Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1926-08-01
ECONOMIC TESTS
COMING TO BRITAIN
Open Mind and Seriousness
of View Succeed Mob
PuISationS of Past.
By EDWARD PRICE BELL.

rope, is passing through a historical
crisis of the first order. Funda-
mentally. as the writer sees IT, TINS
crisis represents a struggle of the
European masses for the larger I'D
erty and the greater happiness which
springs from widely diffused pros
perity.
Europe's workers are too poor.
They know they are too poor. They
have heard of Americas economic
progress. They are saying to their
leaders, to their elite; SHOW US a
way out of this wilderness.
Certain nations OF Continental Eu-
rope have political crises OF crucial
character. These nations have not
found themselves constitutionally.
Their traditions are not those OF
Great Britain. They are waverinG
somewhere between the realms OF au-
tocracy and democracy.
Great Britain has no political crisis.
No one demands that the King shall
go nor that Parliament shall shut up
nor that any part of the constitution
shall be scrapped. Great Britain s
crisis is purely and simply a socia!
and economic crisis.
Moreover, the social crisis, so far
as the phrase suggests class warfare,
seems to have no really serious fea-
lures. 1 never have been able to OBJ
serve in the past, and cannot observe
now, that the British masses are af'
fected by any considerable antipathy
to the British classes as such. Brit
ish workmen have no objection to
education or refinement or decent leis-
ure or high standard of living. On
the contrary, they respect these
things, as they respect the gentle
man, so long as he is a gentleman.
What disturbs the British working
class is not social distinctions, but an
economic condition that strikes 1t as
squalid unjust, insufferable and un.
necessary.
Is it unnecessary? Is there some
thing wrong that good will, energy,
talent, science, modern methods and
machinery can put right? This is the
burning question of the whole posi-
ton. Employers ana employees. the
fortunate and unfortunate, are too
far asunder.
Understanding, harmony of endeav-
or, between the complementary fac
tors of production - these are the
great detectives toward which Brit
ish spiritual and Intellectual forces
are moving. And these forces never
before were so earnest as now. Great
Britain is aroused more thoroughly,
Is intent and experimentally construc.
tive, over larger area of her popula-
ton than she was in the darkest
hours of the World War.
Toll of thought for the national
betterment"-the expression Of Eng
lands greatest economist, Sir Josiah
stamps found in all sections of the
community.
1t is a great spectacle-this spec
tacle of the morality and the intelli-
gence of one of the foremost units of
advanced civilization rsIlving to 4
world honored flag. Dark as the OUT
look it, one looks in vain for despair.
Yet it is a fact that the actual meth
DDS and mechanism of recovery are
yet to be evolved.
Too Many Ideas.
If anything, too many ideas-not
too few-are Great Britain's embar.
Fassment now. There are not, of
course, too many good ideas, but the
task of winnowing the grain from the
chaff is overwhelming.
Into all the important details of a
situation as fateful as it is complex
/ am hoping, with competent assist
ence, to make more or less fruitful
inquiries. 1t is a. subject that more
and more enlists the sympathy and
the interest, if not the anxiety, of the
world.
If students of government and Of
economics are turning their thoughts
Increasingly to the United States to
plumb the secret of it's growing
wealth, so are they studying Great
search of lessons for battling against
Britain, with it's problems of geogra-
ply, raw materials and population, in
conditions that threaten a degree of
general poverty incompatible with the
stability of capitalistic democracy.
What are some of the surface as
poets of Great Britain's profoundly
altered mood? Symptoms of postwar
feverishness-the high temperature.
the quickened pulse, the thirst for an
unending sequence of eXcitement-are
gone. Great Britain's eye reflects the
grave and resolute spirit of a. nation
peI-plexed or a. nation heavily bur
dened, but of a nation calmly bent
upon measures of redress.
To dine at any leading hotel or res
taurant in London at this time is to
have an experience totally different
from that of a similar occasion as late
as 1924. Great crowds assembled
then. Dining rooms overfiowed. Lob
bies were packed. 1t was q bedlam OF
pleasure.
Chill Winter has fallen over all this
do not mean that these dining rooms
are desoIate or empty now. But al
most indescribable Is the TRANSITIONAL,
tion.. No jostling concourse of revel
ers. Just moderate gatherings OF
quiet diners.
Immediate postwar stimuli nc
longer please. Syncopated music runs
Ill with the national preoccupation
scrhf IN moi
Jump to jazz; one grieveS or rejoices
with composers like Mozart, Verdi
Chopin, Mendelssohn, Tschaikowsky
and Mascagni.
Prohibition is unknown in Great
Britain. British statesmen, whether
opposed to alcohol or opposed to the
social evil of betting, do not. push reck
lessly into the domain of the moralist
and educator.
Fox-trotting and one-stepping ant
Waiting convulsed all England fol
half decade after the arimistice. II
was a sort hurt peoples ecstatic escape
To the British capital focked the
greatest jazz artists of the world. Re
taxation. forgetfulness, joy-oases 0,
Joy in measureless wastes Of bereave
ment-these were England.
It is different now. Britons have
come to see that the ar1nistice wa.
not the end, but the beginning O
their latest test as an independent
misunderstanding and freedom-serv
ing people. So the friyolities, gen
orally speaking. have had their iaunt
ing day and passed into oblivion.
Seriousness of temper, showing n
look, word and act, has supervenet
in all the principal walks. if not il
every nook and corner. of the coun
try's activity. Science, literature, ar
and the drama are sensitive to thu
new emotions. Invention is at con
cert pitch.
Doctrinnaire thinking, pride of in
telIect, overconfldence in cultura
background are, perceptibly less dis
dainful than they were in days o
NARRATIVE huoYancN. There was