1946

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 392, 27 December 1946, Page 5

1946

HEN George Eliot asked in one of her novels what we would do without the Calendar she was thinking of the hopelessness of life if we could not write our failures off and start over again. To many people 1946 has been a failure. Until its last few weeks it brought little but friction among friends and something close to open conflict among. pledged allies. It is still difficult. not to be cynical about it and natural to be sceptical of agree-. ments reached at the last moment by bargaining in side-alleys and not on the highway of principle. While there must always be compromises in politics, and give-and-take adjustments, it is not easy to believe that the United Nations went no further than that this year in their attempts to end one war without starting another. Nothing can make 1946 a cheerful page in history, but we shall not think it hopeless if we "look before and after" and keep it in its context. To begin with, it could have been worse: the peacemakers did sit in. conference to the end and are still friends as friendship goes in diplomacy. They could have broken off negotiations, as the nervous kept thinking they were going to do, and retired to the isolations and silences in which nations get ready for another appeal to force. We are safely through that; and if we ean’t point to ether more positive signs of progress, we must remember the deep-rooted fear of high-sounding faiths in which the war everywhere ended. It was never called a war to end war, though it may in fact have done so by a diabolic accident of science, and if it was called a struggle for three or four freedoms, rough justice with some freedom was always the practical goal. We enter 1947 with that victory still in our hands. We have much to deplore in 1946 and a good deal to forget if we can, but we are still in a good position for starting again, and for that reason enter the new year hopefully. .