The Grey River Argus WEDNESDAY, April 17th., 1940. POST-WAR POSSIBILITIES.

Grey River Argus, 17 April 1940, Page 6

The Grey River Argus WEDNESDAY, April 17th., 1940. POST-WAR POSSIBILITIES.

It may be premature to talk of post rvar- social changes, but it is obvious that the present conflict must only intensify a process that had for a quarter of a century been, changing society before the war began. Moral as well as political and economic issues are involved. It has been a collectivist trend. The result has been mass’organisation in a growing measure nearly everywhere. Investigators have attributed it not only to class conflict but to the mechanisation of modern economic life. It is said that this involves a. corresponding mass organisation of political and social life. Certainly political institutions and ideals created by limited and privileged classes since the dawn of the industrial revolution are no longer adapted tor mass democracies. To a. limited extent New Zealand has illustrated the charge mentioned by the manner in which it has met the effects of a breakdown in the capitalistic system that followed the last Avar. Unemployed have been found a living en masse by the State. Exports have been marketed on masse by the State. The principle of the social security i policy is essentially similar. It is I the claim of the Allied PoAvers that they are fighting for liberty, but it is'Undeniable that in all European countries the effect of changes in the past generation has been the increasing mechanisation of human life and the subordination of the individual to the 1 State and to economic processes. To say as much is not necessarily to accept the Marxian thesis of materialism or economic determinism, any more than it is Io agree that mechanisation or collectivism is a final solution of the problem of modern civilisation. There are spiritual values that cannot be ignored, and no social system can set itself’up as the final end of human action, for even class conflicts to-day demonstrate that the nature of man is not comprised merely of political and economic forms. The last war, while it exploded the delusion that capitalistic engineering could maintain and extend prosperity even in the countries it had made paramount, Avas itself a product of disintegrating farces, and the present Avar has in pari arisen from the operation of new forces that had begun to j reach against the disintegration. I if there lias been collectivist ac-I tion in various parts of Europe, j it has been in the United States j paralleled in some degree by the policy known as the Ncav Deal. ; Under that, there has been semidictationa! action on national iiiics, expressed verbally as national leadership. There has beena brcakdOAVn of the old European culture and unity, and the collectivist action on national or even broader lines has been an attempt to supply the deficiency. There are indications of a return io a siinpler and more elementary social condition. The supremacy even of parliamentary institution.'-: has been questioned in the cradles of modern democracy.

Those cradles were a privileged class among the nations in the sense that they created the political and economic order of the nineteenth century, were the masters of the sea, the owners of most of the earth, the world’s bankers and financiers, and the possessors of most powerful armaments. The rest of the world' has perciptibly been reacting against a position of economic and political inferiority. That fad cannot now be ignored even when the Western Powers mentioned are fighting to preserve the old conceptions of freedom in a class conflict which is international. Some are prone to see in the European war a struggle to set up, out of hand, a continental economic block which will be self-contained and self sufficient. That conception may enter into it, but. the fact remains that the use of military force by the German Reich goes far further, and threatens .rights that are anterior to economics or politics. In defending moral or spiritual liberty the Allies have right in their side, but it is not to be confused with com'mercial ascendancy. Hence, in the eventual settlement, while guarantees for future peace may be demanded, and these in the shape of territorial adjustments and political restorations, recognition will require to be given to the fundamental economic changes of modern times. The old capitalistic order cannot be restored as it was sought to have it after the last war. The passing of the Liberal-capitalist order of the nineteenth century is not the sole result forthcoming, but the end of an age, a turningpoint in world history that will alter the whole character of civilisation by a change in its fundamental direction; a turning of the human mind from the emptiness of much modern progress to something that stands for all time, a moral reality, which cannot be permanently enslaved by machinery or drudgery, In short, those who are fighting the battle of liberty will insist after the fight, that there shall be liberty, that it shall mean a renewal of the liberty civilisation felt before political and commercial boundaries blighted the recognition of human brotherhood and a common destiny.