SALVATION FROM CHAOS

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20786, 22 April 1939, Page 15 (Supplement)

SALVATION FROM CHAOS

A Common Purpose : : Higher Human Good

(Wickham Steed.)

Military strategists attach high value to what they call “the initiative.” It enables them to choose the point at which they will deliver their main blow, perhaps after feints and demonstrations intended to keep the enemy guessing. In political, no less than in military affairs, the initiative has hitherto been grasped and held by the foes of freedom. The more I muse upon the condition of the world the deeper grows my conviction that only by wresting the initiative from the forces of dictatorship in the name of something worthier than material possessions, can the nations be saved from chaos, and an advance be made toward a new world order in which men and peoples may dwell in peace, None Making Them Afraid. To imagine that this high issue can be met. or indefinitely postponed, strikes me as the most futile of notions. It might be less futile if the re-partition of the world were mainly a material matter, a question of some readjustment of economic resources. Desire for these things, either in themselves or as a means to greater power, doubtless enters into the totalitarian philosophy; but the driving force behind the desire is not only or perhaps even chiefly material. It is at least semi-mystical. If it be not faced betimes with equal or greater fervour we may come to feel the truth of the lines of W. B. Y eats, the greatest Irish poet: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world . . . The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. This need not be. The best need not lack conviction. There is still a faith, democratic and more than democratic, that many Britons hold with passionate intensity. It is that the rule of lawless violence over the affairs of men and of nations must be made to cease so that the p-v>ples still free may address themselves Tv the task of renewing the world and of bringing the earth’s resources equally into the '•vrvice of free men. In sober fact we have come back to the affirmations of the English Bill of Rights in 1689, to the American Declaration of Independence, and to the Rights of Man proclaimed by the French Revolution of 1789. But not all Britons and Frenchmen or, I imagine, all citizens of the United States, yet understand what is needed to make these articles of freedom a creed for which men will willingly dare all. They are not yet fully persuaded that the faith which enabled the men of the seventeenth

and eighteenth centuries to overthrow despotisms must now be adapted to conditions in which mechanical triumphs over time and space have made the world one, for weal or for woe. 1919, after the World War, many believed that a new order had, indeed, been born, that its sure foundation would be a leaguing of the nations against war. They had not Gauged the Strength of the Evil Thing they sought to curb or ban. What had been set up was not a union of free peoples standing together and ready to merge as much of their sovereignties and their resources as might be needed to uphold the truths that have guided the march of mankind from barbarism toward civilisation. So the free nations have fallen into disjointed bewilderment. They fear for their national and personal possessions. And, unless one condition be fulfilled, I am not sure that events will belie Adolf Hitler’s claim that the burden of armaments, even without war, will find the democracies less able to “stand the racket” than the totalitarian systems with their inflated insolvency. This one condition is that all peoples who still retain faith in individual freedom as the highest human good, and in democracy as its political safeguard, shall forthwith unite their policies, their efforts and whatever part of their sovereignties now impedes united action. In union they may triumph, even without war. In disunion they may fall, one by one, because they would not get together in time, as a unity in diversity, with a great common purpose—• the freedom of men. On this condition alone, I am persuaded, can a new world-order be based. That order cannot be, should not be, universal from the outset. High standards of democratic governance should be required of those who enter it. But, from the outset, its moral and material strength would be so great that peoples now in bondage would feel its power and seek to qualify for admission to it. It would regain the initiative. It would be the beginning of the enthronement of a Real Reign of Law on Earth, of an era in which the insane cost and waste of armaments could sanely be devoted to the improvement of human life. I see no other way, no other hope of advancing toward a new world order without wading through floods of blood and tears. And I would replace both the formula of Karl Marx and the newer formula of Hitler by the saving injunction; “ Free nations of the world, unite! ”

Happiness in W ork

Happiness is a rebound from hard work. One of the follies of man is to assume that he can enjoy mere emotion. As well try to eat beauty. Happiness must be tricked. Sh% 1 ves sweat, weariness, self-sacrifice. She '/ill not be found in the palaces, but lurking in the cornfields and factories and hovering over littered desks. She crowns the unconscious head o£ the busy child.— David Grayson. • • ® A friend of Charles Dickens —a man of much promise as a writer but a failure because of indolence—called upon him one morning, and began to complain bitterly of his lack of success.

“Ah,” sighed the indolent man, “if only I were gifted with your genius! ” “ Tell me,” replied Dickens, “do you work hard? Do you spend long hours, sometimes whole days, seeking suitable scenes for your stories? Do you work hard to give vividness to them ? Do you labour to elaborate plot, character, and dialogue? And, finally, do you rewrite, revise, and retouch your work so that it may be more acceptable? ” “All of that?” exclaimed the unsuccessful author. “ Never! ” “ Then,” said Dickens, “let me tell you, I do not know what you'mean when you say ‘genius.’ The only genius I know is the genius of hard work! ”