WAR AND POST-WAR
BOTH inside this country and outside it thoughts and energies are being directed to two distinct but associated ends, the prosecution of the war and preparation for the post-war world. Both tasks have perpetually to be kept in view and in relation. They are often com- plementary to each other, but not always. At certain points they may be actually in conflict. Some measure deemed essential for promoting war-efficiency may rule out some measure deemed essential for the right ordering of post-war society. Take, for example, the location of the factories springing up by hundreds throughout the land for the pro- duction of aeroplanes and guns and munitions. Not all— it may be hoped, indeed, very few—of them will be left derelict when the war ends. Many will be changed over as soon as possible to serve the normal needs of peace. But the ideal conditions for war-time production and peace- time industry are not identical. In each case dispersal is desirable for different reasons, and in different degree, but the peace-time factory has not the same need to be located in a relatively safe area as a munitions-factory has today, and what is a good location from that point of view may be a very bad one in relation to transport and power services, markets and suitability for permanent, as opposed to emer- gency, housing-accommodation. In all such cases, subject to rare and special exceptions, one principle must stand unquestioned. Till the war is won the war-needs are supreme and all else must give way to them, for if the war were lost there would be no world to plan for and no world fit to live in.
But if that is axiomatic, as it should be, it does not mean that every demand advanced in the alleged interest of war- exigencies must be accepted unexamined. Often enough small adjustments will convert an apparent conflict between war-needs and post-war-needs into relative harmony. But when that is plainly impossible then what the war demands must be conceded, even if it prejudices seriously some com- pletely sound plan of post-war reconstruction. The sacrifice of the latter is part of the price of victory. And in fact cases of such conflict will be rare. Over four-fifths of the field of national life the planners can spread their blue- prints unchecked by anxiety lest their efforts should go for nothing. And they need not always be blue-prints only. Actual foundations can frequently be laid, even if the full superstructure must remain incomplete till a peace-treaty has been signed. There is good precedent for that. The later years of the last war were rich in legislation affecting permanently the whole structure of society, notable among them the Franchise Act which conferred votes on women, the Fisher Education Act and the Trade Boards Amend- ment Act. It was during those years, again, that epoch- making declarations like Mr. Montagu's on the new Indian constitution and Mr. Balfour's on a National Home for the Jews in Palestine were made. It is a profound error to assume that in war-time we can, or should, think only of war. Thinking, constant and concentrated, on a multitude of post-war problems is urgently needed. Fortunately there are plenty of men and women who from age and other reasons can think better than they can fight. To them we must look for the preparation of plans whose improvisation might be not only difficult but disastrous in the turmoil of the transition from war to peace.
The term " plan " in this connexion must be interpreted broadly. In some cases it is possible to work out details, in others it would be premature to go beyond general principles. For in some fields the future can be foreseen with reasonable confidence; in others it is completely obscure. Lord Reith needs to recognise that more titan anyone. He cannot tell how much of Britain must be rebuilt till he sees how much of Britain has been destroyed; we are not at the end of the destruction yet. And the nature of the rebuilding depends to some extent on the volume of the rebuilding. But various principles can be discussed and decided here and now—whether, for example, in cases where either course is practicable the cottage-home or the block-dwelling should be favoured ; whether new towns, limited in area and population, should be created ; whether in London and other great cities the present limits of height should be substantially increased, as the im- provement in fire-fighting appliances seems to justify. That is the type of question which arises in the field of material reconstruction. There are others no less important and immediate in other fields. The reform, or remodelling, of the education-system in particular calls clamantly for new thought and a new policy. Fortunately the President of the Board of Education shows signs of being alive to that Speaking at Morecambe on Saturday he laid down a tenta- tive programme—raising of the school-leaving age to 15 as soon as possible, with 16 as the ultimate objective, with day continuation-classes for both boys and girls up to the age of 18—which should command general approval. So far as legislation along these lines is neetied to supplement the provisions of the Fisher Act it should be enacted now rather than later, so that school-buildings can be planned on the scale which the new policy demands. This is essentially a case where post-war reconstruction can begin forthwith. And in association with that it is worth remem- bering that effect has still to be given to the far-reaching proposals embodied in the Spens Report.
Wherever we may turn the same principles emerge. If there is one thing on which the people of this country are more firmly resolved than any other it is that after the war the minimum standard of living, so far from being allowed to fall, shall be substantially raised. Whatever the sacrifice, we must rid ourselves of the reproach of leaving twenty to thirty per cent. of workers' families definitely and indisputably under-nourished. But how that reproach is to be dispelled needs long and profound consideration. Is it to be by forcing up wages (and, if so, how?) or by subsidising food and rent and increasing social services? These questions raise profound problems, both of principle and of method, and there will be no time to solve them when the cataclysm of demobilisation---for if unwisely managed it may be nothing less—is upon us. Our aspirations must obviously be limited by our resources, but at least we can reach some conclusion about priorities, in regard both to the recipients of State-aid and to the forms of State-aid. As to the former there should be 00 serious question. On any long-term view children have the first claim—subject to the immediate needs "ht who shall have borne the battle and his widow and his orphan." The future is theirs, not ours who look back oa half a life or more and forward to less—their own fore and the country's and the Empire's. On every ground their subsistence, their primary education, provision of opportunity for their entry into whatever walk of life the! may be fitted to fill, must be the first charge on ogi resources. One of the incidental, but most necessary; steps in that direction is the adoption of some forr" family allowances. That, too, needs decision. , Planning, no doubt, has its limitations. Tradition201 this country tends to prefer the solvitur ambulando method, and that will certainly carry us far in the years immediately ahead. Steps, which it will be difficult and undesirable to retrace, are being taken every day under the pressure of new exigencies that cannot be evaded. Agricultural reform, with or without State ownership of the land on the lines recently suggested in these columns, is being translated progressively from theory into practice by the orders the Ministry of Agriculture is issuing to farmers almost weekly. State control of the railways is so far-reaching today that it may be conceded in the end by the directors and share- holders themselves that to go forward to full State owner- ship will be more beneficial than to go back. The same is true in the international sphere. We have in London today the makings of an international council of a dozen nations, each backed by armed forces fighting as a single international force. And the relations of all of them with the United States are something beyond precedent. In that sphere there is much to be said for making haste slowly and letting natural processes work themselves out natur- ally. But in others, discussed earlier, it is high time we were well astir.
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