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December 30, 1938
The Sword and the Pen
A GERMAN News Agency,
with an office in Hongkong, brandcasts to the world that {"great dissatisfaction is being felt among the inhabitants of Cyprus" at British rule because the latter "anvours unpleasantly of dictatorship."
This is an example-a some- what ironical one-of the type of propaganda disseminated from a country where dictator- ship is the neme of “unpleasant- ness,"
In the same message the Ger- man agency quotes Cyprion re- sentment at a "press gag," a par- ticularly unfortunate reference in view of the well-known lack of. freedom.enjoyed by the Ger- man Press.
If German propaganda were limited to such examples of fatuous comment, or to home. consumption by Germans, we could shrug our shoulders at the repeated calumnies disseminated by Berlin
newspapers and
through broadcasting stations of the Reich.
Propaganda, however, has be
real war--a war 2 words. And the pen is proving mightier than the sword.
come
of
German propaganda is aimed at other nations, at other peoples. Through powerful short-wave broadcasting sta- tions, a German Voice fans the flames of hatred, criticises with calumnics, suggests by innuendo that the way to peace is by violence, that democracy offers the vices and not the virtues of civiliantion, that the path to "freedom" is through totali- tarianism.
Germany places so much faith in its insidious propaganda of the spoken and written word that it ranks its Minister of Propaganda third only to Hitler as its Most Important Person- age.
B
CLEAR THE AIR WITH A MINISTER OF SUPPLY "Smog is fog created by smoke," says the National Smoke Abatement Society.
A Million a Day
Goes up in Smoke
RITAIN
has spent £700,000,000 on arma- ments in the last threo years. Yet when the criais came in September, Lon- don, by the admission of Minis- ters themselves, was practically defenceless against air attack.
This year we have been spending £1,000,000 a day on defence. Yet we are told that Britain is still too week in the air to take any diplo- matic action which might offend the dictators.
Why is it that we are not getting value for our money? Why is it. again, that the armament firms publish over higher and higher pront figures while the Govern- ment tells us that costs and profits are being rigidly scrutinised?
Until the public is given a sin- eera answer to these questions, it will have very little confidence in any administration which may be installed in Downing Street,
The real responsibility for fallure lles not merely in a weakness of personnel in high places, but in fundamental errors of economic policy which are preventing the efficient mobliisation of industry behind defence.
We are using to-day exactly the same rusty methods which had to be scrapped almost too late when the Ministry of Munitions was founded in 1015. We are making all the same mistakes, and bowing before the same vested interests.
Essentially the problem is this.
Play-Boys Will Be Work-Boys Soon
Berlin. DERLIN'S West End playboya, ' B
at present spending their mornings in bed and their nights in night clubs, will shortly be State put to work by the Nazi in factories, labour
caraps and
farms.
A conference of Nazi police, labour exchange and welfare organisation Goebbels has served his Lex-officials is now meeting under Ber- der well. He has gone to the tin's chief of police, Count Helldorf, racketeers of America for his to discuss methods of putting them greatest discovery-the power
to work.
Decrees giving officials the neces
of the whispered word. Theronry powers will be issued shortly.
is no defence against the sharp Under the decrees will fall, it is Germans employed at knife in the back provided by a reported, "whispering campaign," unless part-time jobs and those who-ac
cording to the one desconds, too, to the methods of the racketeers.
Nazi newspaper Angri-do nothing else except dig a little garden plot, although they are mentally and bodily ft."
BY
DOUGLAS
In ordinary peace-timo, when the security of the country is not threatened. the Defence Depart- ments place orders with a small group of approved firms; and prices and costs are scrutinised by Government auditors and Treasury ofciais.
The firmas are all working below capacity. Prices of materials aro at low or normal levels. Deliveries are consequently punctual' and pronta are small.
Then comes a sudden inter- national emergency in which the Stato suddenly requires a hugely increased supply of certain materials at the earliest moment and without fail. In 1913 it was mainly shells.
To-day it is mainly aeroplanes, anti-aircraft guns, and anti-air- craft munitions.
If the Defence Departments simply respond to this situation, as traditionally they always do, merely by placing bigger and big- ger contracts with the existing Arms, these firma simply force up prices of materiais by bidding against one another and against ordinary business buyers; profits all along the line become encr- mous; and deliveries fall hope- lessly behind schedule.
All the time the Governinent auditora are working conscien- tiously to check costs; and the manufacturers mostly honestly bo-
JAY
love that they are not "profit- coring." They are after all merely selling at market prices.
But in fact the ordinary asstem of uncontrolled prices and mar- kets has entirely failed to meet the emergency.
The Government's defence needs may require, say, 80 per cent. of the supply of a certain essential armament metal. Yet it the individual arma firms bk for it against all other buyers in the market the price may be doubled or trebled.
Huge profits will then be made by the producer of that metal at the expense of the State.
Yet if the State had power 10 acquire the whole supply at a fixed price representing a fair profit, and to supply it to the arms firms at that price, huge savings in money. time and emciency
would made all along the line from the.
be
Importer or producer to the final manufacturers.
That is the crux of the whole matter. It was this vital lesson, learnt in the last war, which led to thorough-going control of muni- tion materials, foodstuffs, and shipping.
in the case of shipping, for in- stance, in the two years 1916 and
GRIN AND BEAR IT
DOWN
WITH
By Lichty
UNITE
"and I defy any capitalist in the crowd to defy me?”
1916, before control of profits was introduced, a company with a capi- tal of £180,000 carned a net profit of £350,037, or 02 per cent. a year.
The company could then have sold out at £700,000, realising a total profit of £876,937, or 215 per cent, per year!
This is what happens if the State tries to uso the ordinary mechani lam of uncontrolled supply and prices to get hold of emergency material at a critical period."
That is why Labour urges the establishment of a Ministry of Supply, which would undertake the organisation of supply for all the fighting services, and would have in the background the necessary powers to control prices and stocks. The presont problem is of course not of the same magnitude as that of 1015. But it is the same in prin- ciple.
The other two essentials that we require are the erection of Govern- ment factories, particularly in the aircraft industry, and much higher taxation (or direct limitation) of profits.
In 1916-18 the 218 Government munition factories eventually built were found essential both in ex- panding output and in establishing a real test of manufacturers' costs. Enormous reduction in costs fol- lowed from the building of these factories.
But now, as then, the various "ring" Arms are Oghting the plan for national factories.
With these three essentials: (2), Ministry of Supply; (2) Govern- ment factories; and (3) Higher taxation of profits-we could mobi- lise our hugo resources effectively. get full value for money, and at the same time maintain and extend our expenditure on social services.
At present unemployment and excess profits are wasting Britain's. potential resources. In 1914-1918
we diverted one half of the coun- try's resources into war service; supplied several million men under arms with food, clothing and muni- tions; reserved the volume of our exports; and if anything raised real standard of living of those left at home.
That is what organisation can do. In Nazi Germany in the last few years organisation on the same scale has produced the terriblo military machine that enabled Hitler to show his hand at Munich. If we ourselves still have the will to preserve our essential liberties, we can organise our resources in their defence; and we can do it by the elimination, not of our social services or our personal freedom, but of ineficiency, of profiteering ‚and of wasto.
-To-day's Thought- WHEREFORE do ve spand money for that which le not bread?
Old Testament.