The Wanganui Chronicle. SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 1942. IS HISTORY BUNK?

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 86, Issue 203, 29 August 1942, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle. SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 1942. IS HISTORY BUNK?

WALTER RALEIGH doubted the value of history when lie discovered that he could not record with accuracy a fight which he had witnessed from the window of his cell in the Tower of London. Raleigh was a historian himself and he knew something of his subject, which possibly accounts for the less dogmatic character of his remarks as compared with Henry Ford, the expert ear maker, who observed with the terseness of deep conviction: “History is bunk.”

It may be noticed that the aphorism of Ford implies a knewledge on his part of both history and bunk. It is only history that is the immediate concern. It is, unfortunately for the great American manufacturer, not in evidence that he knows anything at all about the subject of history. His qualifications in the realm of manufacturing do not give him a status in the realm of humanities. Abraham Lincoln, who may be regarded also as in the class of great Americans, held an entirely different view from Ford. Commencing one of his speeches, Lincoln said: “If we could first know where we are, and ■whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do it.” The logic of the statement seems to be unchallengeable. If a man is lost the first thing he has to do is to take his bearings, and he can best do that by examining the path that he has already trod and relating it to some fixed object, such as a mountain, the moon, the stars or the sun. What is true of individuals in this respect is equally true of nations and of civilisations.

Some people are now crying out for a New World Order, and they think that the best way to secure that Order is by scrapping all the experience of the past. “We must have a new monetary system,” some say. “We must have a new political set up,” is another cry. “The whole economic system must be changed,” others assert. Very well, thep, let it be agreed that there is room for believing that the whole organisation of civilisation could be better managed: that this is not the best of all possible worlds and much requires to be put right; which implies that many former things must pass away. There is no argument about all that because everyone wants a better world, for every sensible man knows that he cannot escape from any process of deterioration and he cannot help sharing with others in any betterment. The first prerequisite for securing a better-managed world is to secure better managers than are now in office. This, let it be assumed, is easy enough; all that is necessary is to advertise for them and offer them adequate remuneration for their higher efficiency in management than is at present being displayed. There is a difficulty involved in this process, even assuming—and it is a very big assumption—that the super-experts are available to the community, that difficulty lies in the process which is to be adopted by those charged with the task of selecting the super-expert. If the task is to be done efficiently it is obvious that the super-expert can only be selected by men who are themselves super-super-experts. This very statement induces vertigo. Where are these men who have been able to give the greater portion of their lives to the study of public opinion and keeping just one jump ahead of, or behind it, and who have yet been able to become super-super-experts in any particular field? It must be confessed that their heads have not yet appeared above the horizon, and so it is clear again that it will be a long time yet before they are available to take over the fairly simple task—for them—of selecting the mere super-experts. “Ah!” it is urged, “but it is the system which is to be changed, and that will bring the best to the top when the profit motive has been eliminated.” Splendid! Here history will help in the task. All that is required is to go to those periods of the world when profiteering was not the chief end of man’s work. There wc shall find the key to present problems. Nobody ever claimed that Yenghis Khan ever kept a profit-and-loss account, or that Alexander the Great sighed for fresh credits to conquer, or that Napoleon’s nights were engrossed in poring over, not his maps, but his private ledger. None of these men was a profiteer, and each strove to create a New World Order. Somehow the. people who inherited the New Order didn’t appreciate it very much and wished they had been left alone to endure their very defective old disorders, while those who were killed in making the New World Order were probably as ecstatic as the Nazis dying on the Russian plains are to-day about the, New Order in Europe. The feudal system, too, was based, not on contract but on status. Each individual was born to a status which kept him in his place, whether or not he liked that place. Bargaining and profiteering were not much in evidence, but somehow or other the people of the time engaged in peasant risings and similar unpleasantnesses; they stabbed statesmen and burned priests, and when in a gentle mood they treated landlords in the same manner as did the Irish Moonlights ; and all this went on despite the absence of the profit motive. Anyone looking backward over history, then, will not easily accept the view that the elimination of the profit motive will be enough to ensure a New World Order being created. It would be more likely to create a very, very old and outworn order which would be inadequate for the support of the large populations of the world to-day. History, then, is not bunk. It is but the record of human experience, and he who knows his history will be less likely to commit the error of trying to teach his grandmother to suck eggs, or of falling into the fatal error of the Bonbons, who learned nothing and forgot nothing and who, in consequence, passed into the limbo of the. lost.