THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Saturday, January 8, 1944. THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25428, 8 January 1944, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Saturday, January 8, 1944. THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

Those who have tried to look into the vision of the future were at one time only dreamers—poets or philosophers. But in the present era every thinking man is asking himself what kind, of world he may expect or hope or fear after the war. The reason of the wider extension of the number of forwardlooking minds is that, for better or worse, the world is being viewed as a whole, where the drama of the common destinies of mankind is being enacted. In the British Empire the question no longer is how powerful or extensive the Empire will be. It is, what will its relations be, not as of yore with the older Powers of Europe, but with those newer Powers that have arisen or are arising, principally Russia and China? No longer is it a question, what is to be done with Russia? Nor is it, what is to be done with China? ' The question, rather, is what will Russia do? And what will China do? For the immediate future Russia is the more important. Its great population, its rapid indusIrialisation, its educational advance, its genius for organisation, as revealed in the war, mark Russia out for the future as the dominant Power in Europe. It is not likely that an extreme form of Communism will prevail. That would be tyranny. Russia has exchanged the old tyranny of the few over the many for the milder tyranny of the many over the few. No man in Russia, unless he courts “liquidation,”, dare oppose the State constitution on platform or in the press. At present the average Russian does not wish to challenge the constitution, for it gives him a living condition which, compared with his traditional one, is as paradise to the inferno. But the day will come when the present freedom will not suffice, and then there will be a new Russia. It will come gradually. It is coming even now.. It could not be expected that a great population inured to serfdom for centuries could change over intone generation to a liberal democracy. Such a change is the result of long, slow growth. What has happened is that an hereditary and very limited autocracy has been superseded by another autocracy which attempts to confer benefits on the whole people. Britain and France have evolved through all the stages of political growth from tyranny to freedom. This applies also to the United States, whicl* grew out of the British root. Russia will gradually go through those stages and arrive at a form of democracy which will recognise the old insistent demand of nature that individual effort shall not be fettered unduly. The only danger that was to be apprehended from Russia was that after the war Marshal Stalin (or his successor) would revert to the propagandist policy and attempt to impose violently or surreptitiously its doctrines on other peoples. It is to be recalled that Russia was the first country to use political propaganda as an instrument of Government policy. Apparently, if one may judge from the utterances of President Roosevelt and Mr Churchill, the world has nothing to fear now from Russia in that respect. On the other hand, it is not likely that Britain will again send troops to Russia to assist a dissolving Government, as was done at the end of the last war. There appears to be no valid reason why, given ordinary restraint on both sides, Britain and Russia should not continue to cooperate for mutual benefit, each developing under its own political system and each respecting that of its ally. Much the same might be said of the United States and Russia. America is now fully awake to the call of destiny. No nation can be a great world Power unless it cooperates in international movements. Had the United States backed the League of Nations in dead earnest and enforced its resolutions this second war would have been avoided. This truth is now so generally recognised in the United States that isolationism is dead—dead because it is fatal to the national interests, and dead because great power demands great responsibility. The United States will undoubtedly be a great world Power, perhaps the greatest of all the great Powers. And what of the Empire? This at least can be said, that it has offered, and still offers, the world a pattern ,of a stately commonwealth of nations widely scattered over the planet, .yet unified in ideals, sentiments, and a determination to resist aggression and to preserve individual as well as national freedom. Just as King Arthur’s Round Table was “an image of the mighty world,” so the British Empire has been and is. No treaties, no diplomacy, no intrigue, bribery or compulsion, but simply a common loyalty to the ideals of freedom and a consecration of their noblest and best at freedom’s shrine —these are the things the Empire contributes to the future, and these are the things that may bring some rest from its ills to this distracted world.