HUMAN ADJUSTMENTS IN A CHANGING WORLD

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 25, 13 February 1937, Page 11

HUMAN ADJUSTMENTS IN A CHANGING WORLD

FASCISM & COMMUNISM Chaos and Gosrnos

"What hal3 surprised me since my arrival in Sydney," says Mr. Yoshaiki Hatta, life member of the House of Peers of Japan, "is the growing Pacific consciousness of the people, so much so, that when I' refer to Japan or China as part of 'the Far East,' there is some who object to the teiininology, saying; 'You are our neighbours.' And more and more of our people are xeferring to you as our neighbours rather than as westerners." The old idea of Eudyard Kipling's oft-quoted but misapplied line, "Oh, East is East, and West is West and never the twain shall meet," has gone west. And the West haia gone East, writes T. E. Euth in The Sydney Morning Herald. Travellers are surprised to find how Western the Eastern cities are. Distinctions between the Orient and the Occident disappear. It is as Kipling said: There is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, though they como from tlm ends of the earth. And Mr. Hatta says to Syduoy people: "I am amazed at your gcnerosity and alert and sincere desire for international jfriendship." Precisely. Something has gone into all the world.

Life is different in every land. Old barriers are broken down. There is a new alignment. And a now centro of gravity. Neutrality is impossible. No country can completely avoid what used to be called "foreign complications." Nothing is foreign any more. "Go ye into all the world and prcach the Gospel to every crcaturo" is Christ's commission to His followers, still His marching orders to the Church. Eut the world is not what it was when those words were ispoken. It is very different to the world in which modern missions were born. It is \ery different to the world in which some of us were born. It has iradically -hanged within living memory. The now generation is living in a new tvorld When I was a boy we knew proi cisely what cou&tries were Christian

and which peoples were heathen. Mis* sionary maps were printed in;black nnd white — white for Christian, black f oi heathen, tis Empire maps to-day print everything British in red. No missionary society with any sense of pro* portion or humour would" now paiul Europe white, meaning Christian. And only those who misread Bible history and are blind to the political facts of our own time would identify the British nation with the chosen people of God. Eed may have a real religiou? significance. But it includes nonChristian preligions and -aion-reiigious communities. The missionary white i9 now rather grey. Black is not as black as it is painted. Eed does not always mean British. In. some countries it means not reformation but revolution Even so, the colours are mixed. . The war changed the map of tho world.

The soap-box orator who infoimed his audience that "status quo" was merely Latin for the mess we're in was only technically wrong. The state wc're in is a mess. Chaos 1 But chao3 out of which cosmos ■ is suroly springing. It is true that ' ' the nations lie in blood, their kings a .broken brood." In tolder countries everything has radically changed, oi is rapidly changing. fcio radically, so rapidly, that in this remote and selfcontained contincnt it is exceediagly difficult to keep pace with the cables however much we try. Comparatively few of us try. It is felt to be next to impossible to relate facts to faith and maintain a mental scale of values But we are not as remote as we seem. The whole world is at the gates of this Pacific paradise. The world 's affairs cannot long be foreign to any of us. That ia what the changing world

means., "We have become near neighbours with far-distant people^. The political map of the two continents containing two-thirds of the population of the world has been re-drawn. Tremendous strain is being Jput on the economic system in every country. • New experiments are being made — industfrial," political, national, international. Humanity is on the march, committed to a new crusade, engaged in a new adventure, taking part in a new pilgrimage, making new demands on personality discover ing new tepiritual rcsources and being enriehed by new physics and a new psychology. , Democracy is as dead in Germany as it is in Bussia. There is probably as much faith in spiritual ideals in Commuhistic Russi», and as much spiritual freedom a* ia llussolini's Fascist Italy. There is ao dcnying the tremendous driving power of dictatorships where democracy has died or never lived. With Fascism and Communism the British genius of government has nothing in common. Communism is engaged in a world campaign against what is called capitalism and Fatecism. would destroy almost everything we rogard as personal rights. Basil Matthews begins his new book on "Shapingrthe Future" with a quotation from a sardonic young French poet: "Our fate is in the hands of six petrol merchants, who eat poached eggs and drink iced water, and di'scuss over the 'phone the gushing oil wells of Mossoul. " There are men to whon: the political and economic machine is like Edgar Allan Poe 's nightmare story of walls gradually and irresistibly - closing in to crush them Providence itself apparently has become a mechanised predestination, a sort of Calvanism withoni God, There is- no

denying the immense might of the machine. But man is not a marionette to be jerked this way and that against his will. . Fascism is not our fate. It is something we may have to fight, even in Australia, Liberty, of conrse, runs a great risk in the adventure of life .grown so complex as ours. But mightier than the machine is the man who made it. "The problem of what man will do with- the .enormous, possibilities of power which science has placed in his hands is probably the . most vital and the most alarming problem of modern times," Julian Huxleyputs it. "At tho moment humanity is rather like an irresponsible and -mischievous child who has -'been presented with a.set of machine tools, a' box of match.es, and a supply of dynamite." , , Ju>st so. There is needed a new mentality,- a new moiality, a new sense of resDonsibility to God. I believe it is coming, that it is bound to . corae." There is a world of meaning in the reply of a mechanic to the question, 44 What is the most dangerous part of a car" He replied immediately, "The driverl" It is with the driver that we are concerned, with the man behind tho machine — Imperialistic. nationalistic, Communistic. In , man's world nothing matterQ so much as man,- Except God. Any Imperialism, . nationalism, Communism — British, German, Italian, Eussian, Japanese — which makes the machine everything and admits of no appeal from the State to the conscience, to man, to God, is pagan, even if it struts the international stago as Christian, Patriotism is not pagan. Loyalty is of tho essence of the Christian faith. But civilisation is not Christian. Patriotism which' comes prejudiced and narrow is blind. Imperialism may be-. come jingoistic. Nationalism may havo no god but Caesar. The totalitarian State may be a soulless machine. Communism, witb its insistcnce that man lives by bread alone, is Bolshevism without even the beginning (o^ brothcrhood in it, Comes the great question What can. we do about it, personally?