NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23995, 19 June 1941, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS

NO BLIND CHOICE

"South Africans must choose their friends tor the tuture, declared General Smuts in a recent speech at Winburg, in the Orange l'ree State. "I choose the country under which we suffered 40 or 50 years ago, but which, when we were at her mercy, treated us as a Christian people should —England. When 1 speak of England I take off my hat. We who have been through something similar can appreciate it when a nation stands as fast as a wall. Our choice in South Africa, no matter what our language or our origin may be, is to remain on the road of independence, of self-government, of Parliamentary institutions, of justice and humanity. On that road we shall persevere." BEGINNING AND CONTINUING The short-circuiting of thought which expresses itself in popular maxims often attains only partial truth, remarks the Times. The "first step, for instance, of which we hear so much when any new business is afoot, is by no means always the most costly item oi the effort that has to be made. That has become very plain in the great struggle in which we are now engaged. Nineteen months ago we were all strung up to face the utmost horrors of war in our enthusiasm tor a cause which was none the less noble and righteous because it happened also to be the only way of national self-preservation. But. as things turned out, the cosily effort was not called for immediately. Much heavier calls both for active endeavour and for passive endurance have been made upon us since. Wise leaders still impress upon us from time to time that we must be prepared to do and bear more yet, and that any slackening of will or deed would endanger the issue. We need to be at one and the same time fiercely active and calmly resolute. Our spirit must be compounded of fire and steel.

I WEALTH AND WELFARE A suggestion that in the word "welfare" Britain might find the right and possibly the only solution of post-war economic problems, was made by Mr. F. ! L. McDougall, economic adviser to the Australian Government, in an address to the Royal Society of Arts. "The Empire primary producer," he said, "is directly concerned with food and the raw materials of clothing. Let us suppose that as part of the neace settlement the nations pledged themselves to adopt policies designed to bring public health to the standards reached in 1939 by New Zealand, Australia and Hoihind. and for this purpose to regard adequate food, housing, and clothing as the foremost desiderata of their economic policies. If this was done, even bv the nations of Western civilisation alone, the effects upon world trade in primary products would be great indeed. If. in the peace settlement, we can pive real meaning to this practicable aspiration, the nations, freed from enormous expenditures on armaments, will be able to devote a larger proportion of their economic resources to social

welfare. I shall have the temerity suggest that' the industrial nations — i.e.. Great Britain, Western Europe, the industrial States of the United States, and .Japan—will find that they eannpt afford nut to find the means of placing a rising standard of living in the forefront of economic policy. My main reason for this is not because it will be demanded by the industrial workers of these countries, although that will probably happen. My reason is that, in the post-war world, the only way in which the older industrial countries will he able to find adequate markets for their enterprise and skill will be if there is a world-wide movement to improve housing, clothing, transport and the enjoyment of leisure." LEAVING IT TO HISTORY People who used to "let George do it"' now advocate leaving it to history, notes the Christian Science Monitor. History, they argue, will take care of Hitlerism, as it took care of Napoleon and other conquerors and tyrants. Over the perspective of centuries, the Alexanders do look like mere incidents in tin- great storv of humanity. Thus the novelist. Kathleen Norris. preceding Colonel Lindbergh s speaker at the New York meeting of the America I'irst Committee, could say: "We are justified in feeling that, although a cruel and unbalanced dictator has arisen in Europe, this state of affairs will last no lousier than it has lasted in the past, when Peter the Great, Louis XIV.. Cromwell. Philip of Spain and Napoleon have all caused them panic. We may hope that within a few years, these despots will disappear." The conquerors come and go. seemingly falling by their own weight, as they rose apparentlv bv their own power. But they did neither. Their times helped to make them what th-\v were, and active opponents contributed decisively to the undoing of conquerors' achievements. Americans who are besieged in their moral citadels b v arguments encouraging passivity and apathy may well remember the history of their own nation's struggle for collective and individual freedom. History has brought these blessings to America. But w _ hat is history? It is primarily tho record of courageous action. History is not what men wait for. It is what they do.