Summary (Search for Survival)
1. Our teaching of history should be modified so as to include the history of the human race.
2. There can be no doubt that too long a period of power and wealth leads to decadence. We must diagnose how this occurs and take steps to rectify it.
3. Old nations suffer from atrophy owing to organisation, to rigid forms and to an ever-increasing bureaucracy, destroying individual initiative and psychological drive.
4. The armed forces recruited from a welfare state tend to lose initiative. Too luxurious a standard of living results in their becoming all tail and no teeth.
5. Too much organisation from above tends to destroy initiative. One of our chief problems is how to avoid over-organisation in an industrial nation.
6. We can appreciate the humane and benevolent intentions of the welfare state, while simultaneously realising that a spoon-fed population loses all initiative.
7. Decadent nations cease to explore new sources of wealth. Their energies are wasted in sordid squabbles over inherited wealth.
8. The influence of the Crown is impartial and thus valuable.
9. Both security and prosperity require large unified areas of free trade. The tendency to split up into smaller and smaller fragments increases poverty and insecurity.
10. The European Community is not a device to reduce the price of groceries in Britain. Its object is to produce a wider trading area and better integration of European defence measures.
11. The surest guarantee of world peace and free trade would be Anglo-American command of the sea. This fact, the foundation of the past greatness of Britain, does not seem to have been grasped by our modern politicians.
12. Although we talk of liberty, one of the most disastrous of modern trends is the tendency to use coercion, whether by the use of weapons, by strikes, blockades or boycotts. Reason, discussion and amicable persuasion produce better and more lasting results. But in order to be listened to we need to be strong.
13. A notable feature of declining nations is a loss of physical energy. We cannot be sure of the reason, for national decline has never been the subject of research.
14. Every one of us can contribute to the recovery of our country by working harder and by fostering a sense of comradeship and team-work.
15. Bribery and corruption in public life are new features in Britain. They cannot be obliterated by more laws or by increased penalties, but only by the diffusion of a higher standard of morality.
16. The increasing appearance of women in public life seems to have been a symptom of decline of past nations. We cannot explain the reversal of the sexes because no research has been done in this field.
17. Women are the guardians of the national future by the dedication with which they bring up their children. When women neglect small children to earn a double salary for the family, there is grave danger of injury to the next generation.
18. Men should venerate women for their noble and selfless service. Women, in their turn, would do better not to descend from their high estate.
19. Ease of travel and the increase in world population may inevitably lead to mixed populations. This tendency presents many dangers of internal hatreds. It is better to allow people to live as they wish, and in separate communities if they so desire, rather than to force them to integrate.
20. Love- patient and benevolent- will always find a way. The ideals of the British Commonwealth are based on this spirit.
21. Only a revival of spiritual devotion- not fashionable ‘-isms’- can inspire selfless service.
22. Each one of us can contribute by leading moral and dedicated lives, and by speaking and writing in that sense. If we have no leaders to inspire us, we must ‘go it alone’.