All-round Progress


either too self-centred or too pusillanimous to do something about it, should it not then become the prerogative of ordinary men and women, as part of the broader social contract which is humanity, to enforce the law of civilisation on those who are violating it? No, the problem does not lie in the moral or social sanction, it lies in the gradual deadening of our sensibilities. Citizens of every nation have their own immediate priorities. Young people continue to commingle, but they commingle for reasons that might seem altogether peripheral in the light of the spark which ignited millions of souls fifty years ago in the cause of Spain. Idealism has acquired an unsavoury odour, they laugh in your face when you say that one is none, you are not supposed to die any more for other people's cause. At this distance of fifty years, in the context of the worries and concerns of today's crowd, it was a crazy thing what those young people did, the Audens and Caudwells, the Bunuels and Bretons, the Ehrenburgs and Hemingways: why must you fritter away your talent, resources and, ultimately, lives merely because fascists have gone on the rampage in some remote place or because some racists are indulging in genocide in that vague geographical tract, South Africa?