HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1938.
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December 30, 1938
The Sword and the Pen A GERMAN News Agency,
with an office in Hongkong, broadcasts to the world that "great dissatisfaction is being felt among the inhabitants of Cyprus" at British rule because the latter "savours 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 acme 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 uf freedom enjoyed by the Ger- man Press...
If German propaganda were limited to such examples of fetuous comment, or to honie consumption by Germans, we could shrug our shoulders at the repeated calumnies disseminated by Berlin
and through broadcasting stations of the Reich.
newspapers
Propaganda, however, has be-
1
como real war-a · war of words. And the pen is proving mightier than the sword.
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 |calumnies, suggests by innuendo that the way to peace is by violence, that democracy offera the vices and not the virtues of civilisation, that the path to "freedom" is through totali- tarianism.
Germany places so much faith in its insidious propagandn 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.
ARMY
A Million a Day
Goes up in Smoke
RITAIN £700,000,000
has spent on arma-
ments in the last three years. Yet when the crisis 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 weak 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 Arms publish ever higher and higher profit kurca while the. Govern- ment tells us that costs and profita are being rigidly scrutinised?
Until the public is given a sin- cero answer to these questions, it. will have very lle confidence in any administration which may be
· Installed in Downing Street.
The real responsibility for fallure Hes not merely in a weakness of personnel in high places, but in fundamental errors of economic polley which are preventing the efficient mobilisation 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 1915, 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,
moralugs in bed and their nights In night clubs, will shortly be put to work by the Nazl State In factories, labour camps and farms.
A conference of Nazi police, Inbour Goebbels has served his Len-oficials is now meeting under Ber- exchange and welfare organisation der well. He has gone to then's chief of police, Count Helldorf,! racketeers of America for his to discuss methods of putting them
to work.
greatest discovery-the power
Decrees giving oficials the neces
of the whispered word. There cary powers will be issued shortly.
is no defence against the sharp knife in the back provided by a "whispering campaign," unless
Under the decrees will fall, it is reported. Germans employed at Part-time Jobs and those who-ac- cording to :ho Nazi newspaper
one descends, too, to the methods | Angriff-"do nothing else except dini
of the racketeers.
a little garden plut, although they are mentally and bodily 01,"
BY
DOUGLAS
In ordinary pence-time, 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 officials.
The firms are all working below capacity. Prices of materials are at low or normal levels. Deliveries are consequently punctual and profits are small.
Then comes a. audden Inter- national emergency in which the State suddenly
equires a hugely increased supply of cortain materials at the earliest moment and without fall. In 1915 it was mainly shells.
To-day it is mainly acroplanes, 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 frms-simply force up prices of materials by bidding against one another and against ordinary business buyers; proûts all along the lino become enor- mous; and deliveries fall hope- lessly behind schedule.
All the time the Government Auditors are working conscien- tiously to check costs; and the manufacturers mostly honestly be-
JAY
lleve that they are not "profit- coring." They are after all merely selling at market prices.
But in fact the ordinary system 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 i the individual arms frns bid 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 to acquire the whole supply at a fixed price representing a fait profit, and to supply it to the arma arms at that price, hugo savings in money. time and efficiency would be made all along the line from the 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 materiala, foodstuITS, and shipping.
In the case of shipping, for in- stance, in the two years 1915 and
GRIN AND BEAR TT
WWN
WITH
WO
By Lichty
"and I defy any capitalist in the crowd to defy me!”
YFRE
1916, before control of profits was Introduced, a company with a capi- tal of £180,000 earned a net profit of £350,937, or 02 per cent.
a year.
The company could then have sold out at £700,000, realising n total prolt of £870,937, or 225 per cent, per year!
This is what happens if the State tries to use the ordinary machan- Ism of uncontrolled supply and prices to get hold of emergency material at a critical period.
That is why Labour arges the establishment of a Ministry of Supply, which would undertake the organisation of supply for all the nghting services, and would have in the background the necessary powers to control prices and stock. The present problem is of course not of the same magnitude as that of 1916. 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 1910-18 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 conta fol lowed from the building of these factories,
But now, as then, the various "ring" Arms are fighting the plan for national factories.
With these three essentials: (1), Ministry of Supply; (2) Govern- ment factories; and (3) Elgher taxation of profits-we could mobi- lac our huge resources effectively, get full value for money, and st 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 servico: supplied several million man under arms with food, clothing and muni- tions: reserved the volume of our exports; and if anything raised tho 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 terrible military machine that enabled Hitler to show his hand at Munich, If we ourselves still have the will to preserve our essential Ubertica, we can organise our resources in their defence; and we can do it by the elimination, not of our social services or aur personal freedom, but of ineficiency, of profiteering and of waste.
------To-day's Thought——
WHEREFORE do vo spend money for that which is hot bread?
-Old Testament.