Clues to Social Credit: Orage and The New Age

Clues to Social Credit: Orage and The New Age J. L. FINLAY Anyone at all interested in the development of English literature and politics in the crucial first twenty years of this century will have encountered frequent references, the great majority laudatory,1 to The New Age, "A Weekly Review of Politics, Literature and Art,"2 and to its editor, A. R. Orage. There were several reasons for their pre-eminence. Orage himself was a literary and political critic of distinction. T. S. Eliot has recorded that "many will remember him as the best leader writer in London - on Wednesday mornings I always read through the first part of the New English Weekly [Orage's second paper] before attending to any other work ... as R.H.C. of The New Age ... [Orage was] the best literary critic of that time in London."3 It was rumored that Orage was one of the only two people whom T. E. Lawrence felt were qualified to judge the manuscript of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.4 In attracting contributions to match the excellence of his own Orage was aided by that charm for which he was always remembered. A mere list of the contributers, frequently lured to his service for little or no monetary reward,5 would be enough to establish the significance of The New Age as a prime source for an understanding of the period, indeed, of much of subsequent developments : Michael Arlen, E. B. Bax, Hilaire Belloc, Arnold Bennett (Jacob Tonson), Cecil Chesterton, G. K. Chesterton, G. D. H. Cole, Havelock Ellis, S. G. Hobson, T. E. Hulme, Rowland Kenney, Oscar Levy, A. M. Ludovic, Conrad Noel, A. J. Penty, Ezra Pound, John C. Powys, G. B. Shaw, J. C. Squire, H. G. Wells, and Israel Zangwill. In addition it must be remembered that Orage was responsible for discovering and encouraging many noteworthy writers; F. S. Flint, Katherine Mansfield, J. M. Murray, Herbert Read, Ivor Brown, Llewelyn Powys and Edwin Muir were authorswhose work first appeared in The New Age. And finally, The 46 New Age was the crucible in which was formed Guild Socialism, that political doctrine which attracted into its ranks, among others, Clement Atlee, Arthur Greenwood, George Lansbury, William Mellor, Raymond Postgate, Bertrand Russell and Ellen Wilkinson; William Temple, later to be Archbishop of Canterbury, was on the fringe of the movement.6 For Canadian readers there has been, of course, an added interest in Orage and The New Age. When Major Douglas was looking for an influential paper to take up, champion and explain his highly unorthodox and badly expressed ideas he was sent to Orage. After lengthy discussion Orage was won over and he began an advocacy of Social Credit which lasted for the remainder of his life. It was a close connection, so close, in fact, that long before the term "Social Credit'' had been coined the scheme was known as the "Douglas-New Age Proposals"; as late as 1922 this was how the Labor Party referred to the theory.7 Despite the attention which Canadian scholarship has devoted to Social Credit much still remains to be clarified, notably the initial Douglas-New Age interaction. In view of the importance of Social Credit to the political development of Canada, Canadians would be pardoned if their interest in The New Age were directed first and foremost to this aspect of the journal. Until recently no study of The New Age had been attempted. It is true that Philip Mairet, who succeeded Orage as editor of the New English Weekly, wrote A. R. Orage: A Memoir, but this appeared in 1936,8 but two years after Orage's tragically untimely death, and did not pretend to be anything more than the title indicated; a second edition of this work, which came out in 1966,9 differed only in the addition of extra material upon the New York years of the late twenties. But recently the forthcoming publication was announced of Wallace Martin's The New Age under Orage,10 and it seemed that a serious gap was at last to be filled. At once it must be admitted that those interested in the specifically Social Credit...