GOVERNMENT TODAY

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 61, 13 March 1934, Page 7

GOVERNMENT TODAY

ENDLESS ADVENTURE

PROBLEM OF PROBLEMS

A STEIIvING ADDEESS

The rectors of Aberdeen University .have been notable men for many years, and their installation addresses are always of a high order. Famous scientists and scholars in the past have 1 blazed a trail for the students, and "this year Mr. Walter Elliot, the new rector, spoke from the watch, tower of a politician and Minister of Agriculture. "It is not ignorance which is. at our heels," he said, "but knowledge/ a more pitiless huntsman." The title of Mr. Elliot's address, states "Public Opinion," was "The Endless .Adventure." "Government today," he said, "is passing through a great transformation. Governments today find that the most insistent of their" problems at home aro the relations of the State—the community as a whole—to the group and individuals concerned in the production and distribution of wealth within their boundaries.-. ' ■ ■ - ■ ' "Abroad, States are no longer merely geographical or political units, but economic units which every kind of intercourse, industrial, agricultural, or commercial, has to take into consideration. . . - "Some say,"hocontinued,"that this is due to the war, and some that it is due to madness amongst rulers which will shortly disappear. It is not so. It is a development inherent, but concealed, in the whole industrial development of the last 150 years, which we call the industrial revolution. It could not have been averted, and cannot be averted, without a complete transformation of the psychological make-up of the average mortal. We may rule a psychological transforma- . tion out of account for our immediate future, and deal with men as they are. "WAS," EXCUSES NOT SUFFICIENT. "The general explanations of today's .crisis as 'the" war' and 'the madness of rulers' are. only valid in so far as the war, by opening a. volcano of destruction, stimulated the paco of development everywhere, and in so far as 'the madness of rulers' has not yet found a' way by which people will sit with folded arms and see their work, by which they mean their place as citizens, carried out by others/ "The psychological reeonstitution necessary for the smooth working of that process has not even been envis: aged by the pundits who cheerfully advocate a course which would make it -essential. "These factors have produced and are producing modern Europe and • America, which for the moment is preoccupied with political and economic changes to the verge of obsession. That is only to be expected. ■"In Great Britain, so far, with incredible patience and endurance, our people, have refused to give way to any hurricane of emotion such as has swept other lands, but have confined themselves to a very clear-eyed examination of all the solutions in turn. So fair.-they have turned down all the spell-binders, and are working quietly along, downcast but not at: all in des"pair, still less in panic, awaiting a call Trom the scouts which shall show that the way out, which they firmly believe exists and is being sought for in good faith, has been in very truth followed, through to open country and that the' people may, in order, advance along it. "The endless adventure of Government has become the problem of problems, the rear riddle of the Sphinx, "There is an atmosphere of insecurity throughout tho world which weighs on us^'all. That atmosphere of insecurity comes from the 20,000,000 unemployed far more than from any other single cause. The fear which tho unemployment spreads has deep and widespread roots —the fear of losing a man's place' as a citizen far more, I believe, than the fear of privation. "Because of the psychological effects of unemployment, States determine to keep their people at work even when that Work can demonstrably be done cheaper in other places and by other ■lands. Partly because the world is so large, partly because the processes of industry and finance are so difficult to follow through and so impossible for the experts to explain (in any fashion -upon which they will all agree) the movement towards smaller self-con-tained units, as against the world-unit or world-market, has recently spread (very fast. ' "Indeed, the conscious defence of a self-contained- isolation has begun, a. philosophy which has been, called autarchy, or .self-organisation with, as a unit, the autarchic State. It is because in these smaller units a man feels more assured of his place as a citizen. TO MEET. THE UNEASINESS. "Organisation is essential if we are to meet the uneasiness and insecurity of the present day. . But organisation must choose some field within which to organise.- The alternatives are to organise the whole world at once, or to organise smaller units and gear them up to «ach other as soon as time and hard thinking will permit. Those of us ivho arc working at this task, now, aave to use both' methods. "The producers are at stake—the producers and their livelihood, which is, in turn, the livelihood of the consumersalso. You cannot put them off with prophecies of happy days at the Greek Kalends. Bemember that concurrently svitK the industrial revolution an agricultural revolution scarcely less massive came about. Medieval yields of corn on the open iield system were only two to three hundredweights to the acre, say, three to four times the seed. "By 1860 yields from 18cwt to a ton became possible, and usually a ninefold increase. Men do not eat nine times as much, nor, taking the world as a whole, are there nine times as many of them. That is the answer to the other cry that all we have to do is to develop the undeveloped lands. To develop the undeveloped lands, the undeveloped countries, is not to develop a drain. It is to develop a water spout. A PITILESS HUNTSMAN. "It is not ignorance which is at our heels, but knowledge, a more pitiless huntsman. It is science, the science of the engineers, the chemists, the biologists. The economists will have to come to an agreement over that; and their agreement will have to be total surrender. The biologists, the chemists, the engineers, do not go back upon their tracks. . . . "It all turns on the man. Let not this talk of organisation blind you to the fact that it all originated from the plight of the individual, and by the individual it must be justified. Have we not here great assets in our hands at home? To the Scottish power of work is added the English power of' tolerance. I should not like to say which will be more essential in the days to come. . "Tolerance, fair play, forbearance these are qualities which anyone engaged in the endless adventure of government must prize above Tubies. "These qualities, in almost embarrassing profusion, lie to the hand of anyone who governs in Great Britain. The danger of England is that she should be too tolerant, too terribly anxious to play the game, too forbear-