The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-11-24
Conflict Phan-
tom Or Reality
Phan-

So Enthusiastically hostile has been the re-
Spouse of the official and semi-official
British press to the intensified offensive of
American imperialism against English i'm
perialism that the Wall Street press no longer
attempts to conceal the antagonism between
the two powers. N
During the years that the worldwide eco
nomic conflict between the two imperialst
giants has been raging, the American capt.
+oFN+ 0ress v'os blithelv ignoring it while
talking twaddle about The role of the two
nglish-speaking nations as the safe
quad of the peace of all mankind. The
world struggle for oil was interpreted by the
capitalist press not as a fundamental I'M
perialist conflict but as merely a fight be-
tween two groups of oil magnates The
rout of the British rubber monopoly by the
department of commerce under Hoover, in
spite of the direct intervention of the gov
erpment on behalf of the American rubber
trust, was interpreted as an isolated struggle
that had no bearing whatsoever on any other
question The antagonisms over PREPARATIONS,
the conflict of interests in the enforcement
of the Dawes plan, the role of Latin-Ameri-
can pawns of yankee Imperialism within the
policy and leadership and aid the United
States in its drive to wrest leadership of
European reaction from Britain, were all
ignored.
But. since the Armistice Day speech of Cool
idge wherein he threw off all pretense of try
ing longer to conceal the Anglo-American
santagonisms, it has been impossible to ignore
the real situation. After few days of be-
wilderment at the aggressiveness of the at
tack upon British naval policy, the London
press began the counter blast and made no
attempt to conceal its fury at the charges of
Coolidge The New Statesman in a sharp
attack says;
After years of sonorous silence only pune
tuated and then by the utterance of some
discreet inanity, he suddenly delivered sort
of dying kick with viciousness of which few
people on this side of the Atlantic would have
supposed him capable"
Not merely did the London press react
with feigned establishment or real fury, but
the English ruling class are busy mobilizing
"opinion'' from the farthest sections of its
far-flung empire. From South Africa, the
former Boer nationalist and present renegade
and agent of British Imperialism, Jan Chris
tian SHUTS, expresses the hope that "the
United States will not spoil her record peace
policy by charging her policy of naval con-
struction.'
Meanwhile the race for naval ornaments
is on. The gathering war clouds that have
been perceptible to all careful political OBJ
servers for a long period of time are now so
dark and so menacing that not even such a
persistent advocate of Anglo-American re-
sponsibility for the peace of the world as
the New York World can ignore it. But
according to that organ of Wall Street rapa-
city these antagonisms are only phantoms,
not realities:
Relations between Great Britain and the
United States at a point where unless
there is decided turn for the better they arr
almost certain to become much worse. There
exists, as both the Prime Minister and the
lA president have recently admitted, misunder-
standing on both sides of the Atlantic This
misunderstanding is expressing itself not only
popular irritation and suspicion in the less
responsible press.
"The hope of understanding rests upon
the creation of a body of opinion in both
tries which is sufficiently clear headed and
resOute to focus the attention of both govern
ments and both nations upon their genuine
common interests rather than upon those ap-
parent interests which now divide them For
it may confidently be asserted that both gov
ernments at this moment pursuing phan-
TOMS"
Certainly it is not to be expected that the
World one of the most persistent propa-
gandists of the dawn of peace" newspaper
that hailed every exhibition of imperialist
chicanery, every maneuver of capitalist diplo-
mats as indications of the beginning of new
era of world peace to suddenly admit that it
was either deliberate liar or a victim of
lies. A newspaper that hailed the peace"
of Versailles as the end of the epoch of wars
and the dawn of a millennium, that called the
league of nations an agency that would pre-
vent war; that extolled the Locarno con-
spiracy against the Soviet Union and the first
attempt to create a bloc of European debtor
nations against Uncle Shylock" as the guar
antee of peace between the great powers,
could not be expected to confess that it had
been busy sowing pacifist illusions in behalf