Words
F it were as easy to change people as to give them good advice we should attach great importance to the article reprinted on page 16 from the American magazine Life. While the influence of words in politics can be exaggerated, it is not easy to exaggerate the influence of the confused thoughts and attitudes of which confused and confusing words are. the common expression. In domestic politics the evil can be over taken before much harm is done; or before anything worse has happened than some intensification of the confusion in which most of ‘us normally live anyhow. When, | for example, everyone who asks. radical questions is called a Communist and everyone who criticises the conduct of a war is a Pacifist, tolerance and wisdom have an other burden to bear; but at the most we are only a fool’s march nearer to domestic nonsense. When the same kind of confusion clouds international discussions we may be a day’s march nearer to another war. Life is right in saying that neither "democracy" nor "fascism" means the same thing to an American and to a Russian; but both use them, and even write them into international documents, as if they did mean the same, and then drift into suspicion because they don’t. Democracy in Russia has never meant much more than a juster distribution of economic rewards and the free discussion on farms and in factories of the methods of carrying out Government orders. Democracy in America and the several Britains is the strongest of all political traditions, but has been a mockery and a sham economically. As for fascism, it will soon mean the same in Europe as communism has so often meant out of Europe: somebody or something that those in power dislike. And just as it is a mockery to cry peace, peace when there is no peace, it is confusion to demand the same kind of democracy in London, Moscow, Belgrade, and New York, and folly to expect to get it. The beginning of wisdom in such matters is to know what we mean and say nothing else.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 338, 14 December 1945, Page 5
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353Words New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 338, 14 December 1945, Page 5
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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