WHEN PEACE COMES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 102, 1 May 1943, Page 6

WHEN PEACE COMES

THE WILL TO USE IT

URGENT CALL TO YOUTH

Delivering the rectorial address to Aberdeen University recently Sir Stafford Cripps, Minister of Aircraft Production, said he had noticed \yith some distress a growing tendency in Britain to view the future with a certain degree of hopelessness, and of almost sour disillusion. The confident expectation that had been expressed very widely during the past three years that we should never return again to pre-war conditions, and that there would be fundamental change and marked progress, showed signs of weakening just at the moment when the prospect of the war ending began to materialise. Doubts were creeping in. and signs were not. wanting that privilege and selfish interests were busily preparing to cast the future in the mould of the past. It was almost commonplace now to hear the most confirmed advocates oi! change expressing the view that "They" will never really implement the promise of a new Britain or a new world. Who were these mysterious people referred to as "They." who were appareritly looked upon as the veriestbroken reed of a hope for the future? "They" was not the language of democracy, or even of the class struggle. "They" was the language" of dictatorship and defeatism of the common people. We must put aside all such subservience within our democracy and speak instead of what "We"' wanted and what "We" would do. or insist upon being done. Sir Stafford recalled a name to designate the breaking down of the universal comradeship of war into the struggle for sectional advantage in peace. It was given by Mr. Winston .Churchill after the last war. He called it the "Broken Spell.'' The political reaction of peace had almost always been marked by a relapse from tlie idealism of common effort engendered by the stress of war to renewal of the struggle between progress and reaction, Sir Stafford said, and we now approached one of those critical periods. He appealed to those now standing at the threshold of their lives to observe objectively the problem they and their generation faced, and that they would not allow others to lead "them astray by facile explanations dealing with the deceit fulness of politicians or trickery of the ruling class. Many of those who cast the spell in former times were absolutely sincere in their hopes and desires, but, at the critical moment, when they sought to implement those desires in action the opposing forces were too strong. He believed there were two main reasons for that, one that the progressive forces failed to strike while the iron was hot. and the other that they underestimated the support they would win from the people—the comnion men and women of the country— for a bold programme of change. He said that since the last war British democracy had made great progress. All classes had become more politically conscious, and were not so easily misled by empty slogans. He pointed out. however, a great danger. The war, more than any other, had drawn in almost every man and woman. 'There had been rest for none, and the whole population would be vastly wearied when the end came. It would be harder than ever before to stir the people up to a realisation of how easily their democratic power might be used for what might seem plausible, but would turn out to be disastrous purposes. The war had developed many mechanisms for polical and economic co-operation, many controls, and much machineiy ot I planning. They had been created because the call 'for efficiency had been held to over-ride every special interest. That same spirit, the same stress upon the supreme priority of the common weal must be carried through the armistice and into the peace. Much that had been built up for the purpose of war could be adapted quickly and easily to the needs of peace. __^