Freedom and civilization / by Bronislaw Malinowski.

  • Bronisław Malinowski
Date:
1944
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Freedom and civilization / by Bronislaw Malinowski. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/360 page 9
    as well as effective quelling of any international hostilities. It would also administer all those international concerns which de¬ mand a centralized control. The New League would above all supply the indispensable political, economic, and moral equiva¬ lent of war by providing elastic legislative mechanisms based on deliberation and free discussion which would allow peaceful change by voluntary agreement. A political organization on a world scale entails far-reaching sacrifices on the part of each component community. The sacri¬ fices, however, are not so great as the enemies of world order often allege. The fundamental problems hinge around the anal¬ ysis of what we may have to surrender if we accept the road of peace, and what we know we shall lose if we establish at the peace table a treaty which is bound to breed new wars. In this analysis some of the principles implied in this plan will be discussed. It will be shown that all major crises in culture are the danger foci of freedom, of democracy, and of the pursuit of happiness. The absence of that freedom which only order in international affairs can guarantee, must inevitably bring about the absence of freedom in national life, under our present conditions of technical effi¬ ciency and of development in means of control, violence, and destruction. Only by preventing war through international re¬ organization can we place freedom on a sound basis and abolish all temptations, all justifications, all possibilities for the intro¬ duction of totalitarian methods in the constitution of this country and of all other countries. There are still one or two points to be made in connection with our watchword, “Remember Pearl Harbor”. We are all united in action for the pursuit of war until victory. Yet such a surface solidarity in practical or pragmatic pursuits probably hides a considerable amount of divergencies in opinion, in sentiment, and in purpose with reference to the ultimate issues involved, above
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