The Evening Post WELLINGTON, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1945. REBIRTH: MORAL AND SCIENTIFIC

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 48, 26 February 1945, Page 4

The Evening Post WELLINGTON, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1945.

REBIRTH: MORAL AND SCIENTIFIC

Will Britain be able to regain in the world's export trade a share necessary to her existence? In answering this question vigorously in the affirmative, Sir Ernest Fisk expresses the opinion that Britain will use "the newer sciences and newer industries" to regain that place in export trade which she had to relinquish in order to fight —in the first place alone.'—the world's battle for freedom. Morally, Britain's war service to the whole democratic world is so magnificent that a "comeback" in the post-war commercial-industrial-economic sphere is hers by right. But assets of mentality as well as of morality are needed. Has Britain always shown a realisation of the spirit and meaning of applied science sufficient to equip her to compete in the new scientific chapter of an increasingly scientific age? If industrial Britain's attitude towards the commercial utilisation of science, in the past, has been the subject of much, criticism—and it has been—has In- j dustrial Britain sufficiently learned lessons of experience to enable her now, at a very critical period, to leap on the back of science and to gallop, in front of other riders, to economic rehabilitation? Science is a horse that has to be ridden all the way, from the starting gates to the winning post. There has never been any doubt about British science. Concerning the industrial and commercial expression of it the same thing cannot be said.

Competition in the post-war world will be a very different thing from what it was at the dawn of the industrial revolution. Britain was then by far the best circumstanced starter, if not the only one. Britain walked into industrial success, but more than a walk will be required to make her a winner in the balance of the twentieth century, if her main support is to be science. When she assumed the industrial lead in the last century, her production not only benefited from limited competition but from the absence of political-labour checks, of Government-in-business, and of all those things that separate the advanced economists of today from Adam Smith. The race that Britain then was in could be run slowly. It will be run slowly never again. Not only within the nation, but in the international sphere, there are scores of factors that require political as well as industrial insight, and which will not brook delay, that last infirmity of noble democracies. In short, the exalted morality of Britain's claims as the warchampion of freedom needs a mentality far more rapid than the nineteenth century mentality if the new great opportunity is to be fully capitalised. Nor will the war for exports be won by such a policy of drift as Hitler found—to his delight—in the Britain and France of the twenties and thirties. What is wanted is a practical application, as brilliant in peacetime as in wartime, of all that science can do. Britain has shown an ability, equal to any, in science as a destroyer. There is no obstacle to her making an equal success of science as a builder, if the spirit is there. All this seems to be implied by Sir Ernest Fisk when he speaks of "the renaissance of British industry." Renaissance is a rebirth, including spiritual rebirth. That is exactly what Britain and the British Empire need. They need ' something to grapple with a human spirit that was not in evidence when Britain walked^ into the industrial lead. In fact, a renaissance; nothing less.

About half a century ago industrial Britain was called upon to "wake up," and Mr. Joseph Chamberlain spoke of Britain, as "a weary Titan" struggling with the "too vast orb" imposed by fate. The Titan's burden was never greater than it is now and will be; but we 4 hope and believe with Sir Ernest Fisk that Britain is a Titan refreshed, a giant reborn. New Zealand's economy has pivoted on the Mother- ■ land to such an amazing degree that all Dominion good wishes for her begin at home. The scientific new age, from which so much is hoped, attracts the attention not only of citizens of the British Empire but of Americans, Russians, and French; and the defeated Germans and Japanese will look to science and to exports to pull them-j selves out of their predicament. As to Russia, consider her vast natural resources and add to them the scientific-technical skill already shown in the marvellous work of the Red Army and the equipment of it. Again, on the political side —internal and international, "ideological" and purely opportunist, with State controls, barter systems, cartels, not forgetting the by no means obsolete tariffism—there is a field which can be conquered only by the kind of statesmanship that was not conspicuous between the two World Wars. No wonder that Sir Ernest Fisk observes that "there are going to be difficulties in the international and intra-national economies of the world; all countries will be . looking to the development of export trade." But will all countries abjure tariffism? In the United States, war issues subordinated the differences in the Democrats over the New Deal and over the internal economy. Will these or similar differences remain submerged, in America or anywhere? And "intranational" economy goes to the root of the economy that is international; if economic-industrial cleavages cannot be composed within a great nation, can they be composed outside it? How can the tariff question be settled anywhere, except in conformity with "intranational" economy?

At the moment, the struggle in America between the orthodox and the new age seems to be epitomised in the issue between Jesse Jones and H. A. Wallace for official control of finance policies. This issue has arisen under the shadow of war-needs. But no war-settlement of "intra-national" economy in America will be permanent. The Jones-Wallace conflict is a portent of things to come.