Talks with Sri Aurobindo

18 MAY 1940

SRI AUROBINDO: The Allies seem to have retreated not because of German pressure but for geographical configuration with the French. If they go on retreating in this way, I don't see how they can win. But have the Germans penetrated the Maginot Line?

NIRODBARAN: That is not said, but the Maginot Line on the Belgian side seems a scattered fortification.

SRI AUROBINDO: Scattered? Then it may be possible to penetrate it.

PURANI: The Allies also should attack somewhere.

SRI AUROBINDO: The French have been trained for long to be on the defensive. Now that Hitler has changed his plan, they have to take up a new position. The French are very good in attack; they are good also in defence.

NIRODBARAN: Amery says that he believes in self-government and wants to keep an open mind as regards India.

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, he says that he won't make any prejudgment. If he does that, it will be very good. Zetland stuck to his ideas like a leech-just like Congress to its principles.

NIRODBARAN: Dilip was very glad to learn what you had said about pro-Hitler sympathy. It has come at the right time, he says. He was being jeered at for being pro-Ally. When he said he was sad at Holland's defeat, they remarked, "You are pro-Ally?"

SRI AUROBINDO: They are glad that Holland was occupied? Very strange, and yet they want freedom for India! That is one thing I can't swallow. How can they have sympathy for Hitler who is destroying other nations, taking away their liberty? It is not only pro-Ally sympathy but sympathy for humanity that they are jeering at.

NIRODBARAN: Y was there. He remained all the time glum. He doesn't believe that England will give freedom to India.

SRI AUROBINDO: If England gave freedom to Egypt and Iraq, why not to India?

EVENING

SRI AUROBINDO: It is not such bad news. Germany hasn't entered Brussels yet; the morning radio said it had.

PURANI: No. The Allies' aeroplanes seem to be very active. They have ordered 4000 new aeroplanes costing 650 million dollars.

SRI AUROBINDO: That means one plane costs eight lakhs of rupees, and it can be destroyed in one minute?

SATYENDRA: India can't hope to build any armaments. America is putting a huge sum aside for armaments.

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, they say they must have 50,000 aeroplanes and a standing army one million strong.

NIRODBARAN: Only one million?

SRI AUROBINDO: One million is a very large number in peace time. Except in countries with conscription there are no such large armies during peace.

PURANI: England has asked all British subjects to evacuate from Gibraltar, owing to Italy's threat, perhaps.

SRI AUROBINDO: But somebody says that Italy will have to wait at least a fortnight before joining the war because a big liner of hers is in the Atlantic, which can at once be seized. But nobody knows what Mussolini will do. He is a great bluffer and may keep on bluffing as bluffing is very pleasant to him. (laughter)

PURANI: Italy has contempt for Germany.

SRI AUROBINDO: Not contempt, but hatred. (Laughter)

PURANI: Spengler supports this instinct of barbarism.

SRI AUROBINDO: Does he?

PURANI: Yes, he says that when a race goes down, it is by this instinct that it rises up again. By this instinct, he says, the race tills the soil, ploughs the land and builds houses and slowly builds up a culture, but when it progresses from there towards a city-life and towards civilisation its downfall begins. This has been the curve of civilisation throughout. For instance, a farmer never thinks of how many children he has, he goes on producing and producing. But a civilised man, after having two or three children, begins to think and as soon as he thinks his decadence begins. So, according to Spengler, culture exists only when man is bound to the primitive conditions of life by his instinct and ploughs land and cultivates it.

SRI AUROBINDO: That is not culture; that is survival of the force of life. And it is from this animal stage of existence that man has progressed into a higher one. What according to him would be progress then?

PURANI: He maintains that humanity will always follow this curve from the primitive stage to the height of civilisation and then to decadence. This has always been so.

SRI AUROBINDO: It may have been but need not be. Such repetition would be the failure of the human race. The human race has risen from the animal and it must push farther. If it does not, it will have to make room for some other species.

PURANI: Hitler's power seems to have started even from Hindenburg's time?

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes. The German army had already made preparations but they were afraid of what the Allies would say. Hitler gave them the first start. Of course the British are responsible for all this. They thought that France would become very powerful, so in order to keep the French in check they helped Germany to power. After this war the same trouble will occur again. Some people predict that after the war there will be a socialistic State, which means that instead of individualistic capitalism, the State will be capitalistic.

PURANI: Yes. like, "Give us your cows. We will give you milk."

SRI AUROBINDO: No, "Give us your cows and buy the milk." (Laughter) In Russia one has to earn one's very life.

PURANI: There they have now also made a discrimination in wages. And if anyone has more money, he can deposit it with the State and get interest on it. It is that which makes Trotsky wild and say that Stalin is for capitalism.

SRI AUROBINDO: There nobody can be rich and buy luxuries, because then he will be suspected. It seems only the authors are rich in Russia because the masses are being educated to read more. But what will the authors do with their money? Of course they can make a wise gift of it to the State.

PURANI: The Russian Government also gives more wages to the people if their output is more.

SRI AUROBINDO: That again is against Communism.

PURANI: One thing in favour of Socialism is that it promises to give bread and work to people.

SRI AUROBINDO: That is easy; it only requires a different arrangement. Under the capitalistic system people also got work. Only because circumstances have changed they have been thrown out of it. And the two things that are responsible are machinery and war.

PURANI: Machinery has made the problem of unemployment so acute.

SATYENDRA: The problem of the world remains the same.

SRI AUROBINDO: Under Socialism there will be universal poverty. Only the State will be rich. Socialism can become successful only when people have got rid of the egoistic impulse in their actions and movements.