The New English Weekly, 5 (3 May 1934) 71-72
Sir, – There appears to be left one matter upon which Mr. Pound and I do not agree: namely, the vital problem of what is and what is not blue china. Let Mr. Pound dust his own blue china and let me potter about with mine. 1
Incidentally, the personalities of Mr. Chesterton and Dean Inge, and Mr. Pound’s lack of respect for them, seem to me to be totally irrelevant. 2
I am not convinced that my own concern for the future of society, in England A.D. 1934, is any less than that of Mr. Pound in Italy anno12. 3 On the contrary, as Mr. Pound is not interested in the survival of the Christian Faith, his demands upon the future are much more likely to be satisfied than are mine. And this is the point, and indeed the only point for me of embarking upon or pursuing this correspondence. It is only a step from asserting (what appears to be true) that the economic problem must be solved if civilisation is to survive, to asserting (what I dispute) that all other problems may be or ought to be neglected until the solution of the economic problem. And from this point it is only one step more into complete Secularism. The political alternatives which we are offered as alternatives to the present rotten state of affairs both seem to me wholly secular. The reason why I have been able to support the New English Weeklyis that the doctrines it advocates do not appear to be necessarily and exclusively secular. The kind of fanaticism which Mr. Pound applies to economic reforms with which I am, in any case, in sympathy, and which he applies in a different sense to a religious institution of which I am a member, seems to me to degrade the former, and to leave the latter unaffected.
Mr. Pound has been kind enough to inform me about the works of Alberto de la Magna, the Collection Migne, and Larousse. 4 I may recommend in return a small pamphlet, Le bien commun, published by Desclée de Brouwer et Cie., fr. 2.50. I have also found Le meilleur régime politique selon S. Thomas(Marcel Demongeot) and Fragments de sociologie chrétienne (Tristan d’Athayde) of some interest. I have no doubt that he is already familiar with Quadragesimo Anno. 5
t. s. eliot
