POLITICS AND HAPPINESS iN these days it is common for
men who are not
politicians to tell governments what they should do ; but few of them give such sensible advice as Lord Horder gave in a speech last week to the Royal Medical Society at Edinburgh. There was once a time perhaps when no one except professional politicians, fine old gentlemen with commanding presences, found it necessary to think about polities; it was the job of professionals and on the whole they did it very well. The others, doctors, lawyers, work- men, shopkeepers also did their job, quite well and not unhappily. On special occasions only, a war, a general election, a revolution, did they find it necessary to attend to what their rulers were doing ; and as diversions these special occasions were not unamusing. Today politicians do not escape attention so easily ; they have lost their commanding presences and with them much of their immunity from criticism. Now everyone feels himself a politician ; we are all, as they say, politically minded. It is sad, but true, that the doctor, the workman, the shopkeeper can no longer ignore the effect politics may have upon his life and his work ; at any moment the roaring of dictators, the disputes of parties, may disturb the job he has in hand. To his alarm the unpolitical man finds that he must take politics seriously. Even more to his alarm he finds that they confuse him. For very soon he begins to ask what they are about. Of other activities it is easy to answer that question. Navigators sail ships, archi- tects build houses, doctors cure disease. Each art and science has its proper end. But a politician ? At the moment there are few with the courage to answer that question, except the dictators who assert that the only duty of the politician is to govern for the glory of the State, whatever the cost may be.
In his speech Lord Horder suggested another answer, and one with which the common man will agree. Like Lord Horder, the common man believes that the duty of government is to create, so far as it can, the conditions for a happy life. Lord Horder expressed this by saying that what we really needed was a Ministry of Happiness. Such a Ministry is indeed difficult to imagine ; its object is too different from 'those of the Ministries we already have. And a moment's reflection is enough to show that no government and no ministry could aim directly at giving happiness even to the majority of its people. The most it can do is to provide the conditions which the majority agrees Are necessary in "order to be happy. There is no need to deny that this is a very modest, rough,
and inaccurate political criterion ; but, as Lord Horder pointed out, it has been part of the political wisdom of Englishmen to work with such rough but practical standards. It is worth while comparing them with other standards which at the moment are held up to the admiration of Europe. In the Fascist countries the pursuit of happiness has been mocked at as the essence of decadence and weakness ; it is not happiness they wish for but the glory and strength of the nation. With astonishing impudence they compare the accuracy and precision of this ideal with the degenerate daydreams of democracy ; with equal impudence they assert that they have deliberately chosen the path to glory in preference to the path to happiness. The assertion is merely an attempt to conceal that the path to happiness has been abandoned as too difficult ; that the path to glory has been taken only as a means to offering some substitute, shadowy though it is, for that achievement of happiness which every man truly desires. For the happiness of the individual, tang- ible, perceptible, unmistakable, they offer the glory of a State which, except as a machinery of administration, is a fiction of philosophers and the type of patriots whom Dr. Johnson very properly described as scoundrels.
Englishmen are perhaps fortunate in not being so easily deceived ; though; at this moment, there is a danger that, amid prophecies of wars, governments may forget their duty to provide for the happiness of their peoples. Lord Horder had no doubt of that duty nor how it is to be fulfilled ; with a good sense beside which most of what is said and written about politics seems raving lunacy, he defined the indispensable conditions of happiness as the satis- faction of hunger, access to fresh air, and adequate shelter. Only a saint perhaps could honestly deny this assertion ; and saints are fortunately rare and are cared for by something other than governments. Yet, though all men would agree that without at least these conditions they cannot be happy, there still remain large numbers of men and women for whom they do not exist. So long as that is true, governments have failed in their elementary duty ; and we must agree with Lord Horder also that governments are no less of a failure if, while encourag- ing the pursuit of happiness, they pursue policies which make it unattainable. More concretely, it is, as Lord Horder said, no good encouraging people to drink more milk when milk cannot be bought for less than 2d. a pint. Such encouragement is a repellent mixture of hypocrisy and cynicism. Lord Horder was equally sensible in saying that, simple as these conditions are, the future of our civilisation largely depended on their being fulfilled. It is often attempted to prove that the course of history is determined by factors entirely independent of material circumstances. But the behaviour of States is much the same as that of individuals. If men are starved, homeless, exposed to every kind of material suffering, they become desperate, neurotic, and irresponsible, and the states which they compose become desperate, neurotic, and irresponsible also. It is precisely this quality of irresponsibility in the behaviour of contemporary States which is a threat to the future of civilisation. We need not deny that such irresponsibility may bring States much glory, victories in war, diplomatic triumphs, or heroic defeats. Except for the suffering it imposes, such glory is of no concern to the ordinary man, nor does it satisfy the empty stomach. Worse still, it will never soothe the tortured nerves and minds which flourish on empty stomachs ; so long as men, through poverty, are not able to be at peace with them- selves, which is the real happiness to be achieved, they will never be at peace with each other.
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