Sunset Over England

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 18922, 25 January 1936, Page 9

Sunset Over England

Mil RICHARD Heron Ward, in IVI "The Sun Shall b'isc," const i lutes himself the spokesman of those —probably a large majority of Eng lish people—who dislike Fascism and all its work, and who arc fixed'y op posed by conviction to seeing il eslab lished i'n England. They feel that, whatever political and economic meritit has exhibited in those countries, such as Italy and Germany, in which |it. has become the dominating power — and those merits are certaintly no! to be denied —its influence on the whole is essentially retrogressive, and in the long run evil. The supporters of Fascism argue that in a world riddled by Bolshevism the system makes for national solidarity, free consciousness, and the betterment of conditions for all. (dasses; its opponents contend that the Fascist State is a robot State, in which individual liberty and initiative are suppressed, force usurps the place of reason, and national egoism is deliberately and dangerously hypcrtroplried. Certainly neither England nor A usfralia is likely to approve of .lewbaiting or dosing with castor oil—I" say nothing of other and even less pleasing phenomena—and Mr Ward's picture of England in the process of subjection to blitckshirt tyranny is lurid enough. Unarmed workers are mowed down with miichilie-guiis, Oi bombed from aeroplanes, -when the) attempt to resist, arsenals are blown up, a reign of terror crushes out tin last vestiges of English freedom. One need not, however, hold a brief foi Sir Oswald Moseley and his myrnii dons to doubt whether they would really prove quite so ruthless or oppressive,as Air Ward imagines. Clashes between hlackshirts and communists are not i../requent in England even now, but it is difficult to visualise the horrors of internecine strife in a country where, in Tennyson's words, "Freedom slowly broadens down from precedent to precedent." The lesson of the general strike some years back. when strikers and police joined amicably in a football match, is surely sufficient refutation of Mr Ward's niglnmare prophecies.

The author of "The Sun Shall Rise" is apparently a Communist. On the other hand, his brand of Communism is evidently worn, like rue, with a difference. It is, indeed, merely si liberal acceptance of the teachings of Jesus Christ, and any change in the existitig order must, to be successful, start with a change of heart and in our outlook towards our fellow men. "If we wanted everyone to be happy, if everyone of us was willing to sacrifice himself so I hat everyone else could have some of the money, the food, the shelter, the entertainment, that we have, wf'd have Communism in it minute," says one of hi.leading characters. Unfortunately, such a hypothesis is still as far from being fulfilled as communism in general is from that professed by the author.