EAST AND WEST

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 718, 17 April 1953, Page 5

EAST AND WEST

Sir,-Your correspondent "By Their Fruits" is quite entitled to his opinion that we should bear in mind a long list, which he details, of "crime (by Communist governments) that cries to Heaven for vengeance." I do not question his right to believe, if he wants to, that strong emotions are an aid to clear thinking; but I doubt whether many will agree with him. We have a problem to solve: how to reconcile the East and the West without war; and we shall not solve it by titivating our emotions into the attitude of righteous indignation which in the past has so greatly contributed to the making of wars. Does your correspondent . seriously suggest that we should keep in mind the "crimes" he mentions and forget that a very similar list could be compiled of deeds that have been’committed at one time or another within the territories of the British Empire? And what of the stark inhumanity of early capitalism that "cries for ‘vengeance" from the pages of Das Kapital? Are we to overlook first causes and see only the hard attitudes and effects which they have so largely induced? In any case, what use is it to anyone if we shout like urchins: "Yah! Your face is dirtier than mine?" We have a problem to solve. And I suggested that we start, with appropriate humility, from the fact of basic inconsistencies in the faiths of both the East and West. If neither side is standing firm on the -faiths. it professes, then small wonder that both feel insecure and strive so feverishly to build up the only defence they know. We shall go forward from here not as nation-states. or groups of nation-states but as individuals. The contribution of

the West will be in the art and science of being an individual in spite of groups and. in spite of systems. The leadership of the future will be composed of men and women able to stand as individuals in their own right, independently even from the faiths and attachments of their nation-groups and concerned only with man as man. It goes without saying that this will be too much for most of us, at any rate until the new leadership has. emerged clearly enough for the rest of us-in both the East and the West alike-to feel security, in following it. But in this general direction there is a chance of a rational way forward without war. Whether we are prepared to take .the chance depends on the depth of ‘our longing fora future.

PETER

MANN

(Auckand).