OCR Text |
Show TWO TRUTHS Reports from England indicate that there is a growing opposition to the policies of the Labor government-and that it is becoming apparent in the ranks of labor itself. The cause ot that resentment is plain. It is rooted in the fact that the high hopes held out for socialism were a cruel illusion, that rigid regimentation has sapped, not fed, the energies and product abilities of the nation, and that England Eng-land is now on the verge of complete economic disaster. The British people are not complaining about the austerity aus-terity programa similar measure would necessarily have been imposed by any government in the interest of industrial indus-trial recovery. What they are complaining about is that the incredible sacrifices made by the people in living standards stan-dards have gone for nothing. All the basic industries on which British exports depend-coal, electric power, steel and the resthave either been socialized or threatened with socialism. And in all of them output has been declining. Politicians, many of them utterly without experience in industry, in-dustry, are the unchallenged masters of England today, and they have shown a great deal more ability at extending their own authority than in getting out the goods that can save England from ruin. When socialism fails, its advocates always propose more socoialism as the cure. And that has brought still another an-other grave danger to the English people the loss of rights which have been "extended since the Magna Carta. Labor officials say that freezing a worker in his job does not amount to a labor draft but that is merely a play on words when the law makes it impossible for a man to change employment em-ployment if he so desires. Agriculture has been surrounded with dictatorial restrictions, and more have been proposed. England is a living example of two vitally important truths first, that socialism is wasteful and inefficient; and, second, that it is basically and inevitably a destroyer of in-idual in-idual liberty. That is the lesson that England is giving lJnilcd States, and it is time for us to heed it. |