NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume 78, Issue 24132, 26 November 1941, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

NEW ORDER NOT INEVITABLE "No new order will inevitably arise out of the present chaos," said the Rev. Leslie 1). Wcatherhead in an address at Leeds. "If the war ended to-mor-row there would be tens of thousands of people who would slip back into the old grooves, forget the new world, and ask for peace and security; and the old order would take us in its clutches again. Now is the time to see ahead and plan for a new world. The minds of some are at present fluid about a new order because they are frightened for their lives and their property. When peace is declared their minds will freeze and become strangely silent when there is no further cause for fear. TOO READY TO RELAX Future historians, looking back on the first two years of the war, will surely record as one of its most astonishing characteristics the basic irresponsibility of public opinion in democracies, says the Economist. With their world going up in flames about them, the people are still using their sand, not to extinguish the fire, but to bury their heads. The least respite, the least lightening of the horizon, and, hey presto, the war is already won. Thus, when the fighting moves, temporarily, from the Channel to Smolensk, the emotional urgency behind the democratic war effort wanes. The failure of intelligence applies to leadership rather than to the masses. It is quite simply that, after two years of war, the economic, social and administrative implications of total war arc still not fully grasped; and this lack of realisation, coupled with the general public's readiness to slip into apathy and complacency, is the main reason why Hitler's policy of "one by one" has so far been effective. The democracies seem incapable of profiting by lulls; as they enter the third year there is little sign that they are yet mending their ways decisively. "AND NOW WE HAVE HITLER" If America had joined the League of Nations there might not have been a Hitler, insisted iVlr. Edwin L. .Tames in an address to American students. "There are Americans who damn the League of Nations, who say that the League did not do this, did not do that, that it was never any good anyhow," said Mr. James. "Nothing could be more unfair, more unjustified. The League was set up as a machine for the conduct of international relations under a charter based on the idea that aggressors would be assured beforehand that they could not get away with it. It was to have been an international corporation to handle world affairs. America broke awav first and the others followed suit. The League never got a trial; the League never had a chance. In this result, the responsibility of the United States is heavy indeed. If America, with the power she bad in 1920, with Europe owing her billions of dollars, had insisted on international business being conducted through Geneva, the League would have had a political and material foundation which it never enjoyed. When the Council of the League held its first meeting in the Salle dec Horloges of the Quai d'Orsay

in Paris, a chair was left empty for the representative of the United States. As the afternoon sun came in the windows from across the Seine, it threw upon the table the shadow of the empty chair. That shadow never left the Council meetings. It spread until it threw darkness across the whole establishment. Nations went back into selfish paths. It became popular to condemn the League. That the United States had fought to make the world safe for democracy became a joke. From time to time something came to the surface to show that we Americans were not comfortable about it all, like the nowridiculous Kellogg Pact. But, bv and large, every nation was paddling its own canoe and devil take the hindmost. Co-operation was gone; the dream of Woodrow Wilson was dead. And now we have Hitler." ANGLO-SAXON AND RUSSIAN Like the Russian, who has been prirnarilv a nomad living within limitless and natural horizons, the Anglo-Saxon, nurtured in his island home, braving the vast unknown of the oceans, has also been impressed by the power and mvstery of Nature, says a Russian correspondent in the Times. But the varied and active life he has had to lead has given him a more practical turn of mind. As an islander and a seafarer the Briton early learned to be independent and to value that independ-; ence. He had to rely on his own en- ! deavours, his adaptability, his resourcefulness. While the Russian conceives of the world as a vast brotherhood where is no distinction of race or class, the Anglo-Saxon insists that no such brotherhood can come into being unless every person is willing to respect the sacred ' individuality of his brother which distinguishes man from the herd and makes further human development possible. The individual consciousness and respect for life and property of the Anglo-Saxon must complement the Russian ideals of mass social justice before a happy equilibrium between individual and social man can be established. That is the great problem of to-morrow. And that is why it is so important these great i voples should understand one another, Their world task and ideals are complementary and not opposed. In Russian fervour for social justice coupled with Anglo-Saxon balanced judgment and patience lies one of the great hopes of building a saner world after the war.