"The transformation of the English from a predominately rural into a predominantly urban people makes the substance of his narrative, in which his gift of vivid description and his intense feeling for national idiosyncrasy have effective expression. He finds the cause of the social change—which he wholeheartedly deplores—in the dogma of laissez-faire, with its consecration of the profit motive and the rights of property, and its reduction of the state to a system of machinery for the protection of individual rights. His diagnosis of the evils proceeding from the change combines that of the Marxists with that of the Nazis—that is, he sees competitive capitalism driving the world to war, and individualism and urbanization resulting in the deterioration of the race. But his remedy is neither Communism nor Fascism, but a Toryism based on the teaching of Disraeli. He believes in a method of government that is so far paternal that it has always in mind the welfare of the community, future as well as past, overriding the immediate interest of any individual."
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A review of English Saga, 1840–1940 by Arthur Bryant
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Arthur Bryant
Sir Arthur Wynne Morgan Bryant CH CBE (18 February 1899 – 22 January 1985) was an English historian, columnist for The Illustrated London News and man of affairs. His books included studies of Samuel Pepys, accounts of English eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history, and a life of George V. Whilst his scholarly reputation has declined somewhat since his death, he continues to be read and to be the subject of detailed historical studies. He moved in high government circles, where his works wer
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