Plans for Germany

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 298, 9 March 1945, Page 5

Plans for Germany

LANS for Germany are plans ‘for Europe, and thus for the whole world. Therefore we do not apologise for filling so much of our space this week and last with opinions about the shape of things to come. That shape has, of course, emerged with much clearer definition as a result of the Crimea Conference: we are no longer completely in the realm of speculation, as the people whose opinions we have quoted were when they uttered them. But that does not mean that such speculation is now without value. Although peace must wait for victory, thinking about peace must not; and, although the man in the street does not find it easy to isolate enough facts for firm opinions, it is his questions and demands in democratic countries that give shape to national policy. It is true that the

opinions we have reprinted in these two issues are the opinions not of ordinary men but of several men and one woman who are professional propagandists. Upton Sinclair, for instance, is a writer of books with a revolutionary aim. Sir Walter Layton is a journalisteconomist who controls a group of newspapers. Robert Boothby is a front-bench member of the House of Commons. Not one of them is ‘the kind of person London’s bus drivers or dock workers or schoolteachers or shopkeepers are likely to know intimately, but they all either make or influence the opinions that those others think they hold. And they influence, and should influence, New Zealand opinions too. In every case they approach the subject high-mind-edly. If some are more severe than others, some more revolutionary, the purpose is never vengeance, and the aim always a freer and happier world. Hitler would of course say the same, and the Premier of Japan has already said it. But democracy is a defence against platitudes as well as against tyranny, and it is our duty as well as our privilege to ask ourselves how much of this we believe.