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

116 LIFE AND IDEAS OF MITRINOVIC

became almost frantic, however, as plans were laid in the spring of 1933 for the launching of a mass circulation weekly newspaper. A major portion of the funds for this ambitious venture was provided by an associate of Mitrinovic’s, the wealthy daughter of a millionaire manufacturer. It was decided to recruit a professional journalist to take editorial control of the proposed paper, and Charles Purdom, an associate of S. G. Hobson and a past editor of Everyman was invited to take on the post. Purdom, the professional journalist, found himself entering a rather strange and exotic milieu:

The paper was to be called New Britain, and to put forward the ideas of the New Britain Group. These ideas were not different from my own. Although it seemed that I was expected to bring out a paper under that title, and discussions took place every day, I found it difficult to discover who was responsible. There were numerous people, some of them obviously with means, but I found it hard to pin anything down or to get decision on any matter, until I discovered that Dimitri Mitrinovic, a strange but attractive Serbian, who was usually present, would always give a definite and immediate answer to any question I put to him and on his answers I acted. Somehow, the preparations went on, offices were secured in Bedford Square, staff was engaged, and a contract was entered into for printing. Much, however, remained vague. The New Britain Publishing Company Ltd. was formed, but who were to be the directors, what capital it was to have, and when a meeting of the company was to be held I could not ascertain. Decisions about the company taken one day were changed the next, and so far as I know from first to last the directors of the company never met. Neither could I get the lease of the office signed so that we could take possession. The delay dragged on, and the staff had to meet in the street and in local pubs, and I had to accommodate my secretary in an office of my own, the other side of London. It was a comic opera situation, and the staff, all of whom knew me, wondered what had come over me; but I assured them all would be well. A week or so before the paper appeared we got into the offices, and all was well, at least for the time being.

The first number of New Britain Weekly appeared on Empire Day, May 24th, 1933. The choice of date was not accidental, given the significance attributed to the empire as a potential synthesis of both East and West and as a staging post on the way towards world federation. Moreover, Mitrinovic had the insight to realise that any appeal to the British public had to pay token regard to the strength of patriotic feeling. “You can do nothing in England,” he used to remark, “unless you unite the Bible and the Union Jack. Even their football crowds sing “Abide with Me’.”35

Advertised as “A sixpenny weekly for 2d,” the paper consisted of 32 pages. It had a green cover on which was printed in solid black a map of old Britain