GOOD DEMOCRATS ASK QUESTIONS: Good Nazis Obey Blindly

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 99, 16 May 1941, Page 12

GOOD DEMOCRATS ASK QUESTIONS:

Good Nazis Obey Blindly

"Progress Has Always Depended On Discontented Individuals Who Disregarded Opposition "°’

This talk from the BBC is one of a new series by ST. JOHN ERVINE, who is known throughout the English speaking world as author, playwright and critic. He here discusses some of the great historical movements of the past, and with them he associates the names of some great individuals. It is his argument that such movements, initiated as they were by individuals, would not have been possible in Totalitarian States. Do you agree? FEW years before the beginning of the war I had an interesting and surprising talk with a distinguished oculist who was about to operate on my right eye. A well-known millionaire who was famous for his munificent gifts to the community had recently endowed a school of medical research. I took it for granted that my friend the surgeon would be delighted with this gift, but he wasn’t in the least delighted. I won’t say that he disapproved of the endowment, but he certainly was not enthusiastic about it, and as the reason he gave for his coldness has some bearing on the whole theory of Government, and the beliefs for which we are fighting in this war, I shall spend the next few minutes in relating them to you. But before I do so, let me remind you that this war, more perhaps than any other war in the history of mankind, is about beliefs. If I were asked to state very simply and very shortly what I think this war is about, I should reply that it is a conflict between those who think that the community is more important than the individual, and those who think that the individual is more important than the

community. It is obvious that in a State, in a community where the State is regarded as supreme and the individual is treated as no more than a cog in the national wheel, no change of any kind can be proposed without the sanction of the people in power, and people in power do not like change, even though they themselves propose it. That is the chief fact which emerges from the history of human life. The Experience of Galileo All men of authority tend to become very pleased with themselves and to resent not only change, but any suggestion that change is desirable. Yet we know beyond the shadow of a doubt, that every improvement and discovery that has benefited mankind has been made not by Cabinets or committees or unrestricted rulers, but by discontented individuals whose efforts to realise their thoughts were fiercely opposed by the people in power. For nearly 2,000 years every learned man in Europe believed Aristotle’s statement that if two bodies, one being heavier than the other, were simultaneously to be dropped from a height, the heavier body would hit the ground first. It was not until 1590 that a young mathematical professor named Galileo climbed to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa, and in the presence of the sceptical and derisive faculty and the students of the University, he dropped two weights, one weighing 10 pounds and the other one pound, simultaneously. They both hit the ground at the same moment, but the University authorities were not convinced by the evidence of their own eyes. They returned to the library to re-read Aristotle. There it was in black and white. "A body weighing ten pounds must," said Aristotle, "reach the ground before a body weighing one pound." That was good enough for the Professors, and they ordered Galileo to stop wasting his time with silly experiments, Steamships and ‘Planes Derided Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood, was called a lunatic by his contemporaries. Lister’s use of antiseptics earned him the dislike and enmity of the London Surgical Society. In the year 1797, the Lords of the Admiralty refused to make a grant to Lord Stafford on an experiment with a steamship because they were unanimously of the opinion that it would never be possible to move a vessel without the aid of wind and tide. In 1908 the Lords of the Admiralty, who had not learnt any lesson from that incidcnt, rejected an offer of co-operation from the famous aviators, the Wright Brothers, because their experts-mark that word "experts" -were’ satisfied that aeroplanes could be of no practical use. The Duke of Wellington resisted the proposal to build railways because he thought it was neither necessary nor possible to travel at a greater speed than 23 miles an hour. "Any person who moved in a train travelling at that speed

would," he said, "die of it. His nose would become so congested with air rushing furiously through them that they would burst." Even H. G. Wells, whose capacity to look into the future is greater than that of most people, once wrote in a printed book that the submarine could never be more than an expensive and useless toy. Every person who has invented or discovered a means of improving the lot of mankind has had to fight the authorities for his very life. Hardening of Intellectual Arteries That brings me to my friend the oculist. "All schools, whatever their character," he said, "have a tendency to harden their intellectual arteries. The principal of such a school has the human habit of liking his own ideas better than other peoples, and he surrounds himself with congenial colleagues. He will, as far as he can, appoint to positions in his school only those who share his opinions and support his policy. A doctor who believed in open air treatment for consumptives had little or no hope of appointment in a hospital where every window was tightly closed and the tubercular patient was kept in a hot and stuffy atmosphere. There were medical men who believed in what they call the ‘therapeutic value’ of pain, and they declined to perform operations under anesthetics. There were other people who were impious enough to say that the use of anesthetics was a blasphemous interference with the will of God. They seemed never to have understood the meaning of the 21st verse of the 2nd chapter of the Book of Genesis, which is a summary of an account of an operation under anesthetics that anyone who wishes to can réad." (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) There, substantially you have my friend’s objection to schools of Medical Research, but it is not the whole of his objection. The Second Argument "All the great discoveries in medicine," he said, "were made not by specialists in schools, but by ordinary doctors in general practice. A man in a research school may never see a sick person from one year’s end to another. He sees tonsils and sputum and is very familiar with microbes on glass slides, but he does not see patients. Even a consultant only sees people who are suffering from the complaint in which he specialises, and he sees them briefly. An oculist deals all day and every day with diseased eyes and he begins to think of the world as a place inhabited by persons suffering from cataract or glaucoma or detached retina. He seldom or never sees a person who is suffering from catarrh or kidney disease or boils. But the general practitioner sees every sort of sick person and sees them frequently and familiarly. He knows the whole body and not merely a part of it, There are times, of course, when the G.P. has to consult a specialist but, broadly speaking, he can treat any illness with a fair chance of curing it." That is the second argument used by my friend. General experience, he said, was better than particular experience. Now the theory of totalitarian Government is that people in power are always right because they are in power, and that any person who differs from their opinions or resists their decrees is actively wicked. The Dictator surrounds himself with a staff which is sycophantic. They assure him that everything he says and does is not only right but perfect. They would lose their jobs if they didn’t. He rules his subjects as if they were thoughtless slaves from whom he demands blind obedience. Theirs not to reason why-theirs but to do what he tells them, or die, and he has power over them that no other man possesses. The power of life and death. It is clear, isn’t it, that in such a community there can never be fresh springs of thought? Nothing can be taught or practised there that is not permitted by the Dictator. To ask a question which can be construed as an expression of doubt is to bring oneself dangerously near the concentration camp. A good Nazi does not ask questions. He just obeys. Great Christian Movements I shall not argue now about whether State action is good in itself or better than individual action. Some things can be done better by the community and other things can be better done by private persons, It is neither economical nor is it nowadays possible for every man to keep his own fire brigade or to keep his own system of sewage. But there are some services which the State cannot render, which can only be rendered by individuals. There are services indeed, which can be rendered only by particular persons. No one but Shakespeare could have written HamTet. Three great movements among Christians were each born in the mind of a single person who suffered persecution and in the supreme case a most

cruel death. There is no need for me to say more than this, that the whole of Christianity came out of the mind of one Man Who was opposed in every possible way by arbitrary authorities. Inside the Christian Society two remarkable movements were begun by men of no power or position-William Booth and St. Francis of Assisi. The World is familiar with the story of St. Francis, but it is less well informed about Booth. In his middle-age this delicate uneducated and very poor man whose wife, a saint if ever there was one, and six children were more delicate than he was, walked on to Mile End Waste in East London one wet and windy night with nothing but an umbrella and a Bible in his hands, and there, disregarded or derided, | began one of the greatest religious organisations in the world-the society which subsequently became known as the Salvation Army.