A Vision of the Post-War World (1941)

From the May 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard 

And Some Good News for Vegetarians 

During the course of the “war to end war” (World War No. 1), the promise was frequently held out to the people that after the war there would be a land “fit for heroes to live in.” We do not know what sort of a land the coiner of this phrase, Lloyd George, had in mind, nor what sort of a land was thereby conjured up in the minds of his hearers. The interested enquirer, however, who remembers this England of before the last war, if he cares to take a walk round some of the suburbs of London or any other “great” city, will notice that there is no essential difference in the appearance of these quarters—there are the same long rows of dingy-looking streets—the same dingy-looking inhabitants living on the same low-protein diet. At first sight, the only noticeable difference is that the area covered by the dwellings of the workers has become vaster in extent. Huge new estates of semi-detached houses have covered the outskirts of the big towns like a flood ; in them the hire-purchase occupiers, in the delusion that they are “buying their own homes,” are constantly harassed by the too-frequent repair bills caused by jerry-building workmanship, the necessity of keeping up the payments to the building society converts the spectre of unemployment into a nightmare; while in the majority of cases, these “family homes” become converted—in an effort to meet the recurring costs—into two-storey flats—but flats much smaller than those of pre-1914 flats, in fact, so microscopic that the phrase “no room to swing a cat” has completely passed out of the lingo.

But stay, as one looks around, and ponders, a new, castle-like building suddenly strikes the eye—it is a police station. Obviously a first-class architect must have designed the magnificent proportions of this mosque-like structure; of harmonious forms, it towers over the landscape like the feudal castle in some mediaeval city. Looking around again, one notices that other buildings have also imposed themselves upon the landscape. Here is a magnificent new employment exchange; there a block of luxury flats at rents equal or superior to the entire contents of the average worker’s wage packet. No jerry-building here, my friends, of ferro-concrete construction and parquet floors, it will stand foursquare to the winds of time when the jerry-built homes of England have long-since been condemned by the “enlightened” local authority. We mentioned diet. Those who are familiar with workmen’s eating-houses and wayside cafes—not to mention the imitation-marble teashops where so many town dwellers take their mid-day meal, will have been struck by the extent to which during the last twenty years the roast beef of old England has been replaced by dishes in which baked beans are the staple food; so that to fill the void, one’s first thought is not “roast beef and two veg.,” but baked beans on toast, baked beans and sausages, or baked beans and chips. In public-houses “roast beef and two veg.” has been replaced by “roast beef and three veg.,” but the portion of roast beef has grown smaller and is made up by the third veg. —baked beans ! Since the time of the “war to end war,” the roast-beef eating Englishman has been transmogrified into the baked-bean eating Englishman! This, then, is the “land fit for heroes to live in“—a land of police stations, labour exchanges, luxury flats, slum dwellings and bean eaters.

But now another conflict is afoot, and the powers that be need the support of the workers in order that it may be waged to a successful issue. For the first twelve months of the war, the promises were few and far between; but now they are becoming a deluge, and Church dignitaries, Labour leaders and company directors vie with one another in their promises to the electorate. Mr. Hugh Dalton, the Minister for Economic Warfare, says :

“We must build a new economics of plenty, founded on a rational plan. In face of our immense productive powers, there should be no poverty nor hunger any more. Nor workers by the million standing idle against their will.”—(Sunday Times, December 1st, 1940.)

While Mr. Arthur Greenwood, the Minister without Portfolio, and Labour leader, says: —

“After the war, Britain will not tolerate in her midst the tragic spectacle of abject poverty and unemployment … It will, I believe, be the pride of the nation to succour its citizens who during the war, or afterwards, fall on evil days, through bereavement, disability, disease or old age. We shall look forward to developing our educational system and social services. We are planning to get rid of ugliness in our towns, to build a fairer Britain, and to replace hovels by worthy homes.”—(News-Chronicle, January 14th, 1941.)

Notice the implication that these things were still in existence twenty years after the promise of a “land fit for heroes to live in.”

Herbert Morrison adds his little mite with, “I want change so big that I do not like to tell you you about it” (Evening Standard, December 12th, 1940). We would add—”so vague, that nothing can be made of it.”

The Church, not to be outdone, adds its voice to the crescendo of promises. Signifying their approval of the Pope’s five points, including the “development of universal love,” four prelates of the Churches—Dr. Lang, the Archbishop of Canterbury; Dr. Temple, the Archbishop of York; the Rev. Walter Armstrong, Moderator of the Free Church Federal Council; and Cardinal Hinsley, Catholic Archbishop of Westminster—-have agreed on five additional peace aim points, to wit—

“1. Extreme inequalities in wealth and possessions should be abolished.

“2. All children should have equal opportunities of education.

“3. The family as a social unit must be safeguarded.

“4. The sense of a Divine vocation must be restored to man’s daily work.

“5. Earth’s resources should be used as God’s gifts to the whole human race.”

(News Chronicle, December 23rd, 1940.)

No. 5 sounds very much like Socialism, but is obviously inconsistent with No. 1, which assume the continuance of inequalities in wealth.

The scientific impossibility of putting into effect the many promises which have been and are being made while capitalism rules, has been examined in previous issues of the Socialist Standard. Here we are concerned to know what this post-war world will be like. As a result of this little survey, we can safely say that if the carrying-out of the last lot of promises is anything to go by, this world of “changes too big to mention,” will consist of bigger labour exchanges, bigger police station: super-de-luxe flats of even greater luxuriousness, and greater slums inhabited by a race of complete vegetarian Englishmen.

A famous statesman used to say : ”You can deceive some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time, but you can’t deceive all the people all the time.” If he were alive to-day however, he would appreciate that times have changed, and all you have to do to-day is to deceive most of the people most of the time—the minority simply doesn’t count !

In conclusion, it may not be inappropriate to re-quote Liebknecht’s words: —

“Every power outside ourselves on which we seek to lean is for us only weakness.”

Milbourne

Editorial: A Message for Irish Workers (1941)

Editorial from the May 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

A recent issue of the Cork Weekly Examiner (22/3/41) prompts us to recall an article in the Socialist Standard of January, 1918. From that 23-year-old article we quote the following extracts : —

“Imagine 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 people, and in many cases different families, all huddled together, eating and sleeping and performing the ordinary functions of life in one room! How is it possible for the physical, mental and moral life of these men, women and children to be maintained when they are forced to herd together under such awful conditions ? The death rate in Dublin is the highest of the United Kingdom. The infantile death rate is 200 per 1,000 in Summer Hill and Gardner Street districts, and 220 in Church Street district. In Dublin there are 20,000 houses of one room.’ This is an extract from an article published in 1914 on the conditions in Dublin. At a sworn housing inquiry in the same city in 1913, Dr. McWalter, a member of the Insurance Committee, stated that about 10,000 families in Dublin were living under unhealthy conditions. Practically two persons out of every five died in institutions or asylums in Dublin, and that was absolutely abnormal. If they had 40 per cent. living in institutions, it meant that there were 40 per cent. who could not normally provide for themselves. He had known women who were obliged to live on 3d. per day. In twelve wards the influence of the slum landlord was very strong. He did not think there were more than three or four members of the Corporation who were slum landlords.

* * * * *

Let every British Socialist face the fact that Irish ‘patriotism’ is not Socialism, and that the achievement of Irish nationality, even up to the highest professed ideals of traditional Irish patriotism, namely the complete political separation of Ireland from Britain, would not ‘free Ireland’ one iota in any sense satisfactory to the international Socialist and absolutely demanded by Socialist principles. This age-long struggle of Irish ‘patriots’ to ‘free Ireland’ is, therefore, from the Socialist point of view, an utter chimera which, if it could be achieved, would be to the wretched wage-slaves of Ireland but as the apples of Sodom, fair to the eye, but turning to smoke and ashes when plucked. The international Socialist who happens to be an Irishman can, and does feel profound sympathy with all the struggles of his countrymen and even their pathetic efforts to achieve the utter futility—from the strictly Socialist point of view—of Home Rule, or of an Irish republic, can excite his pity for their useless sufferings, even though he cannot take part in their misdirected exertions.”

Another paragraph refers to the useless slaughter in Dublin the previous Easter, when 1,300 casualties occurred, many of which were women children and non-combatants. The article concludes : —

“Our solemn word to Irish wage-slaves is, let them use their remaining strength to shake off the leeches of capitalism, that are sucking their life blood, instead of hastening their destruction in a mad effort to set up Tweedledum in place of Tweedledee. Let them beware of ‘republics.’”

The Irish workers did not heed our message. Now, in 1941, after many years’ functioning of the Irish Free State, Mr. Hickey (Lab., Cork) is quoted as stating in the Dail: —

“An examination of the facts revealed that there was poverty among a large section of their people. The M.O.H. in Cork had reported that thousands living in Corporation houses had not more than 4s a week each to live on. Doctors in the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin, had complained that expectant mothers attending the ante-natal clinic were grossly under-nourished, and they had all seen appeals from the St. John Ambulance Brigade. Again, the Minister for Justice had told the House recently that 90 per cent. of the children sent to industrial schools represented dire poverty. In 1940 home assistance was double the 1939 figure in Co. Kerry. Like Deputy Dillon, he felt that the country was suffering increasingly from speculators and monopolists. Their law were grinding the poor and the rich were ruling the laws. The meagre unemployment assistance allowance was something any country in the world should be ashamed of.”

If another speaker (Mr. Esmonde, F.G., Cork West) is to be believed, the worker’s inability to obtain food is not due to shortage of supplies. He says:—

“They ought to tell the people the truth—that at this moment they were probably the richest nation in Europe so far as supplies per person were concerned There was no country where there was such plenty per head of the population, and it would be well to prepare the people for the fact that the situation could not continue. The people who were suffering were the people with fixed unemployment benefit.”

But some people are doing well. Mr. Milligan (F.G., Dublin North-west) stated: —

“Wheat Importers, Ltd., were making a profit of £250,000, which they had for distribution among themselves, after paying importing expenses, and, although the Board was supposed to be composed of those who had imported a certain amount of wheat over three years, it had emerged that people who had not that qualification, but who were friends of the Ministers, had been put on it. The elastic mills in Clare, which was a monopolist concern, had made a profit of £25,000, and the cement company, because of criticism of its profits, had lowered its dividend from 10 to 8 per cent.”

The influence of Irish capitalists upon the policy of the Government is shown by the statement of Mr. Hugo Flinn, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance, who said : —

“The report of the Banking Commission showed that the majority of the moneyed opinion in this country was implacably of opinion that the accumulated savings of this country should remain locked up in sterling assets, and overseas investments and conversion into consumers’ goods. Did that opinion alter now when it was too late; there was a growing recognition among those interests that the better policy would have been to try to straddle between sterling and dollars and to convert more of their assets into consumers’ goods. If the Government had tried to purchase dollars or purchase reserves of goods while there was yet time, he doubted if the commercial and moneyed opinion would have backed the Government.”

The above-quoted extracts of speeches give the normal picture of a capitalist State. Despite its “national independence,” there is in the Irish Free State widespread poverty going arm in arm with great wealth.

This story of Irish poverty, Irish struggles, and the results of the achievement of Irish “independence,” has its lesson, not only for the workers of Ireland, but for the workers of Britain and of all other countries.

Balkan Bubbles (1941)

From the May 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

The spectacular changes that have recently transpired in the Near East have induced many people to study the geographical features of the locality affected who heretofore never troubled to do so. Greece has a large coastline for so small a country, with many islands in the vicinity and is so situated that its importance from the standpoint of naval and military strategy can at once be perceived. In the old days it was often stated that the control of Corinth meant the control of Greece, but that was when danger came from the East. The points that comprise the gateway between Europe and Asia are the Serbian plateau, Salonika and the Dardanelles. Germany has already captured two of these and is preparing to make a bid for the third. The extension of the sphere of operations to Asia can be anticipated, from which in all probability it will spread to the American continent. This means that practically all the human family will be involved and it would be of interest to discover how many of them have any clear idea of what the trouble is about.

The Prussians are marching with seven-leagued boots; they have often marched before. Under a Frederick, a Bismarck, the Kaiser, or Hitler, they indulge periodically in military adventures. Their recent trek is the longest they have made and their enemies are apparently determined it shall be their last. The reason why Germany has been able to move so rapidly in the Balkans is because ever since the days of Charlemagne, large numbers of her people have been moving South-East. In all the Balkan countries German minorities had settled themselves and many of these had for years been preparing the way for the invader.

In a previous issue of the Socialist Standard it was pointed out what is at stake in the present conflict. The control of the Rhine and the Danubian Waterways is the German Dictator’s ambition. He also aspires to cut a canal from Bucharest, in Roumania, to Salonika, in Greece. If the Rhine and the Danube are connected by a larger canal than the one now in operation, and the connection above referred to established with the Mediterranean, boats will be able to travel from the north to the southern sea without having to pass through either the Straits of Gibraltar or the Dardanelles. If the scheme above referred to could be put in operation, Germany thinks she would be in a position to tap the wealth of practically all the European countries and lay a foundation of power upon which she could build a superstructure strong enough to enable her to successfully challenge the rest of the world.

In times of peace British working-men take little or no interest in international politics, and the consequence is that when the country in which they live is involved in a war, they are totally dependent upon the ruling class for any ideas they may have in regard to the cause. To some extent the same thing prevails in all countries, but in many other lands there is a keen interest taken in what is going on in the world as a whole; there is not more class-consciousness, but a greater knowledge of international affairs.

The “Unofficial Observer,” in his book “Our Lords and Masters,” says (commencing page 64):

“Terrorists play an especially important part in the affairs of eastern and southern Europe and one of the most important groups of them originated with the ‘Green Organisation’ of deserters from the Austro-Hungarian Army. After the war this organisation fell into the hands of General Sarkotich, a Croat who fought on the side of Austria and devoted himself to the cause of the Hapsburg Monarchy and of detaching Catholic Croatia from orthodox Yugoslavia.”

Sarkotich became Croatian and Yugoslavian ‘expert’ on the monarchist Reichpost of Vienna, where the movement maintained its intellectual headquarters until the assassination of Dollfuss in July, 1934. The most active terrorists, however, were Percec and Pavelic, who were connected with several attempts to bomb trains running from Italy to Austria via Yugoslavia. In 1932, when Goemboes became Prime Minister of Hungary and appointed Koloman as his Foreign Minister, the Hungarian Government became an open party to the terrorist plots. Percec and Pavelic were given Hungarian passports on the theory that they were really Hungarians and they established a training ground for terrorists on a big estate at Jankapuszta, near the Yugoslav frontier. The men trained here were assigned the task of leading domestic revolts in Yugoslavia in the event of trouble and the whole organisation modelled itself pretty faithfully on the Serbian ‘Black Hand’ society, which had plotted the Sarajevo murders.

In 1933, the year after Goemboes came into power, Mussolini himself began to aid the Croatian cause and the terrorists established training camps for larger bodies of troops on Italian soil at Borgotaro, Bonegno and Bardi. Here Croats were given uniforms provided by Italy and were shipped to Zara by Italian ships and then made their way inland along the Dalmatian coast. Giorgio Sanza, an Italian journalist who spoke Croat, was put at Pavelic’s disposition. The climax came when the assassin of King Alexander was revealed to be a member of this terrorist group and when Italy refused to surrender Percec and Pavelic, who were on Italian soil after the murders at Marseilles. Germany has also maintained connections with the Croat cause, via a certain Wilhelm Singer, who travelled on a German passport issued in the name of Guttman, and after the Dollfuss murder Germany supplanted Austria as the brain centre of the Croatian terrorists, who now publish their official organ, ‘Gric,’ in Berlin, although all their actual printed matter bears the mark of the Free City of Danzig.

Hungary is the one country in which terrorists associate openly with the governing officials. In 1921, Premier Goemboes gave refuge to Schulze and Thyllessen, the assassins of Matthais Erzberger. The noblemen who forged the French francs back in 1926 belonged to the move organisation, of which Goemboes was the head; and Count Julius Karolvyi, who served as Premier for a brief interval between Bethlen and Goemboes, was a business associate of Slavisky’s. Between 15,000 and 17,000 political murders are said to have been committed in Hungary since 1919, the victims having included a Catholic priest of 75 who attacked the advocates of treaty revision, and a Czechoslovak journalist who was imprisoned and beaten up because Czechoslovakia opposed changing the frontiers. Bela Somogyi, editor of a right-wing Socialist paper, who had refused to support Bela Kun’s Soviet regime, was also murdered by some high army officers, who were never punished.

“The dean of the European terrorists, however, is found further south, in that terrific geographic, religious, racial and national scramble known as Macedonia. Here all the races and creeds of the Balkans are intermingled and it has dominated the political struggles of the Near East for the last fifty years. When a new stick of dynamite cracks in the Balkans to-day, the chances are better than ever that the political detonator is the little known Ivan Michailoff, leader of the Imro (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation). Like Lawrence of Arabia, Michailoff became a legend in his own lifetime. So widespread are tales of his deeds of heroism and cunning, that Michailoff is often called “King Ivan” by the Macedonians. His secrecy and skill at conspiracy make him one of the most dreaded figures in the Balkans, with a price on his head in Greece, Yugoslavia, and at times even Bulgaria. . . . Michailoff says: There will be no peace in Europe until Macedonia is free.'”

The above will give the readers of the Socialist Standard some idea of the undercurrents in the Balkans and will show them how foolish it is to judge these people from a modern capitalist standpoint. Their views of life differ from those of the rest of the western world. Socialism is the child of Capitalism and in taking stock of the struggle now raging, let us realise that those members of the proletariat who have been trained and disciplined by the industrial mechanism are the only section of the working-class yet capable of taking the initiative in the building of a Socialist Society.

The writer will return to the situation in the Balkans in a later article.

Charles Lestor

Socialism—More Than Equality (1941)

From the May 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

Apologists for capitalism, ever asearch for doctrinal dope to infuse new life into the doddering near-corpse of the present politico-economic set-up, will drag out some outworn theory, blow the dust off it, and present it to the public as up-to-date evidence against the socialist.

Common among these theories is one built around the suggestion that the rich may well experience as much financial difficulty as the poor.

We have, in the Daily Express for April 12th, a leader page article by Mr. Paul Holt. This deals with Mr. Donald Skilling, who at West London Police Court, admitted to earning £5 10s. weekly putting up Anderson shelters, and with the magistrate, Mr. Paul Bennett, who cried, “No wonder income tax is 10s. in the pound !”

Mr. Holt contends that to earn this wage “is no crime,” and makes out a budget to demonstrate. He further thinks that Mr. Bennett cannot find it “all bees and honey” on his £2,000 a year. He refers, too, to Mr. Hely Hutchinson, M.P., and merchant banker, who recently told the House of Commons that after meeting just claims he had 4s. each for his family.

Self-styled “Man o’ the People,” in the People for April 13th, observes: —

“We used, some of us, to talk of “Socialism in our time.” To-day, under a predominantly Conservative Government, we have stormed the barricades of money privilege and come much nearer to “equality of—financial—sacrifice” than ever before.

Will there be any rich men left among us ? Yes, but it will need a gross income of £66,000 a year to leave any taxpayer with £5,000 a year net! The colossal incomes are cut to the bone.”

Now, having reduced the Socialist to tears of pity for the luckless millionaire doomed to struggle along on his £5,000 a year, the defender of capitalism usually assails him with, “It’s all very well you grumbling about inequality, but the rich are just as badly off as you.” Then come high-sounding statements about harmony, and capital and labour going hand-in-hand, with a heigh and a ho and a heigh nonny no, sweet lovers love the spring.

This common misconception that the Socialist just aims at taking from the rich and sharing is one of the many unfortunate outcomes of the obscuring propaganda of avowedly capitalist and so-called labour institutions.

Hence, we must at all times reiterate: (1) no matter how large a man’s income, he is a worker if he is forced to sell his mental or physical energies for it; (2) it is readily appreciated that many capitalists, in the basically unnecessary fight for wealth, may to varying degrees suffer worry and inconvenience, and this applies particularly to the few capitalists who have an active role in their business. But the essential point is that they, as well as the working-class, would gain with Socialism a better, fuller life, free from economic dominance; (3) that Socialism will not bring merely a different share-out, but a much greater total wealth.

This last point merits enlargement, for with it is closely connected the utter refutation of the contention that capitalism is now necessary to progress.

It needs little effort to see that modern man finds his life so dominated by work he has little opportunity or energy for intellectual advancement, the little he does receive being almost entirely the result of capitalist training for capitalist ends.

It is not so obvious to the uninitiated that under modern capitalism, production of the material means of life is not progressing, but retrogressing. Though the rate of production consistently increases, the totality of production is with like consistency restricted.

This is done by (1) leaving unused a considerable portion of the two basic factors in wealth production—land and labour power; (2) deliberate, “legal,” large-scale destructions of goods the world over; (3) national and international agreements to restrict production of commodities below the potentiality; (4) use of labour for ends peculiar to capitalism and meeting no human need: armed forces, insurance workers, commercial travellers, banks, advertising, servants, pawnbrokers, and the printing and production of paper for putting the prices on packets of peanuts are a few examples; (5) neglect of improved scientific methods of production, e.g., in the English cotton industry, Government enquiry found only a minute fraction of the industry using any of the three developments of ring spinning, automatic looms and highspeed winding.

Well, I suppose all this is because people already have all they need ?

Oh, no. Nearly all of them are in great want.

Then, surely all those in want are organising to set things right ?

On the contrary, they’re fighting among themselves as hard as they can.

. . . and little Audrey laughed and laughed, for it was crazier than “Alice in Wonderland.”

And crazy it is, tragically so. These wealth restrictions arise because under capitalism the profit motive controls production. With Socialism will come production for human needs, banishing for ever the ghastly paradox of poverty amid plenty.

Richard Tatham

Notes by the Way: The Italian Fascists and Their Former Apologists. (1941)

The Notes by the Way Column from the May 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Italian Fascists and Their Former Apologists.

Before the war our newspapers and public men told us remarkably little about the real nature of the Fascist racket led by Mussolini, they were chiefly interested in telling us that it couldn’t be so bad because under Fascism the hotels were improved and the trains were running to time and Mussolini had preserved ancient monuments and built splendid motor roads—a typical tourist view of things. They forgot that 40 million Italians don’t spend their day visiting the sights and living in expensive hotels or touring about on motor roads. Mr. Bernard Shaw shows the same kind of mental blindness when he gives as a reason why Rome should not be bombed, our common interest in that city’s ancient glories. “In Rome,” he writes, “no one is a stranger and a foreigner; we all feel when we first go there that we are revisiting the scene of a former existence.” (Times, April 28th, 1941.) Mr. Shaw forgets that 40 million British workers, under this beneficent capitalist system, never had the time or money to go to see their ancient heritage.

Amongst the steadfast admirers of Mussolini was the late Lord Rothermere, who wrote in the Daily Mail (July 10th, 1933) dismissing the brutalities of Italian Fascism as mere “incidental extravagances” and glorifying the Fascist and Nazi regimes.

“Now that Italy has been for ten years not only peaceful and progressive, but, by comparison with other lands, even prosperous, the incidental extravagances of the early days of Fascism are forgotten. In the same way the minor misdeeds of individual Nazis will be submerged by the immense benefits that the new regime is already bestowing upon Germany.”

It was only after the war broke out that the Daily Mail and some other newspapers could discover the brutalities of both regimes. Similarly with regard to the qualities of their leaders. In the article quoted above, Lord Rothermere was full of praise for the virile youthful Mussolini. It was only in 1940 (Daily Mail, May 9th) that the Daily Mail could relate that Mussolini’s more middle-aged virility took the form that when he addressed a meeting of Italian industrialists about the British blockade, “he leant over the table and literally foamed at the mouth.” Hitler’s hysterical outbursts are by now well-known, but Lord Rothermere was able only eight years ago to describe him as a man who “will stand out in history” as one of the three “founders of a new Germany,” “The world’s greatest need to-day,” said Lord Rothermere (Daily Mail, July 10th, 1933), “is realism. Hitler is a realist.” (Lord Rothermere’s two other youthful heroes were the senile Hindenburg and the German Crown Prince.) If the world needed Hitler the world has certainly got him, in full measure, and it is worth bearing always in mind how large a part in getting the world to accept Hitler was played by men and newspapers like Lord Rothermere and the Daily Mail.

Another aspect of the Fascist racket, which answers Lord Rothermere’s argument that Fascism and Nazism rooted out corruption, is given by the Evening Standard (April 22nd, 1941). It discloses that Count Ciano, the husband of Mussolini’s daughter, Edda, “prevailed on the Banco di Santo Spirito, of Rome, to sell him building sites between the Lower Aventine and Ostia, port of Rome, at half a farthing a square yard. He resold the land to the Committee for the ‘Rome Exhibition of 1942,’ at 12s. 6d. a square yard.”

Rome may be, as Bernard Shaw says, the heritage of the whole world, but it looks as if the more immediate landlord gets the biggest rake-off. Note by the way the name of the bank which put the deal in Ciano’s way.

Incidentally, there has been much complaint in the Press recently about land speculators in this country.

Another interesting story about the supporters of Fascism appeared in the diary of the late William Dodd, who was American Ambassador in Germany. The following extract was reproduced in the Sunday Dispatch (March 9th, 1941): —

“In 1924 Hearst, who had been violently opposed to the Mussolini dictatorship, sent a man to Rome to negotiate a deal with Mussolini by which he would be paid a dollar a word for anything he would dictate for the Hearst Press.

It was widely known that Gianini, president of the Bank of America in California and an ardent Mussolini supporter, had loaned Hearst some millions of dollars.

Thereafter, Hearst’s newspapers praised the Italian dictatorship and Mussolini received large sums of money.

From 1924 until now Hearst has supported the dictatorship in Italy.”

* * * *

The Sunday Opening of Theatres

The Sabbatarians’ itch to interfere with other people’s lives always finds support among the Clergy and others whose living is bound up with the churches from the purely business point of view. For them the Sunday cinemas, theatres and public-houses are rival commercial establishments and curbing them is legitimate business practice. One novelty about the recent campaign which stopped the opening of theatres on Sundays was that the brewers were siding with the parsons, for them it is better that workers should not have opened up an additional Sunday entertainment which might affect the takings of the public houses as well as the revenue of the churches. Now, however, emboldened by their success, it looks as if the Sabbatarians are going to have a shot at closing the public houses as well, for the duration of the war. Thus ends another short-lived eternal pact of non-aggression.

One pained complaint comes from Mr. R. Wilson Black, President of the Baptist Union, this time directed against the Radio. “The Radio was made by many an excuse for remaining at home, where they could listen to just as much or as little of the broadcast service as they chose.” —(The Times, April 29th.)

It looks as if Mr. Black’s problem will only be solved by a law making it compulsory for everyone to attend Church services and to listen in silence to the whole of the sermon whether they like it or not.

The Manchester Guardian (April 24th, 1941) tells an entertaining story from U.S.A. The State of Delaware has on its Statute Book a law passed in 1740 prohibiting all “worldly” activities on Sunday. The Delaware Senate recently passed an amendment to permit each community to decide for itself the extent of Sabbath observance, but the House of Representatives refused to agree to the amendment. At this point the Attorney General comes on the scene. He thinks the 1740 law is all nonsense and he decided that the best way to prove it to its defenders was to enforce it to the full, and he did !

“So the police went out and arrested bus-drivers, tram-drivers, taxi-drivers, newsboys, restaurant-owners, milkmen, drug-store clerks, sweet-shop proprietors, garage hands, and even a strike picket and a man shovelling snow from the pavement. The manager of a radio station was taken up, and a Sabbatarian parson whose sermon had been broadcast was warned that he had become an accomplice in law-breaking. The next morning hundreds of people appeared in the courts. The House of Representatives became alarmed and protested but declared that it would not be coerced into repeal. The Attorney-General replied that “each Sunday will grow worse until the laws are amended.” Within four days the law was repealed.”

* * * *

Stalin Meets Matsuoka

We have had Hitler sending birthday greetings to Stalin, Stalin being photographed in a friendly party with Ribbentrop, Molotov all smiles with General Goering, now comes Stalin and Matsuoka, the Japanese Foreign Minister, who was in Moscow late in April. Here is the story from the Evening Standard of what is reported to have occurred when Stalin saw Matsuoka off on the train : —

“According to Mr. Hasegawa, the two statesmen were then apparently overcome with emotion and embraced one another to the amazement of the foreign diplomatic representatives present. —(Evening Standard, April 28th, 1941.)

It sounds too touching to be true, but, no doubt “dialectically considered,” as the Communists would say, it is a further piece of Socialist propaganda designed to clarify the ideas of the world’s workers and show them which of the representatives of capitalism are their true friends.

Those who still imagine that the Russian Government’s foreign policy is governed by internationalism should note the following, reproduced from the Bolshevik journal Pravda:—

“The foreign policy of the U.S.S.R. is guided exclusively by the interests of the U.S.S.R., exclusively by the interests of the peoples of the U.S.S.R. This policy dictates to the U.S.S.R. the desire to develop as widely as possible trade and economic relations with those of its neighbours who correctly appraise the importance of these connections with the U.S.S.R. for their own interests. The Soviet-German Treaty and Agreements of 1941 confirm with perfect clarity the absolute truth of this proposition—(Reproduced in the Anglo-Russia News Bulletin, January: 18th, 1941.)

Edgar Hardcastle

Press Cuttings (1941)

From the May 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Men We Want More Than Millionaires

“Skilled engineers to-day are far more valuable to the country than the millionaires,” said Mr. G. Tomlinson, M.P., of the Ministry of Labour, to-day. —(Evening News, April 24th, 1941.)

* * * *

The High Cost of Killing.

It cost about 75 cents to kill a man in Caesar’s time. The price rose to about 3,000 dollars per man during the Napoleonic wars, to about 5,000 dollars in the American Civil War and then to 21,000 dollars per man in the World War. Estimates for the present war indicate that it may cost the warring countries not less than 50,000 dollars for each man killed.—Senator Homer T. Bone (Readers’ Digest, October, 1940).

This Month's Quotation: Karl Marx (1941)

The Front Page quote from the May 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “To appeal to the working men without strictly scientific ideas and concrete doctrine is tantamount to empty-headed and conscienceless play with propaganda."

Karl Marx, 1883

What the Soldier Wants and How to Get it (1941)

From the May 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

War brings a shortage of many things but not of would-be leaders of the workers, who profess to be able to shepherd us into the promised land after the war. But leaders must have followers and as the mood of the soldiers and civilians changes with the progress of the war the outlines of the promised post-war world as sketched by our J. B. Priestleys and A. P. Herberts, our J. M. Keynes and Harry Pollitts, will change too. When war breaks out it is easy for many people to take a rosy, romantic view both of the conflict and its aftermath. The lines seem clear and simple. First the brave fight against the forces of evil, then the brave new world to come after. First the comradeship of the trenches and the air-raid shelter, then the peace and the universal goodwill capable of surmounting all obstacles and solving all problems. This is the phase in which a man like the late H. H. Munro (“Saki") could say (as he did when war was declared in 1914), “I have always looked forward to the romance of European war,” it is the phase in which British statesmen could say that the war was not against the German workers but. only against those who mislead and oppress them. Then there comes another phase, after the destruction, hardship, and bitterness of war have wrought their changes. This is the phase summed up by the late C. E. Montague in. the word “disenchantment.” It is the phase in which Munro’s friends said of him, “He was thin and his face was haggard.” "It was evident that the strain of military life was telling on him.” Though determined to go through with it at whatever cost (he was subsequently killed), it is likely that Munro must by then have realised that war is not romantic and that the apparently simple lines of visionary future have become blurred and unrecognisable. Then, soldiers and civilians alike forget the early glimpses of promised lands after the war and ask only for more moderate things. Like Sassoon’s "Dreamers,”

“When the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.”

They feel that the most desirable of all pleasures are the humdrum things they did before the war—“ bank-holidays and picture shows,” and “going to the office in the train.”

The soldier fighting in desert heat or freezing in mountain snows, and the munition worker toiling day and night, feels that he will be satisfied if after the war life returns to the “good old days,” but with certain concrete improvements. Subject to obtaining these improvements, his desires are confined to the wish for no more crash of bombs and guns, no more drone of planes and wail of sirens. No more rationing, no more regulations, filling up of forms, no more restrictions, orders, warnings, advice and lecturing. No more pep-talks and parsons exhorting us to lift up our hearts. No more sudden death and destruction, no more ruined homes, evacuated families. No more broken windows, no more black-out, no more interrupted sleep.

But with it goes a determination, mixed up with bitterness, to have a world in which poverty, unemployment, “profiteering,” slums and overwork, have been diminished if not abolished entirely.

The Socialist having a clear purpose in view and knowing the difficulties in the way of social change, does not share either mood. He knows that brave new worlds are not to be had for the asking and consequently he realises that the second mood in which the workers want concrete improvements of working and living conditions, is likely to be rather more useful and practical. Yet it, too, has its definite limits and dangers. It is not enough to want the pre-war world with improvements unless along with determination there is knowledge of the obstacles that will have to be removed and of the only way in which it can be done.

For after the war the world will still be a world run on capitalist lines and the capitalist too will have his expectation of reverting to 1939, and both capitalists and workers will be faced with tremendous problems arising out of capitalism, many of them even more acute than before. Peace will not only mean cessation of war strain and war restrictions, but also the release of forces now suppressed. The class struggle will still be on. The non-Socialist will say of this how stupid, how wicked, how unnecessary, but the Socialist sees that it is unavoidable unless a fundamental change in the basis of society is carried out. The world's resources will still be privately owned nnd utilised for the purpose of profit-making. There will still be two classes with antagonistic interests, one class living by rent, interest and profit, the other living by selling its labour-power for wages or salary. True, this is “wicked” in the sense that it is unnecessary, but it can only be removed by abolishing its cause, the private ownership of the means of wealth-production and distribution. While there is private ownership (including so-called “public” ownership or State capitalism) it is impossible to have harmony and identity of interest between the classes. The only way to abolish class struggle is to abolish the classes.

Now is the time, not for day-dreaming or for getting out plans for reforming capitalism, but for hard, laborious thought about the nature of the capitalist system and of its opposite, Socialism.

The post-war world will not just happen. It will correspond to the development of the ideas of the majority. Effort now devoted to thinking out the basic causes of the pre-war problems of riches and poverty, unemployment and strikes, will be more valuable than years of scheming to soften the rigours of the capitalist system.

Edgar Hardcastle

Our Head Office (1941)

Party News from the May 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

As a result of an air raid in the middle of April, our Head Office was badly damaged and had to be demolished. Through the co-operation of a number of comrades, the greater part of our movable stock on the ground floor and above was got out and temporarily stored nearby. Along with stock in the basement which had escaped damage, it was subsequently moved to a place of storage out of London. Correspondence addressed to 42, Great Dover Street, will, by arrangement with the Post Office, be forwarded to party officials until some other premises can be obtained. Members and friends will appreciate that this loss of our head office will increase our difficulties and delay answers to letters, despatch of literature, etc.

____________________

Bombed!

This was a big, beautiful bomb that did the job, and 42, Great Dover Street is no more. We are pleased to say, however, that as a result of some prompt work on the part of members, most of our records and office equipment were successfully salvaged from a tottering building.

A fresh office is now being sought from which the Party's all important work can be carried on, and the new address will be announced as soon as possible.

This unfortunate incident has entailed certain extra expenses—hire of room for meetings of the Executive Committee, removal and storage expenses, etc. Consequently, any contributions which members or readers can make to help defray these expenses will give some necessary help to the Party in these difficult times.

Cheques and P.O.s, crossed and made payable to the Socialist Party of Great Britain, should be addressed :-Mr. J. Butler, 37, Heyworth Road. Stratford, E.15.