AFTER VICTORY?

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 3261, 10 May 1943, Page 6

AFTER VICTORY?

FREEDOM OF ENTERPRISE NEEDED FOR PROSPERITY GOVERNMENT OF THE FUTURE [An address to the Farm Equipment Institute at its 49th. Annual 'Convention at Chicago on October 14 and 15, 1942, by • James S. Diincan, president and ■general manager of the MasseyHarris Company Ltd.]

Although it is customary in a gathering such as this to discuss matters pertaining to the implement industry, I have decided to depart from this general rule, not only w because I feel that there are many here, at the fountain head of the farm machinery business, who are better qualified than I to discuss such matters, but more particularly because I feel that the factors which will govern the future of your life’s work and mine are not to be found within the framework of the industry itself, but are almost wholly dependent upon our ability to defeat our enemies and to establish the peace which will follow victory upon a sound and sane basis. In other words, I have sufficient confidence in the resourcefulness and vitality of the farm implement industry to feel but little concern for its future, providing the world we' are going to live in when peace is once more restored is one in which our cause has triumphed, one in which we can operate untrammelled by regimentation, and one in which we can be captains of our own destiny.

In driving down to the station through the streets of Toronto the other day, I was impressed- again by the fact that men in training, men and women in uniform were to be seen everywhere. I find to an everincreasing degree the same martiai spirit prevailing here. This is because you and we together have a common job to do. God grant that our sons and our grandsons and we ourselves again will know these two countries as they used to be —nations not of swords but- of plowshares.

And yet if this is to be, certain things must be brought to pass in the meantime, and thus I come to the subject of my address.

Let me say at the very outset, and this with all the earnestness of a strong conviction, that I believe victory for the United Nations is certain, and furthermore that I have sufficient faith in the realism, not only of the American and the British, the Russian and the Chinese people, but of all those suffering nations which have lived for years under the heel of the oppressor, to believe that when once the tide has turned, we shall follow through to complete and unequivocal military victory. I can see no hope for this world without that.

The two oppressor nations, who, in cold reasoning, soulless greed and shameless ambition, set out to conquer and subjugate not only their weaker neighbours but the whole world, must be crushed so decisively that they will cease to be a threat to mankind, and their peoples must be so punished that they will learn for all time that this brutal defiance of all the laws of God and man does not pay. w . My feelings of optimism and conviction concerning the final outcome of this war are based not only on the fact that the weight of advantage is on our side, but because I earnestly believe that when once free men are when they have finally decided that death is preferable to humiliation and slavery, they -unleash upon their tyrannical and regimented foes a force which cannot be withstood. It is upon this solid rock of conviction in complete military victory that I have anchored my argument concerning the type of world in which we may find ourselves living when victory is achieved. And this victory—what will it be?

Having had our outlook much broadened by adversity, can we have any other use for victory than to make global use of it; in other words, to create such equitable political and ! social conditions throughout the world’s five continents that man’s fertile invention would at last be able to bend the earth’s rich resources to the of the whole human lot? Any vision narrower than a global vision is surely unthinkable today, is surely profoundly unpractical. But before looking forward into the the future, let us take stock of ■ the present. Let us see where we stand. Time, unfortunately, allows me tO' touch only upon the economic side of our present position and upon the economic possibilities inherent in complete victory. Controlled Economy To fight totalitarianism, the WestI ern democracies have introduced conI trolled economy. I have no quarrel

with this. On the contrary, I believe that such a policy is necessary, for war is too serious a business to be left entirely to voluntary regimentation.

I am sure I need not tell this audience that many of these controls have been imperfect, confused, contradictory and harmful. We are inclined at times to compare our efforts with those of our enemies, whose smoothticking economic mechanism appears to be so much more satisfactory than our own, but we should not forget that we have been working at it for only two and a-half years, whereas both Japan and Germany have been operating a war economy at least fifteen years under only the thinnest of camouflage.

I am convinced that as we enter deeper and deeper into this all-embrac-ing war, the controls governing our daily actions will steadily increase. I am optimistic enough to belijeve, however, that as we become more practiced in the art of controlled economy, we shall become more expert in it—that is, just for our temporary good. It is the irony of fate that to fight totalitarianism abroad one must accept it to an ever-increasing degree at home, but I believe that so long as this war lasts, this will have to be so. The job which you and I are facing both here and in the Dominion of Canada —a job which, to my mind, is second only in importance to winning the war—is that of taking the necessary' measures to ensure that the liberties which we have voluntarily surrendered so that this war .might be successfully fought will be regained when peace is restored once more. \

In this welter of economic theories, of controlled economies, of allotments, of restrictions, of mandatory decisions, let us keep this main fact clearly before us: that we are fighting against totalitarianism, and that we must see to it that, having defeated it in the person of our enemy, we have not inherited it ourselves. What is it above all that we want of our hard-won peace? Can we not sum it up in one heart-catching word —democracy ?

However much our cynical enemies may jeer, it is for the preservation of democracy that we are fighting: it is for this cause that the youth of both our countries are prepared to lay down their very lives.

And let reason march with emotion. In its time, mankind has made many experiments for its own betterment—social, political, religious and economic—and started making them many, many centuries before the Anglo-Saxon people had learned to read or write, in fact, while they- were still content with the luxury of living in damp caves.

We can do worse than to see what has gone before us. Our troubles in 1942 are not unique. They have indeed not suddenly -sprung upon , mankind just to plague us of this generation. Let us go down the corridor of time together and see how a people in the past met our coming problems after having gone through what we are going through to-day. China the Cradle of Democracy And of all the peoples who laboured in the past, only the experience of one can carry any conviction, for it still strides the good earth—l, of course, refer to the Chinese.

We, the North Americans and the Europeans, are plagued to-day by complete totalitarianism for the first time in our history. The Chinese people fought and destroyed complete totalitarianism twenty-one centuries ago in the form of the Ch’in State, which for fifteen years ruled the whole of China and attained a perfection of regimentation which makes the Nazis look like small-town amateurs, for it was run by a fanatical bureaucracy of impeccable integrity. This .system was overthrown by the people. Two centuries later, a usurper of the Dragon throne tried another brand of totalitarianism and it lasted for thirty-four years. Their (theories were similar in many respects to those of our advanced Socialists of to-day, -but they were again overthrown by the forces of democracy. Ten centuries later, around 1066, another generation had imposed upon it another type of totalitarianism, which had a certain affinity to the Communism of to-day. From that day to this, the forces of democracy have ruled triumphant. The lesson which we have to learn from the experience of the Chinese is that from all these three experiments of extreme regimentation there emerges the same lesson, namely, that prosperity is possible only under freedom of enterprise, and that totalitarianism places a strangle-hold upon the life of a nation.

! So, with the authority of China’s long experiences behind us, we Western democracies are right to feel tha. that the creative faculties in us can ! never be fully exercised unless we 1 have the freedom of the. spirit that true freedom of enterprise alone can

i give. I I .believe in democracy. I believe in democracy because it is the only system of government devised by man

which can bring benefits to the whole of a nation. Despotic systems bring benefits to only a few, and at the expense of the many. The capitalistic system has undoubtedly made the rich richer, but it has also made the poor richer. The capitalistic system has given this North American continent of ours the distinction of having conferred upon the masses of our people a greater degree of prosperity, a larger share of the good things of life than has ever been enjoyed by the peoples of any other nation in any part of the world.

On the contrary, the despotic system—in other words, totalitarianism —makes the rich richer, but the poor poorer.

Many of us in this room have risen to the top in our own sphere, and although we would all defend our just rights to the limit of our abilities, we want to see all men prosper. We just do not want to keep the poor down, not only as a matter of policy but out of humanity also, whereas the only way in which a despotic system can function is to be totally without humanity towards the masses of the people. The Nazi Rejects Humanity

In that one word “humanity,” I believe we have the clue to the difference between the two systems. The Nazi and Fascist systems, in believing that men must belong body, mind and soul to the State, deny man’s essential humanity, but the democratic system, by striving to make the State belong to man, is founded upon man’s essential humanity.

This fine, warm thing which we call democracy is something which we must have or all else is tasteless; all else is cold and will not fit into our being.

Democracy! Our enemies both within and without jeer because we are shy of defining it. 'Can one define a sunset or one’s deepest emotions?. So with democracy, for it embraces our total being, and here is what a regimented mind cannot grasp. We know what democracy is not, and that, to my way of thinking, is the important point. What we want to have is too often shallow, unsubstantial, unreal; but what we do not want to have is far more positive, far more substantial, far more real—contradictory as it may sound. In other words, what we do not want to haye shapes our lives far more than what we want to have, and we do not want, to have regimentation. We Americans and Canadians are individualists, whether rugged or smooth, and we reject the principle of dictatorship, whether it. be of the government, of capital, of labour, or of bureaucracy. To be regimented to meet and beat savage aggression is Q ne thing;- but to be regimented in peacetime is quite another. We in this room are so made that in peace only true freedom of enterprise can completely satisfy our being. We are prepared to accept regimented economy until peace is once more with us, but it behoves us to be vigilant to see that we make an end of it when victory is ours; to see that through some quirk of fate no rulers are put over us who may want to give regimentation of economy in peace a trial. .

Bureaucrats Will Not Willingly Retire And do not let us have any illusions When victory is won, our present bureaucracy will not voluntarily or tamely relinquish their new-found authority. They will, in fact, fight to the last spool of red tape to preserve thi£ thing so sweet to small minds.

How then are we to regain our economic liberties? Here is the greatest problem, which, second to winning the war, takes prior rank before all. Its solution will depend upon men like you and me. It will depend upon our toughness of spirit, upon our stamina, upon our ability to keep the ultimate objectives of democracy and freedom of enterprise clearly before us while we are travelling through the uncertain twilight, which will separate the controlled economy of wartime from the dawn of a new world of peace into which, in God’s appointed time, we shall emerge.

But before discussing how we can retain our economic liberties in the post-war era, let us examine what kind of world we shall be living in after victory.

As I have stated before, I am assuming that we, tne Allied Nations, will achieve a complete military victory—a victory so complete, so utter, that not only would thd aggressor nations be subdued but that <-hey would be placed in a position where they can never again rise io strike down their defenceless neighbours. But this is not enough. Our victory must be so unquestionable that the nations of this earth can settle down io build up their shattered economies, freed at last from that ever-present fear of aggression, fear of invasion, fear of servitude, whica has gripp-u bur hearts

and governed their minds ever since the growing despotic might of Germany and Japan began to cast its shadow over this earth. If fear of invasion, fear of war, fear of blockade, and. the gnawing necessity of preparing for these eventualities, are to continue to govern the economic life 1 of nations, then there is no hope of early or permanent world recovery. The Price of Enduring Peace

Were Germany, for instance, to continue the manufacture of Buna rubber or synthetic gas, at exorbitant cost, merely to assure herself of these raw materials in the event of war; if Italy were to grow wheat rather than import it from the Argentine as an assurance against starvation in the event of a conflict, and restrict emigration so as to keep her manpower at home for the same reason; if the agricultural countries of South America were going to continue their process of industrialisation so as to be independent of Europe and North America in the event of another world war; were England to proceed with the development of her agriculture so that she would be more self-sup-porting should her lines of communications be cut by hostile nations — then the victory for which we are fighting would indeed be a hollow one and the peace which we would achieve would be but an armed truce. ■ -But I am satisfied that these things will not come to pass. I am satisfied that the freedom-loving nations of the world, being at last aroused, will j plough the furrow to the end, and that they will not lay down their arms until a solid and lasting peace has been established.

Human nature being as it is, I have no illusions concerning the possibility of maintaining world peace without armed strength, any more than I believe that peace could be maintained in this City of 'Chicago without a police force. Nor do I believe either in the theories of an international army under the League of Nations. To my mind, the task of ensuring a lasting peace will devolve upon the four great “have” nations of the world, the nations who desire no territorial aggrandisement, the nations who have all to gain from peaceful and prosperous neighbours. I am ref erring to the United States of America, Great Britain, China and Russia. They and they aloiie coiuld maintain a military machine of such proportions that international law and order would be made to prevail, and thus, by preventing military or economic aggression, would impart to other nations that sense of peace and security which will enable each and all of them to devote all their energies to rebuilding their shattered economies.

After Waterloo the world enjoyed a long period of peace, of immense economic development and of prosperity. This peace was based upon the unchallenged might of the British Navy. I believe that it is not too much to hope that, when once this war is won and over, we can look for ward again to a long era of peace, one which our children and our grandchildren will be spared the horrors and devastion of war, and that this peace will be guaranteed, by the strength of these four nations who, differing in so many respects, yet are united by a common hatred of the aggressor nations and a common desirej to free the world once and for all of international banditry and oppression.

Assuming, therefore, that these things come to pass, the establishment of peace will, to my mind, be followed by a period of prosperity, of replenishment, of distress buying,, of filling up the depleted shelves, of rebuilding, or reconstruction. This undoubtedly will be a period of great activity, when industry, agriculture and commerce, and particularly industry, will have to be demobilised so to speak, will have to be switched over from the tasks of war to the less dramatit! but more satisfying tasks of peace.

It is, of course, impossible to say how long this period of reconstruction and prosperity will last. Much will depend upon the duration of the present conflict and, therefore, the state of exhaustion in which the world will find itself. It is a fair assump'ion, however, that after the first rush o£ replenishment and rehabilitation is over, a period of depression, of convalescence, and of slow healing will follow. It is during the era of prosperity immediately following peace, howevej shortlived this may be, that militant and vigilant democracy must undertake the task of regaining our economic independence, of loosening the grip of the multitudinous control which we, the people, have voluntarily accepted during these years of conflict. Task of Regaining Free Economy It stands to reason, however, that a return to complete freedom of enterprise must be a gradual process. If the world were to regain overnight the economic freedom of, say, 1913, it would probably be thrown into indescribable chaos. No! However much we may be yearning for the £• td c!d

days of nigged individualism, the ties of governmental control can only be loosened gradually. There will be a job of world reconstruction, of rebuilding, or sorting-out to do, which is beyond the compass of undirected individual effort.

In the period immediately following cessation of hostilities, for instance, the continent of Europe, China, the isles of the southwest Pacific, India even may be so impoverished that they will be unable to buy foodstuffs or the raw materials necessary for their rehabilitation. Private enterprise could not extend the necessary credit to put these nations back oh their feet again and this would have to be done under government supervision and control.

The gradual process ■of lowering ing tariffs and removing trade barriers, which is a part of the Atlantic Charter, could not be accomplished under complete freedom of enterprise without great losses to individuals, because it stands to reason that this process cannot be accomplished without the abandoning of artificial industries, built up in different countries under protective tariffs oi’ quotas of importations. In other words, if the Argentine is to resume her wheat shipments to Italy, she must be prepared to grow less wine and to import it from that country; and likewise, if the United States is to ship more cars to France or more farm machinery she must be prepared to import more perfume, silks or wine from that country.

This process of turning back the rivers of international trade to their old channels obviously cannot be done without great sacrifice to private interests, and, therefore, without compensation from the State. In fact, I doubt very much whether the world will ever go back to, or whether it is wholly desirable that it ever should go back to, the economic system o£ pre-war days, and that, being so, the freedom of enterprise of the future will not necessarily be that which we knew in the days gone by. The economic peace structure of the future, unless I am much mistaken, will be built upon three pillars: (1) Equitable distribution of raw materials; (2) 1 the stopping of national economic banditry; (3) the gradual lowering of tariffs. Such policies cannot be put into effect without some superstructure of international control, and this inexorably carries with it a curbing of free enterprise of the 1939 vintage.

But underneath this edifice, rugged individualism can still find its place and the great task which lies ahead of us is to see to it that throughout the long period of reconstruction and resettlement which will follow the war, no matter how gradual be the process of decentralisation, our ultimate goal be that of free economy. If we are true to this task and are equal 4;o it; if- in this fight against autocracy, we do not ourselves become infected •by its foul disease; if through our flaming faith in democracy we can steer our way through the twilight between controlled economy of war and the ultimate goal of free enterprise after peace is established, then, I believe that we shall be justified in looking forward to the future with j confidence—yes, with unbounded opI timism.

I do not hold with those who be■ieve that the world in the future will be a less comfortable, less happy, a less healthy, or a less' prosperous one than the one we knew in the days before the war. I believe, on the contrary, that with all the new skills, the. new ideas, the new products, the new methods, and the new materials which have been planned and thought Gut and developed during this war, coupled with the throwing up of great new markets, particularly in China, in India, perhaps in Russia, we can look forward to a world where the standards of living of the masses will -be higher than has evei- been known before; a world in which perhaps the wealthy will not be wealthier, but one in which the poor will be richer, and where the opportunities for all men will be greater than ever before.

But, in closing, let me say again that this bright prospect is solely dependent upon complete military defeat of our enemies and upon- our own ability to re-establish and maintain

in the years of reconstruction the everlasting principles of democracy and freedom of enterprise. I couple them together because history has taught us that they are ent. If we lose our economic freedom, we shall lose our political freedom also. 1

Let us, therefore, be ever vigilant, yes, be ever militant, in the preservation of this essential thing, this priceless gift, which has been handed down to us by our forefathers—democracy.