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

108 LIFE AND IDEAS OF MITRINOVIC

take into account all man’s needs and potentialities can satisfy the individuals who make up a community ...

This Group proposes that similar groups should be formed in a rapidly growing organisation designed to gather together those who wish to examine the situation and inform themselves of what are the possibilities for a reconstructed, renewed social order.!9 i

Interested people were invited to contact the secretary of the NEG at Gower Street, Miss W. G. Fraser. Winifred Gordon Fraser had been working in a South Kensington bookshop when she had been ‘discovered’ by Mitrinovié who promptly recruited her as his secretary and general factotum. She was to remain a devoted colleague and co-worker until his death. One of her first tasks as secretary of the NEG was to solicit support and assistance from various influential personages. Amongst those contacted were Sir Charles Trevelyan and Sir Patrick Geddes. Trevelyan declined the invitation to lend his name to the new organisation, observing that “in some ways the aspirations sound very good, but it is all quite vague. . . . 0 Geddes responded positively, and readily agreed to accept nomination as President.?!

Other recruits were drawn in through the series of lectures that the new group organised. The first lecture of which a record exists was delivered by Mitrinovi¢ on December 7th 1931 on the theme of “A United Europe in a World Order.” Amongst those who attended this series was a graduate of Glasgow University, Watson Thomson, who had recently moved to London after working abroad in Jamaica and Nigeria. On about his third visit to 55 Gower Street he encountered Mitrinovic for the first time, heard him speak, and was enthralled.

I went home to my little attic room in a daze. Here, I thought, is a very great man. Here is the kind of wisdom the world desperately needs ... Why have I never heard of this man? Why is he not proclaiming to the world? Why is he wasting his time with a little Bloomsbury lecture society? Who is he anyway?

As may well be imagined, my attendances at Gower Street became more regular after that, though D. M. did not appear again for quite a long time. Meanwhile I got to know some of the officials of the two societies and did some writing jobs for them, preparing new pamphlets—projects which brought me to Gower Street in the afternoons. One afternoon a girl, one of our volunteer typists, came up to me and said, “Mr. D. M. would like to meet you. Would you come downstairs and have tea with him?”

In some excitement, not unmixed with trepidation, I descended the stairs to a

large basement room. It was a strange room, dark and cluttered, its walls lined with books, dark draperies everywhere, some paintings here and there, and many