THE PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 58, 6 September 1938, Page 11

THE PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD

POWER OF THE UNITED STATES

ANTAGONISM TO TYRANNY AND AGGRESSION

Arrangements have been made by the "Evening Post" for the publication of a series of articles of unusual interest and importance, written by the Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill and the Rt. Hon, Anthony Eden. Mr. Churchill's articles will appear at approximately fortnightly intervals and Mr. Eden's once a month.

The first of tbese articles follows.

(World Copyright, 1938, by Cooperation.)

(By Winston S. Churchill, P.C., M.P.)

How heavily do the destinies of this generation hang upon the Government and people of the United States! Prom many lands in Europe and Asia, eyes are turned towards this large, strong, English-speaking community, which lies doubly shielded by its oceans, and yet is responsive to the surge of world causes. Will the United States throw its weight into the scales of peace and law and freedom while time remains, or will its people remain spectators until the disaster has occurred; and then with infinite cost and labour build up what need not have been cast down? This is the riddle of d Sphinx, which, under the mask of loquacity, affability, sentimentality, hard business, machinemade politics, wrong feeling, right feeling, vigour and weakness, efficiency and muddle, still preserves the power to pronounce a solemn and formidable word. In what condition, physical, moral, or psychological, stands the United States today? The fierce struggle which is proceeding between the anti-capitalist or anti-rich men forces of that vast country, on the one side, and the anxieties of its practical economic wellbeing on the other, has reached a kind of equipoise. It is good politics to hunt the millionaires, to break up the monopolies, to tax and discipline the vested interests. But these have great powers of resistance. They fight, they will keep on fighting; and until the quarrel is settled, prosperity stands a-tiptoe outside the door. IMPORTANCE OF PROSPERITY. Yet there never was a time when it was more important to the whole world for the United States to be prosperous as well as militarily strong. The European democracies have a real advantage over the dictator States in wealth, credit, "and sea-borne trade, but their strength and energy at any given moment are intimately related to the prosperity or adversity of the United .States. When things are going well in America, the more solid pedestrian forces in the free countries of Europe are conscious of a new draught of strength. When things go ill, they are weakened through a hundred channels in those very elements of strength which ought to reward law-respecting, peace-interested, civilised States. Economic and financial disorder in the United States not only depresses all sister-countries, but it weakens them in those very forces which might either mitigate the hatreds of races, or provide the means to resist tyranny1. The first service which the United States can render to world causes is to be prosperous and well armed. The arming part is being achieved on a very large scale. Enormous supplies have Been voted by Congress for the expansion of the armed forces, particularly the navy, to levels far above what any immediate direct danger would seem to require. No American party resists the President's desire to make the United States one of the most heavily-armed, scientificallyprepared countries in the world. Pacifism and the cult of defencelessness have been discarded by all parties. There never was in peace a time when the American armaments by land, air, and sea reached so imposing a height, or were sustained by so much national convictipn. BUSINESS VERSUS GOVERNMENT. But the economic and financial strength which would impart itself so readily to like-minded countries across the oceans is still far from its natural level. The warfare between big business and the Administration continues at a grievous pitch. These great forces do not seem to realise, how much they are dependent upon one another. The President continues blithely now to disturb, now to console, business and ■ high finance. He blows hot, he blows cold, and confidence does not return. Immense use is made of the national borrowing power for relieving unemployment, which would largely cure itself if even for a single year the normal conditions of confidence were restored. Party politics invade every aspect of economic life. When one measures the prodigious sums whicn are being expended on various forms of relief, pump-priming, and New Deal ideology, it is possible to visualise the innumerable official and semi-official classes of hierarchies inevitably called into being in the process, which will thenceforward cherish a vested interest of their own. ELECTIONEERING DANGERS. The attempt to organise and administer a nation-wide scheme of unemployment relief without the essential mechanism of Labour Exchanges must have produced fra«d, waste, and imposture of similar proportions. The noble effort which the President has made towards a higher form of social justice requires to be corrected and consolidated by well-administered services running under strict conditions during several years of quiet perseverance. If instead there is to be another surge of electioneering at the expense of the national assets, then the stabilising part which the United States might play in the world will be crippled. The authority and prestige which spring from the great armament of a free people will oe undermined by financial and political disorder. But we must hope that other counsels will prevail. As a contribution to trade revival, and as an expression .of the good will prevailing in the English-speaking world, the British-American Trade Agreement is of real importance. There is every prospect of a good arrangement being reached in the near future. The war debt question, on the other hand, has encountered a new complication. The isolation forces in the United States are not favourable to a settlement which would free Great Britain from the ban imposed upon foreign loans to defaulting countries._,by the Johnson Act. These forces would naturally press for the most rigorous terms and make it difficult for a reasonable compromise to be reached. The stirring of this question at this juncture, when Congressional elections are already looming, would not be helpful. Nevertheless, there is an earnest desire in Great Britain for a fair and friendly agreement. In the meanwhile, the movement of American opinion upon world affairs is remarkable. Side by side with the loudest reiterations of "Never again will we be drawn in," there is a ceaselessly growing interest in the '(preat issues which are at stake both in )2urope and th* Far East. There never was a time in peace when the newspapers of the United States car3Se<i. more foreign news to their

readers, or when those readers showed themselves more anxious to be informed about the affairs taking place thousands, of miles away, or more disposed- to' develop strong intellectual and moral convictions about them. There are liberally scores of millions of men and women in the United States who feel as much opposed to the tyrannies of totalitarian governments, Communist or Nazi, as their: grandfathers were to the continuance of slavery.FEELING AGAINST NAZIS. The feeling, not against Germany, but against the Nazi regime, is more pronounced and outspoken throughout the United States than in Great Britain. It is far more active and widespread than. it was before 1914. This mood is not at all discouraged by the Administration. The speeches of important Ministers express in ardent terms all the feelings of British, French, and Scandinavian liberal i democracies. The American ex-service-!men confront the Nazi movement , with a stern, unrelenting hostility. German espionage in America rivets public attention. The New Yorkers have to be restrained from mobbing German ships. Hardly a week passes without some incident arising in politics or sport which affords the five-hundred-headed newspaper Press an opportunity of writing against Nazism the kind of things their readers want to read. Evidently behind all this process a sombre antagonism to tyranny and aggression in all their various forms is steadily growing. The attitude of American ambassadors and their staffs in many capitals is strongly bent towards the maintenance of the democratic ideal, while at the same time in no way committing the United States to active intervention. All these facts should be noted by those whom they concern. It would be foolish of the European democracies in their military arrangements to count on any direct aid from the United States. It would be still more foolish for war-making forces in the Dictator Governments of Europe to treat this slow but ceaseless marshalling of United States opinion, around the standards of freedom and tolerance, with ignorance or with contempt. The more weightily the personality of the United States is accounted in Europe in these years, perhaps even in these months, the better are our chances of escaping another lurch into the pit.