A Review of Reviews

BY ‘RAVI’

The Congress is in office and the August monthlies in India naturally concentrate on the importance of this momentous event. The Modern Review contains a sheaf of articles on the pros and cons of Congress government. Mr. Subhas Chandra Bose fears that the Congress will shed its ‘rebel mentality’ and will lose sight of its true objective; Mr. Ramananda Chatterjee quotes sections 78 and 79 of the Government of India Act (1935) and shows how restricted are the powers of the Ministers and legislators in finance and legislation; and Mr. Satyamurti lays down a bold programme for the Provincial Governments within the limits of the Constitution. But it is Mr. Gandhi who gives us the essence of the matter with regard to the Congress acceptance of office. He has been quoted at length in the newspaper press; but on the principle that we cannot have too much of a good thing, we make bold to insert the following:

"……it is possible to construe it [the Act] as an attempt, however limited and feeble, to replace the rule of the sword by the rule of the majority…..

"If the Englishmen or Anglicised Indians can but see the Indian, which is the Congress, view-point, the battle is won by the Congress, and complete Independence will come to us without shedding a drop of blood. This is what I call the non-violent approach…. This office acceptance is not intended to work the Act anyhow. In the prosecution by the Congress of its goal of complete Independence, it is a serious attempt on the one hand to avoid a bloody revolution and on the other to avoid mass civil disobedience on a scale hitherto not attempted."

The Congress Cabinets will have formidable tasks before them. Not the least of them will be the tackling of the problem of unemployment, especially of the educated class. The problem has been growing in extent and seriousness for a considerable period and yet nothing tangible has been done by former governments. Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, in an address in The Asiatic Review, talks of the wasteful multiplication of our universities and the sterility of our educational system. He urges strongly bifurcation at a very early stage in the schools and the establishment of vocational institutions.

But perhaps the only ulitimate solution of unemployment, educated or otherwise, will be found to be in the industrialisation and socialisation of this country. And with the Congress in power in the Provinces, industrialisation at least can be pushed up to a great point. One of the chief obstacles to the growth of industries in India has been the persistence of the managing agency system. The defects of this system and the partial remedies offered by the recent Indian Companies (Amendment) Act of 1936 are lucidly analysed in the same number of The Asiatic Review by Dr. Vera Anstey and Mr. Nabagopal Das.

India seems to have ‘plunged’ into a period of comparative calm. She must now, says Dr. Gilbert Slater in The Indian Review, make her voice heard in the political madhouse of Europe. Together with Burma, China, Persia, Turkey, and the U. S. S. R., she could form a pax Asiatica and work vigorously for peace and sanity. "Its (Asia’s) common will, uttered with unity and determination, would have behind it the force of over a thousand million human beings and even yet might win the victory of humanity and civilisation." Dr. A. B. Keith makes the same point in The Prabuddha Bharata. Morality and political power are being shamelessly divorced in the national as well as in the international sphere. And it is the duty of Philosophy, Eastern as well as Western, to "mediate between extremes, to remind mankind of the unity of humanity, and to negative false claims of superiority….."

Ultimate unity! There’s the rub, says Ezra Pound in The Aryan Path. What is ultimate unity? "It is our impression that an Indian begins all talk with an allusion to the Infinite and that Ultimate Unity appears four times on every Indian page"…..Get your ‘red’ down to rose, rust, cherry, if you want to know what you are talking about. We have too much of this talk about vibrations and infinites." Mr. Pound suggests "a common locus of mutual comprehension" between India and the West in the study of Confucius’ Ta Hio and his ideogramic thinking. Let us define before we discuss.

But the world is in no mood to tolerate essays in dialectic. Of what use is Confucianism to China herself when Peiping has fallen and Shanghai is being bombed into submission? Japan listens only to the argument of the bullet. She can sustain her internal economy only by outward explosions and a continual drive for markets. She needs must think in terms of territorial expansion. Her war-lords are at the helm of her affairs. The Fortnightly has an interesting article on the position of the parties in Japan. The Army and the Navy have radical elements in their middle and lower ranks, but the High Command works hand in glove with Big Business. Communist parties are illegal and there is very little of real left-wing ideas in the Trade Union and the Social Mass parties. Whatever Socialism exists in Japan is of the brand of National Socialism.

If the Far East is ablaze, the Near East; is in ferment. The Palestine Report has deeply disappointed both the Arabs and the Jews. Christopher Lumby, writing in The Contemporary Review, catalogues their grievances respectively. The Arabs complain:

"1. Approximately 300,000 Arabs are to be left in the Jewish State, only 1,250 Jews in the Arab State.

"2. The whole of Galilee which is 87% Arab is to be given to the Jews.

"3. The Holy Places which were under Moslem control for centuries, are to be under British guardianship.

"4. The Jews get Haifa which is half-Arab in population.

"5. Jaffa though left to the Arabs is to be cut off from the Arab State….

"6. The Arab access to the sea is indirect.

"7. The Jewish State blocks the direct route to Syria."

On the other hand the Jews protest:

"1. The Jewish State loses its capital.

"2. Only 1/5 of the territory of Palestine is available for the National Home for the Jews……

"3. The Dead Sea Potash Works, Jordan Power Station, are left in the Arab State.

"4. The Jews have to pay a subsidy to the Arab State.

"5. Britain will have control over Haifa and Galilee."

This catalogue of counts forms a terrible indictment of the Report. Even disinterested criticism has not been sparing. Harold Temperley, the Cambridge historian, writes in The Nineteenth Century that the Partition of Palestine "is not correct according to ethnic, strategic, sentimental or even economic considerations."

But perhaps on a balance of opposite dangers, the Report can be recommended. The Arabs have been released from the fear of being swamped by the Jews; and the Jews cart yet accommodate two more millions of their numbers. At any rate when both parties feel so aggrieved, it can be held that the Report represents the nearest approximation to justice.

In the last resort Britain is likely to ‘impose’ a peace on the Jews and the Arabs. She will be supported by Germany, Poland and Rumania who have Jewish minorities to be got rid of. But who will ‘impose’ a peaceful settlement on Europe herself? Pertinax (Andre Geraud) of the Echo de Paris contributes a significant article to the current number of The Fortnightly. Europe has been stampeding towards war. The League has fallen and collective commitments are being shaken off. "The spectre of neutrality, which the League was intended to exorcise, has returned with a vengeance." Belgium has begun to wobble, the Little Entente is dissolving and, with an England angling for a German understanding and an Anglo-Italian entente, the London-Paris axis is being irreparably broken. The world is fast approaching that state of international anarchy which she was in before the war of 1914.

The villain of the European piece at the moment appears to be Poland. The wanderings of Col. Beck have become sinister and ominous, Poland’s relations with Germany are marked by great friendliness, with Czechoslovakia by subdued hostility. She has massed her forces on her southern frontier, dangerously near Czech industrial centres. Poland is fast becoming a Fascist State in all but name. The evolution of Polish nationalism is excellently traced in an article in The Contemporary Review. From the French Revolution and Fichte through Brodzinski and Mickiewiecz, the Poles have arrived at a stage where nationalism outruns democracy. The National Democrats of Poland are as anti-Semitic and anti-Slav and anti-Communistic as the Nazis across the frontier. Even eminent professors like Eduard Hartmann, the psychologist of the unconscious, demand extirpation of the Slavs. In fact, even universities are being purged of their radical elements. A Cambridge don writing in a recent number of The New Statesman and Nation said that at Vilna, one of the oldest universities in Poland, the Government ruthlessly suppressed a society and its journal devoted to scientific and social problems. The muzzling of free thought is as effective in Poland as in the totalitarian States.

Reaction is tightening its grip on Europe. To what extent it is successful can be seen in the growing activity of the Catholic Action, a party sponsored by the Papacy, subsidised by the Papacy and deriving its tenets from Papal Encyclicals. The Contemporary Review has an article which brings together the more important of the Papal pronouncements:

"Church and State:- The chief duty of all men is to cling to religion in both its teaching and practice, not such a religion as they may prefer but the religion (Roman Catholicism) which God has enjoined and whose marks, certain and clear, show it to be the true religion. (Leo: lmmortale Dei. Nov. 1st, 1885)

"Democracy:- The sovereignty of the people and this without any reference to God is held to reside in the multitude–which is a doctrine well calculated to flatter and influence many passions but which lacks all reasonable proof.

"So, too, the liberty of thinking and publishing, whatsoever one likes…..the fount and origin of many evils. (lmmortale)."

Catholic Action is vigorous in France, Austria and Portugal. It has affiliations in England, Germany and Spain.

But it would be wrong to think that the attack on civil liberties is confined to the activities of reactionary sections. In the democratic countries there are subtler and more vulgar opponents. Electoral corruption and Parliamentary inanities are, well-known. But it is in the control of the newspaper press that the attack is most dangerous. Captain Kennedy contributes a very interesting article in The Nineteenth Century on "the faking, wangling, twisting of news to suit the controllers." The blame rests in part on the shoulders of the reading public who want sensation and more sensation. Democracy has to be cajoled and entertained and so the newspapers have to be adapted to their public. But such twisting and falsification of news is fraught with grave results in the international world. Offence is given to nations for which there is no redress save the expulsion of correspondents. Mr. Kennedy relates a number of stories in which he was asked to put more ‘pep’ into his despatches. The most amusing to us and the most annoying to the Japanese, concerns the visit of Amy Johnson to Japan in 1931. When Amy arrived, Gen. Nagoaka, famed for the length of his moustaches, gallantly embraced her, bursting all bounds of convention. Mr. Kennedy telegraphed to his office in England mentioning this element of ‘human interest.’ And presently he got a wire: "Whisker story excellent press. Heartiest congrats!"

The phrase of Goethe, "democracy is ignorance with spurs on," leaps to one’s mind.

The lesson of all this melange in Europe, and the increase of reaction is simple, but of the first importance. Europe must resurrect the League and implement Articles 10-16 of the Covenant. And Europe means, in fact, the democratic countries. Without Sanctions, the League would be an emasculated institution, a ghost and a mockery. But the opposition to the Sanctions clauses is considerable. The Contemporary Review contains a duet on Sanctions. Sir Christopher Hobhouse rigorously attacks the idea of retaining the use of violence in the Covenant and traces the failure of the League to its inner contradiction. Prof. Gilbert Murray on the other hand beats the anti-sanctionists into pulp and leaves them no leg to stand upon. Sanctions are essentially a fence, a barrier; they come into play after aggression, are slow in action, but they restrain irresponsible action, preclude aggressive wars. It is not by cutting out Sanctions but by making them more effective and automatic can the League be resurrected.

But it is not enough merely to emphasize the strength of the League powers. Collective security does not mean collective selfishness. Armaments are never the most effective instrument in establishing or even enforcing peace. Sir Norman Angell, in a brilliant article in The Nineteenth Century, shows how to make armaments useless. The democratic States must agree to join together and to satisfy the legitimate demands of the ‘have-not’ States. The former must address the latter in some such words: "For the defence of these principles (the democratic) we are ready to enter into an alliance……to form a defensive confederation based on the principle that an attack on one is an attack on all. It is open to you to join it when you are ready to abide by its conditions."

Such must be the principle of the League and the sooner the European nations realise it, the better for them and the world. Otherwise the Armageddon will assuredly draw near. A gruesome foretaste of what the next war will be like can be seen in the wiping out of Guernica in Spain by the German bombers. G. L. Steer was on the spot and he writes in The London Mercury with a power and passion which can be realised only by reading his article. We trust it will eventually find its way into innumerable anthologies, as much for its dreadful lesson as for its vivid prose. Guernica was smoked out within the space of a few hours. A prosperous market-town, the Heinkel and Junker ‘planes pounded it "without mercy and with system." They literally poured vials of wrath in the shape of thermite bombs. And the liquid fire crackled in graveyards and hospital roofs, roared in fields, danced in the hayricks and by nightfall rose into the sky like a single column, putting to shame the setting sun. Guernica has been destroyed–it remains only as a memory. But if the world does not solve its major problems and revive the League, even the memory ofGuernica will be lost in a tragedy more awful and more bloody than the war of 1914.

After Guernica, the thinking people in Europe may well feel like the ‘Mourning Woman’ of Sheila Wingfield in The London Mercury:

"Though Grief sits under ceilings low,
While Sorrow hooded in street will go;
Though Melancholy bides in river sedges,
And Despair by the dark mountain edges,
And at night Fear shakes the trees:
Sadder am I than all these."