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Show were honest but misguided zealots. zea-lots. In England it seems likely that Churchill, Bevin and Greenwood are smart enough to realize that socialism always has been and always will be a stepping-stone to dictatorship. With Churchill, it is probably a case of the war must be won at any price. With Bevin and Greenwood, it may be idealism, ideal-ism, patriotism, optimism 'or a totalitarian to-talitarian dream. At any rate there is a definite move on the part of a minority to socialize England. Next week in this column, col-umn, we would like to hazard an opinion as to how a socialized England would affect America, and what we can do to prevent such a catastrophe. Is England Flirting With Socialism? By GEORGE FECK PART I Something of enormous importance import-ance has been developing in England Eng-land these past few years. Some astute political students contend that England definitely is finished as a democracy. To them there seems to be little or no evidence that she will emerge from this war, whether as victor or vanquished, van-quished, as anything but a socialized soc-ialized corporate state. This is of particular significance to us here in America as not long ago, Presi- dent Roosevelt stated that: "Freedom "Free-dom canot survive here if lost to all others." We are inclined to disagree with the contention that democracy is doomed in England. Britain has gone through other period's when it looked as though socialism was inevitable but after the hour o( trial, she always has emerged as a democratic state with the capitalistic cap-italistic system intact. It is true that Ernest Bevin and Arthur Greenwood, English labor leaders, with the backing of Winston Churchill, are projecting a state in which land and industry in-dustry will be socialized "for the best interests of the common people." peo-ple." The New Leader, weekly organ or-gan of the British Independent Labor party, states that the new-order new-order will be like that of Italy and Germany, "except that free trade unions will) exist in Britain." The war has opened the doer for English socialism by furnishing furnish-ing the excuse for ruinous taxation. tax-ation. The conservative socialists always have preferred this method. meth-od. The trick is to bring industry to insolvency through taxation and then come to its rescue (?) by having he government take over. This is not always infallible in the case of the large powerful corporations but it is a sure formula form-ula for liquidating the middle class, that large group wihch is always the principal beneficiary of property prop-erty rights under a free enterprise enter-prise system. Gordon Holmes, a leading British Brit-ish banker, supports the socialization-thru-taxation contention in the following statement: "A 50 income tax is a radical enough change. The tax is converting the country into a socialism of democracy. de-mocracy. The fastest measure of converting to socialism, faster than all the preachers and lecturers, is to give half of the money you earn to the government." , . This high taxation in England, we are convinced is merely expediency. ex-pediency. In this conection, however, how-ever, it is well to remember that England did not go "all out" for defense until labor was made supreme su-preme in government. Only then did the labor unions really line up and go to work. This would sesm to indicate that the nation had the choice of capitulating to labor or facing certain military defeat. It is always a question whether men who lead trusting nations into adopting Utopian state policies pol-icies are sincere but even when tr-'-ii" integrity is unimpeachable, they cannot stand up against the realists. Lenin, undoubtedly, w?s sincere but even he found the realists too much for him. We cannot attribute any sincerity to Mussolini and Hitler even thovh many of their original backers |