Private Enterprise

These lines are written in the midst of crisis: they will be read in the midst of crisis. War, conscription the whole ghastly familiar tale of 1914 is almost upon the world once again.

At the time of writing the motives and results of Mr. Chamberlain's visit to Herr Hitler have not been made public. The move has met with almost universal acclaim. In certain quarters, however, notabley in Prague, the attitude towards it is one of distrust: and not without reason. For one would not be at all surprised were the result of the talk at Berchtesgarden that Lord Runciman will be asked to give to Hitler by negotiations what the latter threatened to take by force. The Czechs will no doubt be asked to yield so much in concessions that when the time comes, Hitler will be able to walk in without a struggle, Whether the Czechs will be amenable to persuasion" is another matter.

We are all appalled at the threat of war. But do we ever stop to think, even now, that for years the lives of millions of men and women have been dominated by the preparation for war? Rearmament was the principal factor in the temporary economic revival we are experiencing. Men are forced to live, only in order to prepare to kill. To-morrow they may die for the same cause, Such is the inescapable logic of contemporary capitalism.

But just because new and more terrible wars are the result of imperialism, we must at all costs break out of the prison of this mad-house logic. We must work tirelessly to free ourselves and others from the frightful view that there is anything either in man or nature which dooms the world to slaughter.

Now that the fact of oncoming war seems undeniable, it should not be difficult to show the chain of cause and effect between a competitive economic system and the inevitability of ever-recurrent war: to convince men that if they found their daily life on the principle of competitive struggle of all kinds; upon the struggle for survival of business against business in commercial rivalry; upon the struggle of class with class; upon the struggle of Empire with Empire, war must at last become the be-all and end-all of life. For war is nothing but the ultimate from of economic competition. It is "cut-throat competition" grown from metaphor to reality.

The reckless individual initiative of a Hitler is the final, logical product of private enterprise, willing, if it falls, to pull down millions with it, rather than sacrifice the wealth it holds.

—A.H.S.