Individual Welfare and Human Progress

Abstract

THE R.A.F. Penrose Memorial Lecture delivered by the Right Hon. H. B. Butler, British Minister at Washington, has been published (Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc., 88, 151; 1944). Mr. Butler discusses the lessons derived from the work of the International Labour Organisation during the last twenty-five years. Its organization, he says, has needed little amendment during its first twenty-five years. It was founded in the belief that the welfare of the common man must be one of the main objectives of human society, the supreme aim of which is individual progress. There can be no peace without social justice; nor can we have social justice without peace. War must go; but economic upheaval must also be prevented. The great slump of 1929–32, which was due, not to inability to produce, but to lack of purchasing power, is likely to recur after the present War, to a more serious degree. That slump taught us that international economic unity is essential. Nations must act together to prevent a repetition of it. Wise planning is not enough. There must be a true conception of life as well. The Fascist danger, spread far and wide, will still be a menace after the War, and it will be one of the tasks of the International Labour Organisation, which has been repudiated by all the Fascist States, to fight it. If we follow purely egoistic and materialistic aims and ignore the good of our neighbours, putting economic above spiritual values, we shall inevitably decline. The cynicism of despair will be equally fatal. But if we believe that humanity, by its own exertions, can attain a higher and nobler destiny than any it has yet known, then we shall not fail.