Timely Topics

Northern Advocate, 31 January 1939, Page 4

Timely Topics

The Continent of Europe (says a Scandinavian correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian”) is suffering | from a terrible dis-

PARALYSIS OF FREE SPEECH.

ease the paralysis of free speech. With the • destruc-

ticn of Czechoslovakia free speech has ceased to exist anywhere east of the Rhine—except in Switzerland, In Germany, in Hungary, in Yugoslavia, in Italy, Governments keep an iron hand upon the Press and anything not palatable to the men in power is suppressed. We have grown ■accustomed to the thought of this censorship, and it n olorlger shocks !us to learn that Germans are not allowed to know what enlightened foreign opinion thinks of what is going on within the Reich. What is far worse is the growing influence of Dr. Goebbels’ censorship over surrounding democratic countries, over countries that have a long tradition of free government behind them and in which generations of honest men have been free to say what they thought. The German, pressure on Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway is growing daily more intense, and Governments are finding it increasingly difficult to withstand it. ( OS 8 9 K • “I would suggest to some well-? meaning people that they should be|ware of pointing to Russia (or Ger-

'.CURE FOR UNEMPLOYMENT.

many) as countries in which unemployment has been < a s »» _

; ‘ abolished,’ ” writes ;Mr J. A. Spender in the “Yorkshire'. [Observer.” • .

“Unemployment Can be ‘abolished’ in Britain as in Russia or Germany if forced labour is to count as ‘ em- 1

’ployed.’ ' We have only to abolish | trade unions, set the unemployed to iwork on any job that the Government prescribes, count the money paid to them as ‘wages,’ and send any trying to resist to prison or concentration camp—and the thing is done. 'v ’ “This, and nothing else, is what is meant by the ‘abolition of unemployment ’ in these countries. Our solution will not be of this kind, and I think it is worth noting at this stage that a large part ’of Socialist policy requires State interference and State regimentation of a kind which necessarily leads in a totalitarian direction. If freedom is to be undermined simultaneously by well-mean-ing Socialists desiring to make the State all-powerful in internal politics, and militarists desiring compulsion to prepare for war, it will be in greater danger than ever-in Hying memory. It is the junction of these two forces which has brought the citadel down in so many countries.