Soberly
May 23, 1943
The moment is serious, just as serious for you as it is for anyone else. For twenty years you have fought against shadows. And now a real danger affronts you. In fact several enemies confront you. Quite solid dangers. You have been stirred up against a Germany that did not exist. For two decades your press has conducted a campaign of defamation against Italy. The campaign of lies does no good to anyone. You included. One expects you to be a bit up in the bottle. Perhaps it will be easier, or more nearly possible for you to hear in such a moment than when you are in the doldrums.
The moment calls for realism of a kind more real than you are accustomed to. Let us take down the stage set. It is very easy to fall into rhetoric. It is very easy for people to be swayed by cliché. No one is immune from THAT danger. Least of all men who write in a hurry.
YOU are threatened. You are threatened by the Russian METHODS of administration. Those methods are not theoretic. The theory of Bolschevism has never constituted a danger to England. Mr. Churchill knows quite as much about Bolshevik METHODS of administration as anyone else. Mr. Churchill has in the past expressed himself quite clearly on that subject. Nothing equivocal about Winston’s words when referring to Russia under Bolshevik rule. The mass graves at Katyn surprised NO one.
BUT the Russian system of administration in Iran, for example, is not your sole danger. It is, in fact, so far from being your sole danger that I have, in over two years of talk over this radio, possibly never referred to it before.
Usury has gnawed into England since the days of Elizabeth. First it was mortgages, mortgages on Earl’s estates; usury against the feudal nobility. Then there were attacks on the common land, filchings of village common pasture. Then there developed a usury system, an international usury system, from Cromwell’s time, ever increasing. That system gave you your slums. It brought in that civic leprosy that has made England a byeword. It has taken the shock of this war, three years of war to jog your memory, to bring your slums up again into headlines.
The usury system does NO nation good, it does no nation any good whatsoever. It is an internal peril to him who hath, and it can make NO use of nations in the play of international diplomacy save to breed strife between them and use the worst as flails against the best.
It is the usurer’s game to hurl the savage against the civilized opponent. The game is not pretty, it is not a very safe game. It does no one any credit.
A ruined Europe gives you no market. A ruined England will give no market to the new usury control.
Systems grow rotten and die. You have thrown Poland, had thrown half of Poland, to Russia, not in any attempt to save Poland. With the new Russia you have no longer any need of that particular dagger thrust into Germany’s vitals. Russia constitutes a quite sufficient counterpoise to German force, now that they have a common frontier.
Let me interrupt myself at this point, to be perfectly clear as to my own convictions. EVERY social reform that has gone into effect in Germany and Italy should be defended. And the best men in England know that as well as I do. The time of calumny is past, and its passing should be seen very clearly. It should be seen very clearly IN England. Colonial empires should be administered by those nations who can best TEACH how such empires can and should be administered. That sentence perhaps needs a whole talk to itself.
The usury system rots the earth. It is a malady dangerous to ALL people. As your own slums can testify. The usury system has ruined millions of poor devils in England just as it has brought misery to millions in India. And that system is shifting its central. That shift represents NO gain to your American allies. It merely means an increase of vigor, it means a new and more violent infraction of America’s 120 millions, and that infection will do YOU no good. Your middle class will be engulfed, London will feel the blow as Vienna felt the blow after the last war. That is to say, the glitter of scum, the feverish distribution of tidbits among a privileged few, and among the art world surrounding “society” will decline.
The nomadic parasites will shift out of London and into Manhattan. And this will be presented under a camouflage of national slogans. It will be represented as an American victory. It will not be an AMERICAN victory. The moment is serious. The moment is also confusing. It is confusing because there are two sets of concurrent phenomena, namely, those connected with fighting this war, and those which sow seeds for the next one. Your leading men ought to see that. You ought to see it.
It should constitute food for reflection. For YOUR reflection. You are between two very rough millstones.
