WASHINGTON TALK

By ROBERT WAITILMAN ELL—won't be long now ! "

" What won't be long now ?

" Won't be long now before Big Chief Cripps and Big Chief Bevin come rolling into Union Station and the big pow- wow begins. Will you and your fellow Britons be expected to wear any sort of special clothes while the great men are in town ? "

"Oh certainly. Dinner jackets and khaki shorts."

" I guess there's a good deal of interest in London in this fiesta ? " " You could say that it hasn't escaped the attention of the news- papers."

What do they expect to come out of it all ? "

"The newspapers ? "

"Well, yes—the British generally. Do they think someone's going to pull some kind of a rabbit out of the hat ? Are they expecting some kind of assurance that everything's going to be all right to come out of it ? "

" I shouldn't think so."

"Do they give a damn anyhow ? "

" My dear lad—are you asking me if the British care a damn whether they have enough to eat or not, whether they prosper or decline, whether they have a high standard of living or a low—? "

"No I'm not. I'm asking you whether the British know they're in a crisis. There's a pretty considerable school of thought here that they don't, on account they're fully employed, better paid than they've ever been, lushed up with free dentures and free doctors and family allowances and pensions—that they're so cushioned against the old fears of unemployment and destitution that they can't be expected to feel alarmed."

" Well of course, I don't know how alarmed the average man is about the dollar gap. I don't see quite how anyone can know. But there's nothing like living on a fragment of meat with one ounce of cooking fat and rather less than one cake of soap a week for a few years to bring home the general idea that we have to have foreign currency in order to buy the things we need. Do you mean you think there's no crisis ? "

" Hell no—I think you're in a lot worse spot than you realise. I mean than most of your people realise—the trade unions, for instance. I also think you'd have got more action by now if your people had genuinely believed in the crisis."

" What sort of action ? "

"Look, there's no dispute, is there, what sort of action you need to take ? You want to compete successfully in the dollar markets. How does anyone do that ? You do it by producing a lot of goods that are at least as cheap and.as good as those the other guy is peddling in the same market, and if possible a little cheaper or a little better. How do you do that ? You do it by buying your materials shrewdly, working efficiently, with good management, cutting corners, getting the most out of your labour—I don't mean slave-driving it, but not wasting it: seeing that a day's work really is a day's work. Using machinery. Inventing new machinery. Not only that—you have to make it worth while for everyone—the guy who runs the plant and the guy who works in the plant. Profits for the guy who runs the plant, not just a kind of glorified dole, which is what your Government seems to allow employers when it gets through taxing him."

" And high wages for the guy who works in the plant ? "

" Sure—so long as he does work, and co-operates."

What does co-operating mean ? "

" Well, first it means not raising hell if the boss brings in a new machine or figures out a new plan to produce more with less men.

That's one of your troubles, isn't it now Even though you have full employment you can't get the old fear of unemployment out of their minds. Paul Hoffman is right. When the good trade union man realises that his best hope lies not in chiselling a larger slice of the existing pie but in joining in the general effort to increase. the size of the pie—when your trade unionists begin to 4te that—then you're making progress." " Would you say your trade unionists feel that way ? " "Well—yes, generally speaking, I would."

"The coal miners ? When they solemnly and deliberately announce that their policy is to do half a week's work in a week—" " Well, that's a special case. I don't say all the unions act right, but I do say there's a better understanding among trade unionists that it's no good opposing new ideas and labour-saving machinery— that in the long run these things are going to enrich everyone. They've seen it happen. They know it works. That's how America got rich. Not by Socialism but by—" "—The system of free competitive enterprise."

"That's right."

" Supported, since the regrettable cropper of 1929, by certain inevitable and necessary welfare practices, such as price supports for farmers and social security and so on, which the Federal and the State Governments pursue with general public approval and the unspoken understanding that they are all right so long as they arc not called Socialism."

" Look, I don't deny that our Government has gone into the welfare business, and I don't deny that it's been necessary that it should. But we haven't killed the goose that lays the golden eggs. We haven't so taxed and regimented and hamstrung our productive industries that we can't get the effort out of them that's necessary for national survival—national prosperity."

"No, and you haven't had to pawn overseas invesunents built up for over a century in order to stay alive. If we now had the income from the investments we sold to get money to carry on the war we should have as many dollars as we need."

" I know that too. We owe you a lot, and we're trying to level things up—in our interest as well as yours--by the Marshall Plan and all the rest of it. Don't be so touchy. You were up against it, and there had to be controls. But did you have, do you have, to throw overboard the system we have proved to be the most success- ful in the world, just at the time when you were up against it, and take on a system that costs so much for spoon-feeding your people that you can't make your books balance ? "

" You know better than that, don't you ? "

" Isn't it the truth ? "

" No, it isn't. The volume of British exports has been brought up by a good deal of hard work and by sacrifices on the part of the whole population of which you and your fellow Americans have no real idea, to fifty per cent. more than they were in 1938. The books do balance with the rest of the world. And, with Marshall aid, they might even now have been on the way to an eventual balance with the dollar area if it hadn't been that you began to buy less' from the sterling countries because you had a recession, and the word began to get around that the pound would be devalued, so that buyers hung back in the hope of getting more for their money, and—" " Arc we now going to have the argument that the British crisis! is all America's fault ? "

"You are not—not from me, nor I devoutly trust from Big Chief Cripps and Big Chief Bevin. That's one of the troubles though.' I set forth a few facts which are not in dispute at all as to the reasons why this crisis has suddenly sprung up and you Hy into a rage and accuse me—" "Calm down, calm down. I ain't mad at nobody. But who was it said that a system that isn't proof against a ten per cent. decline in dollar exports isn't much good to anybody ? "

" I don't know, but whoever it was might have added that you don't usually judge how good a system is at a time when it's still struggling to establish itself."

"You think the system's fine and dandy ? Everything perfect ? "

"There you go again—you have to have everything in either jet black or pure white. I didn't say it was perfect. What I do say is that you condemn everything we've done on the ground that one of the things we've done has gone wrong—and I'm admitting that the thing that's gone wrong, the dollar export thing, is one of the most vital of them all. But there are other things too."

"Such as ? "

"Such as healthier children and fair sharing of pretty nearly, everything the country has, and the removal of a lot of old fears— fear of having a family in case the job gives out, fear of being- ill because you can't afford a doctor, fear of a neglected and poverty- stricken old age. You wouldn't call that nothing ? "

"No, I wouldn't call that nothing. What do you think Amiricans are looking for ? You've been here long enough not to be one of those insufferable Englishmen who's doped it all out that so long as they have an icebox and a car and two television sets all Americans arc happy."

" Dear old boy, in answer to your reasonable question—I think Americans are looking for almost exactly the same things that Britons are looking for. Some security, a chance to live and learn and better themselves, bigger opportunities for their children—" " That's about it, I guess. Only we think the best way is to give every individual his head—let him win these things for himself in competition with his fellow men. We figure he'll win them quickest that way."

"And we think that no man is an island, and that we have a collective responsibility."

"As simple as that, huh ? The doctrine of individual responsi- bility and the doctrine of collective responsibility. Say, I wonder if Chiefs Cripps and Bevin know it's as simple as that ? "

" Ah. I wonder. . . ."

"Yes. . . . Where in hell did that waiter get to ? "