Rubber, Tin & Ethics

"And you will hear a crash of falling glass and find me (sawdust welling from the wound) stabbed through the bosom with the dirty truth."—Chris Caudwell.

Today more than ever it behaves the more intelligent and ethically acute student to defend Western civilisation (the American way of life). Apart from the civilising impact of our way of life upon the pagan there is also the not inconsiderable material advantages that have accrued from the thrift of the investor who have made their capital available for developing such countries. Of course material advances are in their nature a slow business and because of this a narrow section of the community persists in condemning this. Take Malaya for instance. Here by the grace of the British Government English investors have a delightful present each year of £70,000,000 bestowed on them by grateful people. There are a few dissentients (about 90 per cent) who, avariciously thinking of their miserable selves, would appropiate this wealth for their country. But it is as plain as the marking of the Union Jack that this tiny handful of unwitting reactionaries are the dupes of a foreign power, seeking to disrupt and cut off this source of Britain's wealth. After all Britain herself earns 10,000,000 dollars less than her profits from Malaya, and anyone without prejudice can easily see that our gallant plantation owners in the mines must be nearly dead with exhaustion to create all that magnificent wealth. After all it was British blood that manured the soil of Malaya: that made it so fecund. The fact that a good Malayan worker earns about £60 a year is not an injustice, for has not Christ said that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for the rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven? No gentleman would be worth a pinch of shares that put the temptation of wealth in the way of these creatures. As for wealth and education, how can they afford it when Providence has ordained that British thrift and courageous national Guardsmen should relieve them of the incubus of wealth. Actually this saves them a considerable expenditure of wealth and worry as this little need for them to erect such costly structures as banks, factories, schools, hospitals and houses. For this their thanks should rise to heaven on a conveyor belt of prayers. Selfless individuals having the colonial peoples' welfare at heart (i.e. hearts or solid, albeit cold gold) do not shirk their duty by trusting their white man's burden on them. At first when one hears and sees of Malayans perishing from hunger, dying from consumption, suffering from rickets and beri-beri and a host of other diseases, the tendency for most people is to feel a scorching flame of hatred at an order that permits such vandalism to the image of God. This is where the tragedy arises, for these feelings are base and unworthy and not to be trusted. They are emotive, and 20th, Century man has pititlessly exposed the folly of emotive prose and the like, and all articles against Imperialism are emotive they are worthless. To get clear perspective of these issues Justice demands that an irrational thing like a conscience be brutally manhandled. He would have a conscience offers up hostages to fortune.