In Mr. Peter Anson’s pleasant book of reminiscences there are occasional passages about Catholic Action in Britain, usually with special reference to the Apostleship of the Sea, which he helped to found in 1921. In these passages there appears distinctly an uneasiness about the adequacy of the latter’s work in this country, a feeling that it tackles the symptoms of spiritual sickness and not its roots, and the suggestion, by implication at least, that it is in some ways too remote from the people and conditions which it hopes to affect. Mr. Anson himself has changed his mind as to the lines on which the Apostleship of the Sea could best develop; a change illustrated by his withdrawal from all organizing committee work to his present life in the cottage called ‘Harbour Head,’ which has become a flourishing House of Hospitality, for seamen primarily, but also for any service men or local fishers who care to drop in. In his memoirs little is told us about the last five years at ‘Harbour Head ‘; enough to give a rough idea of what is attempted there but, naturally enough, nothing to show how much it has meant to large numbers of men, Catholics and Protestants, British and foreign, brought by war to a north-east Scottish fishing town with only a minute Catholic population, and little to offer in the way of comfort or entertainment to men in port. ‘Harbour Head ‘has become a centre of the Apostleship of the Sea, of a kind which is strikingly kin to Friendship Houses and to the Houses of Hospitality established by the Apostolate of Christ the Worker.

It is possible, in the daily intercourse of living, to be familiar with every detail of a man’s behaviour and habits, and yet to understand nothing of the man himself; or in history, to wade through volumes about some figure or movement, and yet not to be any closer to the reality. Then, suddenly, one chances upon a formula, a character-equation, which explains all, which renders coherent and intelligible what had before been isolated and inexplicable problems of history or of personal acquaintance.

Let me illustrate. For years I had known a certain man of my own age and profession, conversed with him, studied with him, idled with him. Now, after all this I never became intimate with him, as it is a commonplace that knowledge may never ripen into friendship. Here familiarity never developed even into knowledge. The springs and fountains of the man’s conduct were completely hidden from me. We had exchanged a thousand views with each other, but we had never exchanged ourselves. All the time I felt dimly that there was some lack, some defect, which precluded intimacy. For four or five years our relations stood thus, our good fellowship more apparent than real, when, quite unexpectedly from nowhere, a character-formula (I cannot think of a more apt word) flashed upon me.

There had been nothing to indicate any ground for our divergence, when one day my demon or my angel whispered : not in what he did, not in what he said, but in what he left unsaid will you find an answer.

During the last thirty years the exploitation of language by the linotype, radio and cinema has made words cheap, obscured their meaning and dulled our perceptions. Our idea of goodness is likely to be haunted by a phantasm of Guiness, and if it becomes coterminous with Guiness it becomes false. Our understanding of the difference between glamour and beauty is likely to be hazy, not only because of film stars, for Blackpool and the Scottish Highlands are both described as glamorous. We live in a world where sound in general and words in particular are scattered about with insensate prodigality and disregard for the consequences, and we cannot fail to become in some degree insensitive to the meaning and value of words.

Words were created to be the means of conveying thought. How often do they convey thought and how often only ‘sound and fury signifying nothing.’ The popularity of a slogan lies more in its sound than in its meaning; you can always lead the crowd by an attractive noise, and if you are unscrupulous by an evil meaning noise. While it is possible for a slogan to enshrine a gem of wisdom it is also possible for a slogan to be gibberish. When the press makes its appeal through such noise all stimulus of thought is killed, the channels of intellect are silted up with a deposit of jargon and cliches and we lose the power to distinguish between sound and significance. So our thoughts become muddled and consequently false.

Arthur Koestler is unique among modern novelists for two reasons. Firstly he has written novels which have achieved wide popularity without in any way sacrificing their claim to be serious literature. Secondly, his political philosophy is sufficiently mature to enable him to analyse left-wing politics from a left-wing standpoint and yet to arrive at conclusions far more balanced and critical than we are entitled to expect from any British political commentator starting from the same assumptions.

The popularity of his two novels, Darkness at Noon and Arrival and Departure, has been achieved by his use of all the reader-appeals of the modern best-seller. His subject matter is extremely palatable to those types of middle-class intelligentsia who frequent the circulating libraries. Koestler’s chief appeal, of course, is his topicality. The setting of his novels is in modern Russia and Germany. But one has only to compare his grasp of political realities with the tedious platitudes and gross over-simplifications of such a political novelist as Philip Gibbs to appreciate Koestler’s mature and informed political criticism through characters and vividly localised details.