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

POLITICAL INITIATIVES 111

quarterly. I did so, and got a dummy copy made up in a green cover, similar in size and shape to the “XXth Century magazine . .. When I took this outcome of hours of work with the printer to Mitrinovic, he threw it into the wastepaper basket after one withering, contemptuous look. “You are not going to stab the Unconscious of the Englishman with shat kind of thing,” he said. And in the next ten minutes he sketched out the format and design of the magazine . . . I began to learn that to be editor meant being Mitrinovic’s office-boy.*°

The quarterly magazine that emerged from Mitrinovic’s sketches had the unusual page size of 16” x 14”, laid out in three columns. It provoked the printer to ribald laughter, but the first issue sold some 2000 copies and Davies was forced to concede that the odd format made an immediate appeal to readers. The contributors included some familiar names: Soddy, Delahaye, Philip Mairet, and Professor J. MacMurray. Mitrinovic’s name did not appear—but his mark was everywhere to be seen. He suggested the contributors to be sought out, he produced relevant European material for inclusion (amongst which were translations of Van Eeden and Gutkind), he chose the illustrations, and decided what books should be reviewed. He also, with an eye to the future, decided to promote certain members of the group by printing under their names extracts of articles or lectures that had been produced by other group members.

In an article in the first issue entitled “New Europe—New Britain,” Delahaye explored the nature of the world crisis confronting humanity and outlined the changes necessary to bring about a ‘revolution of order.’

It is a total revolutionary change that is necessary. We are sick, culturally, politically, economically. Leaders continue to tinker with symptoms, whereas it is the disease which has to be attacked. It is a new way of life and work that must be established. Not planning only is required but planning for a new purpose. That purpose, briefly stated, is to achieve a maximum of individuation, i.e. the maximum devolution of power and significance and responsibility in the spheres of politics, economics and culture, upon the maximum number of individuals.

Each individual then must see to the change in his own outlook, rather than urge others to take the first step. And, though our ultimate vision is one of world unity, New Britain is our immediate task, and New Europe the setting in which it must be conceived.”6

For the second issue of the quarterly Mitrinovié sent Valerie Cooper and Gordon Fraser to Tring in Buckinghamshire to solicit an article from ‘the father of guild socialism, S. G. Hobson. Hobson had left Orage’s The New Age shortly before Mitrinovié began his “World Affairs” series and had