Strana 14.
Ve stiedu, dne 16. dervence 1941.
VESTNIK
OFFICIAL ORGAN OF SLAVONIC BENEVOLENT ORDER OF STATE OF TEXAS
VESTNiK ilEgosumugaming
RATERNALISM means brotherhood. BroF therhood, necessarily, is restricted by war. We may practice brotherhood, in wartime, among our own nationals and among the nationals of countries with which we are allied or which remain neutral. It would not be seemly nor patriotic to practice brotherhood with one's enemies. Among other considerations, one's government wouldn't like it. Yet, during wartime, the need for brotherhood is greater than ever. It is needed to relieve the bitterness which we hold for our antagonists, it is needed to encourage our men under arms, it is needed to alliviate the sufferings of our people, .it is needed to form a bond of hope with peoples which have been subjugated. Canadian fraternalists, characteristically, have seen these needs and have met them. I have personal knowledge of the great work which is being done, in Canada, to aid the morale of soldiers and sailors, to furnish comforts for them and to make sure that their families do not fall into want. The assistance you are giving bom-ravished England is well known. The efforts of the British commonwealth of nations to give the. people of Germany real knowledge of the state of affairs, early in the war, were in all the headlines. Before dropping bombs you dropped leaflets. Your action in allowing experimental shipments of food and medical supplies to pass into conquered countries has been widely applauded. With a more honorable enemy, such shipments might have been permitted to continue. The spirit of brotherhood has been manifest among you. In supplying relief to troops and evacuees, Canadian fraternal organizations have taken a leading part. But this occasions is no surprise. Rather, it would be surprising if fraternal associations were not in the forefront of wartime welfare efforts. The whole background, the enviable history of your organization, have led us to expect this understanding, this humanitarian interest from,you. Truly, of all the great works of fraternalism, this last is outstanding. The providing of insurance benefits is no easy undertaking. It requires great effort and entails grave responsibilities. The safeguarding and administration of huge benefit funds is not a task for the novice. In order to supervise them adequately, one must train himself over long years. It is necessary to reach relative expertness in field organization, office management, the selection of risks; in actuarial science and the safe investment of funds. Not lightly may such work be initiated. The record of fraternal society administration is an excellent one. Despite the very trying years through which we have come, just now, the societies are sounder than ever. They are sounder, not only with regard to dollars and cents but in improved home-office management, better recruting and administration and more scientific selection of risks from both the lay and medical standpoints. How easy it would have been, during the years of panic and scarcity, to throw up one's hands, as some did, and say that the going was too difficult. But, happily, the responsible officers of fraternal societies, realizing that the welfare of millions of people was in their hands, far from seeking to evade the task, faced it with redoubled determination. Their fortitude and resolution have produced a gratifying result. But hardly had we time to recover from the great depression before we were confronted with another great war; no doubt, the
great-
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The Need for Brotherhood In War Time, By Edward King. est war in the history of the world. Not only it is a great war but it is a unique war. For the first time, the gage of battle is likely to be determined by modern machinery. For the first time, the whole world is divided by two opposing ideologies. This time, in good truth, it is necessary to fight "to save the world for democracy." For what we are confronting is an explosive retrogression, a gigantic reactionary movement back to state absolutism and the bloody rule of tyrants. This retrogression is encum bered with all the familiar Caesarian trappings: with government by tyrannical whimsy, with inquisitorial and punitive secret agents, with subsistence by continuing conquest, with the rationing of food as a political expedient, with blood and tears and anguish and with the deificatibn of temporal rulers. Ghastly, we say. Incredible! Yet there it is; a whole continent regurgitating the dregs of six thousand years. But not quite a continent. There is an island which belongs to Europe but is not of it That island is the center of a great commonwealth of nations, the British Commonwealth. There, the sons of freedom stand embattled; kneedeep in their own dead but fighting on against a posible fate which they know to be worse than death. No story of Horation at the bridge of Tiber nor of Leonidas at the Pass of Thermopylae can excel the story that is unfolding before our eyes of the stolid, unflinching British peoples. They, too, have defended their bridge, the bridge of ships. They, to have added glory to the annals of Thermopylae. With all the horror of the present conflict and the present rapine of country after country it is to be hoped that the specter of dread will not pass away without having taught us a necessary and a most valuable lesson. The lesson is that governments can be too strong. Surely there must be a great many German and Italian people who do not subscribe to the policies of their rulers. Surely, there must be many to whom the names Hitler and Mussolini are as hateful as to us. But what can they do? They are oppressed every bit as much as the Poles. They were the first to be subdued. They have no recourse whatever against their government. By no means, is it too soon to be thinking about the world and about our own countries after the war. During the period of stress and danger, no doubt, it is desirable that wide powers be delegated to government in order that it may deal effectively with grave perils and bring about the required national unity of purpose and action. But with every grant of power to government there should go a recapture clause, specifically terminating drastic powers after the war. How many times in the history of the world have people sold their birthright for a mess of pottage. How many times have they given away during times of preoccupation what they would die to recover after adequate reflection. Let it not be so with our precious liberties. There are those who would fish in troubled waters. We are law-abiding peoples. We are used to living under government of law and not of men. It is our understanding and our birthright that the law constrains our go y,
ernments as well as ourselves. There is a dangerous tendency toward usurpation of lawmaking power by government bureaus and agencies. Already the highest courts have upheld a few such actions. These tendencies must be watched by all men of all parties or we shall suffer surely. We face more than one danger. There is a creeping disease which has been stealing about the world for many a year and which appears, at times, to be stealing close to us. Its name is Marxian Socialism. Now here was a child which died aborning but whose memory lingers on. At the identical time that Marx and Engels were preparing their treatises, the very conditions upon which their theories were founded were beginning to disappear. The sweating and impoverishment of labor already had been found to provide poor-grade goods and poor markets for the goods. Already, an improvement in the lot of laboring men had started and this improvement has gone steadily forward in all the enlightened democratic countries until, today, the laborer is the envy of the clerk and the farmer. No new theory ever was needed. What was required was the mere extension of democracy to more countries and the unfolding of the democratic flower. As always, men needed recourse against their rulers. They got it with their constitution and their electoral franchise. But Marxian philosophy contained more than a plea for the workingman. In the Communist Manifesto it advocated the dictatorship of the proletariat. Now dictatorship, by whatever name it may be called, is still dictatorship and is the constant handmaiden of tyranny Dictatorship may start out to be proletarian, but it soon fetches up in a powerhouse wih a very bourgeoise belly. And, before long, it transcends the bourgeoise and pontificates in a tapestried tower with all the furbelows of an aristocratic autocrat who forgets the mud but of his youth and suddenly makes the amazing discovery that he partakes of divinity and was born to rule. And if the first proletarian dictator doesn't make this gratifying discovery, you may safely bet your bottom dollar that the second one will. What you have in Berlin and Rome is the same dish that you have in Moscow and it was inspired by the same book, the Communist Manifesto. Only Mussolini and Hitler were cynical enough to come right out with the dictatorship instead of going through a few years of pious posing. God forbid that it should happen here in -either way. I most seriously doubt that anything would be gained by any kind of socialism. As against the plain democratic processes with all their resilience and all their accomplishments in social welfare it appears recklessly chancy to experiment afresh But if we must be persuaded toward socialism there are some perfectly good Anglo-Saxon socialists whose views I invite you to consider. There was first Robert Owen who, in 1813, actually fathered socialism. He was a practical and a very convincing socialist who gave away his own properties and factories rather than someone else's. In whichever department of life you find it the touch of the Hun is always the same. It seems imposible to disabuse the German mind of the obsession of might for might's sake. Against all the evidence of history, Marx insisted upon adopting the materialistic concept of social gains and the blitzkrieg method of achieving them. Against all the evidence of history, Hitler insists upon the doctrine of Nihilism and government by blitz. Just as in Russia Marxian socialism is exhausting itself (Continued on page 17.)