J. S. Mill and the World of Nations
KOHN, HANS
Allies in Peace as in War Economic and Political "Union Now" With Britain By William E. Bohn THE Lend-Lease act aa signed by the President on April 1», 1946, contained the provision that it waa...
...No dictator ia the year* to come will be able to persuade hi* people to chance that kind of retribution for aggression...
...For nothing is better calculated to prevent future wara than the knowledge of the common people in •very nation of the world that now warfare may mean total annihilation...
...They speak of mutual interchange and a commoi, prosperity...
...There have been sinister suggestions in high places that certain circles of American bankers and industrialists are out to sabotage the British Labor Government...
...The 7.9M,999 members of the American Federation of Labor will be glad te know that the War Department haa extended official recognition and praise for their efforts in constructing th* tremendous plants where the atomic bomb is bring produced and hi operating those plants...
...With the British, the French and the other free countries of western Europe would descend into disaster...
...International trade runa.according to exactly the sama laws...
...From now on, everything depends upon the spirit in which the bargaining is carried on...
...It will be impossible for us to recover and maintain full peacetime production without that market...
...The European world is divided between those who look to Moscow for their inspiration and those who look to London and Washington...
...Despite their debtor position, the people of Britain face the enormous ask of reconverting their industry to peacetime production...
...More recently, on August 21, The Wall Street Journal editorialized: "The one controlling reason why we think the United States should make neither loan nor gift to the United Kingdom is that neither, no matter how big, could be expected to restore the United Kingdom to her former position as a solvent world-trading nation...
...LABOR AND THE ATOMIC BOMB ¦y wfllmm GREEN American labor, which played a vital role in the successful development of the atomic bomb as an instrument of military destruction, is keenly interested in the plan* of science for harnessing the power of the atom to peacetime industry after -victory is won...
...1<imI Lease is finished...
...Allies in Peace as in War Economic and Political "Union Now" With Britain By William E. Bohn THE Lend-Lease act aa signed by the President on April 1», 1946, contained the provision that it waa to run until June SO, 1940, or until a joint resolution passed by both houses of Congress should put an end to it...
...duction and employment in all nations...
...Canada stood second and France third...
...The war to beat the Germans and Japs has ended, but the war to win a decent world has jiift begun...
...If they go down—If they have ona mor* great depression—that banner will go ilown...
...A policy of selfish nationalism would lead to common destruction...
...Looking at the matter from a purely selfish point of view, it is of the utmost importance that Great Britain be helped over the rough places of reconstruction and that her people and ours advance together to the point at which we produce and exchange goods freely and in growing quantities...
...If we hope to create a proaperous world with increasing manufacture and tiade, we must think in terms of markets, of making goods snd selling them to consumers who sre aide to pay...
...They present a problem which both the President and Congress will shirk at their peril...
...If these imports are held up by lark of credit, reconversion will be hindered and the time when exports begin to furnish foreign credits will lie postponed...
...British ships are still spread over half the world, and we are still mutually engaged in vast operations both in Europe and in the Pacific...
...But both parts of this objective remain in the realm of the impossible so long as we maintain mir...
...The President and Secretary Byrnes both have a different perspective...
...1 ? his statement to Congress, Truman stated our objective as "a lasting period of freedom and economic welfare...
...New yea hav* th* reward of knowing that their effort* ?·** •? important contribution te victory...
...Before tha war Great Britain stood far in the lead among nations furnishing a market for American goda...
...We can export in appreciable quantities only t* prosperous lands...
...It require* no exaggerated stretch of th* imagination to visualise the tremendous economic revolution which th* development of atomic power may accomplish in th* futura The discovery of how electricity could be applied to improve the live* of human beings and lighten their labor* ¦·» become inaignileant beside this new and epochal scientific achievement...
...With regard to the domestic problem we are coming more and more to think in terms of a balance between tha expendable income of the citizens and the value of our agricultural and manufactured products...
...It is possible to use our creditor position to this end...
...Now that Labor is in, it would be all wrong...
...In this country it is to b* constantly born* in mind that if Britain fails, w* also shsll fail...
...But that way lies destruction for the entire democratic world...
...Even from a purely economic point of view the fate of the United States is tied in with thst of western Europe...
...The New Leader quoted a bold statement by Arthur Krock which strongly suggested this possibility...
...Tins hope has crossed th* Channel...
...There is every reason, therefore, why we should exert the predominant fiscal power which the war haa placed in our hands to build up other nations—especially friendly, allied nations —rather than to tear them down...
...I want to thank all the officers and members of your building and metal trades unions who helped build and man th* pls.ils in which oar atomic bomba ar* made...
...Many other nations about which there has been much discussion in this connection came so far down in the list that they never would be missed...
...The French, the Belgians, th* Dutch and many older* see hop* for themselves in th* British *xp*rim*nt...
...Certain big-business circles evidently regard this as an opportunity to put Britain out of the running as ? business rival...
...If the people of the country lack the cash to purchase what is turned out, the whole system limps and lags and tend* to stop...
...It is doubtful if any other Americans ever went as far as this* in malevolence...
...he abruptly put an end to the shipping of all goods under lend lease terms...
...For many reasons this is a prospect not to be endured...
...During the six years of war the exports were necessarily cut down to nearly nothing and the foreign investments were largely disposed of in order to pay for desperately needed supplies...
...Oni objective of American leaders is, doubtless, the loosening up of empire preference agreements and of the control of sterling balances...
...If the Conservatives had remained in, a new sort of lend-lease would have been all right...
...Our business system and that of the British are close aa a pair of Siamese twins...
...These quotations are signals of the most stupid sort of obtuseness...
...high-tariff walls and refuse to put at the disposal of the British adequate dollar credits at manageable interest rates...
...hi which there will be full and useful pro...
...In order to wreak their ideological spit* these men would ruin the British world end thereby bring down our own in the common debacle...
...Britain, Fiance snd their neighbors have always furnished the overwhelming bulk of our foreign market...
...If it succeeds, democracy will gradually win over a larg* part of th* old continent.If it fails, th* victory will go th* Moscow sort of dictatorship...
...On August 24, Raymond Moley, writing in the same journal, makes an even franker avowal of motive: l|ln short, opponents of Socialism here cannot understand why the United States should finance Socialism in (neat Britain...
...But the economic difficulties which the Allied nations were able to endure during the war by virtue of Lend Lesse aid are not finished...
...the British people do...
...President Truman had, nevertheless, a good deal of justification for the act by which, on August 21...
...And these two great power* boar the banner of democracy and freedom...
...All the provisions of the art are in the nature of authorizations to the President to use his judgment in extending the benefits provided...
...From there the mouthpiece of Wall Street goes on to explain that such munificense on our part could only buy the British "a respite from the consequences of Socialism...
...Shocked as we are by the terrible and devastating effect of this new explosive, we ¦ -annul help thinking thst it will eventually prove a great blessing to humanity...
...Our financial position places upon us the responsibility for achieving these ends...
...They threaten, in fact, to grow more grave during the trying days of reconversion...
...The power to destroy rsn snd must be transformed to the power to build...
...And both Roosevelt and Truman had an understanding with Cori-(i ess that I-end-Lease was a war measure ami would terminate with the ending el the war...
...Though both our wars are ended, the "emergency" is obviously .still with us...
...If in the democracies economic failure follows military success, the laurela of the battlefields will turn to ashes in our hands...
...The attainment of such a period will require a good deal of give and take in the areas of tariffs, credits and special agreements for the control of trade...
...If the President had the authority to use his judgment in making grants, he also had the right to use it in bringing them to an end...
...The Agreement on Mutual Aid signed by Great Britain and the United 8fates in February, 1942, provided that it was to bold until "the end of the present emergency...
...therefore we will do our best to wreck the British economy...
...The assurance of lasting peace will give science, labor and industry a glorious opportunity to put the mighty resources of the atom to work for the constructive benefit of mankind...
...Britain's reward, then, for having defended clone the ramparts of freedom from the fall of France to the entrance of Russia and the United States into the war would lie industrial and fiscal collapse...
...So at the end of the war, during a part of which Britain had stood practically alone against the Nazi and Fascist world, she finds herself with an external debt amounting to about $i6,(km),<mm),imm...
...Bekore the war the people of Britain lived largely from the returns on foreign investments and on the sale of ex ports...
...Then—with th* war won for democracy—the dictators would take over the world...
...If Britain, Fiance and their neighbors fall into an economic morass, we shsll fail to gsrner the political results of our military victory...
...The British people look forward to a better-managed and more satisfactory life...
...These men are saying to tde American people: we do not believe in Socialism...
...Immediately after the election returns were announced...
...Both these processes will necessitate the importation fit immense quantities of food and other supplies...
...Especially since the Labor Party success has this been tha case...
...I receiv*d th* following telegram from tinder Seer eta r ? of War Robert P. I'« tier son "Through y*u...
...Had there been no Lend-Lease she would have lieen in a much worse situation, liut in that case Hitler would have won and the world's financial problems would have been his headache...
...Tea recruited skilled mechanic* from thousands ·' miles away to work on these project* even thongs) we could not tell you what they were making...
...One thing it certain—the ute of atomic power mutt be controlled to at not ft enrich and ttrengthen the few but to bring itt benefitt enuitably to all the peoplt...
...Tha American Federation af Uber wish** to l*t the American people kaow that the natioa'a soldiers af prod actio* will contra km to **rv* faithfully and unswervingly to win the peace a* they did to wia tha war...
...The gallant fellowship of war was maintained, not merely to beat Hitler, but to restore to the world the possibility of a decant and democratic life...
Vol. 28 • September 1945 • No. 36
