Thinking Ahead
T is an accident, so far as we ourselves are il concerned, that so much of the reading matter in this issue comes from people who are dreaming about a new world. But it is not an accident so far as these people are concerned. The world, with most of its systems and philosophies, is being remade. Those even who may wish to do so-and they become a smaller proportion every daywill not be able to return to the world of the nineteen-thirties. They will be lucky if they find any part of that world undamaged when the fighting ceases; and much of it will be damaged beyond repair. It is, therefore, natural and in itself encouraging that more and more people should be asking themselves, and asking one another, what kind of a world they want, and what kind they think they can get. It is at least partly true that we are fighting the present war because we did not know how to use the Opportunity that came to us in 1918. Not enough people -had thought about the new world, and not enough had talked about it. Above all, not enough had reached the stage of mental and moral adjustment to the new demands of peace. We could not make up our minds whether to destroy our enemy or to lift him again to his feet, so stood awkwardly and foolishly, and in the end fearfully, resting one boot on him. We had no plan for dealing with him, or with any other disturber of our peace, but an idealistic re-arrangement of the world for which we were at no time prepared to pay. So the more we think now, and the more realistically we plan, the better chance we have of meeting the enormous problems of peace when it comes. But there is one fact more encouraging than all this planning. It is the almost universal belief of all sane and decent people that the war must first be won. Whether we are capitalists or socialists, liberals or conservatives, we know that nothing can be done till Hitlerism is annihilated. Unless we keep that forever in our minds, planning is mere moonshine and talking a waste of air, ~
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 108, 18 July 1941, Page 4
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374Thinking Ahead New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 108, 18 July 1941, Page 4
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