THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 1931. WORLD UNREST.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21360, 13 June 1931, Page 10

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 1931. WORLD UNREST.

It is impossible to survey the cable news without being impressed with a sense of the existence of world-wide unrest, Spain rejects an ancient throne and becomes a republic; India goes to a conference seeking whole or partial autonomy; China out of her welter of provincial strife is bent on securing a central government; Signor Mussolini endeavours’ to repress all anti-Fascist movements in Italy. This by no means • completes the catalogue of disturbance. Some of it is political, some intellectual, some religious, some economic. Despite its diverse and often conflicting manifestations there is little doubt that the universal disturbance Comes from one primary effort of the human self. Man seeks, consciously or unconsciously, what he believes will be to his good. In the long course of history, this seeking may be designated the struggle for enfranchisement from thraldom, both secular and spiritual. But individual attainment of a social end is by its very nature impossible. The only individual improvement possible apart from one’s fellows is some form of asceticism directed to the future status of the soul in some non-mundane sphere. It is the fact, that man is tied to man, that each is in some respect his brother’s keeper, that is the condition of social well-being. It is also its limitation. When mutual self-sacrifice, compromise, sharing with others, is carried to its limit, it becomes manifest that all men have lost that liberty for which they strove. When social regimentation threatens the whole communal life of man, as it begins to do, man’s liberty is threatened. And when finally everything that one may do or may not do is, in the interests of liberty, prescribed or proscribed—when “ thou shalt not ” becomes the universal formula for the inhibition of every constructive self-expression, save that which commands universal assent —then liberty is won. And then/ too, it, is lost. There may be peace, but there never can be happiness when personality is in fetters from childhood. What of equilibrium has been so far achieved, what of the attainment of social stability concurrently with the conservation of the rights of individuality is admittedly tentative and pragmatic. It works fairly, smoothly, or, rather, it has so worked until recently. But no one has ever thought of claiming that any form of government or social organisation met with in history was or could be the final one. No claim of this kind has been made —with one exception, that of contemporary Russia. Russia exhibits the successful struggle for liberty and, side by side with it. the anti-climax of the suppression of liberty. It would almost seem that the one condition of attaining liberty is that it will be never attained. Like the physical universe, it is in a constant flux. Once become static, it ceases to be what it claims to be.

Liberty cannot be final till man •.ceases to' bo man. Is it hopeless, then, to maintain liberty as an ideal? By no means. It is surely possible to maintain a balance between individual and communal needs, by constant readjustment, reform, abolition of abuses, creation of new outlets for energy. This last is essential. Every human ego is charged with energy which will become explosive if it is dammed up. Mere bovine acceptance of communal food, portioned out on a "ration-ticket principle, may work for a while, but it will not work always. It would be better not to be at all than to be a mere cipher in the general account, a passive acceptor without the right of criticism, a drilled marcher keeping step in the everlasting march to—a ration ticket. That there are great adjustments to be made everywhere is clear. The economic world must find some modus vivendi, some way of meeting unemployment and of regulating currency, in order to prevent a recurrence of the present anomaly of the prevalence of poverty amid great riches, of hunger amidst plenty, of work to be done and of men willing to do it and yet unable to be brought into contact with it. The religious problem cannot be severed from the economic. An underfed man, or a man smarting under the sense of social injustice, may curse God and die. He is more likely in these days to curse man and live —by fair means or foul. A religious mes-

sage can be only an outrage on a man who feels he is starved by the neglect of his fellows. One part of the process towards equilibrium must be the fostering of the international mind. Unregulated intercourse as between nations is as anarchic as between persons; it means at bed-rock the duel to settle disputes. There seems no reason for despair. As law within a State has abolished the anarchy of the duel and all such individual claims to life-and-death decisions, so is it possible to do the same between nations, without filing them all down to a colourless passive acceptance of a universalist code which forbids any aberration. If those who cry so loudly for regimentation of everything by a one-class society only realised that this means the end of criticism and therefore of liberty, they might be less sure of their social cureall scheme. But the way of growth and equilibrium and constant adjustment is no will-o’-the-wisp. It is grounded on human nature, and gives human nature a chance to live.