A WORLD MENACE INDIVIDUAL RESONSIBILITY.

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3822, 16 October 1936, Page 2

A WORLD MENACE

INDIVIDUAL RESONSIBILITY.

“Civilisation can to a very great extent be tested by the importance attached to the individual, as an individual," said Dr G. P. Gooch, the historian, at the International Conference of the New Education Fellowship at Cheltenham.

“In my opinion,” he added, “the most civilised countries in the world to-day are those where the individual counts for most, and the least civilised countries are those where the individual, as an individual, as a spiritual and rational being, counts for least. "The European anarchy leads straight to the concentration of power in the hands of the State. Fear makes people huddle together like a flock of frightened animals; fear is the chi lid of the European anarchy; fear is the child of the mighty armaments which are themselves an expression of that anarchy.

"The greater the fear the greater the power of the State. The more widespread the fear of attack the easier it is for the State to put forward the argument that the individual and his peculiarities, and his heresies, and all minorities of the community, have to suppress themselves in the higher interest of national strength and national safety. "There is infinitely less personal freedom in the world to-day than before the war. The League, utterly indispensable as it is in the complete absence of any thinkable alternative, remains still more of an ideal than a controlling force.”