Is Tomorrow Hitler's? 200 Questions on the Battle of MankindKnickerbocker, H. R. (Hubert Renfro)
History
Is Tomorrow Hitler's? 200 Questions on the Battle of Mankind
Knickerbocker, H. R. (Hubert Renfro)
Europe -- Politics and government -- 1918-1945; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945 -- United States
Churchill has a second difference with Roosevelt in the field of
economic theory and practice. He is distinctly against the New Deal.
There was a time during the period of the Blue Eagle when Churchill
seemed almost to fear that communism was coming to the United States.
He warned: “It is irrational to tear down or cripple the capitalist
system without having the fortitude of spirit and ruthlessness of
action to create a new communist system.” With Churchillian directness
he proclaims his belief in profits. “There can never be good wages or
good employment for any length of time without good profits.”
With equal candor and with much wit he defends rich men. “A second
danger to President Roosevelt’s valiant and heroic experiments seems
to arise from the disposition to hunt down rich men as if they were
noxious beasts.... It is a very attractive sport, and once it gets
started quite a lot of people everywhere are found ready to join in the
chase.... The question arises whether the general well-being of the
masses of the community will be advanced by an excessive indulgence
in this amusement. The millionaire or multi-millionaire is a highly
economic animal. He sucks up with sponge-like efficiency money from all
quarters. In this process, far from depriving ordinary people of their
earnings, he launches enterprise and carries it through, raises values,
and he expands that credit without which on a vast scale no fuller
economic life can be opened to the millions. To hunt wealth is not to
capture commonwealth.” All this, his own economic philosophy, he sums
up in the formula: “Whether it is better to have equality at the price
of poverty or well-being at the price of inequality.”
Does this indicate a narrowly selfish interest by Churchill in his
own class? Not at all. He believes profoundly in the possibility of
extending leisure and well-being to all mankind through the benefits
of science. He takes the evidence of Soviet Russia that the means to
general affluence is not communism, nor does he think it can come
through any form of nationalization of production. He believes the
essence of the problem is monetary. He believes the rights of man are
more important than the success of any economic system. He believes in
the British Empire as a mighty instrument of civilization. He believes
profoundly in cooperation with us. There is no reason why the two
mightiest democratic dictators, Roosevelt and Churchill, should not
emerge from the Peace Conference with a harmonious plan.
Q. _Is it true that Churchill is gifted with a peculiar power to
foresee the event?_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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