MR. WELLS'S IDEALS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 8, 11 January 1939, Page 8

MR. WELLS'S IDEALS

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—Mr. Lyons, the Australian Premier, deplored the "personal insults" tendered to the Fascist and Nazi dictators by Mr. H. G. Wells in a recent interview in Melbourne. There is another Mr. Lyons—Eugene Lyons, for six years Moscow correspondent of the United Press—who, together with the well-known journalist, W. H. Chamberlin (for twelve years Russian correspondent of the "Christian Science Monitor") would, I feel sure, quarrel with another, and to my mind, far more dangerous statement made by [Mr. Wells in the course of that same interview.

From the full report of the interview as published in your issue of January 9, it seems that Mr. Wells, after justifiably, if flamboyantly, remarking. upon the menace of Fascism' and Nazism, embodied his only constructive hope for the future in this sentence: "In Russia you have the remains—only the remains—of a real historical philosophy, but still you have something coherent and a certain tradition of respect for the common man which does not exist in Fascist countries."

The two implications contained in that sentence —(1) that Marxism is the solution to the, present chronic condition of the capitalist world: (2) that the U.S.S.R. shows more respect for "the common man" than the Fascist States—are both refuted by such unimpeachable authorities ,as those"' cited above. Stalin''made a titanic effort to implement Marxism in his Five Year Plan (1928-33). Eugene Lyons, erstwhile admirer of the Russian Revolution, on page 540 of his well-document-ed book, "Assignment in Utopia," sums up the results as they were to be seen in 1933: ". . . Instead of an ampler existence along Socialistic lines the Five Year Plan had brought undernourishment bordering on hunger; a scheme of fixed residences amounting to restoration of feudal discipline; laws prescribing death for theft; destruction of the (least semblance of popular control of working conditions. . . The national supply of livestock had dropped 50 to 60 per cent, below 1928. Grain exports . . . had ceased abruptly. The political police had become the largest single employer of labour , . ." Certainly, there is only "the remains" of a certain "philosophy" in Russia today. And it is obvious, from the foregoing facts, that it is sadly so for the reason that, contrary to Mr. Wells's opinion, that "philosophy" in practice proved chaotic rather than "coherent," and exhibited little, if any, respect for human values. As for comparison with the totalitarian regimes of Italy ahd Germany, Mr. Chamberlain in his book, "A False Utopia," roundly indicts both the Fascist and Communist dictatorships. But on page 106 of the same book he makes this statement, which he elsewhere proves: "Neither of these (Fascism or Nazism) has destroyed human life and inflicted other forms of suffering on anything like the Russian Bolshevik scale, and there is no reason to suppose that Communism, had it gained the upper hand in Italy and Germany, would have been any less ruthless."

Surely it is not logical to say that the alternative to the concentration of economic and social power which characterises the Fascist State is to be found in. the collectivising policy of a Communist State. Rather is it to be found in the preservation of private productive ownership; the diffusion j and organisation of the responsibility and control which goes with such ownership; the rehabilitation of society on that functional, co-operative basis. Since the political opinion of bMr. Wells cuts right across facts of current history (as shown above), as well as basic principles of our own battered but not broken system of social living, it should not be impertinent for one to express the view tfcat his indubitable genius is better employed when he is writing Martian fiction than when he is advocating Marxian Communism.—l am, etc.,

G. J. MURRAY,