PENDULUMS SWING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 October 1941, Page 6

PENDULUMS SWING

POWERFUL FORCES AGAINST TOTALITARIANS. Will frenzied nationalism have a long life, in Europe? asks Dr W. R. Inge, writing in the Quarterly Review on “Nationalism and National Character?’ The totalitarian State. is extremely powerful, being organised entirely for aggressive war. Other nations may be driven in self-defence to suspend their own liberties. But there are other powerful tendencies against which the totalitarian State has to contend. The love of liberty, crushed for the moment, will certainly revive. The cruelties against subject nations and against the Jews must rouse indignation and disgust. The attacks upon Christianity must fail; the religion of Europe for fifteen hundred years cannot be extinguished by persecutors. Thinking men must soon realise that it is not merely democracy and Christianity which are threatened by the dictatorships. All that we mean by humanism, all the spiritual treasures which humanity has stored for two thousand years and more, are in danger of being lost. Our fate is in our own hands; if we perish, we shall perish with our eyes open. It is perhaps rash to calculate on a change of heart in the peoples of Europe; but a return to sanity is per-

haps not too much to hope for. Oxenstierna’s cynical remark: “You do not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed,” may be countered by the earlier saying that “Things refuse to be badly administered for long.” Extreme evils work their own remedy. Pendulums swing; every system of government carries within it the germs which will bring it to destruction.