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

50 LIFE AND IDEAS OF MITRINOVIC

He addressed himself particularly to me; it seems Fr. Nikolai already knew what he would say: “It could start from us three,’ he said. “We are secretly committed to giving our lives to the realization of the Kingdom of Heaven upon Earth and all we do will be directed to that purpose. We will cautiously seek allies and persuade them to join us and form a Christianly conscious nucleus. All in secret, all below ground. The more secret we are, the greater spiritual strength we draw, till we are ready to break surface and grow to a mighty tree.”

All this was said in a hushed voice as if the walls had ears and in a jargon which I have translated into clearer English. I did not myself fully understand this idea, but I agreed to form with him what he called a ‘personal alliance, with the reservation that I would see what would come of it.*5

It is difficult to know how much credence to grant to Graham’s account of such meetings. In later life relationships between the two men became soured, whilst in his autobiography there are a number of factual errors about Mitrinovic which lead one to treat his recollections with a certain degree of caution. What is clear, however, is that during his early years of exile in Britain Mitrinovi¢ was looking for likely people who would be willing to commit themselves, with him, to the creation of a new age. However fanciful and utopian such a vision might appear to others, for Mitrinovic it could never be attained if people did not pursue it with seriousness and determination. Moreover, if the aim was to create a world of liberty and fellowship, where each would value the other as much as themselves, then the starting point lay with one’s own life and one’s relationships with friends and acquaintances. The seed there planted might one day evolve, organically, to a stage where a determining influence on the shape and pattern of the wider world might be exerted. This attempt to create a nucleus of individuals who, by their example and work, might act to transform social life, was a consistent theme of Mitrinovic’s life. It was to reach its fullest development during the late 1920s and the 1930s, but he had begun to explore the idea, if obliquely, in his “Aesthetic Contemplations” articles. His reading of Solovyov and his encounter with the ideas of Gutkind had further stimulated him, and his involvement with the Blutbund initiatives was to teach him some important lessons on the translation of such ideas into the realm of action. The difference between the later period and the years of his involvement with the Blutbund initiative was that during the earlier period Mitrinovi¢ believed it was possible to recruit to such a project the ‘great names’ of philosophy, art and science. This was the logic of the Blutbund. If the leading spirits of the age would commit themselves to each other and to an initiative for a new and better world of peace and fellowship,