The Press Saturday, August 13, 1932. Politics and the Crisis.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20624, 13 August 1932, Page 14

The Press Saturday, August 13, 1932. Politics and the Crisis.

The Halley Stewart Lectures for 1931, published recently by Messrs George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., consist of . a •ymposium by Sir Arthur Salter, Sir Josiah Stamp, Mr J. M. Keynes, Sir Basil Blaekett, Professor Henry Clay, and Sir William Beveridge on The World's Economic Crisis and the Way of Escape. In its brief two hundred pages the book gives perhaps the best diagnosis of the world's present economic sickness that has yet appeared. As might be expected, the remedies proposed reveal much conflict of opinion: but on the whole there is more agreement than disagreement and the reader is left with the impression that if the six lecturers were made rulers of the world they would sot matters right in a few months. And the lecturers themselves seem to realise this. Though they all begin by talking of an economic crisis, they.end by showing, either deliberately or by implication, that the crisis is fundamentally political. The world is living on half-rations, not because the technique of industry is defective, not because the international monetary system is unworkable, not because economic theory has lagged behind economic practice, but because the machinery of government, which everywhere limits and controls economic enterprise, is hopelessly out-of-date. Its inadequacy movos Sir William Beveridge to something like despair:

Just look at the Governments! Can anyone think them ready for a great and adventurous scheme of international co-operation in finance? Just look at them. I do not say that in any spirit of jeering at Governments or at politicians. In the Governments of the world there are many people of high patriotism and intelligence and experience. But the trouble is that they all have too many things and too national things to do: they all have full-time jobs of carrying on their countries from day to day; they are entangled in a ne -work of party or national manoeuvres, of pressing claims to debts and reparations, of conferences and of Cabinetmaking, of agreeing to differ. It i.- so hard for men to-day to rise to power before they lose the vision to use their power. . . . Even if all economists were completely agreed on a remedy, the Governments could not apply it.

Sir Arthur Salter with his unrivalled knowledge of the workings of European Governments and his unencouraging experience of the League's efforts to introduce order into what is now almost anarchy, makes the same point even rhoi-e strongly, while Professor Clay laments the inability of Governments, even in the national sphere of action, to deal effectively with the increasing number of economic problems thrust upon them. It must be regretted, however, that the lecturers are content to criticise and to instances of political incapacity. Far from making any plea for the scientific study of politics, none of them seems to realise that politics is a subject that submits itself to scientific study. Yet the omission was perhaps to be expected. Until about fifty years ago the study of polities was so dominated by the Platonic tradition that -it remained a branch of philosophy and political speculation and revolved endlessly around certain abstract problems. The pragmatic revolt that began in the 'eighties has fastened political theory to political reality and emphasised the fact that liberty and happiness depend to some extent on adequate organisation. Unfortunately the significance and the value of the change have been slowly and grudgingly recognised. In the Universities of Great Britain there are only two Chairs of Political Science, one of them only four years old. The result is that while few University students escape some smattering of economics, few have even the most elementary knowledge of how Governments are organised and how they function. It is true that great political reforms usually have to wait for changes in public opinion; but jt is equally true that public opinion can do no more than express dissatisfaction with existing evils. The remedies must be devised by the few. At present, although public opinion is profoundly dissatisfied with politicians and political institutions, the political scientists are of such small repute that their advice is not listened to. The Halley Stewart Trust would be doing a great service if for the next series of lectures on the erjsis they chose a panel of lecturers comprising, say, Dr. Ernest Barker, Mr Harold Laski, Lord and Lady Passfield, Mr W. A. Robson, and Professor Alfred Zimmerix

The Value of the Antique. If it were true, as is often said, that New Zealand has no established culture to contemplate and enjoy but is wholly and perhaps rather blindly busy upon the materia] foundations which may some day support such a gracious building, then it would be true also that the collector of antiques, the man whose delight is in things past rather than in things to come, woidd be strange and out of place in sueh an environment. But neither of these things is true. To realise that nothing ever generates spontaneously, that the new always grows from the old, is to see the collector's enthusiasm in better perspective. It is necessary also, to distinguish between the man who collects merely for the sake of having a number of things, or for the sake of having rarer or better things than his fellows, apd the ma« who collects—whether furniture or books or anything else that people have lived with in other times—because he hears and can re« spond to the voice of tjje pajst that lives silently in them, When Dr. Lester said, at the opening of the present Loan Exhibition of Antiques in Christchurch, that he so strongly preferred old things that ho would choose old furniture rather than new even if it were uglier, he was putting tlit case of the true amateur in extreme form; but his explanation, that antiques

had an associational value lacking in more i-ecent work and that with them he could "summon up remembrance of " things past," was almost enough to bear him out. This delight in the antique has its source in the same impulse that urges men to any form of historical study. The furniture of the Elizabethan house, for example, the household utensils, the books that were read by its fireside, the pictures that hung upon its walls, the house itself, and the clothing of the people that lived in it, are the lively illustrations of that book of which formal history is the text. There are many books of which the illustrations can be more interesting than the text, and this is one of them, for the non-professional reader of history i more delighted with some sudden intimate revelation of the way in which the personages of history lived than in the wars and political changes in which thev were involved. Whatever the history books can tell of life as it was lived long ago is told in a more personal manner to the imaginative man by these old things, so that the collector is going beyond the historian to one of the sources of history. Nothing more deeply appeals to sense and thought than such discovery of intangible human truth by way of the material witness of art and craft—a discovery winch very nearly penetrates the meaning of the old name for old studies, the humanities. This is only one reason, and perhaps not even the best, why many may be grateful for the sight, if they cannot eujoy the possession, of old furniture, old china, old household equipment of any kind. Another is that such things exemplify, often with a clear reproach, the beauty of what is perfectly adapted to its purpose. Again, to an age which has won much by the use of machines but has let some joy slip from its idle hands they preach the sane gospel ot William Morris. " Time was," he said, " when everybody that made anything " made a work of art besides a useful "piece of goods, and it gave than " pleasure to make it. ... 1 know that "in those days life was often rough " and evil enough, beset by violence, "superstition, ignorance, slavery; yet "sorely as poor folks needed a solace. " they did not altogether lack one, and "that solace was pleasure in their "work. . . . Must we tor ever be "casting out one devil by another?" Por such reasons and for others an exhibition is welcome which shows that Canterbury is richer in fine antiques than most people would have expected, and that some at least of the first settlers in a remote and uncultivated land remembered that ancestral possessions or even antiques bought at a sale could, as Dr. Lester so aptly said, "add dignity and beauty to a home."