Evening Post. SATURDAY, APRIL 19, 1941. NEED OF STABILISED JUDGMENT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 92, 19 April 1941, Page 8

Evening Post. SATURDAY, APRIL 19, 1941. NEED OF STABILISED JUDGMENT

'Notwithstanding all forewarning, the realisation of things warned against comee to most. people with the shock of surprise. In vain do leaders try to cushion the blow of

military events by pointing out, weeks and months in; advance of the events themselves, that such things are possible, even likely. In vain do leaders quote the ebb and flow of the war of 1914-18—its dark moments

and its sunny ones—in order to prepare the collective mind of the people for blows that must come, and for even heavier blows that may come. Notwithstanding all these measures taken by leaders for the mental preparation of the public, the public still wake up with a start of surprise when the potential danger becomes actual and knocks at the front door. Anticipation of risks, however well tutored thereon the public may be, seldom takes the sting out of realisation, and never tqtally removes the pang which vibrates through the collective consciousness when dire warnings come true. Psychologists may be able to give simple and convincing reasons for this quality of the human mind. A collective capacity to hear but not to realise and visualise the thing warned against, until it happens, may be related to the qualities of hope and courage. It may be that, in spite of the whole immense cost of education and propaganda, a people is taught only by experience : —not by the experience of a former war, but by experience newly coined. Into the psychological background of this phase of public mentality we do not, however, propose to go. We are concerned merely with the fact itself. | The foretelling of easily foreseeable war risks is a duty of leaders; but, where truth is unpalatable, it is sometimes a case of "the more frequent the telling, the less the understanding." Favourite sins are sometimes strengthened when ■ their owners are the subject of a frequent telling, or even of a "telling-off." And that may be a reason why gambling and drinking flourish like the green bay. Curious results follow; for instance, to the drunken man who struggled with the bomb in the crater —until he was arrested by a policeman—drink may prove to be a bigger enemy than the bomb. But it is doubtful whether telling him will make him fight alcoholism; as to fighting the bomb, he nfeeds no telling. Thus his case is at once tragic and heroic. Many people who are prepared to give their lives for their country are not prepared to give up drink or gambling even "for the duration," and telling them is of limited use. Yet they will give their blood. In the same way as people' who drink or gamble are told in vain not to do it, the public as a whole are warned about war risks ahead —and mostly warned in vain, for the alternations of superficial optimism over slight success, and unwarranted depression after foretold misfortunes, continue to ripple over the popular mind, in spite of all that far-seeing and sanely-balanced leaders can say or do. |

Of all leaders, no one has gone farther than Mr. Winston Churchill to forewarn the people, to be candid concerning the present, and to paint the future in colours realistic. Both false optimism and mere pessimism he has scorned. Some day a historian will compare the Prime Ministerial utterances of 1940-41 with those of 1914-16, and will almost certainly remark oh the greater candour of the Churchill speeches and their underlying assumption that the British people are not afraid to be told the truth. And if the historian finds that Mr. Churchill's warnings fell anywhere on stony ground, certainly the fault will not lie with the man who uttered them. The implications that he clearly drew from the fact that Britain was, and to an extent still is, a partly-armed nation fighting a well-armed nation —but gradually redressing the armaments balance —need not be repeated here, nor need his statements be repeated here, for both are fully summarised in a Rugby message in today's issue which everybody should read. The pith and the trend of the argument of this message may be gathered from the following:

Some elements of public opinion here which admit to experiencing a sense of shock and disappointment at the developments of the past fortnight in

the war situation now realise that they have only themselves to blame if they were unprepared by the lessons of the German spring offensive last year and by the unmistakable signs and warnings of the past three months. Above all, they are reflecting on the wisdom of the cautions which the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, has never omitted from his considered statements to Parliament on the progress and prospects of the struggle.

The rebuke is well warranted. But it will effect no permanent cure, for it is up against something in human nature that is ineradicable—reluctance to see the blow until it arrives.

Nevertheless, second thoughts on the German violence in the Balkans and elsewhere, combined with* a revived memory of all those warnings which Rugby collates convincingly, have resulted in some rallying of the despondents; and in the immediate i future at any rate there may be less oscillation of the public mind between extremes of and optimism.. The shock of needless surprise has had its tonic after-effect; there are signs of a greater resilience of popular attitude; and the experience may -even result in a more stabilised standard of public judg- , ment. .