THE GREEN INTERNATIONAL.

Hokitika Guardian, 3 April 1926, Page 1

THE GREEN INTERNATIONAL.

(Sydney Herald.)

J)r. Lothrop Stoddard, in common with Dean Inge, holds rather gloomy views about the prospects of our civilisation. Ho has predicted for us a variety of ends, all of them, imminent, and all of them unpleasant. The white peoples will l>e overwhelmed by the yellow, or engulfed by the rising tide of Islam. We are committing race suicide on a wholesale scale by allowing the superior elements in the stock to die out, while the inferior multiply, or we shall ho swallowed up by panEthiopianism insurgents. Still we can derive a crumb of consolation from the fact that only one of these dire dooms can overtake us. If we are to he utterly devoured by the Far East there will be nothing left for the son of Ham; if we perish of inanition the .Moslem will hardly want to make it meal of us. However, in "Social Classes in Postwar Europe ” Or. Stoddard envisages the future from another angle, and his thesis is the more interesting because he is no longer in the realm of pure speculation. During the last few years certain tendencies have been discernible, from which inferences can be drawn with some degree of assurance. Before the war the social organisiation ol Europe was fairly uniform. The war and its aftermath rent this fabric from end to end. especially oil the Continent itself. The landed aristocracy and the middlcclass made the greatest sacrifices. They officered the armies and sustained proportionately heavy casual-

ties. They bore the brunt of the burden of taxation, and subscribed to the war loans. As a reward they were cruelly hit. The landowners lost their land sometimes, as in Russia, by direct contiscat ion. sometimes, as in Rnuliinnia and Czeelio-Slovnkia. by legislative action, payment being provided in long-dated bonds. !n Germany and Austria the process was voluntary. The magnates anticipating the inevitable, made concessions. Even in Britain, the mil ion least affected by these currents, many owners were compelled hv financial pressure to dispose of their estates. The midlc class fared even worse. In ninny countries it has been virtually exterminated either by

violence or poverty. In Eastern ami Central Europe the middle class, as

such, is no more. Tts members have sunk into the ranks of the proletariat. Elsewhere they constitute the “new poor.” It did not go under without a struggle. Jn Germany and in Italy it lias striven more or less successfully to assert itself. Dr Stoddard insists that Fascism is essentially a middleclass movement. But over a gTeat part of the Continent the eclipse of this order is complete.

.Meanwhile the agraians, and at' first the industrialists, had prospered. Not for years had agriculture been so lucrative. The peasant ate his fill and sold his surplus at high prices. Fortunes were made from the soil. For the industrialists in the cities there was, during tlio war, plenty of work nijd soaring wages. They, too, basked in the sunshine for a space. But the bubble burst. In the general collapse of industry which followed the war the city worker found himself jobless and foodless. He coquetted aith Bolshevism, hut his attempts to improve his lot by revolution came, as a rule, to nought. Dr Stoddard is convinced that Bolshevism is a spent force, it has demonstrated its inability to feed the community. "When the factories are destroyed or run upon Soviet principles the operatives starve. The conduct of industry depends upon conditions which over large areas in Europe have censed to exist. But the land is indestructible, and will always support life. The peasant is master of (he situation, and knows it. In Germany and Hungary he suppressed Bed outbreaks by the simple expedient inf withholding supplies. In Russia, as soon as he had acquired the land, he called a halt. It was in order to propitiate the peasant that Lenin was constrained to recognise private property and introduce the new economic policy. With the hrcuKing np uf the large estates in Europe the agrarians have become more numerous. and are conscious of their ; strength, in many parts of Europe, notably in the east, the cities are dwindling. In 11)15 Petrograd and .Moscow had a population of 2,318,000 and 1,skill,00(1 respectively. Five years later the figures were 1.000,000 and 1 ,0511.01)0. Political control everywhere is passing to the countryside. I'nh'ss industry recovers very soon, a most probable contingency. Dr Stoddard foresees a return to the, state of affairs which prevailed before the

industrial revolution in the nineteenth century. Then the towns were comparatively small and uninfluential. Europe was primarily agricultural, and the rural interests were economically and politically paramount. Since 1918 they have won back much of their former ascendency. Tlio peasants have organised themselves politically. They have eaptuned the Government in Czecho-Slovakia, Poland, and Bulgaria, and throughout Central and Eastern Europe are a factor to be reckoned with. Nor are they content with a purely national organisation. Beside the Red International of tin? proletariat and the White International of the upper-middle classes, there has appeared a third group—the Green International of the peasants, with the four-leaved clover as its symbol. Little is heard of it in the outside world. Blit it is very active on the Continent: its adherents are continually increasing, and Dr Stoddard believes that it is a political force which may dominate largo parts of Europe in the future.