The Southland Times THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1942. The Extension of Freedom

Southland Times, Issue 24887, 29 October 1942, Page 4

The Southland Times THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1942. The Extension of Freedom

MR WENDELL WILLKIE, whose recent activities have shown him to be one of the most dynamic personalities in the United States, has just returned from what he described as a “globe-girdling tour of 31,000 miles. In a broadcast speech, summarized yesterday in a cable message from New York, he spoke with force and candour on the impressions he had gained during visits to widely separated battle zones. His mind is capacious and receptive. When he speaks of freedom he does not treat it as a word to be inserted among the platitudes of a shop-soiled oratory. For him it is the sacred impulse that carries the peoples through suffering and sacrifice. He has been to the edge of battlefields where men have died in thousands, and where men are dying today, .to keep the invaders from their native soil. An envoy who has talked with “the wisest man in China” and with the leaders of Soviet Russia cannot speak lightly of freedom. He knows that the word has variations of meaning, fixed by the influences of race and history. A Russian and an Englishman have different standards in the normal life of society. What may seem an adequate liberty to one would be a harsh restriction to the other. Yet they are on common ground when they make their stand against an invader. They are fighting so that they and their children will have the right to shape their own way of life. And in countries where men remember the cycles of war, revolution and famine, there is a tendency to look beyond the present struggle with a strength of purpose that is not easily understood in the democracies. It is too easy to believe that, because the British and American peoples are fighting with the Russians and Chinese against common enemies, they are drawn into an alliance which needs only a military foundation. When the question of war aims is raised in Britain there is either an embarrassed silence, or a flow of platitudes. The truth is that the democracies are fighting for survival; and in the shadow of invasion, when battles are being lost and the outlook is sombre, the instinct of selfpreservation becomes a strong, unifying impulse. In better times, with victory drawing nearer, the major task for the post-war world takes shape in a fixed resolve to remove the possibility of further aggression. The democracies are by no means perfect; they were preoccupied with many social refoxms when war surprised them. But they have achieved political and social privileges that their people are anxious to preserve. It is "the fear of losing what they have got, rather than the hope of winning what they have never had, that reinforces the pure love of country in a resistance to the war-makers.

Post-War Mission

But the nations grouped into the grand alliance are not at the same level of development. “The Russians and Chinese are not satisfied with the Atlantic Charter, and ask about a Pacific Charter and a World Charter,” said Mr Willkie. “Is freedom supposed to be priceless for the white man, but of no account in the East?” The Indian and the Chinese who fight loyally for the democratic cause would have no trouble in drawing up a list of war aims. For them there is no strong attraction in the status quo ante. They have a long and hard road to travel before they can see themselves within reach of economic and social security. The war in China is not merely a war of defence; it is also a national revolution. In the post-war world many of the conditions that will make life easier for them can be provided by the democracies. The world State may be a Wellsian fantasy; but international co-operation must be worked out in economic and political terms if there is to be any real stability. Mr Willkie did not make the mistake of those who accept a simplified view of Indian and colonial problems. “. . .In vast areas of the world,” he explained, “there is no longer a British Empire, but a proud commonwealth of free nations. British colonial possessions are only the remnants of the Empire, and millions of men and women throughout the Commonwealth are working selfishly and with great skill towards reducing the remnants and extending the Commonwealth in place of the colonial system.” There is a great work to be done after the war. But if Britain and America are to be the guardians of freedom and progress, helping other nations to move nearer to their own living standards, their peoples must realize that the responsibility begins at home, in the preservation and enlargement of those liberties which are the hope of the world. What gifts of freedom can come to the struggling nations from those who are not sufficiently careful of their own? Mr Willkie “deplored the atrophy of intelligence produced by stupid, arbitrary or undemocratic censorship.” He does not believe that people accustomed to the free interchange of opinion can meekly “refrain from making military, economic or political suggestions on the conduct of the war.” “Let us have no more of this nonsense,” he added. “Our military experts, as well as our leaders, must be constantly exposed to democracy’s greatest driving power, the whiplash of public opinion.” This driving power will be badly needed when the time comes to plan for peace. The nations of the East are on the move. If they are to be brought into a stable world society the democracies must be free to influence their leaders, to hammer out among themselves the ideas that will help to mould post-war policy. World leadership belongs to the free as well as to the strong. British people have had to surrender precious liberties while they belatedly summoned their strength. If they surrender too much they will leave themselves unfitted for the great work of reconstruction that awaits them when the war is won.