Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star FRIDAY, JULY 23rd, 1920. A WORLD UNDONE.

Hokitika Guardian, 23 July 1920, Page 2

Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star FRIDAY, JULY 23rd, 1920. A WORLD UNDONE.

Tin-: world outlook is not pleasant, it must be confessed. It is a world undone, every quarter of the globe having its revolutionary rather than its evolutionary difficulties. An English writer a couple of months ago in reviewing the outlook remarked on the great iftdustrial strikes in the United States, which were fii most serious it has yet had to lace; the condition of Ireland is indescribable; experts are of opinion that Japan is in the midst of a violent revoluntiou; thanks to the Peace Treaty, the Spnrtacists are gaining ground in Germany, and a now revolution cannot lie far removed in Russia, The remainder of the world, including the United Kingdom, is comparatively free from violent upheavals, due to a growing realisation of the frightfuiness of the financial plight into which we have sunk. All this is, of course, the direct outcome of the war, and can be traced to German ambition. .But the present position is very much worse than it might have been, if, in December, 1918 the world had made up its mind to tackle seriously the problem of recoil- i ■struction. Instead of that goes on the . comment, every civilised pountry, with a unanimity which historians will surely find it difficult to explain, decided to go on with its full war-time organisations, with every form of Government activity and Government control in full force. Even now most of them are thoroughly uncertain whether they arc really serious or whether they are still engaged in war. The result is that the whole world is over-governed. ATi the populations are subject to force. The vary worst forms of autocracy, masquerading as popular governments, are in the ascendancy everywhere. Freedom is almost non-existent, but f!!i atmosphere is created which is ideally suited' for the rapid breeding of revolutions o all kinds. Force, repression, the ex-.

(.iso of authority, always produce rebellion ; that is one of the peculiarities of the civilised human being. Things are pot likely to get much better until governments generally take a much more modest view of their capabilities and of their functions, and allow the individual to let off in ordinary useful occupation those energies which are now finding vent in revolutionary tactics. But the change requires to be individual rather than national, and with a world undone by the war, the individual has grown abnormal, and therein lies the great obstacle to pre-war tranquility.