Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1943-12-04
Forced Labor After the War

william Green, president of the
American Federation of Labor, has
issued a statement calling upon
President Roosevelt to oppose any
plan to force German workers to
help rebuild Russia after the war.
Mr.. Green's protest was evoked by
what he calls "diSturbing rumors"
circulating in Britain and else
where to the effect that Premier
Stain will propose the drafting of
German labor in millions to recon-
struct the immense areas of Russia
devastated by the Nazi armies. In
the discussions overseas which those
rumorS have caused, spokesman for
Nazi-dominated peoples have ap-
parently approved the idea and
suggested that it be applied to their
portions of Europe as we'll. 1t is
argued that Hitler and his hench-
men have deliberately ruined every
country under their control and
have decimated or devitalized their
populations with the intent of leav-
ing even defeated Germany and
its people in better shape to recover
than their enemies. Therefore, the
conclusion runs that the pick of
Germany's workers ought to be con-
scripted for years of compulsory
labor service abroad, in order to re-
dress the postwar balance and pre-
vent Germany from recovering
ahead of its victims.
There is certainly an element of
retributive justice in the idea. be-
cause the Nazi regime has already
established what amounts to sys-
tenn of slave labor on a gigantic
scale. Millions of human beings,
men and women, war prisoners and
civilians, have been brigaded in la
Dor gangs all the way from France
to Russia and from Norway to the
Balkans by methods varying from
brute force to yelled compulsion,
and those millions are today playing
a vital role in maintaining the
efficiency of German industry and
agriculture, depleted by drafts of it's
own manpower for military service.
Nothing like this systematic use Of
forced labor has been seen in mod
ern times. 1t suggests revival Of
the slave empires Of antiquity, from
Assyria to Rome, when servitude
was the inevitable fate of the van
pushed.
Yet just because the Nazi regime
has revived so reprehensible a sys-
tenn, Mr.. Green, as the spokesman
for free labor, protests against it's
being made a precedent and grated
on the structure of the postwar
world. History has abundantly
shown that slavery is the deadly foe
of free labor, exerting an influence
on the labor market comparable to
the action of "Gresham's Law"
whereby bad money drives good
money out of circulation. Mr.. Green
Is therefore vigilant to prevent the
perpetuation anywhere of compul-
sorry working conditions and prac-
tees which might have dangerous
repercussions of incalculable mag
nitude and scope.
1t need not be taken for granted
that these current rumors are we'll
founded. Nothing official has yet
emanated from Moscow to lend them
credibility. Yet the fact that they
seem to have wide circulation and
to have drawn approving comment
In certain European quarters iusti-
f1es Mr. Green's disquietude. It
would be an i'll omen if postwar re-
construction were based on what
Mr.. Green describes as "a plan which
by its very nature is completely in
consistent with the postwar objec-
tives of freedom-loving nations of
the world"