ABSTRACT
Murry’s concern for pacifist agricultural communities was not merely academic, nor was the idea advanced in Christocracy a new one. Already by the summer of 1940, wherever land was neglected, sodden or sterile enough to be cheap, groups of young men and women, as liberally endowed with energy and idealism as they were deficient in funds and experience, were diligently establishing ‘new patterns of social living’ – and very odd some of them were. In business matters alone less down-to-earth, he did not share Murry’s anxiety to see the Centre made a paying proposition, by expanding production and reducing costs to a minimum; nor did he trust the leader of the Farm Group, a twenty-four-year-old Quaker, Walter, whose practical ability and zeal were matched by his overweening self-assurance. Marriage, therefore, becomes once again the haunt and main region of his song; and once again, as might have been predicted, he turns to Lawrence – only not, this time, for guidance.
