Evening star., 1947-08-18
Between the Devil

The staunchest advocate of the free
enterprise system must have felt twinges
of misgiving as he read the details of
program which the Attlee government is
preparing to put into operation in Britain.
Mr.. Churchill was at his eloquent best
as he ripped into the extraordinary peace
time powers which the Labor govern
ment has secured from an uneasy Parlia-
ment. IT warn you solemnly," he told the
British people, that if you submit your
selves to totalitarian compulsion and
regimentation of our national life and
labor there lies before you an almost
measureless prospect of misery and tribu-
lation of which national bankruptcy will
be the first result, hunger the second and
the dispersal or death Of large pro-
portion of our population the third"
That is indeed a solemn warning. And
it may be that Mr.. Churchill is right.
But what has he to propose as an alterna-
tive to a hard-pressed nation? Il am
sure" said Mr.. Churchill that it Is only
by personal effort, free enterprise and
ingenuity" that the people of Britain can
stay alive.
1t would require a considerable stretch
of the imagination to say that this
deserves to be called a program for a
nation that is on the brink of economic
ruin For the fact is, however understand
able the reasons for it, that the British
people as a whole have not been exert
ing that degree of personal effort which
iS tn
And it is because this effort has not been
forthcoming that the Labor government
has asked for and obtained the power
to regulate the individual worker
Mr.. Churchill singles this out for par
ticular attack, declaring that the Labor
government is preparing to deny the
right-"for many centuries deemed funda-
mental in democracy except in time of
mortal WARRIOR every man to choose or
change his employment as he thinks fit. !"
This is the sort of criticism which
greatly weakens the wartime Prime
Minister'S argument. For the Britain of
today Is faced with crisis which Is
hardly less menacing than mortal war,
and in which, as in the case of war, it
cannot afford the luxury of permitting
men to work where they please, or as the
case may be, to refuse to work at all.
When a nation is collapsing in the
economic sense, it is idle to talk OF free
enterprise or freedom of choice for the
individual. To approach the problem IN
terms of traditions that are centuries old
is to ignore the realities of the present.
The great question in Britain today is
how best to wiring from the British
people the maximum productive effort of
which they are capable and how best to
induce them to accept the inevitable
privations. The methods which Mr..
Churchill seems to prefer have been tried
and found wanting. The methods which
Mr. Attlee proposes to adopt, while they
seem more in tune with the realities Of
Britain's position, are not endowed with
great promise.
What we are watching in Britain today
is the sternest test of a free society. The
birthplace of the concept of the dignity
and the freedom of the individual, which
is so dear to us, is trapped between the
devil and the deep blue sea. Will the
British be able to work out their economic
salvation and still retain substantial
measure of freedom? Or will freedom have
to be sacrificed in desperate appeal to
an all-powerful state? We shall shortly
know the answer, and anything that we
can do to mitigate the current British
trend toward totalitarianism most GER
tainly should be done.