The World Today
By CYRIL ASQUITH
THERE are many students of pre-War Weltpolitik, who are unable to comb through a hundred volumes of " original documents," yet unwilling to accept on trust the undocu- mented (and often shallow or biased) summaries which are freely offered them. To this important public Mr. Spender, by his Fifty Years of Europe, has rendered a service which it is difficult to overrate. For them, and for many more, that work is likely to take its place as the classic account of Euro- pean diplomacy and international policy in the half century which ended in 1914. Some day it is to be hoped Mr. Spender will give as a companion volume, comparable with its prede- cessor in scope and scale, analysing the forces which are moulding the post-War world. This little book* of 166 pages attempts nothing so ambitious. It can be read in a couple of hours, with one's " feet on the fender." Brief, how- ever, as is the survey it contains of world tendencies and movements since 1918, it will serve notably to clarify, to make articulate and to range in their proper perspective
reflections which are present vaguely in most English minds today.
All round us—in Russia, the United States, and the counter-revolutionary countries under dictators—huge poli- tical experiments are in progress. One of the indispensable tasks of contemporary statecraft is to measure and value their results. But it is a task of extreme difficulty, for most of the countries involved are at pains to withhold from observers, both foreign and domestic, data which are vital to its achievement. The United States indeed still enjoy a Press which is free to publish both facts and opinions, whether or not their publication is acceptable to the Executive. That country, as Mr. Spender well says, is a " glass-hive which we are permitted to watch." But it is far otherwise in the Soviet and in the " Dictated " countries. " National Socialism," says one of the ablest and least sensible of its champions, in a Speech last March, cannot be judged right in this and wrong in that respect. As we, the National Socialists, are convinced that we are right, we cannot tolerate any other in our neighbourhood who claims also to be right. . . . We deny," continues Dr. Goebbels, " the right to criticize the Government to those who have no share in the responsibility and the burden of work." Such doctrines strike one as beyond parody, and almost beyond comment ; but unquestionably they are accepted and acted upon in countries subject to Dictators, and their necessary corollary is the substitution for uncen- sored fact and free comment of Government propaganda. The controlled Press parades every fact which points to the success of the political experiment, and denies or distorts every fact which points the other way. As soon therefore as a dictatorial system becomes firmly rooted in any country a smoke-screen rises between that country and its neighbours. " More and more," to borrow Mr. Spender's own metaphor, " the European Nations are becoming sealed books to each other." It is almost impossible to discover what is really going on in Russia. In other countries the suffocation of fact has not gone so far, and enough data are still available to justify general conclusions of a sort. Mr. Spender's own conclusion will probably be shared by the majority of thinking Englishmen : " Whatever test " (he says) " we take, whether wage levels, standard of living, public finance, volume of trade, general well- being, there is nothing in the condition of the countries which have sacrificed their freedom which makes it even plausible to suggest that we should gain by following their example."
" Which have sacrificed their freedom " : yes, for although *These Times. By J. A. Spender. (Cassell. 5a.) many of the Dictators are fond of reminding us that they have been established or confirmed in authority by a popular vote, the transfer of omnipotence from people to ruler has not been a temporary delegation, but an irrevocable surrender. " The sole power of Democracy," runs one of Mr. Spender's aphorisms, " is that of changing its mind : those who deprive it of this deprive it of everything." The modern Dictator is not taking any chances in this matter ; sooner than face the risk of a change of mind which might dislodge him, he will see to it that the people shall have no minds to change, or (what comes to much the same thing) shall have minds un- alterably prejudiced in his favour. The whole machinery of the State is accordingly devoted to indoctrinating the masses with a single creed, and paralysing the critical faculty so soon as it approaches this sacred ground. Mass production of a single human type, made in the Dictator's own image, is the essence of the " totalitarian State." " Most of us have been brought up to believe," says Mr. Spender, " that the pro- gressive Societies were those which gave their members the greatest freedom to live their own lives and think their own thoughts, and that to encourage varieties of thought and character was the way to enrich life and discover truth. We are faced with a total denial of these axioms, as we supposed them to be."
Mr. Spender has much to say of other things—of the true functions of the League of Nations, of the necessity for an Economic General Staff, of the internal condition of this country, and of the crystallization of " youth " as a class- conscious militant entity since the War. Space confines me to a word about the last two. As regards the " condition of England question," Mr. Spender is unquestionably right in insisting that the manual workers have retained most of the economic ground they won during the War. Without ex- tenuating the suffering of the 20 per cent. who are unem- ployed and the atrocious housing conditions which affect many more, it is true to say, that four-fifths of the workers are probably earning real wages as high as they ever have in English history. The statement makes some people im- patient : but it is silly to ignore its truth.
For modern youth Mr. Spender has another douche of cool common sense. When I meet young men of today I usually find them modest, courteous and sensible. They have indeed a neanic love of paradox such as underlay the Oxford motion about " King and Country." But this is common to the youth of all generations. In the middle of the last century Thomas Hill Green, least wild of undergraduates, adjured an Oxford Society to " let the flag of England be dragged through the dirt rather than that sixpence should be added to the taxes which weigh on the poor." What is less intelligible is that (in the words of Mr. Spender) they " cut the stream of time in half at or about the year 1914, and from the fact that everyone born after that date is young, infer that everyone who lived before it was old." Where they can be brought to recognize that there were young men in 1914, the indictment assumes the form that " the old men drove the young ones on to the War." The statement sounds perhaps well, but few who were alive at the time (and after all, they know) can treat it seriously. It is quite true that War was not regarded then with the same horror as it is now, and in this regard the change is unmixed gain : but to suggest that the young were less determined in 1914 to go to war than the old, that they were cajoled into so doing by subtle and callous greybeards, is pure .moonshine. The " old men " (not so very old as politicians go) would have been hurled from office by the young if they had stood out and flung Belgium to the vultures.
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