Books: Michael & The Angell

MAKE THIS THE LAST WAR—Michael Straighf—Harcourt, Brace ($3).

LET THE PEOPLE KNOW—Norman Angell—Viking ($2.50).

When the curtain rises on the post-war world the scene may be something like this: 6,000,000 German soldiers fleeing in disorder; 5,000,000 foreign workers and prisoners of war abandoning Germany; 2,000,000 Hungarian, Rumanian, Bulgarian and Spanish soldiers pouring home from the Eastern front; 3,000,000 Poles straggling back to their wasted territory; 50,000,000 Soviet citizens surging back into western Russia.

These desperate homegoers will return to many villages that have been destroyed and towns that have been razed or are filled with strangers. They will bring with them orphans, old and insane folk. They will bring scurvy, trachoma, malaria, typhus, and dysentery from eating grass and earth. Starvation may be so prevalent that the cannibalism of 1919 may again strike eastern Europe. Railroads that should carry these desperate people will be totally disorganized; horses may all have been eaten. No reserves of fuel and clothing will be on hand; no state authorities will exist to guide them. China, Japan, Malaya, The Netherlands East Indies will repeat this picture in other versions.

Such is Author Michael Straight’s conception of the post-war scene. His Make This the Last War attempts to provide a plan-of-life not only for these desperate multitudes but for people the world over. Son of the late Willard Straight (founder of The New Republic, of which Author Straight is an editor) and brother of R.A.F. Acting Air Commodore Whitney Willard Straight, Author Straight took a triple-first degree in economics at Cambridge University, worked in the State Department as economist of the European Division. Now 26, he is awaiting induction as an aviation cadet in the U.S. Air Corps.

No such youngster is beknighted Nobel Peace Prizewinner Sir Norman Angell. At 68 Sir Norman has written 32 books, sat in the British Parliament, worked five years in the U.S. as a ranch hand. The British Empire’s most noted apologist in America, Sir Norman’s latest views on the post-war world have caused the Book-of-the-Month Club to select Let the People Know as its February choice along with Tregaskis’ Guadalcanal Diary.

Sir Norman describes himself as “a Socialist in the British Labour Party or the American New Deal sense of the term,” admits that “Socialists differ . . as to what Socialism really is.” Safely unSocialist is his view of the causes and cures of World War II. Let the People Know attempts to convince “the average busy citizen” that wars are not caused by capitalists, vested interests, empires, divisions into Haves and Havenots. Wars come, he believes, because ordinary men are mis-educated, prejudiced. They come, especially, because man is nationalistically minded.

Babies Are Neutral. The most important step toward international understanding and peace, Sir Norman thinks, is for Americans to get a clear idea of the structure of the British Empire. “Britain does not ‘own’ this Empire at all.” She does “govern” bits of it, but that is something quite different. Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand are self-governing, “can and do erect heavy tariffs against Great Britain,” fight by Britain’s side only if they want to. “Economic imperialism,” Sir Norman feels, is nothing more than “an old country using its resources to develop a new one.” In India, Britain has “enormously diminished the famine risk” by building 40,000 miles of railroads and an irrigation system that “has no parallel anywhere.” As to independence, half of India’s population is “fiercely opposed to the Congress policy.”

In Britain itself, says Sir Norman, “great incomes” have disappeared and “the present wartime economy of Britain is about as Socialist as it could be.” As for the titles Americans dislike so much, Sir Norman says they are just “medals” and that Soviet Russia has medals too. “Old feudal forms tend to lubricate . . . machinery subject to friction.”

What it all adds up to, concludes Sir Norman, is that the U.S. should join with Britain under a pact “for mutual aid against aggression.” This is the only possible beginning to a general, international effort to insure “secure democracy.” America could have air and sea bases in Malaya, Burma, Ceylon and India. Sir Norman does not think India would mind this a bit. Americans, Indians and Britons should together direct “the transition of Indian policy.” The desperate, starving hordes of post-war Europe must be succored by United Nations action. Terroristic Nazis must “mainly” be executed and Germany occupied for “a longish period.” German children should not “be punished, or made to suffer if it can be avoided.” “Babies,” Sir Norman believes, “are neutral.”

Old Ladies Are Snubbers. In his flight Sir Norman often comes within range of Author Straight’s noisily effective multiple pompoms. Make This the Last War keeps blasting away at the Angellian wings. Unlike Sir Norman, Author Straight gives himself no political label, apart from urging his readers to join the International Free World Association.* Like Sir Norman, he hopes to see post-war continuation of United Nations controls. But there the two part company. Author Straight sees the world as indivisible, not only for purposes of national security but for the very existence of nations.

The British imperialism denied by Sir Norman not only exists for Author Straight but is grossly shared by the U.S. Where Sir Norman speaks proudly, of British developments in India, Author Straight is horrified by India’s “arrested development.” India, he insists, has been kept deliberately as a source of raw materials; her industrial capacity has been ignored so as to preserve her “raw” relation to industrial Britain.

But, adds Author Straight, if we are shocked by such exploitation, how can we expect the U.S.’s “equally piratical empires in Latin America [to] be tolerated? The peoples of these nations despise us as much as the natives of Northern Rhodesia despise the British. . . . The people of all the world have had to sweat blood, living in compounds, dressed in loincloths, eating mush and drinking dishwater to provide us with cheap metals and other materials so that we may drive around in shining automobiles.”

“The one great social need of Asia,” says Author Straight, “is that Asia should be allowed to benefit from its own wealth.” This can be done, he believes, only by the combined efforts of the United Nations to build Asiatic industries. Long-term credits at low interest must be extended to Asia’s nations.

Europe’s heavy industries and commerce must come under the control not of individual governments but of the United Nations. Anglo-American domination of United Nations policies must give way to “a Supreme Council … of … the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, and China . . . [with] regional councils.”

The Council (“the central executive of a provisional world government”) will plan European reconstruction on the basis of United Nations requirements. To this end “Russia and Britain and America must now conclude agreements with the governments-in-exile and the European underground.” All anti-Nazi movements must be recognized; propaganda must “incite social revolution in Germany” and, when transmitted to Occupied Europe, must cease to be merely “stirring accounts of old ladies snubbing Nazi officers.”

Freedom Is No End. If conservatives flinch at the thought of such a program for Europe, they will buckle at Author Straight’s designs for the U.S. Straight believes that the reconversion of U.S. industry to peacetime needs will take from seven months to two years, and that citizens cashing in war bonds and drawing on large wartime savings will find in those years a lack of civilian supplies to spend money on. Only government control can prevent inflation, prophesies Straight. Government must direct reconversion, “determine the location of industry that emerges from the war,” maintain priorities where needed, retain title to its own plants. It will have to provide a public works program for perhaps 4,000,000 dislocated workers. Price control and rationing must continue for the sake of the “worldwide relief program,” wages must continue stabilized.

Federal programs must be drawn up for nationwide housing schemes, broadened social security, regional development. All monopolies must be either taken over or indirectly controlled by government; railroads must become government-owned. To counteract the danger to democracy of so vast a government authority, local groups must form “community councils” to supervise housing, health and education.

Concludes Author Straight: “Freedom is no end in itself ; it is simply the presence of opportunity. . . .”

*Principal aims of the I.F.W.A. (55 West 42nd St., Manhattan) are 1) “to begin at once preparation for a world organization,” 2) to aid Europe’s Underground, 3) to block agents and activities of the Axis in Latin America. Honorary board (chairman: Mrs. J. Borden Harriman) includes Mayor LaGuardia, Raymond Gram Swing, Harold Ickes, Viscount Cecil, Thomas Mann, Dorothy Thompson.