THE STRUGGLE FOR SECURITY

Waikato Times, Volume 116, Issue 19462, 29 December 1934, Page 4

THE STRUGGLE FOR SECURITY

The chaos of , the jungle is never far below the surface of security which it has been the task of government to maintain. A moment’s carelessness, and the fear-driven elements creep up from below or break in from without. Even the cruder and more rudimentary forms of violence, 1 such as banditry and lynching, which seemed to have been ended, may burst .out again, as in mbdern America, through a loophole in the civilised system; and all the work of law and order may have to be done over again.

Fear is the root cause of big armaments, and it is also the root cause of nearly all the evils 'of the world that are curable by governments. We say “curable by governments” deliberately; for that is precisely the task which governments from time immemorial have existed to perform —to enable man to rise above the animal by freeing him, in a state of society, from the material causes of terror. It is not enough to attempt to exorcise fear by its psychological extreme, courage; for it is the nature of opposites to belong to the same category. The courage that is engendered by fear merely sets itself to create fear; the desire simply to defend resolves itself into the desire to attack; and so the fear-inspiring causes travel the full round of the circle. *

Only the most rudimentary form of government is content to win security for the tribe by appealing to the more savage kind of courage. The civilised government appeals to that positive and constructive courage which springs, not from fear at all, but from confidence, and sets itself to clear away the causes of insecurity as coolly as a surgeon will wash away the poison from a wound.

We must recognise that the fears, which are undermining civilisation,, themselves have grounds—material grounds—and that the dangers of which men and nations are afraid belong to the same order of maladies as those which have already been removed by governments in the past. Governments, expressing the goodwill of the community, will increasingly endeavour to prevent the exploitation of workers and consumers by big industry and finance, and to protect big industries from preying upon one another; and acting with the same constructive goodwill towards other countries, will seeks means of developing reciprocal trade which will check distrust and inspire confidence.

It is perhaps the most hopeful fact of modern times that British countries are devoid of any feeling of national ill-will to any other country, and fully believe that the prosperity of one promotes the prosperity of all. That fact —which should be no small element in diminishing the grounds of world fear —tends towards peace. Every government that is likely to remain a government must study the ever-changing technique of removing causes of fear, domestic or foreign.