IN SEARCH OF A BETTER WORLD

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 247, 17 March 1944, Page 8

IN SEARCH OF A BETTER WORLD

Professor Joad Borrows A_ Trick From Shaw

EW ZEALAND has had to wait nearly six months for the latest book of Joad; which means, no doubt, that another is almost ready. Has the wait been worth while? At a first glance, yes. For Joad has been cunning this time. The Adventures of the Young Soldier in Search of the Better World is illustrated, and .the illustrations-line drawings by Mervyn Peake-bring both the soldier and his creator to life. If they do not conceal the fact that the book is a well-sus-tained imitation of Shaw’s black girl searching for her soul, they make you forget it while you are looking at them,

which is very often, since there are about 20 of them in a book of 124 pages. One of them, a study of the author as a philosopher, is more lifelike than Joad himself could ever be, and rounds off his talk with such a bang that for a moment or two you forget everything else. But if you don’t like Joad when you hear him from the BBC, you will not like him now. If you don’t surrender when he sits before the microphone, you will certainly not surrender when he robs himself of 30

years, gets into a uniform, and wanders about in a crazy world looking for a water-tight plan. If, on the other hand, you can surrender, you are the readar for whom the book was written: "That moment that his face I see I know the man that must hear me: To him my tale I teach." * Ba * IRST, then, meet the Young Soldier, who has been listening to a wireless talk by Sir Stafford Cripps on "What We Are Fighting For": The Young Soldier was a fine specimen of young English manhood, with a more inquiring turn of mind than is sometimes found among those who have emerged from the valley of the shadow of middle-class educa-

tion. . . . His university career was cut short by the war, and his inquiring turn of mind was not favourably regarded in the Army, where officers are required to learn the Regulations and men to obey them; in spite of it, however, they made him into an officer. This they did be-

cause he was a tall, well-set-up young man, good looking and pleasant spoken. He could swim, ride, dance _ and _ = drink,

was an adept as pushing, hitting, and whacking balls with cues, sticks, clubs, bats, rackets, and even mallets at the right moment, in the right place, with the right amount of strength, and in the right direction. ‘ us % by HEN he left the Mess, the Young Soldier went for a walk in the, forest in which his unit was stationed. Here he met Captain Percy Nick: "IT have just been listening to Sir Stafford Cripps," said the Young Soldier, "who says that we are fighting for a better and a happier world. He means, I suppose, that we shall have a better and happier world when we have won the war, but he does not say how

we are tO Bet ft. V¥ tee do you think?" Captain Nick started to laugh in a superior manner. "What a simpleton you are to believe that guff," he said. "Politicians always talk like that, partly because’ they think it is expected of them, and partly to make people fight for them. But, bless you, they don’t mean a word of it." ‘Do you mean that we are not to have a better and a happier world after the war?" asked the Young Soldier. "Of course not, That’s all my eye. It’s just what they said after the last war, only then it was ‘a land fit for heroes to live in’ in which everybody would have a ‘good job and a decent wage. But what happened?" "What did happen?" "Directly the war was over, everybody wanted to get de-

mobbed as soon as he possibly could. in tact, chaps were much to busy thinking about getting out of the Army to think about any thing else. That was partly just natural fedupness. They had had enough of the Army and being ordered about and they wanted to get back to ‘civvy street’ and their wives. Also there was a most unholy scramble for jobs, and fellows naturally didn’t want to get left behind in the scrum. They wanted to be in on whatever was-going.’"’ "Of course they did. But what has that got to do with the better world after the war?" "This much; that people were much too busy with their personal affairs to think about the country and its affairs. In fact, they ‘wanted to forget all about the government which had been drilling them and ordering them about and making them live in herds and, incidentally, feeding and clothing them for four years. ey wanted to put public life and everything to do with public life out of their minds and to plunge with every available bit of energy that was left to them into. private life, the more private the better. ’ t was the world of the ‘twenties and the Bright Young Thiags, the booming world of lots of jobs and lots of women and lots of drink and high jinks end good wages for a couple of years or so, and then the cold fit, the first of the depressions, the strikes, the labour unrest. . . . And meanwhile the Government getting away with the Treaty of Versailles and a return to the good old days of big business men happily enjoying the pleasures of unrestricted enterprise." * Ed % HE Young Soldier was sad, but went on. Then, through a clump of trees, he saw a large man on a platform engaged in oratory. "He had a big (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) head, prominent eyes, the wide-spread-ing nostrils of the dramatic orator, a voice of brass and lungs of leather." His subject was the world after the war; and as no one was listening, the Young Soldier asked a question: "I understood you to say that after the last war all the Government controls were quickly taken off, and the job of restarting industry and turning the wheels of a peacetime world was left to the initiative of indibe ong that a Mg say, to the business man’s of ts out of sornebody’s aw t whet I'd like to know 4 why, since the ae men seem already be running things, what ha after the last war wan't happen after this war?" "That is easy to answer," said the orator. "We should not think of maki the same mistakes as they made in 1918. We are far too wise for that.’’ "Are statesmen really so much better and wiser than they were 25 Pe ago?"’ asked =n Young Soldier. "I wish I could believe _coMont certainly we are," said the = that you, a member a ne ‘Majesty’s forces, should wish to throw doubt upon these obvious truths. I am not sure

that I shall not have you arrested and dismissed the service for spreading alarm and despondency." * * me HERE is no space for the Young Soldier’s encounter with Mr. Escapegoat, Diplomat and Servant of the State; with the Rev. Mr. Hateman, Servant of God; with fat Mr. Transportouse, who "understood the needs of the masses"; Mr. Ema, who proposed to educate them; and Miss Ame, who "would be responsible for cultivating their souls." We must hurry past the Robot mechanically expounding Marxism, ignore Red-tape Worm, the bureaucrat, refuse to listen while Heardhux (Gerald Heard plus Aldous Huxley?) explains how to reach "universal spiritual consciousness," but we must stop when we come to a "small gentleman in late middle age (53), somewhat protuberant equatorially, with bright eyes, red lips, and a short grey beard," strolling in a glade with his hands in his pockets, This man we need not identify. The Young Soldier’s discussion with him fills 16 pages, and here we have room for only one page. The Young Soldier tells him about the strange people he has met, and the strange advice they have given: "Golly, what a collection," said the Philoie: "And what do you think of them "I don’t know," said the Young Soldier. "A lot of it sou ed dreadfully like nonsense to me and some of it-what the Red-tape Worm a for instance-rather horrible nonsense. a I thought that Mr. Transportouse ar his niends were the only ones who talked much sense.’ ‘ "I am inclined to agree with you," said the Philosopher.

"But you know, they sounded at times horribly convincing." ; "No doubt; but just think of the they made." : "Did they? What mistakes?" "Well, the first is the mistake of excessive-ness-what I call the ‘all or none’ fallacy. The second is the mistake of dogmatism, that is to say, pretending to know something that you can’t possibly know." "I daresay," said the Young Soldier, "but won't you explain a bit?" "By the mistake of excessiveness-I mean their grandiosity. Huw confident and sweeping and wholesale they all were! ‘Civilisation is going to collapse’; ‘Civilisation can only be saved by a mutation of the spirit’; ‘Men must become supermen’; ‘The community must be tun by a scientific ent’; ‘Free will must be blotted out a men must be turned into machines’; ‘Civilisation is heading for revolution and civil war, ahd nothing we can do can avert revolution and civil war.’ Also, ‘Civilisation can only be saved by the victory of the proletariat’ and so on... . Well, you know, it isn’t as simple as that, or rather it is not as simple as any of that. What is more, whatever happens, it won’t happen just like that, For my part, I simply can’t think of the future in terms of these simple oppositions." a * me HE Young Soldier is more bewildered than ever. Are there not safeguards, or signposts, or something to keep him on the right track? What rules does the philosopher follow himself? But he gets only this parting shot: "My dear chap, I am a philosopher. I am, if you like, the signpost. Now you don’t expect to see a Sees marching along the road down which it points. Besides, I am too old. It is you who will have to make that better world, not I."