_ Britain’s alternative
to crisis

by ROBERT F. HALL

UITE simply, Britain’s plight is that she cannot export enough to pay for the food

and raw materials she needs for her people and her foreign trade. Her inability to
“export derives from lagging production which in turn is due to war damage and
machinery which was obsolete, in comparison with Canadian and American equipment,

even before the- war.

unhurt by the war, to produce more cheaply and thus beat

formerly dominated by the Bri-
tish. Much of what Britain
needs, she can get only from the
United States. For that she
needs dollars, the most plentiful
and yet the most desirable cur-
rency in all the world.

In quest of this golden fleece,
from the U.S. in 1946, Britain
secured a loan of $3,750,000,000
in return for which she virtual-
ly mortgaged her soul. Among
the open terms of the agreement
was Britain’s pledge to open her
markets to American business-
men and surrender whatever ad-
vantages she had retained by
virtue of special trade treaties
with these nations. Among the
unwritten terms was Britain’s
pledge to support the anti-Soviet
foreign policy of the US.

It is difficult to say which,
the written or the unwritten
pledge, has contributed most
disastrously to Britain’s undoing. —
- Under terms of the written
agreement, Britain has’ ‘been
forced to establish the ‘open
door’ in her former markets,
and no salesmen move more
freely through ‘open doors’ than
do the representatives of Ameri-
ean business with their cheaper,
more plentiful goods.

ER the terms of the un-
J written agreement, Britain
has kept her armed forces at a
strength of 1,500,000, an unduly
large proportion of her popula-
tion, and has maintained them
in Greece, Palestine, Egypt,
Germany and other far-flung
outposts. It has cost her $300,-
- 900,000 a year for occupation in
Germany alone.

Things were bad enough for
Britain last spring, especially
after a severe winter which tied
up transportation and hampered
-eoal production. But since July

_ 15, the situation has deteriorated
rapidly. On that date, under the _

terms of the British loan agree-
ment, the London government
was compelled to make her cur-
rency, pounds, freely convertible
into dollars.

During the war, Britain went
heavily into debt to Australia,”
Canada and other of her dom-
_inions. These countries emerged
from the war with large supplies
of British' pounds. They earned
more pounds each month as they
sold wheat, wool and other raw
products to England. Since July
15, Britain has been forced to.
give US. dollars for these
pounds wherever demanded.

The result is that - Britain’s
store of precious dollars, so es-

. sential to her recovery, has

. perts say it will be exhausted

N picturing the unhappy

plight of Britain, I have
stressed as causes such objective
matters as the damage done by
war, the obsoleteness of British
equipment, and the American
drive for world conquest which
requires a subservient, dependent
Britain. I have attached great-
est weight to the last.

By this, I do not mean to
absolve the government of Att-
lee and Bevin of all blame. If
ever a maid, by provocative ways
and bold smiles, invited seduc-
tion, her counterpart is the Att-
lee-Bevin government.

The Labor government has al-
way® had another choice. It
could have followed the _ pro-
gram proposed by William Rust,
editor of the London Daily
Worker. This included:

@ Abandonment of support for
the Marshall Plan and its re-
placement by a policy of co-
operation of Britain, France

..-and the Soviet. Union.

@ A national economic plan to
tackle the crisis, sweeping
aside the vested interests and
nationalizing the steel indus-
try.

@® Imposition of an anmual capi-
tal tax on the rich.

@ Resumption of trade negotia-
tions with the Soviet Union.

@ Drastic reduction of the arm-
ed forces.

@ Development of British agri-'

culture.

@ Removal of Bevin “and other
architects of disaster’ from
the government.

‘But the Labor government has
consistently rejected this pro-
gram and sought aid from the
U.S., even though this aid en-
tailed a humiliating surrender of
British independence and Brit-
ish national security.

ee

EPLORABLE as this may be,
it is for the British people,

not us, to point the accusing
finger at the London govern-
ment.

There are two British missions
in Washington, now. One is dis-
cussing the problem of increas-
ing coal production in the Rhur,
so crucial to the American plan
for rebuilding a strong indus-
trialized Germany as the anti-
Soviet spearhead of U.S. foreign
policy. : ;

The other is discussing the
British plea for easing the rig-
orous conditions of the 1946 loan
agreement. A third discussion
will begin shortly in London to
tackle with France the American

program of raising the level of

ernment ownership—it becomes |

impossible for American business-
men to buy it up. Such barriers

' department

And, of course, it is also due to the ability of American industry,

the Britons in many markets

to ‘free enterprise’ are frowned
on by Washington.

For similar reasons, Britain
must agree to discard its plan
to nationalize the Rhur coal
mines.

Britain must retain its armed
forces at near their present
strength and assign them, or
keep them assigned, to such
posts as Greece, Palestine and
Germany where they serve Am-
erican interests. 2

Britain must support the Mar-
shall plan in every respect and
avoid alliances or agreements
which might strengthen Britain,

the Soviet Union or the new

democracies of Central Europe.

If Britain meets these condi-
tions freely, the U.S. may agree
to some loans and to some eas-
ing of the terms of the 1946 loan
agreement. It would be worse
than foolish, however, to ex-
pect that the revisions in the
_agreement will be sufficient to

e

—WASHINGTON
| EDGAR HOOVER’S FBI is
protecting the biggest war-
time spy ring in the United
States, while his agents raise
a new, anti-Communist smoke
sereen. The spies Hoover pro-
tects were sending microfilms
of army ordnance and naval
equipment to Berlin. They were
sending atomic data ag well.
They were not petty operators.
They were working out of the
American offices and plants of
the German chemical trust, with
which James Forrestal, Edsel
Ford and a group of Standard
Oil and Mellon men were for-
merly connected. Now Hoover
knows all about this anti-Am-
erican plot. The conspiracy was
exposed; by the U.S. treasury
before Secretary
Morgenthau was fired by Presi-
dent Truman.

But Hoover is too busy try-
ing to frame Communists
through fabricated ‘atom spy’
seares to do anything about the
real spy menace.

The real. German spy ring,
which the treasury exposed,
worked out of the American
offices of I. G. Farbenindustrie,
the Nazi. chemical trust.

The Nazi trust set up an
American subsidiary, American
I. G. Chemical Corporation,
1929, with Standard Oil help.

Edsel Ford, and later a Mel-
lon representative, joined the
board of directors.

And Forrestal, the former
navy secretary, who is now in
command of all American
armed forces as secretary of
the department of national de-
fense, became assistant vice
president of the German-con-
trolled company in 1939.

bes

CLEMENT ATTLEE

recapture markets on which
the ‘U.S. has cast a covetous
eye.

e

RE are elements in the
Truman government who ar-
gue that some compromise with
the British government along
these lines is necessary. “Brit-
ain must be saved,” they say,
by which they mean the British
government must be prevented
from travelling leftward. Only
such a compromise, in their op-
inion, will enable Attlee to avoid
closer collaboration with the So-
viet Union. Only dollar loans
will prevent the Labor Party
from booting out Attlee and
Bevin and replacing them with
leaders of the left-wing labor
party.
There are other elements in
the Truman government, how-

real atom spies

Forrestal was then president
of Dillon, Read and Company,
the international bankers who
had financed the German Steel
Trust, of which Farben was
part owner.

The Dillon, Read magnate
joined the Nazi firm in October,
just after the fall of Poland,
when the name ‘American I.G.’
was being dropped for war
camouflage purposes. The Far-
ben subsidiary became the Gen-
eral Aniline & Film Corporation.

S part of the camouflage
Geheimrat’ Hermann Schmitz,
Farben’s chairman, resigned

from the board of*directors of.

the New York subsidiary.

\ But his brother Dietrich re-
mained as General Aniline’s
president. German control con-
tinued.

- And the spying went on even
faster.

Now big shot Nazi spies were
not cheap undercover men like
Carlucci, the American  ship-
owners’ thug, who is heading
the U.S. Army’s police in Berlin
today.

In America and South Amer-
ica they were responsible en-
gineers and salesmen for Gen-
eral Aniline & Film Corpora-
tion and sister Farben concerns.

Now General Aniline was a
$66,000,000 outfit. With its allies
it dominated the production of
dyestuffs, photographic chemic-
als and other
items. |

And it was “aptly devised
for espionage purposes,” as
Secretary Morgenthau said in
1942, after the treasury had
raided General’ Aniline’s offices
and examined the defense films
it was sending to Germany.

iary called Agfa Ansco, @

key chemical

ever, and in the GOP leadership

lee-Bevin

it is the government of the
Labor Party, elected on a plat-
form of socialism. Secretary of
the Treasury Snyder is reported-
ly of this opinion and Secretary
of Commerce Harriman shares,
at least, some of Snyder’s sus-

picions and prejudices.

They place their confidence
in Churchill and the Tories with
whom they feel far more com>
fortable. In their opinion, by —
withholding assistance, the U.S. —
could force a_ crisis which
would enable Churchill and his
friends to ride back to power —

No progressive Briton wants
this. Although progressive Brit-
ons might, like the leftwing La
borites and Communists, criti-
cize Attlee and Bevin unmerciful-
ly, they would fight with all their
energy to save the Labor gov-
ernment from defeat at Chur-
chillian hands. Their aim is to
change the Labor Party leader- —
ship from within. 3

Progressives in Canada and
the U.S. must sympathize with
and support this aim. It is only
logical, therefore that they will
endorse the general principle of
all possible aid to Britain in its
present extremity. a

In the U.S., progressives will
insist that loans to Britain
should carry no onerous and
humiliating conditions, certainly
nothing that hampers the Pro
gress of the British people to
wards greater freedom from
poverty and exploitation. They —
want the sort of assistance t?
Britain that will make her less
and less dependent on Wall
Street and the Truman govert-
ment, and more and more the
independent master of her ow?
fate.

Only in this way will Britaim
cease to be a major prop to the
Marshall Plan and the Trumam
doctrine, two policies which,
unchecked, will carry the world
into World War Three. :

Forrestal, who is _ listed in
the 1941 volume of Moody's
Manual of Industrials as assis
ant vice president, had already
left General Aniline by the —
But he was still playing ball.
with his old company as unde
secretary of the U.S. Navy: The
treasury found that the navy
had given the Nazi-controll
firm contracts for some Of
most secret equipment.

No spy could have asked any”
thing better. Mace

e :

UT the Nazis a still

better look-see.

They got the right. to ‘make
pictures from the navy itself.

subsid-
General Aniline had a well’

firm.

micro”
latest

11 a8

got

known German American
And Agfa Ansco had m
to’ get contracts for
printing films of the
technical devices of the
Ordnance Corporation as We
the navy. not
The German company a
only took the pictures—it e
veloped them as well. — Ree
Making copies of the govrn
ment’s secret war developme™
for transmission to
was therefore a cinch. —
General Aniline he. axe
over by the government ©, +
enemy property, eventually: sa
it was soon turned over
management of a group °
connected with the J-—
Schroder bankers, the
German-American outfit,
Time Magazine once
economic booster for
Berlin Axis.”

in Wall Street and Waél
behind Hoover's. anti-Com?
smeke screen.

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