MODERN MOLOCH

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 November 1941, Page 6

MODERN MOLOCH

DIAGNOSIS OF WORLD’S EVILS. In reviewing Mr Alfred Cobban’s new book, “The Crisis of Civilisation,” Professor D. W. Brogan writes:— Briefly, Mr Cobban sees in the sovereign State, especially in the sovereign nation-State, the root of nearly all present evils. What is wrong with the world is bad politics, not bad economics; and what is wrong with the world’s politics is the delusion that the sovereign people, or more exactly the sovereign nation, can do no wrong, that it has no duties except to itself, and that its subjects have no duties except to it. This is Leviathan, or more properly Moloch, the god to whom sacrifices of more than Carthaginian or Mexican savagery are offered in every generation, and sometimes ' twice in one generation. To this monster the possibilities of the good life, as far as it affects individuals, are shamelessly sacrificed. It is indecent even to question the claims of the jealous God who is the God of Battles and of Nations. No religion has asked such sacrifices or has received them. Not dogma, not Marxism, not Catholicism, has so subdued the human mind as has the belief in “my country right or wrong.”