Island - Aldous Huxley [27]
“Murugan told me that he intended to reform these so-called reforms.”
“I can only pray,” said the Rani in a tone that reminded Will of his grandfather, the Archdeacon, “that he’ll be given the Strength and Wisdom to do it.”
“And what do you think of his other projects?” Will asked. “Oil? Industries? An army?”
“Economics and politics aren’t exactly my strong point,” she answered with a little laugh which was meant to remind him that he was talking to someone who had taken the Fourth Initiation. “Ask Bahu what he thinks.”
“I have no right to offer an opinion,” said the Ambassador. “I’m an outsider, the representative of a foreign power.”
“Not so very foreign,” said the Rani.
“Not in your eyes, ma’am. And not, as you know very well, in mine. But in the eyes of the Palanese government—yes. Completely foreign.”
“But that,” said Will, “doesn’t prevent you from having opinions. It only prevents you from having the locally orthodox opinions. And incidentally,” he added, “I’m not here in my professional capacity. You’re not being interviewed, Mr. Ambassador. All this is strictly off the record.”
“Strictly off the record, then, and strictly as myself and not as an official personage, I believe that our young friend is perfectly right.”
“Which implies, of course, that you believe the policy of the Palanese government to be perfectly wrong.”
“Perfectly wrong,” said Mr. Bahu—and the bony, emphatic mask of Savonarola positively twinkled with his Voltairean smile—“perfectly wrong because all too perfectly right.”
“Right?” the Rani protested. “Right?”
“Perfectly right,” he explained, “because so perfectly designed to make every man, woman, and child on this enchanting island as perfectly free and happy as it’s possible to be.”
“But with a False Happiness,” the Rani cried, “a freedom that’s only for the Lower Self.”
“I bow,” said the Ambassador, duly bowing, “to Your Highness’s superior insight. But still, high or low, true or false, happiness is happiness and freedom is most enjoyable. And there can be no doubt that the politics inaugurated by the original Reformers and developed over the years have been admirably well adapted to achieving these two goals.”
“But you feel,” said Will, “that these are undesirable goals?”
“On the contrary, everybody desires them. But unfortunately they’re out of context, they’ve become completely irrelevant to the present situation of the world in general and Pala in particular.”
“Are they more irrelevant now than they were when the Reformers first started to work for happiness and freedom?”
The Ambassador nodded. “In those days Pala was still completely off the map. The idea of turning it into an oasis of freedom and happiness made sense. So long as it remains out of touch with the rest of the world, an ideal society can be a viable society. Pala was completely viable, I’d say, until about 1905. Then, in less than a single generation, the world completely changed. Movies, cars, airplanes, radio. Mass production, mass slaughter, mass communication and, above all, plain mass—more and more people in bigger and bigger slums or suburbs. By 1930 any clear-sighted observer could have seen that, for three quarters of the human race, freedom and happiness were almost out of the question. Today, thirty years later, they’re completely out of the question. And meanwhile the outside world has been closing in on this little island of freedom and happiness. Closing in steadily and inexorably, coming nearer and nearer. What was once a viable ideal is now no longer viable.”
“So Pala will have to be changed—is that your conclusion?”
Mr. Bahu nodded. “Radically.”
“Root and branch,” said the Rani with a prophet’s sadistic gusto.
“And for two cogent reasons,” Mr. Bahu went on. “First, because it simply isn’t possible for Pala to go on being different from the rest