OVERSEAS REPORT

...But they show no disposition to learn...

...In short, the young miners, drafted into the army, have refused to return to the pits...

...but there is no evidence that the government is imperiled...

...If one may descend from a sublime contemplation of possible tragedy to a slightly ridiculous level, it might be worth observing that an American visitor, however much impressed with British moral, social and political achievements, can not refrain from offering the British some technical advice for the solution of their fuel problem...

...There remains therefore the possibility that international catastrophe may prevent the fruition of this hopeful develop, ment in democracy...

...It will be very interesting to see whether by education, and increased understading of the issue involved such differentials can be made a part of government policy...

...While the number of miners is beginning to approach the pre-war level, their average age is higher and their productive power lower limn before the war...

...Unfortunately the international position of Britain does not correspond to its domestic accomplishments...

...Technically we can still be their teachers...

...The Labor Party may indeed lose an election in three or eight years...

...But the domestic situation is even more critical...

...Rear Admiral Joel Boone found health conditions in mining towns "deeply disturbing" and blamed both employers and the union...

...The British like to suggest, at any rate, when they seek to excuse what seems to them the quite irresponsible character of our national economic life, that one can really not expect anything better from a nation so wealthy...

...The USSR boasts the coldest spot <n earth—in Siberia...

...The Nature and Destiny of Man...

...The socialist experiment in Britain was thus launched under circumstances which are not too favorable...

...Beyond Tragedy...

...and meanwhile,domestic consumption has increased...

...Failure to furnish Sweden with coal for instance means a restriction upon the import of Swedish timber and 11 consequent retarding of the housing program...

...Thus, though there may lie other crises after this coal crisis and though the British will hoe a hard row for years to come, one has the impression that the movement toward socialism is irrevocable and that it really expresses the national will...

...Coul production has steadily mounted in the past year, but it Is still short of the lttSU level...

...Make cm all profitable...

...It seems pretty well understood that many factors of long standing, over which the present government had no control, contributed to tin' crisis and that an excessively cold winter was the straw which broke the camel's back...

...The British people are incidentally proud of their rationing discipline, and that quite beyond the ranks of the Labor Party...

...inforced their determination not to return to mining...

...And also the coldest heart — in the Kremlin...

...Having already raised the living standards of the masses to a considerable degree it can actually not afford to raise living standards very much higher, lest its manufactured exports are diminished by the home market and its food imports" increased...

...In a society which has moved for decades, and particularly in the war years, toward a greater and greater equalisation of wealth, the profits of ownership are not so great that when the melon is sliced, the wage slice of an individual worker would be very great...

...The opposition is seeking to blow up the economic crisis into a political one...

...The British mines, for one thing, are notxis highly mechanized as ours and have a much lower productivity per man...

...T£e "free enterprise," which our Republican idealists regard as the sine qua non of democracy, seems to many of our British friends, to be a luxury in which only a "Very wealthy nation can indulge...

...It must be understood of course that this problem is created by the very merits of a socialist system which is moving in the direction of guaranteeing full employment and is thereby removing the incentive of the fear of unemployment which holds some men in some less desirable jobs in a capitalist System with its usual poo) of unemployment...

...Many New Yorkers think the subways should be "put on a paying basis...

...The British were able to absorb the whole bourgeois-liberal movement of the eighteenth smd nineteenth century into a feudal-organic world without a rent in the garment of national lift) and they seem now in the process1 of absorbing the social ist-democratif movement without a noticeable break...

...Britain, which once had a great export trade in coal, is now unable to meet the needs of its own market, not to speak of the loss of its export balance...

...Deficiencies included lack of adequate water supply, garbage disposal, sanitation, insect and rodent control...

...Another Communist front...

...Era...

...The Daily Worker announces ths formation of a ne,w "liberal" Arab party in Palestine with a program of drastic social reform and cooperation with the Jews...

...It was the sense of a common poverty and the feeling that the residue of a wardissipated national wealth must he shared as eqmial.lv as posible which provided the impetus for the socialist victory...

...It isn't the food but the fuel situation which creates the atmosphere of austerity ami crisis...

...The speclfle mark of that poverty is that, having lost the returns on its foreign investments, It must produce a surplus of manufactured goods In order to pay for Its food Imports...

...In changing Britain there are UM luxuries available- and few who can buy them...

...At the moment it is still impossible to do this without encouraging wage increases all along the line and upsetting the whole system...

...But it was capitalist management and not socialist control which was responsible for this technical backwardness...

...But one may be fairly certain that it will not be defeated except by a revised toryism which will promise not to undo most of the things which labor has done and which will create an alternative policy only by suggesting that the nation ought to move more slowly toward an agreed goaf...

...The government can obviously not force men into the mines by law...

...for the same catastrophe will affect strong as well as weakened nations and may make til questions about the way to achieve democratic justice irrelevant...

...Aaaoag his many works are: "Moral Maa aad Immoral Society...

...The only other alternative is to attract labor to the more onerous and less desirable forms of toil by wage differentials...

...They know that they can maintain rationing without creating the black markets of the i'ontinent, because they have a stronger tradition of elementary honesty and a mere robust sense of responsibility toward the community...

...Perhaps thereafter the streets should be put on a paying basis.'Also the schools, the fire department, the police depart* ment, the hospitals and clinics, ths parks, garbage collecting...

...And yet it was precisely the straightened circumstance of the nation which made socialism possible...

...The real trouhle is shortage of man-power...

...Refections on the End of an...

...In Britain the issue is complicated by the fact that labor is naturally restive because it has not achieved greater benefits under a socialist system and does not understand why all wages could not lie greatly increased...

...there were only N person" whs had Incomes last year, aside from ta«ei> of 124.000 or more...

...If it did that it would dissipate the democratic substance of its rule...

...A lot of interesting' questions on how to achieve justice without sacrificing too much fiepdom ar« on the way to being answered In Britain...

...and new and richer opportunities in industry reReinhold Niebuhr is the « ell known clergyman, political aaslyst, and stadeat of social problem...

...An Interpretation of Christian Ethics...

...The austerity of British existence is not primarily due to food rations, which are quite adequate...

...Furthermore Britain has been impoverished by the war...

...If they could learn that S fire-place is a nice decorative adjunct in a heated room but a very inefficient instrument for heating the room and not to be compared with a good stove, they might save some coal or they might at least derive more heat from the coal they use...

...It's- a great achievement if you know how to do it...

...The diet of the average German today Is 58 percent of the minimum requirement for health, the American Military Government reports after a survf^ of 700,000 Germans...

...In contrast with our unrationed freedom, they are able to eat their bread without feeling that they are eating it at the expense of someone else...

...If this lie so, it will answer a lot of questions, particularly of those who persuadod themselves that a genuine socialism could not lie parliamentary because It could not afford to have Its work undone...

...Their army experience emancipated them from traditional loyalties to an ancestral calling...

...Most company doctors show little interest in improving miners' health, he commented...

...This labor problem, while it represents no immediate threat to the government, does raise an interesting issue for the kind of democratic socialism which governs Britain...

...But perhaps we ought not to worry too much ubout that immediately...

...Even now, according to a recent government "white paper" Britain is not balancing its.export-import budget, despite the heroic effort to increase exports...