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Hokitika Guardian, 2 May 1939, Page 4

Military strategists attaeli high value to what they call “the initiative.” Jt enables them to choose the point at which they will delivtr their main blow, perhaps after feints and demonstrations intended to keep the enemy guessing, writes Mr Wickham Steed in the Christian Science Monitor, In political, no less than in military affairs, the initiative has hitherto been grasped and held by the foes of freedom. The more I muse upon the condition of the world the deeper grows my conviction that only by wresting the initiative from the forces of dictatorship in the name of something worthier than material possessions, can the nations he saved from chaos, and an advance be made toward a new world order in which men and peoples may dwell in peace, none making them afraid. To imagine that this high issue can he met, or indefinitely postponed, strikes me as the most futile of notions. It might he less futile if the re-partition of the world were mainly a material matter ( a question of some readjustment of economic resources. Desire for these things, either in themselves or as a means to greater power, doubtless enters into the totalitarian philosophy, hut the driving force behind the desire is not only or perhaps even chiefly material. It is at least semimystieal. If it be not faced betimes' ivith equal or great fervor we may come to feel the truth of the lines pf W. B. Yates, the greatest Irish poet:

Things fall apart, the centre cannot.

hold, Mere anarchy is loosed upon' the

world . The best lack all conviction, while the Worst are full of passionate intensity.

This need not be. The best need not lack conviction. There is still a faith, democratic and more than democratic that many Britons hold with passionate intensity. It is that the rule of lawless violence over the affairs of men and of nations must he made to cease so that the people still free may address themselves to the task of renewing the world and of bringing the earth’s resources equally into the service of free men.