The Fruits of Victory: A Sequel to The Great IllusionAngell, Norman
History
The Fruits of Victory: A Sequel to The Great Illusion
Angell, Norman
Economic history -- 1918-1945; World War, 1914-1918 -- Influence
The English Press is not much better. It was in December, 1918, that
Professor Starling presented to the British Government his report
showing that unless Germany had more food she would be utterly unable to
pay any large indemnity to aid in reparations to France. Fully eighteen
months later we find the _Daily Mail_ (June 18, 1920) rampaging and
shouting itself hoarse at the monstrous discovery that the Government
have permitted Germans to purchase wheat! Yet the _Mail_ has been
foremost in insisting upon France's dire need for a German indemnity in
order to restore devastated districts. If the _Mail_ is really
representative of John Bull, then that person is at present in the
position of a farmer who at seed-time is made violently angry at the
suggestion that grain should be taken for the purpose of sowing the
land, and shouts that it is a wicked proposal to take food from the
mouths of his children. Although the Northcliffe Press has itself
published page advertisements (from the Save the Children Fund)
describing the incredible and appalling conditions in Europe, the _Daily
Mail_ shouts in its leading article: 'Is British Food to go to the
Boches?' The thing is in the best war style. 'Is there any reason why
the Briton should be starved to feed the German?' asks the _Mail_. And
there follows, of course, the usual invective about the submarines, war
criminals, the sinking of hospital ships, and the approval by the whole
German people of all these crimes.
We get here, as at every turn and twist of our policy, not any
recognition of interdependence, but a complete repudiation of that idea,
and an assumption, instead, of a conflict of interest. If the children
of Vienna or Berlin are to be fed, then it is assumed that it must be at
the expense of the children of Paris and London. The wealth of the world
is conceived as a fixed quantity, unaffected by any process of
co-operation between the peoples sharing the world. The idea is, of
course, an utter fallacy. French or Belgian children will have more, not
less, if we take measures to avoid European conditions in which the
children of Vienna are left to die. If, during the winter of 1919-1920,
French children died from sickness due to lack of fuel, it was because
the German coal was not delivered, and the German coal was not delivered
because, among other things, of general disorganization of transport, of
lack of rolling stock, of underfeeding of the miners, of collapse of the
currency, political unrest, uncertainty of the future.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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