The Red Reactionary

The one case for Revolution is that it is the only quite clean and
complete road to anything--even to restoration. Revolution alone can be
not merely a revolt of the living, but also a resurrection of the dead.

A friend of mine (one, in fact, who writes prominently on this paper) was
once walking down the street in a town of Western France, situated in that
area that used to be called La Vendee; which in that great creative crisis
about 1790 formed a separate and mystical soul of its own, and made a
revolution against a revolution. As my friend went down this street he
whistled an old French air which he had found, like Mr. Gandish, "in his
researches into 'istry," and which had somehow taken his fancy; the song
to which those last sincere loyalists went into battle. I think the
words ran:

Monsieur de Charette.
Dit au gens d'ici.
Le roi va remettre.
Le fleur de lys.

My friend was (and is) a Radical, but he was (and is) an Englishman, and
it never occurred to him that there could be any harm in singing archaic
lyrics out of remote centuries; that one had to be a Catholic to enjoy the
"Dies Irae," or a Protestant to remember "Lillibullero." Yet he was
stopped and gravely warned that things so politically provocative might
get him at least into temporary trouble.

A little time after I was helping King George V to get crowned, by walking
round a local bonfire and listening to a local band. Just as a bonfire
cannot be too big, so (by my theory of music) a band cannot be too loud,
and this band was so loud, emphatic, and obvious, that I actually
recognised one or two of the tunes. And I noticed that quite a formidable
proportion of them were Jacobite tunes; that is, tunes that had been
primarily meant to keep George V out of his throne for ever. Some of the
real airs of the old Scottish rebellion were played, such as "Charlie is
My Darling," or "What's a' the steer, kimmer?" songs that men had sung
while marching to destroy and drive out the monarchy under which we live.
They were songs in which the very kinsmen of the present King were swept
aside as usurpers. They were songs in which the actual words "King
George" occurred as a curse and a derision. Yet they were played to
celebrate his very Coronation; played as promptly and innocently as if
they had been "Grandfather's Clock" or "Rule Britannia" or "The
Honeysuckle and the Bee."

That contrast is the measure, not only between two nations, but between
two modes of historical construction and development. For there is not
really very much difference, as European history goes, in the time that
has elapsed between us and the Jacobite and between us