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THE LIVING ACE

VOL. 329-JUNE 12, 1926-NO. 4275

THE LIVING AGE

BRINGS THE WORLD TO AMERICA

A WEEK OF THE WORLD

STRIKES AND STRIKE PREVENTION

ENGLAND and Italy stand at the opposite poles of social opinion and political practice; and this is nowhere better illustrated than in their methods of dealing with relations between employers and employees. In the long run, we imagine the British manner is the better; but superficially Italy's logical, direct, coercive labor regimen has its attractive aspects.

As these lines are dictated the midstrike issues of the British weeklies lie on our desk. They are foolscap size, of eight or ten pages, reproduced by a photographic process from the typewritten manuscript the method to the method to which certain publications in New York, and also in Australia, have resorted during printers' strikes. The first thing that impresses one in their comment is its moderation and broad tolerance. All recognized the primacy of the constitutional question. As the Spectator said: 'When the General Council of the Trades Union Congress forbids men to work, it challenges the existence of the Government. Thus the question before the country neces

sarily becomes a constitutional one. No one can prevent that from happening, although it is quite true that those who are Constitutionalists in every fibre of their thought are not necessarily entirely at one with the Government on the industrial question as such. The fact remains that if Labor, in order to win, were able to make government impossible, the Trades Union Congress would be the only alternative to the Government.' The same journal harked back to the American Civil War in appealing for a timely and conciliatory settlement. 'The one duty of every patriotic man, while doing his share in keeping the life of the nation going, is to engender peace. As Mr. Baldwin finely said, perhaps remembering the words of Lincoln at the end of the American Civil War, he would harbor no bitterness but would be willing to start negotiations afresh, "without prejudice" to those who struck. Lincoln said he would receive the Confederates back into the family of the Union as though they had never left it.'

The Outlook believed the responsible, veteran leaders of the workers had been carried off their feet by their

Copyright 1926, by the Living Age Co.

followers at the conference of union representatives just before the strike. 'A delegate conference is always an extreme body-at any rate before a strike begins. Once it is assembled you may be pretty sure of trouble, unless the leaders make a colossal effort to exert themselves.' Nevertheless, 'official Labor as a whole was responsible for the decision to call a general strike; for Messrs. MacDonald, Henderson, and Thomas were on the platform at the momentous meeting. Yet the triumvirate gave no public sign of dissent or made any implied qualification, and joined the audience of delegates in singing "The Red Flag." Even in the darkest day of the conflict, however, this Conservative journal drew comfort from the fact that a clear-cut issue had been raised, and 'in no spirit of easy-going Toryism' forecast that 'the present crisis must end, and will end, in the emphatic reëstablishment of the old democratic tradition.'

So much for the political philosophy of the nation in the brunt of the battle. The Economist, which for the first time in eighty-four years was unable to publish its normal weekly issue, declared: "The country has entered on one of the most far-reaching industrial conflicts in history with amazing coolness. The public may demand a more complete explanation than it has yet had as to the events of the last few fateful hours and the reason for breaking off negotiations; but the trade-union. leaders must bear the main responsibility for calling into use a weapon which cannot be employed without challenging the constitutional principles in which they themselves believe.' It then added: "The urgent need is to find a way to resume negotiations while tempers still remain cool.' The London Statist, after reporting, 'The superficial dislocation of the normal life of the community is surprisingly small,' esti

mated that the unions' funds would carry their members for about a month, and that the direct cost to the nation of a month's stoppage would be approximately seventy million pounds sterling. On the basis of these estimates, which it developed in some detail, it reached this comforting conclusion: 'A strike lasting a month would not have results as serious as even an average month of conditions during the war. A more prolonged stoppage would be far from causing anything like a financial collapse, but it would make itself felt in the shape of higher commodity prices, shortage of temporary and permanent capital, increasing pressure to sell securities, and a greater demand for cash and credit.'

From the first, apparently, the morale of the nation was kept up by a sense of steadily increasing ability to provide for its essential needs. This ability was conspicuously shown by the railway service. In its issue of May 10, three days before the strike was called off, the Times, which was able to issue four printed pages of its normal size and format during the latter part of the struggle, reported that 106,000 railway men were back at work, and added:

The extent of the rapid recovery of the railways is illustrated by the following total of trains run by the four railway groups since the strike began:

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view of the passenger every shuttle journey is really a separate train. The general improvement was more than maintained yesterday, when over 3600 trains were scheduled to run, the L.M.S. and the L.N.E.R. each providing for 1000 trains, while the G.W.R. had 800 and the Southern was expecting to run about 850 by midnight.

Turning now to Italy, whose press greeted the strike in Great Britain as proof positive that Fascism affords the only salvation for modern society, we find the regimentation of Labor - and incidentally of Capital-proceeding apace. Under the direction of Edmondo Rossoni, National Secretary of the Fascist Unions, the latter were gradually substituted for unions of the General Federation of Labor, which were disbanded either voluntarily or under duress. This development naturally pleased employers. Soon, however, the Fascist unions began to acquire intimidating strength and a mind of their own, particularly after they were enlarged to take in professional and intellectual workers, including journalists. This alarmed both Capital and Cabinet, and the Fascist inner circle decided that a strong helmsman must be put in control of its own creations. For a time Farinacci, the fiery ex-Secretary of the Fascisti Party, was suggested for this post. He himself is an ex-railway man, and a person with enough force of character to handle the problem. But Mussolini, doubtless with the Tarquinian legend of the taller flowers in mind, decided to take the job himself -naturally ad interim.

Augusto Turati, now SecretaryGeneral of the National Fascist Party, recently published a leader in La Tribuna, which is a Rome mouthpiece of the Government, defending the new system thus established. He said: 'Ever since its birth Fascism has held

that the social classes, categories, and groups have divergent interests to sustain and defend, but that two fundamental and absolute conceptions overrule this divergency-production and the nation.' We take this to mean that the authority of the Government must remain supreme, and that the country's work must not be interrupted, no matter how acute the antagonism between Labor and Capital may become. This is perfect in theory, even if it is a little platitudinous; but proves nothing as to how the machinery that the Fascisti have set up to enforce that theory will work in a great crisis. The scheme includes compulsory arbitration of industrial disputes and compulsory organization of both workers and employers. Such a system was established nearly thirty years ago in New Zealand and Australia, where it has prevented the kind of strikes and lockouts that cause society the least inconvenience, but has not abolished those great labor conflicts that shake the social structure to its foundations.

RUSSIA REBUFFED BUT TIRELESS

SEVERAL things have happened recently to discourage the Bolsheviki. The Third International has lost its nimbus, not only in Europe and America, but also to a very considerable extent in Asia. Conditions at home as well as abroad are responsible for this. Zinoviev, who was its master mind, has lost his former influence in Soviet councils. All evidence seems to agree, moreover, that his effacement is but a symbol of the change that is occurring not only in the Soviet programme but in the spirit animating the Moscow leaders. Hope of world revolution, at least as an event near enough to count in practical politics, has faded, and

with the vanishing of that vision the life has gone out of the Communist International.

At its last general meeting that body resolved to concentrate its attention upon China, India, and Central Asia. But in China, at least, if we may trust recent reports from that country, the Communist movement is ebbing rapidly. Wu Pei-fu and Chang Tso-lin are its relentless enemies. A lively interchange of letters and telegrams occurred last April between Marshal Chang's Mukden Government and Soviet representatives in the Far East, which resulted in the suggestion that Comrade Karakhan, Moscow's Ambassador to Peking, be recalled. According to Marshal Chang, that gentleman has employed bribes 'to cause student uprisings and to assist Feng Yu-hsiang with arms for the purpose of creating internal riots and strife.' Another passage in this correspondence is rendered into English by the local press in the following diplomatic verbiage: "We have stood all this hooliganism of Mr. Karakhan a good deal, but we have since lost all patience.' Apparently Moscow recognizes that its Ambassador's usefulness in China is over, and plans to replace him at an early

date.

Another rebuff to the Soviets was the refusal of the general strike leaders in Great Britain to accept the financial assistance proffered by Moscow. Commenting on that rejection, Prarda said: 'While the British bourgeoisie, without distinction of Party, is united, knows what it wants, and openly proclaims the political character of the conflict, the strike movement, while it has its strong points, such as efficient organization, the militant spirit of the workers, and the initiative of its rank and file, has also serious weaknesses. The strike leaders are not sufficiently clear as to their objective. Some of

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them refuse to recognize the political character of the strike, although it can be won only as a political battle. The management is uneven, and so great is the divergency of opinion among those in charge that some of the more conservative of them are ready to play the traitor.'

The Central Committee of the Russian Trade Unions appropriated two and one-quarter million rubles, raised by a special levy of one quarter of one day's wages upon Russian workers, to assist the strikers. When the Council of the Trades Union Congress refused to receive this money, it was set apart as a special fund to help the locked out miners,' although their struggle lacks the political importance of the general strike, in which Moscow was chiefly interested.

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FRANCE's recovered provinces apparently insist upon remaining a problem. If we are to trust a German-Swiss correspondent of Neue Zürcher Zeitung who recently tried to make a diagnosis of their woes, the people cannot describe what they want, further than that it is something different from what they have. Under German rule they enjoyed considerable local autonomy, and had their own Landtag, or provincial parliament. To-day they are a part of the highly centralized French political machine which rules rather bureaucratically from Paris. Berlin allowed the clergy largely to control the schools; Paris enforces lay instruction. All this causes discontent, although the people as a whole show no desire to return to the German fold.

What they really desire, probably, is autonomy, and indeed one leader of the movement to obtain it, who bears the unquestionably Gallic name of M.

René-César Ley, is now residing in Switzerland for his political health. Professor Edmond Vermeil of the University of Strassburg, an ardent champion of France, is so disturbed over this agitation that he interprets it, in Le Figaro, as a conspiracy with ramifications extending not only to Germany but to Bavaria and Austria. Logically it is anti-Prussian as well as anti-French, and its avowed object is to set up a Federal Rhenish State. The Professor even suspects England of regarding this movement with friendly eye, as likely to weaken the preponderance of either France or Germany in Europe, and admonishes his countrymen that the Alsatian autonomist movement may have, in addition to its roots in the little province of Alsace, a rather broad European horizon; and that France should be on her guard against what is happening at a point where so much is at stake for the future peace of the continent.

BELLIGERENT UNCLE SAM

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AN anonymous writer publishes a statistical computation in Le Correspondant, a Conservative Paris review, to prove that the United States, the great advocate of disarmament, has increased its military expenditures, and France has decreased hers, since the good old days before the war. In 1913–14 our country's appropriations for the Army, Navy, and Air Service aggregated something over two hundred and fiftyseven million dollars. Eleven years later, when the latest available figures were published, they amounted to approximately six hundred and eighteen million dollars a nominal increase of 140 per cent, and a real increase, as measured in purchasing power, of 53 per cent. At the former date France expended upon these three services

about two and one-third billion francs. She spends to-day upon them slightly over six and one-third billion francs. Converting these francs into dollars, this amounts to a decrease of forty per cent. In 1914 France had forty-eight divisions of infantry. When the reductions now being made are completed she will have twenty-eight. At the same time her cavalry forces have been reduced from 445 to 180 squadrons, and her artillery from 826 to 480 batteries.

A PESSIMISTIC PROFESSOR

DOCTOR SHINKICHI UYESUGI of the Imperial University at Tokyo deplores in a recent issue of the Japan Times what he regards as the overhasty adoption of the pseudocivilization of the West by his countrymen of a generation or two ago. The result, he says, is that 'the Japanese are to-day a race not unlike a helpless wanderer in a desert, cut off from all their older traditions. The four time-honored classes of samurai, farmers, mechanics, and tradespeople resemble so many lost children, knowing nothing of their future.' The masses are sinking into a proletariat. Their leaders are bereft of counsels. Japan's proud national spirit has vanished, and the author feels sure that Japan as a State is fast dying, without waiting for a foreign invasion.'

Consequently the time has come to take new bearings. "The materialist theory of evolution, which explains the human species as derived from the lower monkey-forms, has utterly failed to solve the problems of individual freedom and personal dignity. Democracy, which means obeying the decision of a majority, has proved hopelessly incapable of producing true constitutional government.' Therefore Japan should return to her old institutions. She should strip off and cast

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