ot do this, as they cannot; if there is nothing in their
eulogies, as there is nothing except eulogy—then they are quacks
or the high-priests of the unutterable. If the art critics can say
nothing about the artists except that they are good it is because
the artists are bad. They can explain nothing because they have found
nothing; and they have found nothing because there is nothing to be
found.

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 m