The Dominion. SATURDAY, JULY 9, 1938. “THE FLIGHT FROM REASON”

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 242, 9 July 1938, Page 10

The Dominion. SATURDAY, JULY 9, 1938. “THE FLIGHT FROM REASON”

“You see; but' you do not observe,” said Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson, when discussing a piece of evidence the significance o which' the latter had failed to grasp.. In the same way people nowadays are apt to listen to assertions without asking themselves.whether these “stand to reason,” as the saying is. The present seems to be an age of assertion, of slogans and labels. Unfortunately it is also an age in which people give themselves so little time to think abou what is happening around them that they may eventually lose the habit of serious thought. They will become the unconscious victims of crowd psychology, too easily swayed by the noisy an meaningless assertions of frothy demagogues. If we are to escape from this danger—and it is a danger which certainly threatens us we must harness our powers of thinking to those of seeing and hearing. Last week we drew attention to the statement in Parliament y the Under-Secretary for Housing, Mr. J. A. Lee: We were up to our necks in butter, but we could not afford to put butter on oui bread.” He was referring to the conditions which he alleged existed in this country before the Socialist Government came into office. Some people remembering the hardships of the depression period and who did not trouble to give the matter any serious thought would probably accept the statement as one of fact or, at any rate, fairly near the mark. Yet it was not merely a gross exaggeration, but on examination proved to be entirely without foundation. The member for Motueka, who did think about the matter and inquired into it, demonstrated the inaccuracy of Mr. Lee’s assertion in the Address-in-Reply debate in the House on Thursday night. Supporting Ins refutation with official statistics, Mr. Holyoake showed that in the slump period the average annual consumption of butter rose from 351 b to 401 b. a head; the consumption of mutton by 51b. a head, reaching a peak level between 1932 and 1934; the consumption of flour in the depth of the slump “was the greatest ever recorded ip the Dominion”; the highest consumption of potatoes was in iybb-M. This incident shows how important it is that people should not take the truth of assertions for granted. “Happy is the man, said Euripides, “who knows the value of research.” And safe and sane is the country whose people have trained themselves nr the habit ot verifying unsupported assertions, especially assertions by politicians engaged in vote-catching. Mr. Arnold Lunn relates in the Nineteenth Century and After, a talk he had with a group of undergraduates at the University of London. In the course of his remarks he quoted from Andrew Smith’s book I Was a Soviet Worker, m which the author, an ardent American Communist who gave his Ute savings to the Communist Party, tells how lie worked in Russia for three years and returned to tell his fellow Communists that Russia treated her workers worse than capitalist countries treat their dogs. At the conclusion, a young Communist among the undergraduates put a question:—

Are you aware (he asked), that Smith is a Trotskyite? I asked him if he could produce any evidence in support or this theory. He could produce no evidence. Smith (he replied), must be a Trotskyite because he had dared to criticise Soviet Russia. Q ... I suggested that the point at issue was not whether Smith was a Trotskyite, but whether Smith’s statements could be disproved. This shocked him.

“This young Communist,” adds Mr. Lunn, “was a characteristic product of an age in which the flight from reason is developing into a rout. He was not interested in truth except in so far as truth could be exploited in the interests of Communism. Facts were only of value in so far as they fitted into his particular creed.” To take another example: In Parliament on Thursday the Minister of Labour remarked that the Opposition had asked what kind of Socialism his party stood for. “We stand for sane Socialism, that s all,” said he. If we think for a moment we can see that this is no answer at all. The kind of Socialism Mr. Armstrong’s party stands for is that defined as “the socialisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange.” The only difference in principle between this brand of Socialism and that practised as Communism in Russia is the method whereby the objective is to be reached.. One seeks to achieve it by constitutional means and the other by violence. The Labour Party’s definition of Socialism, as it aims to apply it in New Zealand, is as comprehensive and absolute as that which in Russia is practised as ' Communism. I hese examples go to show how easily boastful assertions, unsupported by evidencc, can be punctured by the exercise of our thinking faculties. In this period of change our very existence, the very form of our social structure, may be threatened by neglect to subject every assertion, every plan, every legislative proposition to careful reasoning and searching analysis. Democracy. wdl not be saved—it may in fact be destroyed—by mass propagandised opinion, for that in itself is the antithesis of democratic principle, which asserts the right of the individual to think for himself. But he must practise the art.