WHAT ABOUT THIS INSULATION?

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23127, 27 August 1938, Page 1 (Supplement)

WHAT ABOUT THIS INSULATION?

Sandy Speeu

fates

By KOTARE

SANDY was thoroughly enjoying himself in spite of the weather, when after several months I saw him again. He has been to California, I suspect to dodge the rigours of our winter, though he insists that he has been on his old quest of knowledge and experience of men. I suggested that it was curious that he should have chosen the northern summer for "his jaunt; abroad. Like most people getting well-up in years he resents any suggestion by others that he is showing signs of wear, though he i 3 always ready to confide, on his own initiative, that his soul's dark cottage is becoming sadly battered and decayed. As long as you do nofc agree with him, he will refer to his physical condition in terms of the severest contempt and disparagement. "Why, man," he said, "do you think I would be such a fool as to come back here in August if it was my health I was considering? I went away because every now and then I find New Zealand too small. I like looking at it from a distance, just to get my perspective right. You have a very poor opinion of me, I see. I was never fitter in my, life, and you haver away about my trips to a warmer climate to escape ai southern winter, and then imply that this poor broken-down valetudinarian has no more sense than to head back home to Auckland in August. So I'm a weakling both in body and in mind. I wonder you take the trouble to call on so feeble-minded an invalid. Magic Phrase "We'll say no more about that. I've been having the time of my life. 1 have spent my months away going over the catchwords that you and I and all of us use, trying to determine just what they mean. Man, what nonsense we all talk under the mesmeric spell of words whose meaning we see only through a glass darkly. Science, for example, has given us the blessed word 'evolution/' which has come to mean almost any* thing you like. "That's the trouble with these In the strict scientific sense they have their exact meaning, clearly defined and limited. In popular speech they become vaguer and vaguer, wider and wider in their application as they become less and less intelligible. Education gives us rightly the idea of selfexpression, and self-expression becomes a sort of magic phrase to cover a_ multitude of irrelevancies and absurdities in the minds and practice of people that have never thought their way through anything. "Then there is the jargon of modern psychology, this eternal claptrap about; repressions and inferiority complexes, as if giving, a thing a high sounding name explained everything. I went; oyer the words I thought needed clarifying in my own .vocabulary, and I talked with everybody I met, trying to find exactly what these words' meant to them when they were pressed for precise definition'' > . "

"If your researches have led you anywhere," I said, "you trill be. mighty useful here in New Zealand. We are sadly in need of illumination. Words are being bandied about that sound magnificently until you leave vague declamation and get down to hard facts. In background of much of our life here to-day there Jurks the magic word 'insulation.' I suppose you. have heard it. If another world-depres-sion comes, and there are ominous signs, we are to keep it out of New: Zealand by the simple process of insulation. Did you by any chance include that word in your investigation,and if you did what do you make of it?" The Self-contained State "It was just coming into prominence when I left New Zealand," he replied,, "and there was much speculation about it on the boat going over. We had nothing to go on, of course, as the authorof it in its present application has simply; left it lying about to bo- taken up when called for. But it would certainly be wise for New Zealanders to know what may be ahead of them. As we are all in the dark we can only guess what is in the back of people's minds. "On the face of it it seems to suggest a dictatorship of some sort. It would mean so complete a reversal of thenormal procedure in a national crisis that only some form of dictatorship, could make it effective. That is only a guess and those that glibly use the term may have no idea of such a thing. But at least we as the prospective material for the insulating experiment ought to know what may be in the wind. - • - "I worked it out this way. If I were a socialist and in a period of worldwide depression I had to devise andorganise for one national unit a scheme of national regulation that had as it 3 basis complete insulation, how would 1, with my special theorv of social reconstruction, tackle the situation? I would first of all naturally use the opportunity to demonstrate the superiority of my own socialist ideas' of state control and organisation of the nation's resources. It is folly to put a socialist party into power and then complain that it believes in the socialisation o£ the means of production, distribution and exchange. Speeding-up Socialism "if i were a socialist and had the chance to bring in through the special situation created by a depression the ideas and methods implied in my theory, I would naturally make full use of it. I should endeavpur to prove once for all on a wide stage that' • my theory could do what it had always claimed it was able to do. And as I" stood against private ownership, • I would take the chance to transfer to' the state, enterprises and propertv that according to my theorv ought not to be in private hands. , -

"That transfer from private to publio ownership has always been the great initial difficulty in the socialistic conception of the state. How to make the present owners surrender their rights is a desperate problem. The Russian method liquidating the owning section of the community could scarcely be used here. But 1 should certainly speed up the evolutionary process under the stress of a great national emergency, I should be disloyal to my basic social' faith if I did not. "Then in my insulated state £ should appropriate all the national resources included within the country and administer them for the whole community. Out of these appropriations I should, ration the whole community. All would have the same allowance and there would be one uniform standard of living throughout. I should create a local currency that would have value only within the insulated country. . "Well, that's my idea of insulation. It seems a pipe-dream to me. It ,may have little relation to what its inventors mean by insulation. But strange things are happening in the world, and in the absence, of any definitive statement we are bound to speculate ou what may be in Store for us."