LIFE IN ENGLAND

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 May 1943, Page 4

LIFE IN ENGLAND

TREND TOWARDS SOCIALISM. NEW ZEALANDER’S OBSERVATIONS. “Perhaps the most remarkable feature today is the universal trend towards Socialism,” writes Sub-Lieut. L. R. Ward (an Otago teacher now serving in the Royal Navy), in “National Education,” in some observations on life in England. “The movement is stupendous, and in it lies, I believe, our greatest hope for the future. I don’t mean, of course, the sort of soap-box blatherdash that we know so well, but honest planned State control of all important phases of corporate life —housing, income, working hours, credit, transport, trade and the rest. It is coming as surely as night follows day. One finds it advocated by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, by the Archbishop of Westminster, by the 1922 Conservative Committee, as well as by those individuals and movements that have always adopted it as their policy. The Beveridge Report, so recently published, has received tremendous support, and is in itself something radical for this slow-moving old country. I must admit to a certain smugness about it all, for the ideas are all rather familiar to us from New Zealand (it is our Social Security Anglicised), and at the same time my respect for those men in charge out home (N.Z.) has grown 100 per cent since leaving them behind . . . (And apropos of the present English mode of life) . . . Yes, it is all an immense change, and I suppose England is not alone in this regard. I hope you people out at home are doing likewise (and I believe you are), for- if the ‘Old Country’ is rather grim just now, it is very satisfying and encouragingly honest. Of course, there are a few people vzho still live in serene ignorance of the world about them. But the people as a whole are really down to the job, have been so, in fact, for some time, and the result is beginning to show; has indeed already done so in North Africa.”