LIONEL CURTIS HAS A PLAN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 118, 26 September 1941, Page 7

LIONEL CURTIS HAS A PLAN

A Book Review by Peofeccor

F. L. W.

WOOD

" DECISION" by Liortel Curtis. Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1941. R. CURTIS speaks to us from M the past, but with a vision of hope for the future. He was bred in the spacious days of 19th century certainties, and an evangelical faith in freedom and truth has sustained him through half a century of world chaos. Though expressing due humility in face of an obscure future he is calmly certain that humanity, far from submitting indefinitely to tyranny, will ultimately recognise Hitlerism as punishment for its own sins and so be driven back to principles familiar to Mr. Gladstone, This does not mean, however, that Mr. Curtis would wish a_ victorious Britain | merely to restore the pre-war system; that stands self-condemned by the colossal disasters of 1914 and 1939 which were its fruit. Statesmanship must learn bitter lessons from past failure, and release the world from the weary round of disappointed idealism and world war; yet freedom must live. This is a formidable problem, and Curtis puts pen to paper because he is convinced that he knows the solution. He finds it in the right interpretation of British history, and expounds it here with characteristic and prophetic zeal. : Curtis has never been a diplomat skilled in reducing conflicting opinions to -angemic formule equally powerless for good and for evil. We British, he says, can only lead the world (as we should) if "we drop our inveterate habit of shutting our eyes to basic truths, and cease to regard their explicit statement as an indiscretion." He himself, indeed, has never shirked such indiscretions, with the result that brisk controversies have raged round his head, to the great clarification of British political thinking. This pamphlet, thefefore, like The Problem of the Commonwealth, which was published about this stage inthe last war, is a brilliant statement of a

point of view about issues which are squarely faced; it is not a blue-print for the future which will command immediate assent. * * * HE world is at war, writes Mr. Curtis, largely because it puts its faith in inorganic political systems; that is, systems based on compacts between sovereign states, such as the League of Nations. He draws a convincing lesson too from our relations with France. In February, 1940, these were so close that, said Mr. Chamberlain, "the two governments think and act as one." Yet with military defeat the alliance crumbled overnight, and Mr. Churchill’s brilliant offer of organic union came too late. By organic union, Curtis means the existence of a common government, elected directly by all the peoples concerned, and with full power to carry out the primary work of protecting the people’s security. Even in the British Commonwealth, says Mr. Curtis, such organic unity has not been achieved, for in spite of "a smoke-screen from British as well as Dominion ministers," the vital decisions on war and peace have still been made by Britain alone. This lack of Dominion association with foreign policy and defence expenditure (which he oddly regards as being borne by Britain alone) is in Curtis’s view a major reason why war fell upon us in 1939,

‘THE moral is clear. The British Come« monwealth, should carry one step further its demonstration to the world of co-operation between free peoples. Each member state should retain full control over social and economic policy, thus preserving freedom. But there should be set up an international government, with powers strictly confined to "security and matters which are quite inseparable therefrom," but with power to levy the necessary funds from the states. If the British peoples embarked on such a scheme, other states would rapidly join on the same terms, and the result would be a concentration of power so formidable that peace would be secured. % * * SUCH is the plan. It raises difficulties enough. Many will question Curtis’s belief that the mere relief from the threat, of war will remedy economic tensions, and so make it unnecessary for the central government to have any control over economic policy. Again, though he chastises the Dominions’ ingrained habit of seeking leadership in Britain, he may not see as clearly as we do the ingrained habit in some Englishmen of assuming that leadership must eternally rest in their hands; and his airy dismissal of Dominion fear that their policies might be merely out-voted in the joint assembly is surely not justified by experience. Nevertheless, he sets forth solid arguments which critics must weigh before rejecting. The pamphlet might, in ‘fact, be regarded as a classic statement of a view widely held both in Britain and here: that in rebuilding our world we should seek the minimum change which will produce the desired result, on the ground that man is a fundamentally conservative animal who will promptly reject a theoretically perfect scheme — until he has been convinced beyond a shadow of doubt that the only alternative is Hitlerism. If Mr. Curtis can convert British (and Dominion) conservatism to the modest programme here set out, it will not be the least of his many services to humanity.