Political Close-up

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 291, 19 January 1945, Page 7

Political Close-up

T would have been more satisfactory if, with the picture of Communism presented on Page 6, we had been able to present another of Reaction. That would have been fairer, and to some of our readers perhaps more instructive. But the second picture would have been remarkably like the first in reverse: the same plotting, the same mistrust, not as much trickiness, perhaps, but quite as much mischief-making, the same dark fear of liberty, equality, and democracy. For both reaction and revolution mistrust the common man. They mistrust his mind, his motives, and his methods, and are equally determined therefore to control him and not be controlled by him. Everywhere in Europe to-day the sincere, courageous, and unresting purpose of the extreme Right and the extreme Left is to keep power

out of the hands of the multitude. Their immediate purpose of course is to keep power out of the hands of each other, but after that they wish to keep it from the masses whose ignorance, muddle-headed-ness, and lack of ruling experience they both despise and fear. We wish therefore that the pen which drew our picture of the plotting Left had drawn another of the resisting Right, and that the two could have appeared on the same page. But one would not have cancelled the other out. Each would have strengthened the other, hardened the lines and deepened the shadows, since there would have been no touches in one or the other cutting across the main lines or blurring the transition from light to shade. The ‘element missing from both is democracy; neither believes in it or is willing to trust it. Ultimately. no doubt both may trust it---when the multitude has accepted the philosophy and revealed the motives and methods of which its rulers approve. That -might be in two or three generations’ or in ten or twenty; but the firm conviction of both sides in the ‘meantime is that the people must lose their liberty to gain it. Per--haps it is true. It depends on the people. But the first thing the ‘people must do is to try to under‘stand what games are being played in their name.