TWO DISCIPLES.

Franklin Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 99, 25 August 1933, Page 6

TWO DISCIPLES.

FASCISM AND MARXISM. 11. G. WELLS ON THE WORLD. THE REAL ISSUE TO-DAY. The world was in labour with two new ideas which seemed contradictory, said Mr 11. G. Wells in an address to the P.E.N. Clubs’ Congress at Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, recently. Mr Wells began by paying a tribute to the late John Galsworthy, reports the “Manchester Guardian.” He would not, said Mr "Wells, discuss there the work ol‘ Galsworthy as a novelist and playwright, nor speak of Lhe extraordinary charm and distinction of his personality. He had known Galsworthy since the day when his friend Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski brought in a tall, distinguished young man whom he introduced as “John” — “You know, John can write,” a promise which Galsworthy amply confirmed both as a playwright and a novelist. But he (Mr Wells) thought that the best tribute which they could pay to the memory of John Galsworthy would be to talk about the needs and aims of the P.E.N. Club, to the foundation cf which Galsworthy had contributed so materially, and the needs of which had always been very near to his heart. We were living, said Mr Wells, in times of change and stress, and to-day it was the fate-of all things to lac ; changed and adapted to the new conditions. The original idea of the P.E.N. Club had been a rather loose and vague

idea. It had been in the nature of a preliminary sketch rather than a comj pleted project. It was essentially a 1 conception of friendliness between I men of different nationality, based on | a profound faith in the common sense ! in mankind. “Republic of Human Mind.” The idea of dining and gathering and entertaining each other and talkj ing things over was a very AngloI Saxon idea. It seems to give an adI mirable opportunity for going into everything and never going too far | with anything. It has a good old Lib- '■ eral idea, which had enabled our peoi pie to get past some very difficult sit- ! uations in the past. But now all , sorts of novel conditions had arisen to I alter that, and it seemed as though ; the time had come for the P.E.N. Club to revise very carefully what it is, and ; what i tstood for, and to make its laws , and projects more comprehensive and , more precise.

! “We talk, most of us, nowadays very freely of the ‘Republic of the human mind’—a world republic of letters and science and of creative effort,” Mr Wells went on. “That sort of talk I has been going on for the last couple | °f centuries, but is if a reality we are I talking about, or is it something that j is only just coming info existence? Are j we of the P.E.N. Club trying to merely j sustain something, or are we trying to j evolce something? I suggest to you I that wo are trying to evoke something. ; We are trying to evoke a mental com- [ munity throughout the world. We are I asking the different peoples to under- : stand one another In order 1 to achieve ! a common understanding.. ! “Some of us nowadays are beginn, to realise certain unprecedented 1 things that have been happening to ! mankind. There has been an enormous I development of communication bei tween men and men throughout the I earth, and an enormous change of j scale in our power of doing things, so ; that almost all the present political i boundaries are becoming misfits and | the multitude of communities that has hitherto existed in the world is being I forced by necessity to become one world-wide community. If I am right ; in saying that, then I must go on to | that we can only adapt ourselves to , the logical consequence and point out

Running Wild. these new conditions by a complete I revolution in our political and economic ideas.” A century and a half ago, in the beginning of this process, there was a tremendous dissolution in the binding ideas of communities. We were all for liberty, and liberty ran'wild; industry, freed from control, ran wild, and particularly the-iron and steel industries ran wild, and culminated in such an equipment for war as made war a new thing in human experience. Money and finance, freed from direction or restraint, ran wild until we are faced with unemployment in the midst of abundance and universal social paralysis. The old patriotism played havoc with the new weapons, and the old i idea of competition and business played havoc with civilised life. The world now, said Mr Wells, was in labour with two main ideas that pressed upon it. “First is the appreciation of the need for unification, for getting into a world-wide management of each community’s interests —to a world commonwealth. The second is a realisation of the need for discipline, because of that dissolution of the old traditional ideas of conduct which have hitherto bound communities together.” : Now these two ideas seemed to be in

conflict. Some of us put the most stress on the first —the idea of a world community. Some of us put most stress on the second—the idea of a return to discipline. Most of the problems of the present day seemed to resolve themselves into the question of the relative value of these two ideas. “I say ‘seem to’,” added Mr Wells, “because I am inclined to think that the real issue is not between discipline and liberty, but about the objective towards which our discipline ought to be directed.” Weapons of Defence. Those who are most inclined co stress the first idea—of a world commonwealth —since it is a thing that is still in the making, since it demands freshness as well as exacitude of ideas, are all for liberty of expression, liberty of publication. But those who stress the second idea—the idea of discipline—are all too apt to revert to old patriotisms, old loyalties, oldfashioned established values as a basis for their disciplinary rules, and to suppress the free development of new customs and the development of newdirective ideas. They show a tendency everywhere to restrict discussion and to seize upon education, the Press, literature, and the general instruction of the people in order to capture its will from the beginning. “Now,-’ said Mr Wells, “I am not thinking of only one country when I view this antagonism. It is as true of international Marxist Russia -as of Fascist Italy. It occurs everywhere. ‘Go as you please’ becomes impossible. We have to march. The real issue is where are we going? Are we to march to world union and world peace or are we to be marched back to perpetual separation and endless war? “It has been the profession of the P.E.N. Club to keep out of politics, but can it keep out of politics when things are in this state? It is impossib’ e f 0 separate scientific and crGn tlve work ft'Clii iiif! education of the world community as a whole. The two things are continuous and inseparable, tl seems to me that the time has come for our federation of societies to choose definitely between making the world commonwealth and guiding conception of its organisation or relapsing into a mere meeting-ground for the mutual complements of narrow' and repressive cults. Which line are we to take? “I think a decision on that alternative is forced upon us now'. I believe wc must make that decision within a year. I hope we shall not attempt to make it at once, hut that at this conference we shall open our minds to all the alternatives involved. Then we shall know where we stand, whether we stand for reaction or whether we stand for the world commonweal.”