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

110 LIFE AND IDEAS OF MITRINOVIC

We do not believe that “Nothing can be done about it,’ but for New Action, we need New Minds, New Men. The British people pride themselves on their colonies. There is a new realm to conquer, the realm of Spirit and Deed, where Personal Initiative unites in Personal Alliance to create a New Social Order.

Then will arise a New Britain which by her sound sense and courageous action will lead the way to World Socialism and World Peace.*

Whether Mitrinovié seriously believed in the likelihood of such an eventuality is highly doubtful, but it was a myth worth exploring, a great adventure necessary to pursue. Whatever intellectual scepticism he experienced, he always believed it was necessary to act with the utmost confidence if one was to achieve anything, no matter how ‘unrealistic’ the goal. His invocation left some members of the NEG cold, however. One of them jotted his thoughts down in the margins of the printed commentary on the lecture series:

I hate to say it but I do most earnestly implore the New Europe people to revise the fone of their appeal to the country. This sort of thing simply won't go down, and if put to the people in this way the campaign is already doomed to failure... Don’t know who is responsible for this last page but no matter what real truth it embodies, the manner of it is entirely alien to the English mind... Stick to Professor Sir Patrick Geddes. I implore Mr. Mitrinovic to learn a little of the psychology of the English people. At present, obviously, he only knows the intelligentsia!

Following the “Popular Myths Exploded” lecture series, plans were laid for the next major public initiative—the launching of a journal. The first issue of New Britain Quarterly was published in October 1932. Watson Thomson and David Davies an ex- Welsh miner, socialist and congregationalist minister were the co-editors. Nearly forty years later Davies recalled just what being an editor on one of Mitrinovi¢’s publications entailed:

Late one Sunday night in August, 1932, after a day in Bournemouth, | was at supper in Bogey’s bar, in Southampton Row. There I found Mitrinovican unexpected and pleasurable meeting. He broke the news to me that he was bringing out ‘The New Britain Quarterly, in October, “and you are to be editor,” he said casually. The fact that I knew nothing about the trade of journalism or of type setting, lay-out and a hundred and one other things was immaterial. That I was to edit was the great thing: I was immediately in ecstasy . . . | burst with a sense of importance, and set about the task of planning the first number. But Mitrinovié could not be got to discuss it with me .. . But at last he asked me to go the printers and discuss the size, format and other details of the proposed