BRITAIN RECOVERS ITS WILL

Evening Star, Issue 23686, 20 September 1940, Page 8

BRITAIN RECOVERS ITS WILL

GUARANTEES THAT IT WILL SUCCEED HISTORIAN LOOKS TO THE FUTURE “One fear is for ever exorcised—this country has recovered its will,” declares Professor W. K. Hancock.-, professor of history in the University of Birmingham, in a letter received by friends in Christchurch. 'Professor Hancock, an Australian by birth, is a world authority on the British Commonwealth. “ A Government containing Churchill, Morrison, Bevin, and Sinclair, and a nation which insisted that it must have this Government—these, are the guarantees that we will succeed,” he states. “ There are other good people in the Government, and there are soma indifferent people in it, too. No matter, it fuses our will to survive, and if Kingsley Wood or anyone else conceives the job too pettily or easily he will go. It has to happen, “ Chamberlain’s resignation is symbolic and is a more important landmark than the Reform Act of 1832. .It marks the passing of an age—the age of the businessman, 1832-1940. “ Anybody who imagines that Chamberlain was a bad man is making a silly mistake. In some ways he is . a very good man. Some years ago American ‘ leftists ’ were writing plays which featured Chamberlain, Hitler, and Mussolini as partners in. Fascist plotting against ‘ the masses.’ Nothing could be more absurd. Chamberlain and Hitler were and are fundamentally, opposed. And if the choice were (as it seemed to be)' between Chamberlain and Hitler, I should choose Chamberlain. I should do so, however, under a feeling of doom. HITLER AND CHAMBERLAIN. “ Hitler is a man who belongs to the present and the future; he accepts them and forges them for evil. Chamberlain rejected the evil, but rejected the present and the future with it. It was not' morality or courage that he lacked; it was his limitations that were disastrous. He simply could not escape from the Joe Chamberlain-Birmingham age, which was the last phase of the businessman’s century. That meant he was unable, despite good intentions, to wage modern war or organise modern peace. His successors will do both, and Chamberlain’s acceptance of them (he did that with real nobility) is a pledge that the old order will pass resignedly into the new, as it did in 1832. “ Churchill is so much an aristocrat that he is also a democrat—a classless man. Morrison and Bevin can work with him, now and after. My own feeling is that if this struggle lasts too long for Churchill, Morrison will take on the leadership. He has the power in him. “ As for the job, it is to make society organic without destroying freedom. In peace time we have to get a new standard of social duty. The acid test of our success will be the abolition for ever of the disease and disgrace of unemployment. Germany did this by and for (1) the release of racial hatred, (2) the abolition of personal freedom, (3) the perpetuation of war. THE TASK AHEAD. •“ We take up the job during war, ai war which we 1 have to win, and a war which we cannot win Without commit-tee-of-public-Safety methods. It may seem an unhappy start. But it is not the way the Nazis started, and its end is not their end. They started by burning down the Reichstag, and destroying the workers’ organisation* and forcibly subduing their own people. “ But it was the people who started the thing here; it was they who subdued the Government. It could not have been done without the trade unions, it could not have been dona without Parliament, and the work will be carried through by them. “ For the duration of the war we shall be ‘ totalitarian’ and we shall in many things remain ‘totalitarian’after the war. So I hope. But we shall graft all that on to the stock of our ancient freedom. We take the thing and we use it as an instrument (otte could see this coming before the war, e.g., in New Zealand) and thereby prevent Hitlers and Mosleys* and such canaille from forcing it on us to make us its slaves and the instruments of their personal lunacies. FREE PARLIAMENT. “ Our backs are to the wall just now, and personal reactions have to. be strong. ■ Either one will accept a Hitler world, or no. I say, ‘ No,’ and that means a programme both for war and peace. In war we have to surrender some of our normal liberties; there’* medicine we have to drink. Ido that -cheerfully. It doesn’t hurt me when we lock up Oswald Mosley and Co*. We shall lock up some decent people by mistake. I’m sorry for that, but I wish the Norwegians and the Dutch had’ made the mistake on the side of severity instead of easy-going optimism. “ We’re doing what the Roman Republic used to do. And wouldn’t it be just too bad if only the thugs knew how to use a l( gun? “ All the same, this is only one side of it. We have to defend ourselve* against those who in bad 1 faith use the phrases of freedom in order to destroy freedom, but we have to keep freedom alive, even in- war. It was only a free Parliament which gave ns a Government strong enough to save us.” : ■