Freedom Ever New

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLX, Issue 22028, 30 July 1941, Page 4

Freedom Ever New

A former newspaper correspondent ih the Balkans and Central Europe, R. H. Markham, has Written a book which ought to be thad by every confused American, states the New York Titnee. Mr Markham calls his book The Wave of the Past. The gist of its well-stated argument is that the thing that has happened to Etirope is not new. The inflation of diseased personalities at the expense of mankind is older than the driest Egyptian mummy. Autocracy has its alliances deep in the past. It is an enemy of the future. As Mr Markham says: “We should do well to recall that it is freedom, democracy and brotherhood which are the eternally new in history. They are the only current that flows constantly toward new shores and never ceases to approach the fever-beckoning future. It is they that, ifl ohe form br another, have brought man all the good he has enjoyed.” The dictators have made Use of instruments that belong to the future, but they have abused them. They have made the aeroplane—a great invention perfected in the democratic countries—a vehicle of horror. Europe would be happier if its economic boundaries were wiped out; They have taken thdt practicable dream and distorted it into wretchedness, crime and slavery. Bo With all their science, all their chemistry, fill their psychology. Their Use of them makes Hitler atid his accomplices none the less contemporaries in spirit of the Pharaohs, the kings of ancifeijt Assyria and the other overweening gentry who long ago rode through slaughter to destruction. The Hitler “future,” as Mr Markham says, “is nb more inevitable than the might Of 75,090,00!) people Organised for cbnqUeSt makes it.” There can be only a few tew elements hl hutnati relations. Some of them dre more freedom, inoi-6 tolerance, more knowledge, more protection for the Weak, a wider Opportunity for creative Selfexpression. Hitlerism is the sworn enemy of all these possible enrichments Of the human spirit. It is a deliberate turning back into mankind’s darkest night. There can be a future if fi'fee mfen will sacrifice and, if necessary, fight for it. Otherwise there will be only elapsed time, through Which the World will sink more and more deeply into tile Hitlerian abyss of blood and slime.