Initiation and initiative : an exploration of the life and ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović

172 LIFE AND IDEAS OF MITRINOVIC

restaurant near St Giles Church in Soho—a small yet symbolic gesture in the direction of human solidarity and fellowship.!

After the war the remaining members of the pre-war group gathered together. Depleted in numbers with their leader in poor health, they decided that it was pointless to embark on any new political or economic initiative. It was felt, however, that action on the cultural front would be possible and worthwhile. It was decided to form a lecture society, the Renaissance Club, which first met towards the end of 1945 and continued in existence until the summer of 1965. Occasionally referred to as the Anti-Barbarus Renaissance Club of the New Atlantis, it was described by one of its founders in a letter to a friend:

The purpose of the Renaissance Club is, as its title implies, to make more widespread the realisation that in the present crisis of human life nothing less than Rebirth is adequate. We are faced with such an unprecedented situation—science having brought to us the choice between almost unbounded wealth and leisure, if we had the courage to accept it, or racial suicide if we cannot change the whole basis of our life. And also having before us the fact that our human world could now be one world which could be planned economically and politically so as to make life worth living for the individual person, but that so far our world leaders do not care at all for the individual, but for the nation, class, party, or sect which they happen to represent.

What is lacking is not technique or cleverness in any form whatever, but human wisdom and the knowledge of human motives and of meaning and art of life . . .

It is to appreciate the knowledge and wisdom of the past and present in one whole picture, and to combat the present democratic barbarism which denies all human values and puts in their place the values of money, sensationalism and mere quantity, size and speed, that the Anti-Barbarus Renaissance Club exists.2

During the twenty years of the Club’s existence, over 200 lectures were delivered under its auspices by various speakers covering a vast range of topics and subjects. Some speakers were included as old associates of Mitrinovié, like C. B. Purdom, David Davies, Dr. Morris Robb, and Dr. Belden. Amongst the others were Dr. Arnold Groeneveld, the Dutch psychiatrist who had done valuable work during the war in helping Jews escape Nazi persecution; Dr. J. H. Fleure, the geographer who had worked with Sir Patrick Geddes; Dr. Fitzgibbon Young, the chief British authority on Comenius; Dr. E. V. Rieu, the translator of the Gospels and of Homer; Dr. Ifor Evans (later Lord Evans) who became Provost of University College, London; the Egyptologist Dr. Margaret Murray; Frederick Soddy; Canon Raven, Master of Christ’s College and later Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge