time: the refreshing river 



history, are secessions from this wider idea. And secessionist minorities 

 are bound to fail because, as Seversky^ has put it, that side "with the 

 greatest economic strength, industrial capacity, and engineering 

 ingenuity will have the advantage, as always throughout history." 

 We may agree with the words of a Russian philosopher; "However 

 strong the forces of armed reaction, in the end progressive mankind 

 has invariably found the strength to win the victory, and to preserve 

 and develop the achievements of the human mind."^ 



Evolution and Inevitability. 



Now if it has been shown that the organisation of human society 

 is only as yet at the beginning of its triumphs, and that these triumphs 

 are inevitable,^ since they lie along the road traced out hitherto by the 

 entire evolutionary process, is there not some danger lest the effect 

 of such a belief should be to withdraw our own activity from the 

 daily struggle for a better, because better organised, world ? If col- 

 lectivism* is inevitable, why not just sit and wait for it? There is 



^ A. Seversky, Victory through Air Power (London, 1940), p. 140. 



2 G. Alexandrov, Soviet War News, 2nd June, 1942. Cf.also "Ir will be convincingly 

 demonstrated that those who invoked force in violation of their obligations to a 

 world order were destroyed by the inherent capacity of the world order to invoke a 

 greater force in its own defence" (2nd Report of Carnegie Organisation of Peace 

 Commission, 1942, p. 163). 



3 "The downfall of the bourgeoisie and the victory of the proletariat are equally 

 inevitable." — Marx and Engels, Manifesto, 1848. 



"Once you unbridle the forces" (of world-war) "which you will be powerless to 

 cope with, then, however matters go, you will be ruined at the end of the tragedy, and 

 the victory of the proletariat will either have already been won, or will in any case have 

 become inevitable" : Engels, preface to Borkheim's Erinnerung, 1 887. 



With these passages it is interesting to compare a christian formulation: "We believe 

 that there is a purpose running throughout the whole universe, a purpose and a plan; 

 and that if there be a purpose there must be a Purposer, whom we call God: that in 

 spite of the at present inexplicable mystery of pain and cruelty. He is expressing Himself 

 through the everyday virtues of the common people, through the heroic self-sacrifice 

 and service of the saints, and through Jesus, the crown of humankind, God's word and 

 energy who gives meaning and purpose to the age-long process. We believe that ... he 

 opened die gate of heaven to all believers. This gate is not only a gate into a realm be- 

 yond death, but into a realm which descends and is incarnated in a fair, joyful, and equal 

 commonwealth on the arena of this earth." — Conrad Noel, Church Militant, 1937. 



* There exists a misapprehension in the minds of some, that the various forms of 

 fascist government embody collectivism. This, however, has been completely exploded 

 by many students, see e.g. G. Salvemini, Under the Axe of Fascism (London, 1936), and 

 R. Pascal, The Naii Dictatorship (London, 1934), or F. L. Schuman, Hitler and the Naii 

 Dictatorship (London, 1936), for Italy and Germany respectively. It is clear that fascism 

 is a screen for the maintenance and stabilisation of existing class-stratification. The 

 barbaric and militaristic tenets of fascism would be menacing indeed if we did not reflect 

 that a relapse into barbarism seems to accompany each great transformation of economic 



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