Success Kills

The fate of the left-wing political groups was particularly instructive. They died from success. Pinning their hope at first on a change of government, they saw a Labour Government elected to office. Wanting a new philosophy of State action in economic affairs they witnessed the birth of the "welfare state". Violently opposed to fascism, they ticipated in World War II, a war in which, though the "victors" suffered, the hatred of fascism became world-wide. This conflict was followed by prodigious activity on an international scale to remedy the ravages of war and to improve the lot of the impoverished peoples of the world.

But while all this was occurring there were other events which seemed to make the pre-war outlook untenable. The ranks of the pacifists had been decimated when there seemed no way short of war to end the barbarities of the Nazis. Fellow-travellers of the Communists sought other travelling companions when they realised what communism means in practice under Stalin. Socialists who expected Heaven on earth when a Labour Party dedicated to socialism came to power were disillusioned. Those who were less naive in that respect were often more naive about the miracles of science, and expected economic welfare to keep pace with the progress made in the laboratory.

In this way the presuppositions of pre-war days were eaten away, and the humanism which sustained most student thinking in those days was gradually, indeed rapidly, eroded. Instead of being re-inter-preted in the light of its deficiencies as a theoretical foundation for a plan of action it was more and more rejected in favour of reliance on non-human control of our destinies. The miracles that all can see—is not the stupendous work of international relief agencies beyond anything we could have believed possible thirty years ago?—have less effect on current beliefs than miraculous events from the distant past. The transformations achieved by patient work of many hands in the evolution of political organization (one of the few fields in which we have far excelled the achievements of the Greeks) have not led to increased confidence in man's power to solve his own problems, but ironically to greater dependence on supernatural authority.

This is the progress that we have made since the days before "Salient" was born. Its pages record the subtle and not-so-subtle changes of thought and feeling throughout this period— in all history one of the most critical periods of which we know. What of the next thirty years? We all prophesy in terms of our fears and hopes. My own: that we will see a return to rationalism and humanism, as the full significance of the revolution of the mid-twentieth century comes to be appreciated,

—I.D.C.