1940-07-15 — Page 7

THE CHINA MAIL, JULY 15, 1940

CHINA MAIL

WINDSOR HOUSI

BLITZKRIEG

Cash---And---War

If we think of the war in terms ing houses; factories, motor-cars, safely talk in terms of money. We people would be complacent about of the millions of pounds which cosmetics

entertainments can calculate that with full cm- such methods.

and

It is instructively amus-will be required for its prosecu- which we might have got. ployment, intensive activity and But although the total real cost ing that all the most re-tion, we are likely to get a wrong

impression of war economics.

By G. L. Schwartz

7

This is the real cost, the real overtime the annual National In- to the nation would be about the (1989) prices same under inflation, the distri- It sacrhice, and we shall bear it come at pre-war

rise to £6,000 millions. bution of that burden would be cent talk about marching is better to discuss the problem in now. Posterity will not provide us would

command over very different and very inequit

· against England and "the terms of the real cost, because with a single bullet. We have got Then to obtain

then we can grasp an essential to sacrifice something now to get half the resources of the country able. This is what happened last day of reckoning" should truth.

a bullet now.

the Government would have to time, Now suppose that half the re- secure by taxation or borrowing Inflation is a compound of bri- have come out of Rome. The real cost has to be met dur-

bery and cheating. It bribes some ing the war. We have to pay for sources of the country are requir- £3,000 millions of that income.

high Then even ed for military purposes. and not out of Germany. the war as we wage it

It would make no real differ- people with excessively Some of the observers though in his last Budget speech the resources available for private ence if the Government indalged earnings, and profits and cheats in inflation and drove up. the other people of some of the real Sir John Simon justified his de- speak of days and some cision to rely on loans instead of

nominal value of the National The income to which they are entitled. come to £12,000 millions. In that This must not happen this time. of weeks but all Italian taxation on the grounds that we

acquire There is no need or justification were entitled. to place some of the

case it would have to

an a for "äll-round rise in prices. thought follows the line burden on posterity.

command of -£6;000 millions that the effort has got to The reason. Is that war has to

year, again leaving the free pur- People must be induced to econo-- be waged by the contemporary use

chasing power of the population mise, not by rising prices, but by be made soon, and is, of the resources of the country purposes are cut down by one- equivalent to command over half the surrender of the appropriate labour of the part of their income to the State; and the surrender must be ar- seemingly, the more voci- Those resources consist of capital half. It does not matter in this the capital and

country. equipment and labour. That capi- respect how the thing is firianced ferous about the wrath to tal equipment and labour is used by the Government-whether by The real cost or acrifice would ranged on an equitable basis. The come because the mood of in peace time to produce food, taxation or borrowing-the Gov be the same and occur at the same power and the responsibility rests

clothing, houses, factories, motor- ernment has to obtain command time. However the process is ar- with the Government,

The authorities are wont at Germany has undergone a cars, cosmetics, entertainments, over half the existing resources of ranged, private citizens are going

capital equipment and labour and to be deprived forthwith of the times like these to divert wrath noteworthy change. It and so on.

goods and services which soldiers, against, profiteers and to-portray Some of the resources, in fact a put them--to military work. was easy for Hitler and large part of them, will now be

and munition themselves as innocent or help- All the peaceful things which sailors, airmen his aides to declare bold-diverted into the production of those resources could have pro- workers could have produced in less in the matter.

There can be no all-round pro- guns, aeroplanes, and all the duced will be lost to the commun- peace, time. ly their intentions about things covered by the general ity, and that, and that only, is the This looks like an admission Ateering if the Government con- Britain's tight little island term munitions, and more re- real cost. And, it must be em- that it does not really matter whe- trols the money and credit of the when the problem of in-sources of labour will be employ- phasised to the point of tedium, ther the Government taxes, bor- country in the appropriate

ed in wielding the finishing wea that cost is bel borne now.

being

rows, or inflates the currency; and and supplements this control by vasion. was academic. pons. We shall therefore be de-

since borrowing or inflation is the the regulation of various lines of prived of some of the food, cloth- Face to face to-day with

If this is clearly grasped we can easier way of making a levy many consumption. It need not regulate total consumption, since that will be automatically held in check By the opportunity and the

the reduction in freely disposable incomes... prospect, they may be forgiven the feeling that the strongest bastion of Europe, with the little moat called the Channel and the North Sea around

r

*

Ourselves And The Ancient Greeks

way,

If the Government does not in flate incomes there can be no general rise in prices and no serf ous profiteering.

it, needs thoughtful pre- There is one very queer thing Such is our civilisation; it is people there have two square reflect that we cannot stand in paration before the under-about the civilisation of modern not indigenous in the serise

我

**

8

no

that we know of.

**

*

and

ale infanticide.

A

✡

****

districts

All this makes grim reading; but there is a comforting aspect to it. Soine people, obsessed by monetary calculations. gloomily in meals a day. That this abstemi- long war, or that even if we carry Europe. 1: has the appearance of which Hellenism and Hebraism ousness is good for health cannot it to a successful conclusion we taking of an assault. being borrowed. In Our divine were indigenous.

be doubted. I have often noticed shall be bankrupt at the end of Hellenism, as was said more the longevity of the ancient worship we sing hymns not about

Now our, capacity to endure Italy's anxiety for ac-worown country, its glories and than two thousand years ago, is Grecks, compared with modern long war depends solely on our tion is not less easy to un-its trials, but about the ancient the name of a culture, not of a times down to our own generation, capacity to furnish resources for derstand.

Hebrews. We have hymns race. The Greeks were splendid when the duration of life has not the direct waging of the war and

the sustenance of the civil popula about the Spanish Armada or the mongrels, a fusion of northern in- ably increased.

We must think in these real Much has been written battle of Waterloo; we rejoice vaders with the southern race One of their favourite maxims tion.

over the discomfiture of the vulnerability of

of Schon, whom they found in occupation. was "Nothing too much." We have terms, and not in monetary values King of the Amorites, and Og, For some reason which has never a thoroughly vulgar craze for re- and measurements.

explained, they were cords, а taste Italy. Less has been said the King of Basan; we read the been

which is still. At the end of the war our situa splendid description of the deliv- both physically

intellec stronger in America. Profession-ition will depend not upon the size of its striking power. This erance of Hezekiah from Senna- tually superior to any other race alism is spoiling one game after of the National. Debt or of the Budget but upon the productive another. Tables of averages are is because Italy lacks stay-cherib.

capacity of the resources then re- If a stranger were to visit our Their physical beauty lives for not at all good for cricket. ing power. Il Duce needs a public schools, he would be equal- us in their statues, which are, no

maining. They wished their surroundings short war. Italians may be ly surprised to find the boys doubt, idealised; but no such to be beautiful. We have evolv as brave as he asks them studying, not Shakespeare, Milton models could be found in any ed an ugly civilisation, which te-If bur labour force is not too and Burke, but Homer, Sophocles modern civilised nation. As for cordingly does not attract much greatly depleted by casualties, if to be; they still will need and Demosthenes.

education, every Athenian could affection. A popular adage of the our capital equipment has not food not to mention Why should these two little read and write, and the populace Greeks makes beauty the second suffered severe damage or dès- truction, and if (and this is im- peoples, who lived two or three which enjoyed the Greek drama in rank of human goods, the first portant) our young people, the shoes--to march on. thousand years ago, still form the was on a rather different level being health. We should think recruits for industry, have con-

staple of our higher education and from those who go to see Ameri- this is a very odd estimate.

tinued to receive adequate educa- Latest data place Italy's of our religion? Does it not look can films. But, of course; the They were not perfect-far from tion and training, then we shall fighting forces at about as if we had never really found whole of Greece was not like it. They committed suicide, as anot be economically bankrupt.

ourselves? Can we really main Athens; and after Greece lost her race by the continual storms in a There is one immediate problem. 2,250,000 active soldiers, tain that Dante, Shakespeare and freedom, the Romans thought that teacup between two tiny states, which calls for swift attention. "It with trained reserves Goethe are less worthy of study the Greeks were too clevet, by by the frequent massacres, which could and should have been fore- than the Athenians of the Ath half even for their own Interest attended their civli discords, and seen that the plunge into total numbering more than and fourth centuries before Christ, and not to be trusted in any ty by their ruinous practice of fem-war overnight would cause tre- 5,000,000. The figures or that Joshua was a greater get lation of life.

mendous dislocation and that as cral than Marlborough?

They were hard, as the Italians

a result of evacuation and other would be indeed ominous

of the Renaissance were hard, and was measures some people would if the means of keeping

sometimes very cruel. It is be straightway deprived of em- What have we still to learn curious fact that the flowering ployment and income. these men in the field were There is, of course, a historical from this remarkable people, times of the arts have seldom been This has happened, and in par- proportionate. But they explanation. When Europe awoke whose supremacy in literature has humane. The parallel with medie- ticular some evacuated are not. For some time from the long night of the Dark been acknowledged by the best val Italy has often been drawn have temporarily become distress-

The belief in progress, though ed areas. Ages, with the classics in her judges? "In every branch of Italy has been forced to hand, a return to antiquity was letters and learning, says Cicero, often a mere superstition, has, en-recognised this by making tem- ration important

the only road of recovery. "Back "they are our masters." "Beside coutaged us western Europeans to porary provision for relief in such to Greece and Rome" was the Eschyius, and Sophocles, I am advocate many causes and at- ¡cases. modities.

cry of the Latin races; which had nothing," said Wordsworth. "The tempt many reforms. The Greeks It is to be hoped, incidentally, There are also wider as-once belonged to the Roman Em- period between the birth of Feri, had no belief in progress.. They that there will be no flavour of pire. "Back to Palestine" was cles and the death of Aristotle" looked for their golden age, if Public Assistance about such re- pects of strategy to be the reply of the north, which did Shelley wrote, "is undoubtedly the they thought of one, in the past lief: For reliöt off peace, time considered. Italy's pre-

not reject Grééce.

most memorable-in- the history of rather than in the future. His- lines will not meet the situation. As Matthew Arnold said, we the world." "The Greeks were tory, they thought, is a series of As an example, the stoppage of occupations about the have been under two influences, the beginners of nearly every vast cycles, and they had happen- entertainment in the, first week. role Russia is preparing to ever since; we have Hebraised thing, Christianity excepted, of ed on a descending curve. When threw the whole industry out of

and Hellenised. The two ideals which the, modern world makes we think how many of the noblest work. play are not less acute are very different, and our nation- its boast." This is from John lives among us are devoted to It can be argued, of course, that some cause or other, we cannot this is precisely one of the ways than those of Herr Hitleral character is a queer amalgam. Stuart Mill,

Modern Europe has added thres How did they do it? Largely help seeing in the absence of in which resources are released In the Mediterranean, ingredients of its own, which are because speech was free. The such enthusiasms 8 sign of in-for more urgent purposes, and the naval brushes of last neither Hebrew nor

Greeks were great talkers, not feriority.

that the same sort of thing will chivalry, romance and Industrial- great readers, and they discussed

and should happen in many lines. week were well calculated ism.

everything under the sun. There

This is true, and it is futile to talk to cause Italian leaders to

was no system of espionage, no

of "Business as usual! Gestapo and concentration camps, Shall we go on reverencing the

The Government has assumed re-assess the naval situa- the desperate intention of pe holy inquisition, though Plato Greeks and the llebrews as we full powers over the citizenry, and I regret to say, would have liked have done for centuries? Probably as a corollary it acquires full re- tion, and be anxious for helping Hitler make it a

to establish, one.

not to the same extent. We have sponsibility for its sustenance. It German activity round short war. For that aim, Under a tyranny there may be learned from them most of what must assure the necessities of British shores on a scale Hitler evidently needed I small cultivated class, as in they have to teach us, and we food, clothing, fuel, and shelter to France under Louis XIV, but not ought now to be able to stand on all to the extent of available sup-. likely to divert the worry- Duce. But if Hitler could a civilised nation. How little our own feet. But in different plles. ing attentions of the Brit- not do it alone, there is ing and literature since the Great permanent enrichments of our possible the previous education In respect of children,, as far as. Germany has contributed to learn ways these two cultures represent ish Fleet in Il Duce's so a big question whether Warl In Greece, for some, eight human heritage, which must never must be continued, regardless of called Mare Nostrum.

any change in the parents' means. Mussolini's aid can turn hundred years, ending with the be forgotten.

closing of the, schools of Athens These achievements are very. The indiscriminate infliction of For Italy, more than the trick.

by Justinian, the human spirit rare in history, and unfortunate penury Teads to defeatism and It is later on to Fascism, as we have any other belligerent, the Before the end of July, had been free to inquire into all ly they do not last long.

things in heaven and earth. lamentable to think that by für seen happen on the Continent, entire strategy of the con- we shall begin to tell

the greater part of Greek litëra- An apposite description of the ture and art has perished without present situation is a state of duct of the war is based whether what we believe

leaving a trace. There have been siege, and siege principles should tipon the time element, for is not true, that the world The extreme simplicity of their times when to burn an ode of prevail. Children first, extra ra- events suggest that I is still too big for the habits would have astonished us. Sapphire of Hons for the Aghters, and anfale When Plato went to Sicily be re- Phuldius was's cöfisiäerta laud-jälstribution for the rest of the Duce only came in with Blitzkrieg.

cords with displeasure that the able action.

garrison.

-

com-

Greek

.

The Government has