Where the West Falls Short
Declaration of Faith. By Herbert Agar. (Collins. 12s. 6d.) MR. AGAR perplexes me, which is something 1 never thought could happen. He is one of the prophets of the age, as his A Time for Greatness testifies. A volume from his pen under such a title as Declaration ofFaith must, therefore, arouse the keenest expectation.
It will quite certainly be read with the keenest interest. Mr. Agar is a profound believer in Western civilisation, Western ethos, even a Western soul, and he traces its various manifestations and frustra- tions from the days of Athens and Sparta, through Rome of the Emperors with its infusion of Christianity, unity under Charlemagne, truncated unity under Otto the Great, the Vatican in its greatness, the Vatican in decline, extricating from all the varied manifestations, ecclesiastical and political, that natural law, which, though falling short of the higher law of Christianity, could, if accepted and followed, make the West a home of prosperity and enlightenment such as the world has never known.
All this is admirable. World history has rarely been better summarised in so small a compass, and Mr. Agar is perpetually suggestive. But the nearer he gets to contemporary times the more he—surprisingly—inspires misgivings. The West has failures and shortcomings enough, Heaven knows, but Mr. Agar is positively masochistic in his disparagement. He does not, of course, confuse nationality and nationalism in his own mind, but he often writes as though the one were equivalent to the other. And he can say things like this :— " Some of the best enemies of Hitler would revive him from his petrol-pyre-blood-saturated followers and all—because our lately- gallant ally, Marshal Stalin, displeases them." I do not profess to understand this fully. Does it refer to the twelve divisions Germany is to contribute to the European Army ?
In any case, Stalin "displeases" someone. "Displeases." Just that. Furthermore : " Clearly our duty is to grow strong ; but can we not do so without hate." I submit that we can do and are doing ; there is no hatred of the Russian people, in this country at any rate. And I am not conscious of the " ever-increasing self-praise " of our leaders in relation to Soviet Russia—or their " habit of loud language." Mr. Agar rightly deprecates fear as a motive in human actions. He writes :— " Why are we afraid ? Presumably because we feel weak. And why do we feel weak ? Partly because we chose disarmament, and partly because our trade-routes, our money markets and our national borders are tightly closed like a fist.'
Were we wrong to choose disarmament ? Is that to be blamed for our weakness ? Has the fact that "onepowerful nation refused to disarm, when there was no reputable reason for remaining armed, nothing to do with it ? And as for the trade-routes and so forth closed like a fist, they are not closed like a fist—though no doubt they are far from being as open as they might be, and bodies like the Economic Council for Europe exist to try to open them further. To say, moreover, that " we help our friends with one hand in the name of defence ' and savage them with the other in the name of national interest ' " is not a description of the relations between the nations of Western Europe easily recognisable by observers of that area—regrettable though the temporary necessity for import restrictions may be. What I miss in Mr. Agar's pictures of the modern world is chiaro- scuro. Let us face the facts by all means, and many of them are black enough. But not everything is incontestably and irretrievably black. Planning may in some countries be carried too far at the expense of individual freedom ; but planning is not an evil in itself ; it is a necessity, if the organisation of human welfare is to be efficient. Human individuality is not being crushed out by Governments in the West ; it cannot be while the Press is free, as it still is. And the need for unity—by no means necessarily synonymous with union— is far from being ignored. Mr. Agar nowhere so much as mentions the United Nations, and of another more local effort at co-operation he has only this to say : " All we can contrive under the old rules is the North Atlantic Treaty Organisatioh=one more effort at co-operation which is half smothered in nationalism." No mention of the Schuman Plan or the motives which inspired it. No specific mention of a federalised West, but that omission is no doubt deliberate, as calculated to induce Mr. Agar's readers to draw for themselves the conclusion he desires them to draw. Mr. Agar very justly points to the evils of Hobbes' Leviathan State. But is there no danger at all that federalism in Europe might produce a greater Leviathan than Hobbes ever conceived of ?
No one could doubt the sincerity of Mr. Agar's faith : but by no means everyone will share his pessimism. WU_SON HARRIS,
Previous page
