NEW SOCIAL ORDER

Waikato Times, Volume 128, Issue 21365, 8 March 1941, Page 11

NEW SOCIAL ORDER

ITS MAIN FEATURES ARE ALREADY VISIBLE

TOURING the first German world war how huge an aggregate of hours must have been spent on eager speculation upon life apres, as soldiers’ French had it, la guerre finie, writes Lord Elton in the London Sunday Times. Today the same human instinct is increasingly at work, yet with a notable difference. A quarter of a century ago men’s thoughts on the whole dwelt lovingly on a return to life as they had known it before the deluge, and the word reconstruction, suddenly so popular during those years that for the survivors of that generation it has almost n period flavour now. was used in its literal sense—of a rebuilding of what had been there before. Today, on the contrary, talk is almost always of a new social order. At first sight this contrast is surprising, for the men of 1914 had been, if anything, in a more radical temper than those of 1939; and in a hundred ways the average Briton had reached a standard of comfort and security in 1939 which had hardly been dreamt of a generation earlier. One reason, no doubt, for this significant change of mood has been the instinctive belief that the tremendous events of this year of blitzkrieg can but have changed the future, too. and that both the deepest meaning of the war, and our own right to count on victory in it, depend upon the nation’s ordeal being also the nation’s regeneration. Above all, perhaps, there is the sense that having found ourselves capable in war-time of so gigantic a national effort, both spiritual and material, we are bound to carry over these new-found powers into the age which lies beyond. For a people which can adjust its daily life to the blitzkrieg and spend millions a day in war, any social problem, however intractable or mostly it may have seemed hitherto, should be child’s play in peace. Already With Us And yet, although a new social order is almost everywhere spoken of, it is almost nowhere defined. For the present it remains a blurred, but inspiriting, glow upon the horizon. There are those who are impatient for official pledges and definitions, for a ground plan, at least, of another Land Fit for Heroes, arguing that, with the framework of society softened by the fires of war, it is our business to strike while the metal is soft. And yet, for the present, there is surely ’ good deal to be said for hurrying slowly. We can as yet only dimly foresee the conditions under which we shall be building, «o that to plan now must mean to plan all but blindfold—perhaps even to frame one those doctrinaire and a priori paper •onstitutions. beloved of coterie and lec‘ureroom. which in the past have brought lisaster to so many parts of Europe and of which the instinctive wisdom of the British has so consistently fought shy. Another reason perhaps why we may well rest content that the future should not define itself too swiftly or too artificially is that those with leisure just now to spend upon planning it must needs be persons who stand somewhat aloof from the

nation’s war-effort—and history seems increasingly to suggest that the best architects of peace-settlements, whether international or domestic, are likely to be the men who played their part in the wars which preceded them. The truth, however, surely is that we shall need to worry much less than we sometimes suppose about the framing of our new social order. In a society such as ours, mellowed by centuries of organic growth, every system carries within -it the seeds of that by which it is to be replaced, and in embryo at least the new order, of which we are beginning to hear and think so much, is already with us. Nor is it difficult to discern its main features. To such of the landscape as can already be sketched there is, however, a background which it is well not to overlook. We may be sure, for one thing, that the rebuilding will not be the work of any one political party. Still less is it likely to be the fruit of any one political theory. Most of our old prejudices and affiliations, to whatever sect or party we once adhered, will have to be jettisoned. We shall probably find, indeed, that many of the problems with which the makers of this postwar England will most anxiously concern themselves are those which have been consistently ignored by all the parties. Solid Foundations We have solid foundations to build on. For though we must forget politics, we should remember history. The fashion just now of belittling the social achievement of the immediate past is in itself a novel and subtle form of defeatism. A year ago a few voices still hinted that the war was due not so much to Hitler as to forces out of his control, forces generated at Versailles—which was what Hitler is always saying himself. Today certain voices are beginning to suggest that in part at least this war is the inevitable outcome of the decadence and social inertia, during the last twenty years, of British demoplutocracy—which also is exactly what Hitler has always said. It is an illusion as complete and ultimately as self-destructive as Mussolini’s illusion that we were incapable of an offensive in the Western Desert. It is true, of course, that during the last ten years we did not build as many aeroplanes and tanks as we should have built. But it is not true that we merely shirked our social problems. On the contrary, we halved the death rate from tuberculosis, halved maternal and infantile mortality, added three pounds to the average weight of elementary school-children and built a thousand houses a day—which was a good deal more than Germany, or for that matter any other country, achieved during the same period. When the time comes we may surely approach our great task with confidence both in ourselves and in our past. Moving Forward Certain of its features we can already plainly descry. We are moving steadily, not as is sometimes said, towards equality no economic or political manipulation

can produce equality between Nelson and Uriah Heep—but towards equality ol' opportunity. Hall' a dozen currents carry us that way. The economic gulf between rich and poor, which has been narrowing for fifty years, is narrowing faster with every month of war; for, apart from the taxes, air bombardment is bound to impoverish those who own rather than those who The ancient Universities, which for a generation have ceased to be enclaves of privilege, are bound steadily to increase the proportion, already large, of their undergraduates supported by the purse of State or local authority; while with the disappearance of the prosperous upper middle class which so largely created them (and which, in turn, they helped to create) the public schools, as we know them, will be transformed by a new era of Statesupport and free places. Such processes as these, prolonged to a point beyond our present horizon, amount in themselves to a social revolution. The dearth of courageous statesmen in their forties, in contrast to the wealth of courageous pilots in their twenties, is not only due to a bottleneck in our educational system—for we fought two years of the last war without conscription and the men who should now have been our leaders went unquestioningly to the posts of danger and are no more—but it is partly due to a bottleneck. And the growing demand for leadership will itself accelerate the social changes. Educational Trinity Education will have learnt, or re-learnt, much from the air-war; not least that the strength of a nation lies in the fibre of the masses; and more deliberately than ever, avoiding the error of the French, for whom education was a purely intellectual process, it will concentrate upon the trinity of body, character and mind. It is ’ even conceivable that the State will no longer shrink so timidly from the teaching of religion. ' After passing through the fires in defence of Christendom we shall surely see to it in future that our children at least know what Christendom is. Long before the coming of the nightbomber the sprawling industrial city, stifled by factories and slums, had become a moral and a physical menace. It is more than a hundred years since Robert Owen planned villages in which factory would be lapped round by fields. No British family is more than a generation or two from the soil and in many of them the great war migrations will have revived half-buried memories and instincts. Modern transport has for some while made the present swarming accumulations of humanity meaningless as well as dangerous; after the war they will doubtless shake out into a seemlier social landscape. The whole countryside, indeed, will surely be more prosperous: have we not twice now been taught what home-grown fpod can mean to us V Our Greatest Task Countless problems and countless opportunities will stand out clear, and a little unfamiliar, in the hard, early light of the new age. But the economic foundation is there to build on. This year indeed has emphasised the value of that characteristic compromise between Collectivism and Indiyidi alism which has grown up here during the last thirty years: for the war has both added powers to the great public corporation and the State-encour-aged cartel, and has found full use in times of trial for the friendly helpfulness of the one-man business. Take it all in all, the making of the new age will be the greatest task we ever laid hands to. The true meaning of our present ordeal is perhaps that it is fitting us to undertake it