PLAIN ENGLISH.

Hokitika Guardian, 7 May 1920, Page 4

PLAIN ENGLISH.

THE DAY OP DARNED HARD WORK. (Sydney ’•Bulletin”). R«s®ia is moving rapidly, and its chameleon ruler’s take on new colors and shapes. In the course of two exceeding brisk years it has tried every one of the nostrums which its Gardens and Judds preach as the remedy for all human ills. It has had tho levy oil capital, the “taking over” of factories and workshops and banks and mines and lands, the management of industries by committees of workmen, the unrestrained issue of paper money has become so cheap that a loaf was worth as much as £5 of it in places, and the repudiation of the public debt 1 . The resulting spasm of prosperity or anarchy or whatever it might be called having spent itself, the high handed rulers have decided that there is no way to rehabilitate Russia, save by Darned Hard Work. A little while ago compulsory labor for everybody was enacted, and because there are huge arrears to catch up the working day was temporarily fixed at 12 hours.

Now some further light is thrown on the situation by I‘bilip Snowden, ex-La-boqr member of tlie British Commons and one of the Leaders of the Socialist movement. Returning from a visit of inspection he reports that the little local Soviets, the pride and joy of the early revolution, arc being quietly but strenuously wiped out. They talked too much, had too many wild ideas about finance and industry, electioneered too much, saved the country too often with their mouths, and kept too many orators and organisers away from pick and shovel industry. In Germany, also, compulsory labor for ablebodied men and women is suggested, and if it hasn’t been suggested in British, it certainly lias been declared emphatically enough that Darned Hard Work will alone save the nation from an appalling disaster. There is indeed no country in the world, except Australia, where there has not been more or less of an awakening to the fact that tho kaleidoscopic lias turned and that the day of hard toil lias arrived. Australia still clings to the faith that a country can grow rich by doing live short day’s languid work per week, two days to expensive amusements, loilowing hardly any but tlie simplest and most primitive industries, and yet demanding as a right, expensive imported luxuries. And it appears lo he istili able to carry on. How is it possible—how comes it that Australia alone is exempt from the nines' demand for Darned Hard Work:' The fact is it is not exempt: it only seems to be. it is hiding tlie truth by loaning loans take the puice of production. Britain and Trance have sworn on borrowing and are trying to reduce tneir old debts. People have left uil lending to Russia and Germany. if some oi the war countries bad in proportion to population the habit oi charging their daily luxuries to posterity on tlie same scale as Australia, these are about tlie amounts that would be pouring in per annum:—

France 2U0,000,000 Italy 21)0,000,000 Germany 380,000,000 Russia 500,000,000

Under such blessed conditions there would be no need yet awhile for any Day of learned Hard Work. Of course tiie thing would bo impossible, for there isn’t enough money in the world to allow four big nations to live in the fool’s paradise that Australia inhabits. And the end of the giddy racket will come here; for arithmetic is tlie same in Australia as elsewhere. Time and space and cause and effect are the same, and the sun won’t stand still to prevent tlie bills falling due. The longer the settlement is postponed the more flaccid the nations muscles will be when it takes its place on the chain-gang.