SHAPE OF LIFE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 234, 3 October 1942, Page 7

SHAPE OF LIFE

POST-WAR BRITAIN

ABOLITION OF EXTREMES

(0.C.) SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 1.

That characteristic English genius for compromise wiil shape the life to follow the war along purely English lines, Miss Margery Frv told Californians during a visit. The speaker, former governor of the British Broadcasting Corporation, and a one-time principal of SommerviHe College, Oxford, said the life of England will be transformed but "will not become Communist, 80lV. Fasc ist, or what could be designated by any other label now current.

™Jr I s v ? ry difficult," she said, "to predict what will happen in one's own country or indeed what public opinion is in one's own country and one s own time. As has been said, }. ,y°u don t write a book after* living six weeks in a foreign country

you can't write it at all. But I believe it is the almost unanimous opinion in England that we shall never go back; that privilege will be greatly curtailed and that there will no longer be the extremes of wealth and poverty as in the past. "Industrial leaders themselves feel there no longer will be the unrestricted trade, especially in export and possibly in import. What happened when English firms sold goods to the Germans which they later used against us will not be forgotten. There will be more economic planning and organisation." Still, Miss Fry holds, nothing that can be called Socialism will result from the present regimentation necessary because of the war. Most people feel, she said, that English I liberties have been loaned to the Government for the duration of the war, and English compromise will come into play rather than any hard and fast economic solutions. The terms, "you wouldn't be allowed to" and "you can't get" are the most commonly heard on all sides. This superficial appearance of regimentation and Government control, however, should not be mistaken for totalitarianism, the speaker said, for the basic individualism of the English remains.