THE PHILOSOPHY OF FINANCE

Evening Post, Volume c, Issue 54, 5 March 1934, Page 8

THE PHILOSOPHY OF FINANCE

(To the Editor.) Sir, —One of the first impressions resulting from any serious reflection xipon the Douglas Social Credit - System is that it i presents two aspects, the philosophical I and the practical, b£ which the former is the more important because the practical propositions involve such a radical—one might almost say revolutionary—change in financial methods that .their application depends upon an equally radical modification of principles on the part, first, of our leaders, social, political, industrial, and' financial, and, ultimately, of all classes. One is constrained to believe that the same applies, indeed, not only to the Douglas, but, equally, to any other scheme which would effectually, meet the exigencies of the present situation,: and. it can hardly be doubted that it is precisely this which forms the stumbling block and bars the way. Hence the interest and importance of the remarks recently made by Major Douglas to the English-speaking Union, reported in your issue of February 23, where the union's prohibition of religion, politics, and finance as subjects gave him an excellent opportunity for saying something of the essential foundations of his scheme. Unfortunately, the time at his disposal and the circumstances under which he spoke, did not, as one RalliVis from the report, permit him to complete the cou-

ti-ast between the old idea o£ the State and that involved in his scheme. Premising that, under the old idea the State was everything and the individual nothing, he illustrated metaphorically that conception by presenting the absurdity and inhumanity of a system which would place a field and the implements of cultivation on one side, the people to be served by that cultivation on the other, and would then give the importance to the field and riot to the people. He then went on to refer to the development of individuality and the tendency of modern culture towards diversity rather than unity (by which latter word he evidently meant similarity), a movement more in conformity with the philosophy of the New Testament than with that of the Old. It remained for him to. complete his interesting sketch, as he would doubtless have done had circumstances permitted, by showing how all this individual diversity, inseparable from progress, could be brought into unity by the new idea of the State, fundamentally different from the old inasmuch as it regards the State and the individual as identical—as not two but one—or, put. another way, not as organisation but as humanity. Not as an abstraction but as a" living reality. For the metaphor of the field as illustrative of the old idea of the State it substitutes, for the new, that of the human body wherein, while the functions and energies of the component parts are diverse these_ are all unified in the complete organism, which each, individual part serves to.its utmost capacity.and without which neither the one nor the other can maintain a healthy existence: Following/this analogy the new idea of the State involves no suppression of individuality nor- restraint of diversity, but it does demand that these inestimably valuable qualities shall be exercised -primarily and not derivatively for the benefit of the State; that is, of the whole people. So that, in'place of the old aphorism— the State everything, the individual nothing, the new idea is expressed in the formula: —The State and the individual are one. with all its implications of duties, responsibilities, inhibitions, and self-sub-ordination not merely in emergencies such as war, but, what is far more important, difficult, and far-reaching, in the occupations and undertakings of ordinary civil existence. That is the implicit philosophy of the credit scheme.—l am, etc. A. H.-TRUEBRIDGE. March 2.