The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1925-02-21


Smashing blows are being delivered from the
most unexpected sources these days at the theory
of the inherent inability for modern industrial or
ganization on the part of backward nations" over
whom the western nations have thrown a canopy
of lies and misrepresentation.
Writing for the Weekly Westminster, London,
Paul Scott MOwrer, who is also a correspondent
of the Chicago Daily News, gives some facts con
corning the Rffans and their war for independence
from which some very important conclusions can
be drawn. We quote:
The Ritfans have taken up all the old Spanish
field telephone wires and installed six main
lines connecting the military frontiers with the cap
tal. They like children with toy. They
telephone Unfortunately. Their teIephonists sit at
tables, like Europeans, and keep record in book
like EuropeansL The sultan has two motor cars!
He is building road straight across the country!
He has motor boat in which he goes along the
coast at night under the very Of the Spanish!
All these things the talk of the tents and villages
turnout North Africa. The pregnant deduction is
made that modern progress does not after all, de-
pend upon Europeans.
"When you back after the war;" was told
in Aidir, cit will not be like this. You will fine,
modern city, with harbor and tramways and hand
buiIdnes-like Paris or London"
All of the above means that brought into con-
tact with modern methods of communication and
transportation, the Riffans, whom the western
world classifes as barbarians have within very
short space of time made themselves masters of
several very intricate industrial processes.
The capitalist nations have another test by
which they determine the degree of civilization"
reached by the races and language grOups-success
in warfare. The Rifians, once they came into pos
sessions of quantities of up-tO-date instruments of
warfare, demonstrated an aptitude which has
routed the representatives of one of the oldest
cultures in Europe-that of Spain. 1t was not so
long ago that the japanese also were termed bar
barians.
The truth of the matter is that there are no
races nations devoid of intellectual capacity
that they cannot become modern in the sense in
which the word is generally used Backward races,
so-called, races without an advanced industrial
system based on machinery with it's accompanying
phenomena of universal lteracy and complex So
cial organization are not naturally incapable of
progress in this direction but have preserved their
primitive cultures because of geographical and
climatic conditions lack of contact with advanced
industrial nations, etc.
In short, nations and races are Backward" not
for biological but for historical reasons.
1t is becoming more and more obvious as the
revolt of colonial peoples brown, black and yellow,
against the imperiaist nations grows that once
contact with an industrial civilization has been
established, no racial or national group but will
adopt modern methods and adjust itself to the new
social organization necessitated thereby.
Imperialism is digging it's own grave by forcing
the colonial peoples into the world arena where
they quickly learn the mysteries of the machine
gun and gas engine, of the hand granada and the
telephone, of heavy artillery and the locomotive.