World for Zeros

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 490, 12 November 1948, Page 5

World for Zeros

T is not often that a phrasemaker is fortunate enough to be wise, witty, and devastating all in one breath. But that was the achievement of the British M.P. who told the House of Commons the other day that planners were making Britain into a land fit for zeros to live in. The land fit for heroes lasted for 25 years, then disappeared into the abyss again when the second World War began. The land fit for zeros seems likely to last for a century. It is here now, to the sorrow and alarm of all lovers of liberty, but only humbugs and opportunists pretend that they know how to escape from it. Since we must plan or perish, most of us prefer to plan; but we deceive ourselves if we think that planning leaves us free or that the freedom we once enjoyed would now keep us safe. It is the century not of big business but .of big political business — of nations on the move against individualists, and combinations of nations against nonconformist neighbours. We must hope, if we allow the human race intelligence enough to survive, that when it has passed through this century it will be a day’s march nearer to the liberty it has been so long pursuing. But it is moving rapidly at the present time into sharper discipline and wider control. If the people of Britain are becoming zeros in the effort to survive, the people of most other countries have lost even the encircling ring that indicates where a figure once was. The only liberty they retain is liberty to prod one another into more effective agents of their political bossesas the factory workers of Russia do in their wall newspapers, But it is in any case a question of degree. The cold war goes on, and as long as it lasts liberty must accept control or face extinction.