We Asked These People, Too

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 289, 5 January 1945, Page 8

We Asked These People, Too

E were not able to find space for all the replies sent to our two simple questions about the shape of the world to come, Those questions, it will be remembered, were: 1. What changes would you like to see in the world before the end of this year? 2. What changes do you expect to see? Here are some further answers, with photographs, and one or two without. We regret that we shall not be able to find space again next week, and that some replies have been squeezed out. -~- Sa

WHAT SORT OF WORLD?

I. should like to see a marked increase in the recognition of the fact that it is education in the widest sense, not legislation, that makes or mars a democracy. For this reason I should also like to see the Education Minister given precedence of the Finance Minister in the Cabinet. I expect to find 1945 a year of growing but dynamic confusion in the public outlook, @ year in which it will take very active thinking to get the real strength of things.

Any political attitude is in fact the result of a philosophy. In spite of the danger of appearing Utopian and outmoded, I still maintain that internationalism is, in the long run, the soundest way for a settlement in Europe. This means a federation and commonwealth of states with only one international police. In answering the second question: I expect petty nationalism in unprecedented intensity, encouraged and supported by outside powers for their own ends.

1, I would like the philosophy of the Carpenter of Nazareth to be applied to the world. 2. I dread to see the es and sufferings of the birth of all things beautiful.

Your questions, Mr. Editor, are a temptation to cynicism. I want to see the end of the "war in Europé in 1945. Who doesn’t? Perhaps that is not too much to expect. But more than anything else, I would like to see signs of a common purpose and mutual trust among the Allies likely to stand the strain of peace. Who would dare think hopefully about Poland, Greece, China and the others, let alone a lasting peace, without this?

Things wished for: 1. The end of the war and the establishment of an international organisation preventing further wars. 2. World-wide famine relief. 3. Settlement in India. 4. Replacement of the present , General vague idealism by Christian faith. 5.In New Zealand, abandonment by the R.S.A. of its present majority attitude to socalled "defaulters." Things expected: 1. Advances by the United Nations in Europe and the Pacific, 2. Revolution or civil war in most of the liberated countries,

1. Trampers taking time off from bush slogging for ski slopes and high peaks; skiers doing more cross-country trips and less swank on familiar grounds; climbers being less of the superior being. Lighter and better gear and tucker-especially lighter. Helicopters and parachutes would be handy, too. 2. Palatial resorts for wealthy tourists to the exclusion of young Enzedders with more energy than cash. Hordes tearing into the hills, eld hands doing avertime on the wheres, whys and hows-then searching for babes in the woods.