THE MAKING OF WESTERN MAN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27499, 20 September 1950, Page 2

THE MAKING OF WESTERN MAN

Literature

THE PILGRIMAGE OF WESTERN MAN. By Stringfellow Barr. Gollancz. 7s 6d. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. By Hans Kohn. Gollancz. 12s 6a.

THESE two American books go naturally together, though they cover very different periods. In the first Professor Kohn is concerned to study the development that has taken place in political thought and political theory throughout the world over the past 100 years, and in particular to sum up where we now stand, at the turn of the century. His book is closely reasoned, and his case argued with a brilliance and clarity that make it easy and very enlightening reading. Here are no cloudy concepts, but bitingly sharp analyses of the difference between the various political creeds that hold sway in the world today. His chapter on Democracy is of particular interest. He traces it from its earliest beginnings in Greece to its present development in England and the United States, and, after the many woolly pronouncements' on that subject by leading politicians; his definition of that creed, and his support of it in spite of its failings should prove invaluable to its defenders. Perhaps most valuable is his study of the enforced political education of the American people. He does not spare them for their past errors, but he believes that they are now awake. They know what they have to defend and where they must defend it. Recent events in Korea bear out his argument very conclusively. Mr Barr’s book, a history of Europe from the Middle Ages up to the pres-

ent day, ranges far wider, and has to some extent a different aim. As a history of Europe it is satisfactory, within the limits of its space. To cover 450 years in 350 pages is a tour de force of no mean order, and certain omissions and a degree of superficiality are only to be expected. But the real interest of the book lies, not in its recounting of well-known events, but in its argument that a vision of a United World has always been before men’s eye and is there still and that that vision must be brought to reality if there is to be any future for the world at all. Mr Barr, like Professor Kohn, sees in the growth of Nation States, with their cherished independence in a world where no man is independent of another, the real danger to our very existence. He points out how men by imperceptible steps got into their present position, a position out of which the ruling politicians can see no way. His analysis of the opposition of Russia and the United States, and the extraordinary difficulty of resolving that opposition, is extremely well done. He feels that there is no salvation save in a World Government. One cannot help agreeing with him. But also, one cannot help wondering whether it will not take World War 111 to convince the powers that be that separate sovereign States in the same world are not only logically but practically impossible. P. H. W. N.