Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - August 28, 1948, Winnipeg, Manitoba Freedom of Trade i Libov of religion Equality of civil. Rights leg Winnipeg. Saturday. August 28, 1948 and published Winnipeg free press company limited. 300 ctr ton Street Manitoba. Authorized second Dut matter by the Post office department Ottawa. Victor or prox. Dexter publisher. Executive editor. We. Lord. Bruce Hutchison general Sla Najjar. Associate editor. From Britain that minority of canadians which believes that socialism is the answer to everything should be interested in two pieces of news from Britain. The first is that under an Economy planned by the labor government British Industry As a whole has made no Progress toward increased production in the last nine months. Production in the last Quarter of 1947, was 19 cent. Higher than in 1946, according to the reliable London and Cambridge economic service since ,1947 the rate of production has stood still. The great revival and Progress of which the government boasted Early this year is As the Manchester guardian says that happened last autumn and has not gone socialism promises Many things but its main Promise without which All others Are worthless is an increased sup ply of goods to be distributed to the people. Production thus is the Cardinal test of the socialist theory As it is of any economic system. It is on production that the labor govern ment is rightly concentrating its Energy by planning from the top and exhortation of the workers at the Bottom. The fact that the rate of production under planning and exhortation has not increased for a year despite All the government s efforts must be therefore a bitter disappointment to the British socialists. Will it be noted by the socialists of Canada who Are promising us prodigies of increased production by state ownership certain industries an d state management of All v a second development in Britain is equally instructive but being More complicated is More difficult to under stand. In the simplest terms this is what has happened when or. Hugh Dalton was Riding High in the exchequer he refused to admit the danger of inflation but by the time sir Stafford Cripps fortunately succeeded him inflation was in full swing. Sir Stafford with his customary honesty made no secret of it. Socialism in action not Only had permitted inflation to develop to a dangerous degree but various policies had contributed largely to this condition. A prob Lem which would have been bad in any Case was made worse by mistakes in government planning and by the government s refusal until it had reached the Edge of disaster to admit the facts of Britain s position. Sir Stafford courage the mess which or. Dal ton and his planners had bequeathed to him. He ing perhaps As far As he could in practical politics though not far strike at the Root of inflation the pub Lic demand for More goods than the nation could produce. He did this mainly by maintaining High taxes to Drain off the Public s purchasing Power and deflate the appetite for goods. While he pegged prices and also wages by voluntary agreement with the labor unions he knew that the Price of goods already had risen and that this fact would Dis courage the Sale of goods. It is this latter Factor which is now beginning to show its effects. High prices Are reducing Public demand which is of course the precise purpose of the Price system always denounced by socialists but now utilized by the British socialist government because it has no alternative. Sir Stafford s policy of discourage ment of Public demand for its effects slowly but clearly. Public demand for certain articles has declined gave social credit Liberal and . The second choices of the . Voters num Bering 2-15 gave , .126 and Liberal 119. Thus even when the . Candidate had gathered his additional votes making his total he was still in a minority to the first choices of his opponents. It May assumed that similar strange transfers were marked in other constituencies where no Ond count revealed their and this after 24 years experience of the in system. Perhaps this remarkable vagary of the human mind by which a voter swings from one extreme to the opposite is in part a Case of voting for the candidate on Sonal grounds rather than on any basis of party policy Ide Biogy principles or political philosophy. But it seems probable especially in the Case of voters not marking a second Choice to be fail ure to understand that there Are Basic philosophies and principles for which candidates stand and which in fact Many times Are More important than any individual. In the recent Alberta election the second Choice system could have been but was not used by the voters to ensure that there would be a satisfactory opposition one that could have provided Ari acceptable alternative to the pres ent administration. The conclusion seems to be that the voters of Alberta still require a lot of training in the new voting when shall we two meet again fight Over banking by r. L. Curthoys Melbourne there Are mixed feelings in the Commonwealth parliamentary labor now convinced of its a Wisdom by the series of labor reverses it has evoked beginning with the de party concerning the decision of i feat of the. Victorian labor gov the prime minister or. Chifley 10 carry the fight for the nationalization of banking from the High Ern ment last november and culminating in the. Resounding rejection in May of the Commonwealth War in Palestine system and efficiently. How to use it zionism on the offensive because people cannot or will not pay existing prices. As a result supplies of these things Are More plentiful and the government has been Able therefore to relax its rationing and control system notably in furniture clothing and even a some foodstuffs. This beginning is Small. Britain is still bursting like other countries with the pressures of inflation which All the government s subsidies and controls cannot hide. But a begin Ning has been made in the solution of the Basic problem of excessive Public demand for goods. How has this beginning been made has it been made by a Brand new socialist system a painless Miracle of plan Ning such As the . Is constantly promising us in can Ada no it has been made by the oldest and most orthodox mechanism of the free Economy by the Price system. The Price system has registered in Britain As Here the fact that the Public is demanding More goods than the econ omy can possibly provide even working under full steam. As prices have risen the Public has been forced to buy less and this reduced far in Only a few begun to relieve the upward pressure on prices. This process has not gone far in Britain because the Price system cannot operate satisfactorily in an Economy Reg u lated by the state with Price ceilings fixed wages and Gigantic subsidies which blur the existing state of that econ omy. The Point however is that the British government Only began to grapple with inflation when it allowed the Price system to operate even in a limited Field and when it held Down Public purchasing Power by heavy taxes and budget other words when it relied on the very machinery of free Enterprise which socialism denounces and de tests. Here the . Parts company from the British govern ment which it used to Call its Mentor and Model. For the . Does not propose to reduce Public purchasing Power but to increase it by higher wages by subsidies and vastly increased government spending. It rejects out of hand As a crime committed by. The capitalist system and the government the operations of the Price system. It considers unnatural and inhuman the fact that the Price system is accurately reflect ing today the excessive Public demand for goods above the capacity of the Economy to Supply them and it refuses to let the Price system discourage that demand and thus in due course reduce prices. In Short the . Is promising the very painless Miracle which or. Dalton tried to deliver in Britain and almost smashed the National Economy in his failure. Or. Diefenbaker proclaims his Faith or. John Diefenbaker s speech in. Winnipeg this week looked very much like a rehearsal for his nomination speech in the forthcoming conservative parly convention. As such it was an effective speech designed to Appeal to just about everybody except the communists and socialists. As a prospective candidate for the conservative leadership or. Diefenbaker is compelled to talk the language of practical poli tics to avoid offending any Large Section of voters and to make arge promises customary in All candidates and parties. But it is. As a serious student of history and Public affairs that or Diefenbaker is much More impressive and it is in this role that he has left his. Imprint on the debates of. Parliament where in the con the latest reports that the Arab states May want to re new the War in Palestine even i True Are probably inspired Muc More by political than by Militar reasons. On a Frank calculation o military strength they have Little excuse for wishing to resume fight ing that has already gone badly against them. What then is be Hind the move the Best answer seems to b . Voting in Alberta there have been some curious disappointing and some satisfactory results from the. Proportional representation voting system in cities and from the single transferable ballot in one member Rural constituencies. The Edmonton journal has been Delv ing into these results and finds grounds for believing that in Cal Gary and Edmonton . Has assured minority representation in elections since it was introduced in 1924. The journal comments that in the recent election had it not been for the new voting system the government might have won every seat and been without any a position in the House. One of the disappointing results . In Edmonton was the de i feat of the independents Leader or. Page who was the last opposition candidate to be counted out he lost because the second choices of the two Defeated social credit entries naturally went to other . Candidates and or. Page had no party running mates whose second choices he might have received. A curious item in the Edmon on vote was that "300 electors who voted t for the bitterly anti socialist Manning voted 2 for the Arch socialist in two of the Rural seats where a second count was required the . Were Low men their second choices being transferred. But out of their ballots Only. 600 were marked for second Choice and 300 were in addition of the -600 . Second choices majority went to social credit. In Beaver River the first count Serva Tive party he has had practically no Competition. Viewing Canada s future with his knowledge of our history Eon St in ution and Law or. Diefenbaker conceives and promises on behalf of his party a society of free Enterprise from which the state would remove abuses and release the full energies of the private Enterprise. Only communists and socialists will quarrel with this general Ideal. But whether the conserva Tive party is the Best vehicle for the maintenance of such a society is another question. When or. Diefenbaker begins to discuss the details of a conservative in taxes Economy abolition of import restrictions and so runs headlong into the record of his party in parliament for his party has promised a vast expansion of government spending along with tax reductions a vast expansion that the Arab states want to the Palestine Issue in a state of ferment before the meeting of the general Assembly the United nations next month. A quiet pal Estine they fear might be regarded As a form of acquiescence in the victories of Israel and a willingness to accept terms dictated by the present superiority of zionist arms. Nothing but. Harm will come to the Arab Case from such a rash step. They will be even More guilty of defying the United nations than the zionists have been in repeatedly breaking the truce for which they like the arabs to a lesser extent have suffered the merited censure of the Security Council beyond the fortunes of War Anc More important Are the principles of a political settlement w h i c h alone can bring peace to Palestine the arabs will be in a false Posi Tion if they forget that Central fact but the dominant fact in pales Tine today As the economist makes Clear in a significant article is that the zionists Are now on the men and arms Are arriving steadily for the zionist army. At least destitute Arab refugees have fled Palestine. There has even been an. Israeli Sug ing the question of the conditions under which the arabs would be allowed to re enter the the economist asking in its summary for a negotiated Settle ment says the United states alone has the Power and the above All with zionism to turn the Scales in favor of peace. This is True. But the chances of the United states acting this Way Are smaller than Ever in an elec Tion year. Three Basic facts which would pit the Middle East against Britain and the United states far sighted zionist leaders admit this fact but since age ill health and the hatred of the Ond rate for the first rate All combined to reduce or. Weizmann to an illustrious figure head without effective Power the Quality of far sightedness has not been conspicuously marked in zionist counsels. Finally and above ail the authority of the United nations must be maintained. Here there can be no Retreat no evasion no surren apart altogether from this an Der ii is intolerable that also of the state apparatus which or. Diefenbaker considers already appallingly Large and dangerously socialistic and a system of. Trade largely to the British countries which would certainly make it impossible to remove but would make it necessary to in Rease the present restrictions on United states imports. However or. Diefenbaker has Given his party and its convention Good Deal to think about and a Ood Deal to clarify. It would be useful to the electors who must finally return a verdict on the arty and convention if or. Drew he other major contender for the arty leadership would speak his Nind now As or. Diefenbaker has one. Unless a settlement is reached with in a specified time the zionists will recover their Freedom of action and attack the arabs. To this notice of intended aggression the Security Council fortunately has reacted with exemplary vigor. From the Golden books Francis Bacon of truth doth any Man doubt it there were taken out of men s minds vain opinions flattering Hopes false valuations imaginations As one would and the like but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things melancholy and indisposition and unpleasing to themselves ? today s scripture take therefore no thought saying what shall we eat or what shall we or wherewithal shall we be clothed for after All these things do the gentiles for your heavenly father know eth that be have need of All these things. But seek be first the kingdom of god. And his righteousness and All these things shall be added unto you. 6 31-33. Strengthened by continued help from abroad zionist arms now control Haifa Lydda Kamleh and Nazareth. They have overrun most of Western Galilee and have Active plans concerning Jerusalem. The zionist Leader or David Ben Gurion has announced that Israel no longer can regard the partition boundaries As final. Expanded zionist plans for Immi Gration provide for new Comers a month and it is hoped in the next five years to bring in jewish refugees and 000 other jews from Eastern Europe. As the economist Points out Israel in the. Form proposed by the United nations could hot absorb so Many in so Short a time. Once again the practical Conse Quence of jewish policy is to make control of most of Palestine a be the zionist attitude to Arab refugees the economist explains makes sense Only if most or indeed All of Palestine is to be included in the jewish state. The Arab refugees were systematically strip Ped of All their belongings before they were sent on their trek to the Frontier. Household belong Ings stores clothing All had to Lysis three Basic facts have t be remembered As governing re Ali is. First zionists and arabs Are nixed up together and much As hey hate it they must continue o live together. One Day Palestine s tribe will end in a settlement t can end in no other Way. There tiny be Many sullen truces follow d by a new Appeal to Battle. In he end there must be agreement he Only question is How much Lood has spilt before one arty has the Wisdom to propose the terms of., a. Settlement the other can accept. Secondly it is dangerous Folly to forget that the Middle East is one of the threatened frontiers across which the struggle Between free Dom and tyranny is being waged. In its own interest zionism must dread an angry Arab vendetta attempts should be made to bully the Assembly by Arab threats or zionist pressure. Both alike must be resisted and the supremacy of the writ of the United nations pro claimed and enforced. Court to Hie judicial committee of government s Appeal for Power permanently to control rents and prices. One risk of the Appeal is that the privy Council s judgment will be so Long delayed that Bank ing will still be a live Issue at the general election about a year hence. On its record it is an he privy Council in London. The decision to Appeal like the decision to introduce the Bill for the a Linna ligation of the private Banks just a year earlier was eminently a Persona decision of the prime minister for whom nationalization has become an obsession an All consuming passion indeed it Lias been so Ever since Issue to be avoided. There is of course a third group of obdurate leftists whom the depression of the High court has hardened in stub Early 1930 s. When the Banks in or. Chifley s judgment aggravated the suffering entailed in thai distressful time by substituting for their Liberal Extension of credit in born support of nationalization. They hold that it is an integral part of labor policy the socialization of production distribution and. Exchange and that having the labor View the years of buoyancy thai ils hand 10 the the mediately preceded the depression government must on no account a policy of drastic deflation. Us Baclic the political consequences. By Moder ate opinion the banking legislation has been detested not Only for what it accomplished or sought to accomplish but also for what it implied that through a monopoly of banking the government might acquire such menacing Powers Over Commerce and Industry generally that it i glut if it Willied put the business Community in Thrall private banking wrote or. Chifley in his minority report As a member of the Royal com which reviewed the australian banking system a year or two later make the Community the victim of every wave of optimism and pessimism that surges through the minds of financial Spe and in the rank and Ile of the labor party Are bitter Nemories of what is regarded As the raw Deal which the common health government led by labor rime minister j. H. Scullin from 1929 to 1931 received from the Banks in to find a a out of the depression especially by unemployment. But today there Are divided counsels. A year ago there was a minority who disliked nationalize Ion As an extreme measure and iced that the controls of the Pri ate Banks established by or. Chif by s banking legislation of 1943 ave the government the substance f economic Power and were Bereford sufficient. Today these dissidents have been joined by others who while at first adorable to nationalization Are Dom. Or. Chifley s act sought to of Craic on the private Banks by empowering the Commonwealth Bank to Purchase their shares or acquire them compulsorily to re place their directors by ils o w n nominees and to take Over their businesses either by agreement or compulsion. It provided for the nesting the Commonwealth Bank of the private Banks assets ind liabilities and for the payment of compensation and it enabled the government to prohibit the carrying on of banking business by priv Etc Banks and until this pro libation to compel the private Banks to carry on. The Appeal to the privy Council involves several aspects of the constitutional pow to of the Commonwealth. T he death of Frederick Philip Grove is an occasion for melancholy thought concerning tie Light of the creative writer in Canada. Grove did not begin to de end on literature for his living until he was Well into Middle age he had a Small family. He was sex remely industrious. He wrote chiefly in the most popular of Al literary types the novel. But he ived in poverty and probably Ould not have lived at All if his cause Etc by e. K. Brown Star dusting the chief w e do not know what Grad of tour the British gave to chief Micka Boss Man for Ken Gest Ion to the Security Council that1 natives when he visit be left behind a Factor which de the land of the great White father recently but no doubt i Vas the works Complete to the Odd elderly Duchess the red car pet and the City of London Gold plate. Whatever it was it has been highly effective. Chief Micka is impressed and the Bonds of Empire solidified. The Art of entertaining the vis Ting firemen is one of the High Points of British diplomacy. Chief Micka is not the Only one to come see and totter. Of course it is not to be presumed that chief Micka got the same Grade of torn As a Canadian Cabinet minister on the Loose in London. There is a very traditional protocol govern ing the visits of colonials. A minor chieftain in British East Africa uness he occupies an area of parti Cular strategic importance would not float around at the same Altitude As Cabinet ministers from the self governing dominions h e might be wined dined and Star dusted by Only minor members of the aristocracy such As wives of knights Bachelor who come very Low in the order of precedence while his colleague from the Dominion would be entitled to sit next to maids of Honor to the. Queen Regnant or even on Spe Cial occasions next to the wives of younger sons of Dukes of the helps to account for the total destitution of the vast majority of the refugees. In some areas once the villages and settlements had been cleared in this manner jewish settlers were brought in to take the place of the outgoing arabs. Al though the israeli authorities have not. Publicly committed themselves to a refusal to allow the refugees to return to their Homes they have shown extreme Reserve in. Discuss these Are matters beyond the Cen of colonials. It is not some thing which the stranger can Bone up in a minute or two without chancing some hideous social Blun Der such As the placing of a Sher Iff principal next to the wife of a son of a life Baron. Nor is the technique new. It is As old As the colonies them selves and it is burnished by use until it has proved itself Al most irresistible. Sir Wilfred Laur Ier once described it in action. He was speaking from experience. He had been through uie fire of Dia mond tiaras. He had escaped unscathed but he was impressed nonetheless. This is what he said we were looked upon not so much As individual men but abstractly As colonial statesmen to be impressed and hobbled. The englishman is As Businesslike in his politics particularly his Exter Nal politics As in business even if he covers his purposefulness with an air of polite indifference. Once convinced that the colonies were Worth keeping he Bent to the work of drawing them close with in the orbit of London with marvellous skill and persistence. In this Campaign which no one can appreciate until he had been i n the thick of it social pressure is the subtlest and most effective Brce. It is hard to stand up against the flattery of a. Gracious i chief Micka s Heady comments Are tribute to the work of the successors to these Duchesse. The reports of his last interview Are scanty and they mention whether or not he was humming Rule Britannia As he boarded his ship but they do say that he was impressed with the vigor of eng and a nation where he pointed out he had not seen one Lazy Man lying under a tree chief Micka As far As we can gather received Only the Grade our tour. Nothing More was need id evidently. He was preceded however by a gentleman from the Middle East whose name eludes wife had not assisted in maintain ing the household and if he had not supplemented pie meagre proceeds from his books by work of other kinds. When he was almost seventy he worked for a season As a manual labourer. The highest official literary Honor in Canada is the Royal society s Gold medal prove sold his medal to buy the cheapest radio he could find. When i was one of the editors of the University of Toronto quarterly i asked Grove to write on the position of the Canadian Lovelist. The article. The plight of Canadian fiction appeared in july 193s and i continue to be ice that it is a statement of great merest and importance. Like Al most everything that appears in he academic quarterlies it receive d Little popular attention and now hat Grove is dead i should like to bring it to the notice of a larger and the general Reader. Grove stresses this fissure. The academic to him to be informed courageous but they write does not have a serious Impact on the Public. The popular critics do not in his opinion know their Job. They tend to judge books by the breadth of their Appeal not by the depth of their vision or the Beauty of their form. The books they recommend to the Public Are not often the Best books and thus they clog the Channel from the serious writer to the readers he covets. There s More truth in this charge then we May like to admit. People Are veiling about books in Media with arge circulations who do not know that a Good Book is and would not care if Vou told them. Worst. Offender us but who was quite obviously Given a More impressive reception including the visit to the Fleet at Anchor and the 21-gun Salute. We have not been Able to Dis cover effect of it upon this character. We Are however pre pared to bet. That he has gone Home thoroughly convinced that the Sorn will indeed never set. Right now at this very moment. He is probably regaling his com patriots with the Story of that London visit. Not that kind of a we can hear him saying a Dame of the Royal order of the Grove s image for the state of Canadian literature is among the lost Brilliant i have Ever seen we have a bookshelf reaching Halifax to Victoria and on t stands one single Book written in a Frenchman transient in can ten years later what can e set beside the incomparable Maria what ther serious Book continues to be Videly read year in and year out crimps the poems of e. J. Pratt whom Grove admired with intensity. But two books leave the shelf a horrible vacancy. For the vacant bookshelf the responsibility rests says Grove with some combination of these four factors writers publishers critics and the Public. The publishers seem to him to have done1 Well. Indeed any one who has known As he did the enthusiasm and idealism of the late Hugh Eayrs of the Macmillan com Pany or of lome Pierce who still presides at the Ryerson press cannot doubt for an instant that our publishers care More for the Muse than for Money bags. Again and again they bring out books that they know will lose Money be cause they believe those books in Grove s heaviest blows Are for the Public. The Public is not inter ested in books As it is in some other countries Sweden and Denmark arc examples that come to mind at once. The Public in Canada is extraordinarily indifferent to books written by canadians or about Canada. Canadians arc at Bottom says Grove not inter ested in their own certainly there can be no consider Able Canadian literature certainly there can be no career As a serious creative writer in Canada if this it is somewhat less so than it Vas ten years ago. The ast War led a Large number of canadians to think new thoughts about their country and their own relation to 1. The troubled relations Between he two great world Powers be tween which we now lie forces us of go on thinking those thoughts. So far these new thoughts have not aided literature in any decisive Vay we Are an in aesthetic people and will probably always be Lens concerned with the arts than the swedes or the Danes. But it is nevertheless True that serious Young writer would find t a Little easier now to make his Vay than it was for Frederick Grove when he published his first Book which was also his Best Over Prairie that Beautiful record of the Manitoba Countryside in All the a canons of he year is the most remarkable portent. Literary work to come out of the Vest. The Best Way to Mark the critics do not fare so death is not to pursue our i have alluded to the fissure be melancholy train of thought any tween the academic but to read Over Prairie b. W. Birthdays j. F. Stouffer. Holmfield. Man born Alton. On. Aug. 28. 1s59. G. H. Smith. Winni Peg born London. Ont., aug. 2fl. 18s2. Frederick b. Miles Winnipeg born London eng land aug. 29, 3852. And if one has read it before to read to again. H bears Many rereading. Perhaps if there had been More writers like Grove for the writers Loo have n responsibility the critics Public would have been saved from their sins ;