THE EDITOR RESERVES THE LAST COLUMN
The Last Column WILLIAM DUNCAN HERRIDGE is a distinguished Canadian attorney of impeccable Tory background, an authority on patent law, a former leader of the Conservative Party, and for four...
...Churchill's...
...Tinkering with the old order...
...Herridge shows how shortsighted was our leadership...
...And Mr...
...The failure of the old system is making the case for revolution...
...One needn't embrace all of Mr...
...If democracy is to do its best in war, it must fight not only to destroy but to create...
...Democracy had come to a stop...
...Versailles was not a treaty of peace but a declaration of war, because Versailles made it certain that Germany could not progress without a fight...
...Something To Fight For Without rancor but rather with cool detachment, Mr...
...Herridge reminds us of the melancholy fact that British and American leaders had "no real objection to the Nazi philosophy" until it "became big and threatening...
...In the first world war," he writes, "Democracy boasted that we fight to preserve the freedom of little nations...
...Democracy [in 1939] had no place to go" so it went to war...
...This was not true...
...if Democracy had used its power to build a world which had no place for Fascists in it...
...Profits regulated production...
...The reason for this is that Mr...
...And it dare not...
...Churchill's is hovering about zero...
...The official view that the basic cause of this war is Hitler is dismissed by Mr...
...In this respect, his thinking is not much more advanced than Mr...
...Roosevelt has no real understanding of what brought about the war...
...Herridge—that dynamic and meaningful "something to fight for...
...He knows that the causes of modern war are economic, no matter how eloquent is the propaganda to the contrary...
...not only the Baldwins and Chamberlins, but the Churchills and Roosevelts too...
...Our impulse was punitive...
...It is not enough to deny the enemy what he wants...
...We must go after what we want...
...The Last Column WILLIAM DUNCAN HERRIDGE is a distinguished Canadian attorney of impeccable Tory background, an authority on patent law, a former leader of the Conservative Party, and for four years, 1931-1935, Canadian minister to the United States...
...But the point is there never would have been an evil Hitler...
...The system [of scarcity] gave the people not what was good for them, but what was good for it...
...When society has no place to go, it goes to pieces...
...we set out to take from Germany the crumbs of wealth which the first World War had left to her...
...Not only did we deny Germany— and the world—the natural right to a new order of security...
...Churchill, does not realize that when Democracy failed to give its people, and the people of the world, the total use of their resources, Democracy failed so profoundly that the inevitable consequence was war...
...But as yet, not many realize that the sole alternative to bloody revolution is peaceful revolution...
...Mr...
...This background might have qualified Mr...
...And now, even in the midst of a global war, Democracy is fighting without benefit of a shining faith or inspirational purpose...
...Herridge to write a book called The Glory Of The Good Old Days, or How To Recapture The P re-War Status Quo...
...In the second World War, Democracy . . . now boasts that once more we fight for freedom...
...Tracing the origins of World War II to the insistence of our governing groups on a program of scarcity economics, Mr...
...Roosevelt, like Mr...
...British imperialism fought German imperialism because it was fearful of the consequences of not fighting...
...Next week I want to devote this space to the affirmative program advocated by Mr...
...Our plan destructive...
...Versailles A Declaration Of War Before examining Mr...
...Unlike some of the ex-sports writers and gossip columnists who have blossomed out as experts on world politics, Mr...
...Herridge does not believe in the "cops 'n robbers" theory of war...
...The economics of scarcity was imposed on the victorious, as well as the vanquished nations, bringing real and terrible hardship to hundreds of millions of people despite fitful periods of false prosperity...
...He has written, instead, Which Kind Of Revolution?, perhaps the most stimulating and certainly one of the most challenging and courageous books of the war...
...But it does not say what kind of freedom...
...Herridge as downright dangerous...
...Herridge's conclusions as I, for one, don't, to recognize that this exciting little book—it runs only 162 pages—comes to grips with the basic issue of our time—the need for abolishing our system of scarcity and replacing it with an economy of abundance...
...Of course, "Hitler is an evil man...
...But, at best, the end of Hitler will leave us where we were when war began...
...Herridge will accept no substitutes for a new system of total use of resources for the total good of all...
...Disintegration had begun to replace inertia...
...Herridge, a thoroughgoing internationalist, finds the start of the mischief at Versailles...
...Herridge's plan of peaceful revolution, let's glance at his indictment of the system he insists must go...
...M.H.R...
...True, the destruction of Hitler is something to fight for," he concedes...
...is like putting rouge on the face of the dead," he writes...
...Versailles became the instrument of our stupid and immoral purpose...
...Because in fact Democracy is fighting for the kind of freedom which will permit the old order to perpetuate its failure...
Vol. 7 • November 1943 • No. 47
