Evening star., 1938-01-02

In late october, the Windsors announce
a trip to America to STUDY housing; in
early November 1t is Cancelled when organ
lied labor here objects to their travelling
with Charles E. Bedaux, industrial engi-
neer. "Bedaux System" to labor, is syn.
onymous with the "speed-up" system.
IT IS 20 years since the United States
entered the World War, since draft
boards and "Over There" and rockies
stumbling over each other on the drill
fields of cantonments and the strange sight
Of airplanes somersaulting in the clouds.
Americans were naive people then, rest
ing comfortably on established values
A good many gray hairs and gray
thoughts have accumulated since then.
There has been lot Of boiling and dis
tilling of human values The issues that
were beginning to split the world asunder
in 1914 have become clear-cut and 1875
peculiar claim to place in history, it
may be, will be that it was the year in
which mans political and social thinking
was crystallized around two antagonistic
nuclei.
There are those who think the state Is
man-made contrivance, partnership of
geographically contiguous individuals estab-
lshed to carry out certain mutually bene-
ficial enterprises. They hold that the state
has no excuse for being unless it serves
individuals. Republicans. Democrats, Con-
seryatives, Laborites, Socialists and Royal
lists differ somewhat among themselves
from time to time as to the best methods
Of managing these activities, but they are
agreed on the main thesis. BY and large,
the vast majority Of Americans. English
men, Frenchmen, Scandinavians, Eskimos,
Lithuanians and Chinese seem to belong
to this group.
There are. on the other hand, those who
think that the state Is its own excuse for
being, super-organism existing in its
own right. The individual lives only to
serve 1t. as cannon-fodder or otherwise.
Vast groups Of men and women the world
over seem to have accepted this idea
wholeheartedly-in Russia, Germany. italy.
Japan. They have proudly accepted the
status of cells in the body Of the state. It
is easier somehow to be cell than q
man.
All this became clear In 1887 It be-
came clear when the Mayor of New York
made some uncomplimentary remarks
about the dictator Of Germany. Adolf
Hitler thought the United States ought to
punish Mr.. La Guardia. He was thinking
OF Mr.. La Guardia. not as q free-born
American citizen. but as a constituent
part Of some organism-like a red blood
corpuscle in a whales I'm.
The sad part of it is that the whole
history Of life on earth seems to set up the
organic state as the next step in evolu-
ton. Single-celled protozoan, primitive
Communism Of the sponge, the cell re-
public OF snake and lizard the cell autocracy
OF mouse or man. Let us hope there is no
analogy between biology and political
science.
RLoOD PuRGEs in Russia. Americans
are shocked. Some of the most emf
nent Of the idealists who followed Lenin
twenty years ago die before stalin's firing
squads. Before they are shot they confess
to the whole world over the radio waves
that they have engaged in reasonable plots
against the Soviet state.
Unbelievable, the world says These men
must be victims of an evil hypnotism thus
to damn themselves. Not so, say others.
These men never were Communists at
heart. They were anarchists, egalitarians,
vulgarians. They adopted communism as
a means to an end-to destroy the state
they hated To others, 1t became an end
in itself, means Of setting up a new state
as tyrannical and evil as the old. They had
their work to do all over again and they
died in the doing of 1t.
Russia Is a greater enigma than ever in
1887. For above the Arctic Circle, in the
desolate wastes of the Kola peninsula, the
worlds newest cities are rising with paved
streets, neon lights, 2-year-old American
movies. Civilization moves northward over
its last frontier.
Russian aviators fly from Moscow to
Oregon over the North Pole. It Is the
shortest route from Asia. Hee, at last, is
the Norwest Passage sought by Cabot and
Hendrick Hudson and Frobisher and Sir
John Franklin. Commerce in winged
caravans some day may congest the road
these flyers blazed. Death-dealing armies
also may be transported over those roads.
Russia claims the North Pole and estab-
fishes temporary colony there on the ice.
It drifts hither and yon on the frozen
ocean. This is not 80 fantastic as it
seems. Eventually, Mr.. Charles L. Mitchell,
seated in a steam-heated ONCE in the
United States Weather Bureau, will be able
to predict tomorrow's weather much bet
ter because of this lonely little group Of
Russians at the North Pole.
Speaking Of tn North Pole and Russians