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

POLITICAL INITIATIVES 115

administration there would be no need for the Political Chamber to concern itself with economic questions, these were the preserve of the Economic Chamber. The Political Chamber would represent neither class nor party interests but regions.

The villages or wards would elect on the governing body of the country that man or woman who best represented its inhabitants. From those delegates to the county the regional and national members would be chosen. The voting would then no longer be for abstract principles or party labels but for those individuals who best represented the opinion of the region on questions of administration and on home and foreign policy.

The third element in the proposed Social State would be the Cultural Chamber which would be concerned with the problems of general human well-being such as housing, public health, education, the arts, religion, science and philosophy. The Chamber would have as its members the best authorities on these different subjects, who would be kept informed of all the relevant problems and issues by councils spread throughout the country who would investigate and report on the conditions and needs of each region or city. Services and provisions would be designed to meet the needs and aspirations of people rather than the greed of private profiteers. Scientific research would be directed towards human ends rather than the means of war. Once inventive genius was employed for genuinely constructive purposes people would be relieved from much of the drudgery and monotony of manual labour and machine minding, opening up the prospect of an age of leisure.

Then man will know the joy of extending knowledge for its own sake . . . The arts will then become socialised not only in their application as crafts but as interpretations of man’s common experience .. .

In this age of mechanisation, mass production and standardisation, such a Cultural Chamber will be the safeguard of human values. That individual is free who is wise enough to discipline himself so that his physical, moral and mental activities can be a true and complete expression of his own powers. That State will be free in which the community is enabled to establish standards of cultural value which can direct political and economic policy, instead of being dominated by them.

From the start the NBG pursued a far more aggressive and sustained propaganda programme than had hitherto characterised Mitrinovic’s public initiatives. A stream of penny leaflets and policy statements supplemented the usual round of lectures and lunch-time addresses. The pace of activities