Читать книгу Unconditional Surrender онлайн

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It was in miniature a golden age for the book-trade; anything sold; the supply of paper alone determined a writer's popularity. But publishers had obligations to old clients and an eye to the future. Ludovic's Pensées stirred no hopes of a sequel of best-selling novels. The established firms were on the look-out for promise rather than for accomplishment. Sir Ralph therefore sent the manuscript to Everard Spruce, the founder and editor of Survival; a man who cherished no ambitions for the future, believing, despite the title of his monthly review, that the human race was destined to dissolve in chaos.

The war had raised Spruce, who in the years preceding it had not been the most esteemed of his coterie of youngish, socialist writers, to unrivalled eminence. Those of his friends who had not fled to Ireland or to America had joined the Fire Brigade. Spruce by contrast had stood out for himself and, in that disorderly period when Guy had sat in Bellamy's writing so many fruitless appeals for military employment, had announced the birth of a magazine devoted "to the Survival of Values." The Ministry of Information gave it protection, exempted its staff from other duties, granted it a generous allowance of paper, and exported it in bulk to whatever countries were still open to British shipping. Copies were even scattered from aeroplanes in regions under German domination and patiently construed by partisans with the aid of dictionaries. A member who complained in the House of Commons that, so far as its contents were intelligible to him, they were pessimistic in tone, and unconnected in subject with the war effort, was told at some length by the Minister that free expression in the arts was an essential of democracy. "I personally have no doubt," he said, "and I am confirmed in my opinion by many reports, that great encouragement is given to our allies and sympathisers throughout the world by the survival" (laughter) "in this country of what is almost unique in present conditions, a periodical entirely independent of official direction."