Evening star., 1940-04-05
Good Out of Evil

AT first thought it may seem
paradoxical that civilization should
be advantaged by barbarism, freedom
by tyranny; yet the paradox of
rampant totalitarianism and re-
vivified democracy suggests that
there is a relation of cause and
effect between the two. Some OBJ
servers, of course, may have failed
to notice that violent attacks upon
freedom serve only to create re-
sistance among men unwilling to be
slaves. Others, less disturbed by the
rawlings of the dictators, are be-
ginning to understand that Newton's
third law of motion-the law of
action and reaction-applies in the
field of human affairs quite as def
nitely as it does in physics.
If the ministers of George III had
not misgoverned the American
Colonies there probably never would
have been any separation from the
mother country to which most of the
Colonists were loyal up to 1776.
Similarly, Oliver Cromwell was moved
to rebellion not by his own ambitions,
but rather by the intolerable abuses
inflicted upon the people of England
by Charles I.
The principle involved is explained
by Thomson and TAFT in the words:
If one body presses or draws upon
another, it is pressed or drawn by
this other with an equal force in the
opposite direction. If any one presses
a stone with his finger, his finger is
pressed with the same force in the
opposite direction by the stone. A
horse towing a boat on a canal is
dragged backward by force equal
to that which he impresses on the
towing rope forward. BY whatever
amount, and in whatever direction
one body has its motion changed by
impact upon another, this other body
has its motion changed by the same
amount in the opposite direction;
for at each instant during the impact
the force between them is equal and
opposite on the two"
Certainly it may seem different to
casual bystander. The victories of
the Nazi and the Communist despots
have been real enough to be con-
vincing to the world at large. But
for that very reason they have been
ineffective. Germany, it is true, has
seized Austria, Czecho- -Slovakia,
Memel and Danzig; Russia has CO.
creed Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania
and triumphed for the moment over
Finland; the two aggressor states
have divided Poland. But what about
the price which they are paying for
the success of their policies of con-
quest? They have sacrificed the good
opinion of mankind, stirred Great
Britain and France to declare a war
which cannot be adjourned expert
mentally, strengthened in those
countries and generally throughout
the earth the very forces which they
had hoped to weaken.
And, most particularly, they have
contributed toward the development
of new dynamic for the powers of
progress wherever they still are
extant. Less than a decade ago
there was little interest in liberal
philosophy and humane religion in
the United States. Such values were
accepted or neglected without COM
ment. Ordinary men and women
took them or left them as they chose.
Now the picture is changed. Perhaps
never before in the experience of
living generations has there been
keener enthusiasm for freedom and
its concomitants of cultural and
social advancement. For this phe-
nomenon Hitler and Stain are
responsible. Thus, in the one nation
they fear, they have defeated them
selves conclusively. Nor is there
anything they can do about it.