One Year

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 62, 30 August 1940, Page 5

One Year

N a few days the war will have lasted a year-a year that to many of us may have seemed the most dramatic in history. But history is a long stretch of time. Even in Europe-which is only a corner of the historical world, neither the oldest nor the most populous-stranger and viler things have been done than any recorded during the last twelve months. The most we can say of these twelve months is that they have brought more dramatic changes than anyone living can remember. And it is the living who most concern us. It is necessary also to face the fact that many of these changes will remain. The evil that tyrants do lives after them, and some of the things done by Hitler will not be undone whatever happens to his armies. Small nations will no longer determine their external destiny, though a British victory will leave them free at home. No Continental country will function freely as a democracy, unless France stages another revolution. No nation will live without fear because none will have faith in promises, Art and letters will not flourish since few will have time to think. Even if our victory is complete-as it will be if we endure to the end-the spiritual damage of the war will be as real and as lasting as the destruction of materials and men. We shall not again see, and we must not waste our energies looking for, the world we lived in before the fire swept through. Our consolation is that fires do good as well as harm. The world will be poorer. and harder after the war, but it will be juster. It will hardly be freer, but there will be more co-operation. Political democracy will have receded, but social democracy may be nearer than it has ever been before. There will be a vast increase in the activities of the State, which in itself is not necessarily an advantage; but it will be a long step forward if the monopolist and the profiteer disappear, if all men, and not merely the rich and the privileged or the angry and truculent poor, feel that they are the State, if no Government dares any longer to tolerate slums and unemployment, and if barriers are abolished that forbid trade with other countries. Some of these changes are here already, and the others, with many more, will come. But it is worth remembering as we enter what may be a more terrible year still that it depends largely on our unity now whether we have unity afterwards.