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

112 LIFE AND IDEAS OF MITRINOVIC

since retired to the country. He was, by many accounts, a difficult person to work with.

According to Davies he was even more prickly than Frederick Soddy: “Tf Soddy was a porcupine, Hobson was a hedgehog. He was all toes, with corms on every one of them.”27 Montague Fordham, a contributor to the first issue, remarked that if Hobson “were one of the Twelve Apostles, he would find a reason for resigning in less than a month!”?8 Despite this, Hobson was to remain associated with Mitrinovic and his circle for many years, confessing to a friend that “these young people found me old and weary. Now I almost wish I were young again.”

Sales of the second and third issues of the quarterly failed to match those of the first. It continued to appear until Autumn 1934—but with constantly changing names. By October 1933 it had become The New Ailantis: “for Western Renaissance and World Socialism.” Mitrinovic’s name appeared in this issue for the first time when, as general editor, he addressed an “Urgent Appeal to His Excellency the Chancellor of the Reich.” This concluded with the words:

Oh German! Man! Adolph Hitler! hero and saintly man! Your Germany is leading on to war, to self-extermination of the Continent, of which Germany is the form and the spine.

Propose Disarmament, to Germany and to France! Propose the Atlantic Alliance to England and to U.S.A.! Your own violence and bloodshed would be consecrated and forgiven.*°

Such a “bizarre and utterly impossible proposal” was, for Davies, a perfect illustration of Mitrinovi¢’s “fatal and fundamental weakness: his adherence to fantasy.” And yet he combined this with what Davies conceded was “a profound skill in political analysis.”3! Thus, in the same issue of New Atlantis he urged Britain to adopt one of a number of alternative strategies. If war was to be avoided Britain must either “take a new and final initiative for the United States of Europe” or else declare to the world that she would act against “the aggressor in any future European war and will side positively with the nation or block of nations that might be attacked.” The NEG was urging at this time the need to bring the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. into a defensive alliance with Britain in order to counter the threat of European war.

By April 1934, after two issues of the New Adlantis, New Albion: “for British Renaissance and Western Alliance” was born, only for it to give way to New Britain: “for British Revolution and the Social State” in the