FASCISM AND MARXISM

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 August 1933, Page 4

FASCISM AND MARXISM

11. G. WELLS ON THE WORLD The world was in labour with two new ideas which seemed contradictory, said Mr. H. 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 of Galsworthy as a novelist and playwright, nor speak of the 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 of 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 be 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 completed project. It -was essentially a conception of friendliness between men of different nationality, based on a profound faith in the common sense in mankind.

The idea of dining and gathering and entertaining each other and talking things over was a. very Anglo-Saxon idea. It seems to give an admirable opportunity for going into everything and never going too far with anything. It was a good old Liberal idea, which had enabled our people to get past some very difficult situations in the past. But now all sorts of novel conditions had arisen to 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 it stood 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 has been going on for the last couple of centuries, but is it a reality we are talking about, or is it something that is only just coming into existence? Are we of the P.E.N. Club trying to merely sustain something, or are we trying to evoke something? I suggest to you that we are trying to evoke a mental community throughout the world. We are asking the different peoples to understand one another in order to achieve a common understanding. “Some of us nowadays are beginning to realise certain unprecedented things that have been happening to mankind. There has been an enormous development of communication between men and men throughout the earth, and an enormous change of scale in oui* power of doing things, so that- almost all the present political boundaries are becoming misfits and the multitude of communities that has hitherto existed in the world is being forced by necessity to become one world-wide community. If I am right in saying that, then I must go on to the logical consequence and point out that we can only adapt ourselves to these new conditions by a complete revolution in our political and economic ideas.”

RUNNING WILD 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 ifor 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 foi’ war as made war a new thing in human experience. Money and finance, freed from direc-

tion 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 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.! 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.” i Those who are most inclined to stress the first idea—of a world comi monwealth —since it is a thing that is still in the making, since if. demands freshness as well as exactitude 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, oldtfashioned established values as a. basisi for their disciplinary rules, and to suppress the free development of new customs and the development of new directive 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 ,wa.r ?

“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 impossible to separate scientific and creative work from the education of the world community as a whole. The two things ate continuous and inseparable. It seems to me that the time

has come for our federation of societies to choose, definitely between making the world commonwealth the guiding conception of its organisation or relapsing into a. mere meetingground for the mutual complement of narrow and repressive cults. Which

line are we to take? “I think a. decision on that alternant ivc is forced upon us now. I believe we. must make that decision within a year. I hope we shall not attempt to make it at once, but 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.”