Golden Age, April 13, 1921
Download: PDF — Golden Age, April 13, 1921
Golden
$
£2
A-JOUR.NAL-OF ' FACT , -HOPE-AND'CONVfCTlON*
a j welsar W
9-20 - 21
Apr. 13,1921, Vol II, No. 41
FZB Published every other 1K|1 w at 35 Myrtle Avenue, flrooklyn, Vcic York City
Caata ■ Copy—1X00 • Tear
C*Q a da. ind Foreign Countries, $2.50
VcL'.-^S 2 WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 1931 Ncmbtu 41
CONTENTS of the GOLDEN AGE
LABOR AND ECONOMICS
SMerar of Unemployment 399 Coal I nd ax cry the Pivot 403
I’ow* of Bntlah Labor—400 Transport Industry
Trend Toward Socialism 402
. SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL
Social Condltlone — ......... . ■
FINANCE—COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION
Economising Automobile Operation ..........
♦08
British Stnanceu -------
POLITICAL—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN
Earth's Greatest Empire 387
Woes of Ireland.___394
John Boll and Uncle Sam3M
Churning for War____397
Militarism is Unpopular.—399 The Coming wingrtnin. ana
A Corporation Conadenee 387
A Banter's League—---3»
Ruaaian " Acid Tea V--------390
Blech and Brown Races—-399
TRAVEL AND MISCELLANY
Color and character- ------------ --------------
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
The Jews Will Be Brought Out of Their Graves and Put
Into Their Own Land................-....................—
' "They Shall No More be Pulled up Out of Their Land" ..ill Every Man Who Dies Shall Die for His Own Sins-------
Sodomites Also to be Returned tor Their Former Estate—.412 Examples of Just Indignation Which Will be of Future
Service tn an..............
How Glorious Is God's Flan as Compared with the Creedal
Views
Some Men’s Views Exalt the Wisdom and Power of Satan and Underestimate God's Ability
Juvenile Bible Study.......
The Morning Cometh (poem)41 a
Fob tit every orbyp WadeMday at 3S Myrtle Awn:’*. 'Hem Brookljrnj New York. N. Y..
by ODWORTH, MUDGINGfl aad MARTIN
Edk>
CLAYTON J WOODWORTH
ROBERT J MARTIN .... WB. b HUDG1NGS......See"y <ad Tree*.
CcfaMncra ud pnertatora. AddrMi ’’■e MfrtU A**nii«., <HareeT Bron*!'ni> N. w Yurk, Na T. lev > ' Xtw * Coer —12.00 a Yuan, Hale remittances to The Golden Ape.
The Golden Age
Volume II
Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, April 13, 1921
Number 41
Earth’s Greatest Empire
FOUR years ago the greatest empire that the world has ever seen had its back to the wall and was fighting for existence, but today it still lives and is greater than ever. More than ever before it has the whole world directly or indirectly under its control.
In three hundred years the British Empire has grown from an island kingdom containing 50,000 square miles and 6,000,000 population to an empire nine times larger than that of the Roman Empire at the height of its glory, containing 15,000,000 square miles and a combined ruling and subjugated population of 500,000,-000. This is 30 percent of the area and 30 percent of the population of the globe, and within this area is one-half of all the inhabitable, fertile land.
As a result of the World War Britain added to her empire, either by annexation or protectorates or mandates, a territory of 3,972,000 square miles, and a population of 51,275,000 people, ninety-nine percent of whom are natives. Not many of these people came under the British flag willingly; they must be held in subjection by force.
Before the war the British Empire possessed on the shores of the Indian Ocean four huge territorial masses, completely separated from one another. Now these lands are all connected, from the Cape of Good Hope to the Malay peninsula; and to all intents and purposes the vast Indian Ocean has become a British lake, enclosed on all sides by British territory.
There is a reason for this hunger for millions of square miles of territory and hundreds of millions of population. It is a desire for raw materials and for markets. The native soil of Great Britain and Ireland supports only about one-quarter of the population. The remaining , three-quarters must live by trading their services for food and clothing from beyond the seas, or go without.
Let no one suppose that the ruling classes of the British Empire do not know what they are about when they scheme and plot to get under their control as many of humankind as possible. When questioned closely they do not hesitate to admit that, in effect, the empire is a great trading corporation, as, in reality, all other empires have always been.
A Corporation Conscience
TT IS a favorite saying that “Corporations have no consciences”, and it is strangely true that when gathered together in pursuit of a common object men will do things they would never think of doing if acting upon their personal initiative and for their personal interests. What is true of corporations is true of empires.
The people of the British Isles are a people of unsurpassed intelligence, honesty and thrift, and of unexampled courage and fortitude; but their ruling classes, with high indifference to the good opinions of either Gott or man, have set a record for duplicity and cruelty which it would be hard indeed to match, unless it be lathe American administration which at last, thank God, has gone into the oblivion which it richly deserved. How much longer the British machine can continue to travel with this kind of gravel in its bearings is a question which furnishes part of the reason for this article.
At various times in its history the British Empire has been blessed with faithful, conscientious men at the helm, whose efforts have been along lines of justice and righteousness, but their endeavors to do as they wished were largely frustrated through the mischief of others.
In any event, a very small'acquaintance with history reveals the fact that by means of alliances, propaganda against competitors, and the maintenance of a large navy, the British Empire has at one time or another broken the commercial supremacy of Spain, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, France, Germany, Austria and Russia, and at different periods, as occasion required, succeeded in making all the rest of the world abhor the Spaniards, Hollanders, French, Russians, Turks and Germans.
It is no secret with large corporations as to how to do this thing. All that is needed is a printing press, a mailing list, and a go-to-church-on-Sunday and business conscience during the week. It is all a question of newspapers. / Give them money enough, and the news agencies will deliver any people on earth over to the hatred of the rest of the world.
And no corporation has ever beaten or equalled'the British Government in spreading false reports, inflammatory appeals to the best and to the worst sentiments of men, suppression of facts, exaggeration, abuse, misrepresentation, distortion, concealment and downright malicious lying.
A hundred years ago, or a little more, it came to light that the British Government of those days was doing a very profitable business with the pirates of Algiers and Tripoli. The deal that was made with them was to let British ships pass unharmed and to attack the merchant ships of other nations, a trick worthy of Standard Oil, in its palmiest days. Today the methods have changed, but the principles remain the same.
No honorable private person would think of snooping into another’s private mail. Any person caught reading another’s private letters is disgraced for life, and deserves to be; yet it was only in December, 1920, that in a hearing before the United States Senate committee considering cable legislation, John Goldhanuner, Secretary of the Commercial Cable Company, stated that British censors require submission to them of all American cable messages, including the official cables of the State Department of the United States. This evidence was confirmed by Clarence H. Mackay, head of the Postal Telegraph Company, and Newcomb Carleton, head of the Western Union. No J .• exceptions are made. Everything goes into the hands of these men ten days after the messages are transmitted.
Within the next month a great stir was made in America by the discovery that the principal American shipping concern, the International Mercantile Marine, had for eighteen years been under a contract with the British Government that if at any time it should do anything injurious to the interest of the British mercantile marine, or to British trade, the dispute must be referred to the Lord High Chancellor of the British Empire, whose decision on the law or the fact should be final.
A Bankers’ League
T N Thb Golden Agb Number 21 we paid our respects to the so-called League of Nations, ; the combination of politicians and bankers for the preservation of the British Empire and the i exploiting of the millions that have recently J been gathered into it. Every day adds fresh evidence of the unwisdom of America’.* ever entering that combination, if she desires to j remain free. ; ’
In 1790 Congress passed an act requiring that the president’s duties should be exercised ’-J at the seat of government, and on March 4, -'1
1913, passed another act that the President should not extend or accept any invitation to participate in any international conference without first having authority to do so.
No such authority having been granted to him, the President thereupon disobeyed both 5 laws, boarded the glass-roofed steamer which had been made ready for him at fabulous cost, raised the wages of one of his $3,000 henchmen - .4 to $30,000, proceeded across the ocean, dined on King George’s $15,000,000 gold plate, transferred himself to Paris, where he could sleep in a gondola-shaped bed in a bedroom thirty feet square, and take his meals at an inlaid mahogany table large enough to accomodate thirty-five guests, and brought forward his r fourteen points which were the ostensible basis for the conference. The real basis for the conference was the program for the League ’ of Nations, already in the pocket of its originator, Lord Phillimore.
For the sake of future historians, we summarize those fourteen points and explain what ,, happened to them: .
1. There were to be hereafter open covenants openly arrived at—and the proceedings were all in secret.
2. There was to be freedom of the seas—and Great Britain flatly refused to consider it
3. There was to be the removal of economic barriers—and those barriers, against some of the greatest nations, have never been lifted.’
4. There was to be reduction of armaments— and the American army and navy are larger than ever.
5. There was to be impartial treatment of colonial claims—and every colony was straightway grabbed.
6. The treatment of Russia was to be the acid test of Allied faithfulness — and it has been, most surely.
7. The territory of Belgium was to be evacuated—strangely, this was done and Belgium got two strips of bacon from Germany besides.
8. Alsace-Lorraine was to be restored to France—but she grabbed the Saar Valley, too.
9. Frontiers were to be adjusted along lines of nationality—but Italy thinks she was doublecrossed, and Germany surely was.
10. Austro-Hungary was to be given autonomy—and she has been carved into toothpicks.
• 11. There was to be peace in the Balkans— and they have as many wars as ever.
12. Turkey was to be made secure in her sovereignty—but Britain has taken Constantinople, Palestine and Mesopotamia.
13. A Polish state was to be created from Polish populations — but Poland was encouraged to invade strictly Russian territory.
14. Territorial integrity was to be assured to great and small—and the Shantung steal by Japan went through O. EL
It is very foolish and childish for people to look upon machines of government as sacred things, too holy to be profaned by touch or examination. Mr. Lloyd George has shown how much real sincerity of purpose was back of the League of Nations, when he declared that the mandates for people not yet able to stand by themselves were not the gift of the League of Nations, but were merely given by the Allies to one another. The covenant of the League itself expressly denies this statement, and the .word mandate implies delegated authority.
After the League had been in operation nearly a year the lower house, the Assembly, as it is called, wanted to have something to say about how things were to be done, and was told, in almost so many words, by one of England’s greatest men that the Council would do all the deciding, and the Assembly could just stick around and 0. EL the work.
This was one of the things that kept America out. American statesmen discovered that in the supreme council of nine members, five of which were always to be United States, Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan, there were four elective seats, which might at any time be occupied by Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, thus giving Great Britain five times the representation in the upper house that, strangely enough, was to have been accorded to the largest English-speaking country on the globe. In the lower house Great Britain demanded six votes to America’s one.
There were too many lies told, and there was too much selfishness displayed, in connection with the League, of Nations project to enable it to withstand the fierce fires of public scrutiny. The British Government has been caught in. .so many lies of late that it is now almost on a par with the Japanese Government in this respect. Nothing that it says is believed.
In 1914 the British Government made the statement in- open Parliament that it had no secret understanding with France and Russia, and later admitted, also in open Parliament, that it did have a secret treaty with those two countries, under which England was to join them in case of war with the central powers.
At the time that the British Government borrowed the $4,000,000,000 from the United States ' it knew that it then had in existence secret treaties with Japan and other nations detrimental to the interests of the United States, and prejudicial to the peace of the world. It accepted American cooperation in the war, accepted the fourteen points, and never disclosed those secret treaties except for the purpose of dismissing the fourteen points as impossible, when the time had come for making use of the "points”.
The British Board of Trade has declared that it is definitely committed to the League of Nations and its supreme council, and that it believes the supreme council fully qualified to supervise world business relations; and multitudes of preachers have declared that "The
League of Nations is the political expression of God’s kingdom on earth”, b'ut the facts show that it is one of the greatest instruments of hypocrisy ever invented.
On every possible occasion the League has worked openly or secretly for the restoration of monarchies, and in Hungary and elsewhere ' has encouraged the regathering of reactionaries and militarists, conspiring to overthrow every vestige of liberty. Its encouragement of Poland to wage war beyond her own borders is known to all
Jerome K. Jerome, a great English writer, said of the League of Nations:
“The League of the Three Nations—the League of England, France and Japan for the spoiling at all the earth—is dead. It was to have been an instrument— this precious League of Nations’—for the stabilizing to all eternity of all the villainies of Versailles. It was to have been a league for making the world safe for plutocracy, safe from any fear of democracy. It was to have been a league — this League of the Three Nations—for the putting of all Europe under the heel of France; the granting of a perpetual lease of half Asia to Japan; the turning of the seas of all the earth into an English lake. It was to have been a league for the chaining of liberty, for the letting loose of militarism to devour the people. The thing was conceived of evil men for evil deeds. Nothing could be done while it still breathed. Even now ita corpse lies across the pathway of the world.”
When the 1920 American elections became known, George Bernard Shaw, another great English writer, said of the American people:
"They have renounced the pseudo League of Nations; . they have repudiated alliances, and have made peace a separate matter between themselves and Germany. Their signatures to the savage treaty of Versailles have not saved it from being thrown over as a hopelessly bad job; and as they could not vote for a president apostate, they have voted for Washington, whom Mr. Wilson must face at the last with his thirty pieces of silver.”
In spite of the foregoing pungent language, Mr. Lloyd George made such remarks before the Empire Parliamentary Association in December, respecting a time when all nations would take a share in the work of the League of Nations, a s conveyed to his hearers the impression that he then had some definite assurance that the gentleman recently elected because he was not in favor of America’s going into the League would do all he could to see that she got into it If he was correctly understood, it all goes to show what we know to be a fact, that hypocrisy is not confined entirely to the eastern shores of the Atlantic Ocean.
During the American Civil War, British diplomats encouraged the strife, hoping to get both halves back into the . empire. What was not accomplished by that war may yet be accomplished by this League of Nations scheme. The leading banking house of America is a British banking house, and may confidently be relied upon to do all possible to accomplish British ends.
Russian “Aeid Tegt”
TT OW Russia was to be treated was to be the acid test by which the faithfulness of the Allies should be determined — and all of the Allies have tried to slay as many Russians as they conveniently could. It has been an open secret since the Spring of 1919 that executives of the British Government, but not the British people, were in full sympathy with the idea of making war against Russia, to please the International Plunderbund.
These executives expended nearly a billion dollars in hanging on to the flanks of the Russian people, either on the Archangel front or at Lake Onega, or at Baltic ports, or in Poland, or in Ukrainia, or in Siberia, or in Crimea, or Armenia. The only thing that has prevented these assassins and embezzlers from coming out into the open has been the certain knowledge that the British workers would not back them up. They have even admitted this in conversations with Russian monarchists, and, in order to accomplish what they could, have been proven guilty of falsehood and the using of the Red Cross as an instrument of warfare. This was one of the things so loudly charged against the Germans during the World War.
Great Britain never made any declaration of War against Soviet Russia, yet private wars have been conducted against that country for which the British people have had to pay. Promising the British people to evacuate Archangel and vicinity as soon as. possible, these executives sent picked troops t o Archangel to make sure that the evacuation would be delayed as long as possible, all because these executives, or those for whom they work, did not personally approve of the form of Russian government that seems to suit the Russian people better than Czardom.
After a definite agreement had been entered into with the Soviet Government not to undertake any hostile action against it, the British fleet was mobilized in the Baltic Sea in the interest oJ Poland; and when General Wrangel was cooped up in the Crimea, about to be overcome by Bolshevist arms, the British Government ask:-d for and secured an armistice for Wrangel, during which armistice it supplied him with British arms, ammunition, food and equipment.
For th. _>e years the British Government prevented the export of medical supplies and surgical requirements to Soviet Russia; but this is now changed, for the Russians somehow got hold of some perfectly good Chinese bonds, and the British Government allowed these to be sold in London and the proceeds used in payment for needed medical supplies.
British troops returning from the Archangel front have explained why the projected invasion of Russia was a failure. The officers were unable to explain to the men why they were fighting the Russians. At first the officers said that the Russians were worse than Germans; but despite the brutal treatment accorded to Russian prisoners by Allied forces, the Russians healed their Allied captives, and sent them back to the Allies well fed and warmly clothed, always to repeat the same question, “Why are we here?”
At length, no answer being forthcoming, to offset the Russian claims that Allied troops were there merely as representatives of bankers who wished to enforce payment of bonds issued by the Czar’s old regime, the officers finally came to be of the same opinion as the men, that the expedition was one of plain murder. The United States troops that were sent to the 'Archangel front were also sent without the consent of the people.
When the Poles attacked Russia, they were aided and abetted by the chiefs of the French and British War Offices, who supplied French officers and French and British arms and ammunition. Money credits were supplied by America, again without consent of the people.
No doubt there is truth in the claims of some of these men that Bolshevism is not democratic} that large classes of citizens are barred from voting, and that no general elections have been held or are likely to be held; But this was all ti-ue under the Czar, too; and France, England and America let him do about as he pleased. Of course the excuse for these attacks is that an independent Poland is necessary for the safety of Europe; that Russia and Germany must not be allowed joint frontiers, lest Bolshevism sweep over Germany. Ic it ever does, the Allies will be the direct cause of it, in the inhuman terms they imposed.
Representatives of British labor who visited Russia during 1920 are not enthusiastic to have conditions there duplicated in England, although they,claim that most of Russia’s troubles are due to the blockade against her, which has been so long enforced. They are well pleased with the Russian arrangement of a good minimum wage for everybody who works and nothing for those who do not.
They point out that Russia has been a pioneer in some things that England herself is now taking up. One of the Soviet Government’s first acts was to allot quarters for the homeless in all unoccupied or partly occupied buildings. The Health Ministry of Great Britain has been recommending the very same thing in Britain, insisting that-the vacant houses of peers and others be turned into flats for accommodation of the homeless.
At one time the Bolshevist armies reached a point within twenty miles of Warsaw; and when it looked as if Poland would be overwhelmed, England’s Premier made the statement that “Great Britain is bound to give every assistance in her power to save Poland”. This was done not only with an eye to the effect on Germany, but far to the east the Mohammedan states of Afghanistan and Baluchistan, which border on the British Empire in India, have sent envoys to Moscow, and Great Britain has reason to be apprehensive.* How a declaration of war was prevented will be told in another part of this article. There is a new master on the horizon whose will must be obeyed.
It is an interesting commentary on current history to note that after the Polish war the American President ordered the Russian
•In India the representatives of 70,000,000 Mohammedans have served formal notice that they will no longer cooperate With the British Government, .
Envoy Martens to return to Russia, involving the cancellation of large orders for which he was prepared to pay cash, and that the British Government has welcomed another representative of Russia to London to talk business.
Black and Brown Races
BRITAIN’S treatment of the black and brown races is not the same as her-treatment of the whites. Sir H. H. Johnston, writing on this subject in the London Observer, says of conditions in East Africa:
“The natives are slowing coalescing, Bantu with Nilote, Mohammedan with Christian and Pagan, Somali and Galla with the hitherto despised Negro, in their common hatred of the invading white man, owing to the exceptional cruelties which have stained the white man’s record during this period of fifteen years. Not only have murders, light-hearted murders, of natives taken place all too frequently, not only have revolting cruelties been. committed, but, when the white delinquents are brought up for trial white juries acquit them, or white judges inflict trivial penalties, or rebellious public opinion forces a governor to revise a sentence. I doubt if capital punishment for murder has ever been imposed upon a white man in East Africa.”
A native of India writes bitterly of conditions ’ in his native land:
“Countless millions have starved to death while food which they have grown has been shipped from their country. Their industries have been destroyed that they might not compete with Manchester and Lancashire and that they might remain producers of raw materials; their self-governing, democratic village communities have been destroyed and authority centralized in one hand, that exploitation might be more thorough; their schools have been destroyed, and education denied them, save that which fitted them for subordinate clerical
positions under European masters; opium and liquor hare been forced upon them by cannons with a fourfold purpose: revenue, easier economic subjection, easier political subjection, racial and cultural destruction.’* -
Out of a total population of 360.000,000 in India and her dependencies only 170,000 are Europeans, which shows that these immense countries are not held for colonization purposes; if they are not held for colonization there exists good ground for the charges above made. But let us examine more particularly the last of these charges, the one about opium. The Opium Monoply 'TTIRTUALLY all the opium in the world is . * grown in India by the British Government.
- It is a state monopoly, from the advancing of money to the cultivator, and the making ready of the opium at the Government factory at Ghazipur to the selling of it at public auction at Calcutta, where it is marketed without let or hindrance to the highest bidder.
All that this Indian writer has said about the destructive powers of opium upon a people is correct, and still more is true. It is useful among starving people to cause them to forget the pangs of hunger, it reduces or destroys the procreative powers and cuts the expectancy of life in half.
From this industry the British Government gets $15,000,000 net annually for opium which it sells outside of India, and $50,000,000 net annually for that sold within India itself. This enormous sale of opium is turning the people of India into drug addicts. A recent British Government Blue Book shows an increase of 44 percent in opium consumption and 67 percent in the use of other habit-forming drugs. No wonder the book was Blue! -
The British Government imposes severe restrictions against the importations of opium into England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The peoples of these lands are considered worthy of preservation, but not so those of the lands named below.
The heathen and. pacific Chinese do not want to ruin their people with opium; and so, in 1839, they destroyed 20,000 chests that belonged to that great. Christian and warlike Government that is connected in an official capacity with the Church of England.
In the war that resulted, China was forced to give up Hong Kong, was compelled to admit
opium through five ports and obliged to pay an * indemnity of $21,000,000. Nineteen years later, still objecting to the importation of the accursed drug, she lost five thousand men, butchered by the sword in five minutes time, was compelled to open five more ports to opium importations and to pay an indemnity of $3,000,000. We cannot but wonder whether some of this money was used to pay the salary of the Archbishop of Canterbury. No decent man would touch it with a ten-foot pole. In 1917 China shut off all opium importations, as part of her price for entering the war try which she was despoiled of Shantung and of 30,000,000 population.
Fifty percent of the revenues of the Straits Settlements comes from the sale of British opium to the poor natives. Oue-third of the Hong Kong revenue is from the same source. In 1917 the revenues of the island of Sarawak from the sale of British opium were $492,455 and in the same year 745 chests went to Formosa. Siam is not permitted to impose import duties on British opium and in the same year imported 1850 chests of 1401 pounds each. And then, let’s see, there was another backward country into which a vast amount of opium was dumped after the Chinese market was closed— - the United States of America. Well!—3,400 chests of opium were imported into the United States in 1918; and in the first ten months of 1919 the amount was 3,900 chests, or at the rate of 4,680 chests a year. Apparently British opium officials do not care any more for what becomes of the people of the United States than they do for those of India.
Petroleum Pa Mota
"D ETROLEUM is the ideal fuel for propelling A those mighty engines of so-called Christian nations styled battleships; and as organized ’ terrorism, in the interests of the Plunderbund, ’ is one of the permanent industries of civiliza-' tion, there is an immense amount of patriotism , displayed in these days whenever a fresh oil deposit comes to light. This is-the real reason why British-soldiers are laying down their lives in Mesopotamia. The country contains oil.
Even in the stress of the mightiest conflict that ever occurred on earth, the masters of the ’ British Empire found the men and the money ■ to invade and seize Mesopotamia, one of the garden spots of the world, in itself the prize toward which-the German scheme for a “Mitt el* europa” looked. At this writing the British Empire is holding a frontier in Mesopotamia • 550 miles long, with lines of communication of
about the ?ame length. It is ostensibly doing • this in the interests of the mythical Arab state sometime to be formed, but meantime it is shooting the Arabs and drilling for oil.
To be sure, the League of Nations covenant * expressly provides that mandatory powers shall not use the opportunity to establish economic monnjx>lies in the territories under their care; but as Britain is the League, and tells raK’. the League what it can do and what it cannot do, and as nobody pays any attention anyway to any of the covenants or rules or commands or anything else of th*e League of Nations, as such, there are no difficulties on this score.
But there are other difficulties. The American Standard Oil crowd have the smell of oil in their nostrils and are insisting, patriotically of course, that the United States should stand up for her rights—meaning their rights. Just what rights they have, or what rights the English crowd have to the natural resources of faraway Mesopotamia is not clear. But there is oil there, and if either or both of these crowds can get the oil they can explain everything afterward. A small boy with his face smeared with jam can always explain how it happened.
A year ago, England, as the holder of the Mesopotamia mandatory, made public the San Remo agreement, providing that 55 percent of ‘ the oil should go to Great Britain, 25 percent to France and 20 percent to the imaginary mandatory state itself, with the proviso that the whole oil territory "shall be under permanent British control”.
The Standard Oil crowd looked at that agreement and said, substantially: “Where do we come off! Did we not help to pass the hat and shake down the American people to the tune of approximately fifty billion dollars, to finance . this war? And now the pie is being cut, and we are not allowed even a crust!”
They proceed further with their argument, and the usual propaganda in the newspapers, that for many years Britain has been one of the largest consumers of American oils, having obtained almost unlimited supplies from America for her own use; that America owns only onesixth of the oil resources of the world and yet , has been producing three-fourths of the supply; that oil is sold here for $1.75 to $2.50 per barrel, and yet when Americans in the vicinity of the Mesopotamia and other eastern oil developments wish to buy oil, they must pay $7 to $12 , per barrel and, worst of all, American citizens : are prohibited from buying any oil lands in these fields. The further point is made that the oil supply of the United States will prob- j ably be gone in fifteen years, and certainly in ; thirty years.
The British papers argue that Britain has j expended a hundred million pounds in her humanitarian efforts to care for the interests of
the Arabs she is now butchering, and to get their oil, and thinks it in bad taste for America to want a fifty-fifty division of the spoils and to insinuate that maybe part of the hundred million pounds, or all of it, was borrowed money anyway, on which the interest still remains unpaid. And so it goes.
The London Evening Star, disclosing its ideas of the real purpose of the League of ' Nations, said on this subject:
“If Mesopotamian oil is to be brought into Hotch Potch, America must put up its proportion of the cost of obtaining it, or speaking more broadly, it must make up its mind whether it is going to be a partner in the League of Nations [L e., whether it is going to come back into the British Empire] or whether it is going to retire again behind the barrier of the Monroe Doctrine and to refuse all entangling alliances, their risks and their profits.”
Meantime the British soldiers are becoming • weary of being shot for the maintenance of oily principles and are declaring loudly, through the ranks of the labor organizations, and the progressive papers of England, that the Government’s imperial oil policy in Mesopotamia is a repudiation of the ideals which led men to join the colors.
Carving Up Turkey
IF ONE could imagine Turkey as a bird, with its head in Europe, its body in Mesopotamia, and with one of its wings in Palestine and the other in the Caucasus, Britain has the head, the body and one of the wings—namely, Constantinople, Mesopotamia and Palestine—while Armenia has the other wing, France, Italy and Greece have the best part of the breast, and Turkey herself has the neck and the wish-bone.
The Turkish Treaty, like all other peace treaties jockeyed through the League of Nations, is a gross violation of the definite pledges given by Mr. Lloyd George and by President Wilson. But in these days why mention solemn promises of statesmen—scraps of paper 1 They should go into the wit-and-humor column. The turning over of vast territories to the Greeks which are populated almost entirely by Turks, can have but the one effect of keeping Greece in a continual war which she is unable, of herself, to finance.
The British seizure of Palestine has already been treated of by Judge Rutherford in The Golden Age, Number 36; but we add a few
items. It now comes to light that in 1916- a secret treaty was entered into between France and Britain, under which it was agreed that '■ Britain should rule Palestine, despite the fact that, to win the support of the Arabs a year earlier, Britain had definitely agreed that the Arabs alone should rule Palestine. Now Christian and Moslem alike are combined against the Jew.
Mr. Churchill, in the House of Commons, has stated his hope that all the British expenditures in Palestine will be charged to the Egyptian and Palestine State railways. This means that it is the expectation of British financiers that when a country ia invaded it shall pay the cost of the invasion, and pay interest on that invasion cost forever. Whoever finally gets the Palestinian state (and the Jew will get it, as the Bible shows), will be expected to pay interest on the British bonds which will lie as a tremendous burden on the Palestinian railways. -
There has been considerable tension between the British and the French over the partition of Turkey. The French feel that they were out-
maneuvered in the disposal of Palestine, and
they probably were, while the fly in the British
ointment is that the French have complete con-
trol of Damascus and vicinity, which is on the
direct road from Palestine to Mesopotamia.
Meantime the Arabs have told the French to
get out of Syria and Lebanon, and the British to get of Palestine. Before they get through with it, all these contending nationalities, in- i eluding the Turks from whom the lands were wrested, will find that “the earth is the Lord’s”, , and that He will have the final say in the matter. "
Woes of Ireland
IVTILLIONS of the English people would be glad to give the Irish what they want, if there were any way of determining what that is. Some of England’s greatest men have even proposed to abandon the island utterly and let . the Irish people fight it out among themselves, as they would most surely do. Meantime everybody is agreed that present conditions are intolerable.
Th£ Golden Age, Number 39, contained a dispassionate and illuminating article on the Irish question from a subscriber in Dublin. We . supplement his observations with other items
tint* Viavo Anma to light, but without, at this time, nndartaiong any examination of this intricate problem.
Troland has been in periodic revolt against the British Government for about seven hundred years. The present revolt was undoubtedly organized, and is financially supported, by the fifteen million Irish people or the descendants of Trish people, that make their homes in 'A marina- It is claimed that more than fifty million dollars were collected in New England alone for the purpose of arming and encouraging the Sinn Feiners. A considerable portion of this came from poor chambermaids and working people.
The population of Ireland was reduced from $175424 in 1841 to 4375,554 in 1914. Enemies at British rule point out that this is a result of British misrule, citing that transportation rates are 37 percent higher in Ireland than in England, that a parcel can travel 500 miles in England for half the price it can travel 30 miles in Ireland, and as Sidney Smith, an English writer, says: “One by one we have strangled Ireland's incipient industries. Woolens, glass, cotton, sail doth, sugar refining, the cattle and provisions all went.” This is one aide of the story; and on the other is the fact that Irish legislation has occupied a great part of the time and attention of England's wisest men for generations, in the hope of appeasing Irish wrath and of bringing about satisfactory conditions.
One thing is sure, no one will question the terrible conditions that now prevail in that unhappy isle. The British Society of Friends, in an official report, stated last fall that “the English Government has ceased to function over at least eighty percent of Ireland.” So true is this, and so desperate are the conditions, that when the Government recently drew a panel of 296 jurors in Cork, only twelve men responded.
Hardly a day passes without accounts in the papers of the shooting of British constables, sometimes a dozen or twenty at a time, from ambush, and although the stories of reprisals by the constabulary do not obtain as wide publicity, they are nevertheless just as terrible. The Royal Trish Constabulary have black caps and khaki uniforms and have been nicknamed “Black and Tans*.
Between January 1, 1920, and October 2, 1920, the list of crimes laid at the door of the Sinn Fein amounted to more than 3,000 outrages and murders, but for all these murders and shootings of police it is claimed that the number of perpetrators apprehended could be counted on the fingers of one hand, so perfectly is the Sinn Fein movement organized.
On the other side of the question, and without admitting that Sinn Fein had committed 3,000 murders, or even one 'murder, The Monitor, a Catholic weekly published in Newark, N. J., in its issue of October 23, gives the dates between September 9, 1919, and September 27, 1920, of the reprisals by the Black and Tans, and it is a truly terrible list.
Within this period, creameries were wrecked, or shops or houses were wrecked, or towns were sacked or partially sacked, or volleys of musketry were fired along the streets or into the residences of prominent Sinn Feiners in each of the following cities and towns, and in Limerick City this happened as many as fifteen times. In others of the towns named it happened from two to six times each. The list follows:
Ardrahan, Arklow, Athlone, Balbriggan, Ball-aghadereen, Ballina, Ballinamore, Bantry, Boul-aduff, Caltra, Carrick, Castleiny, Castlerae, Cork City, Doon, Drumoleague, Drumshambo, Dublin, Dundalk, Emly, Enniscorthy, Ennisty-mon, Fermoy, Galbally, Galway City, Glengar-iffe, Inniscarra, Kilcommon, Kildorrery, Kill, Killea, Killorglin, Kilmallock, Kinsale, Knock-long, Lahinch, Leap, Limerick City, Lismore, Loughmore, Middleton, Milltown, Naas, Newcastle-West, Newross, Oranmore, Queenstown, Rosegreen, Salthill, Shanagolden, Swords, Templemore, Thurles, Tipperary City, Tralee, Trim, Tuam, Tullow, Union Hall and Upper Church. -
In the forty-two attacks on the creameries, twelve were utterly destroyed. At Newross, in September, a little girl five years old was shot in the back and killed when she became frightened and ran, after she had been ordered to halt. The city hall of Cork was burned by the constables, who forcibly prevented the firemen of the city from quenching the flames. In spite of these illegal reprisals very few of the troops have been tried or punished for them, and nothing has been accomplished in checking them.
It is a sad commentary on the moral condition of the victors in a war to rescue the world from the clutches of German militarism and frightfulness, that it becomes necessary to make such attacks as some of these were. Such savagery reminds one of Darkest Pennsylvania when the cossacks of the Steel Trust used similar methods in ending the steel strike.
The Dublin correspondent of an. English newspaper, writing of the sacking and burning of the village of Balbriggan, in reprisal for the killing of two of the constabulary, said:
"In its brutality, wantonness and destructiveness, last night’s work of the uniformed forces of the crown was comparable only to the story of some Belgian village in the early days of the War. People were fleeing the town in conditions as pitiable as any set of refugees that ever left Louvain.”
In the burning of Louvain the Germans had the beastly excuse of military necessity. The aggravation in each case was the same, the shooting of the men from ambush, always a cowardly, contemptible act.
Henry W. Nevinspn, a British writer, in a written apology to the ghost of the Turkish Sultan, “Abdul, the Damned”, sets forth the reprisals in Ireland in the following language:
“The agents and representatives of the British Government follow your example in burning villages to skeleton. Under the pretext of reprisals for crimes which their victims certainly did not commit, they pitilessly murder. They drive women and children out into the fields and mountains. They spread cruel destitution through the land. They destroy the main sources of production and livelihood. Judged from what I see before me, they appear to contemplate the utter ruin of the country in the hope that the surviving inhabitants may be compelled to emigrate.”
John Bull and Uncle Sam
NOW that the war is over, the old family discord has broken out again. There are many unsettled differences between the United States Government and the British Government, due to the war. Britain claims $100,000,000 for damages in Mexico, for which the United States holds herself responsible; and the United States claims losses of approximately like amount for depredations upon six hundred cargoes of American commerce at sea.
As a neutral nation, the United States was entitled, by written international law, ratified at the Hague conferences, to all rights of free voyage, free cargoes, free mails and cables. But every one of those rights was arbitrarily suspended by the British Empire without a so much as “by your leave”, and the late lamented . British-American administration submitted to it with hardly a squawk of protest.
Not only did America meekly submit to this violation of her neutrality, but even submitted to the humiliation of consenting that American ships with noncontraband cargo, bound for neutral ports in South America, could not leave American ports without permission of a British consular officer. The history of the planet could be searched in vain for a like example of cheek on the one hand and cowardice on the other.
To pretend that the United States was ever neutral during the war is to pretend what every body knows is untrue. Everything possible was done to help the cause of the Allies. The sale of naval vessels to a belligerent in time of war is a violation of neutrality, yet a number of submarines-were made in America and shipped to British waters via Canada long before America entered the war.
Rubber was noncontraband, an article of free commerce among all nations; yet Ampriean citizens were jailed before America entered the war, for attempting, within their strict legal rights, to send rubber from America to Germany.
As to how America came to enter the war, this has already been discussed in The Golden' Age, Number 21. America had no more reason at any time to get into the war than had Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland or Spain, asked for nothing when she went in, and came out with just that, and was the only one of the Allies that had such an ideal or such a reward.
The widely believed notion that a hundred million Americans, with four times Germany’s wealth, fifteen times Germany’s territory, and twice as many men, were ever in danger of invasion or subjugation by an armless and legless Germany, at the end of the greatest war of history, in which she was attacked on all * sides by millions of men, and for several years, is the most ridiculous thing that human beings ever believed at any time in the world’s history; and the American press is entitled to most of the glory, and got most of the money, for making Americans believe that lie.
Churning for War
OW the people of the United States were induced to enter into the war was related by Congressman Callaway on page 3321 of The
Congressional Record for February 9, 1917. In reading the following, it should not be forgotten that J. p. Morgan was the fiscal representative of the British Government in the United State:
“In March, 1915, the J. P. Morgan interests, the steel, ship-building, and powder interests, and their subsidiary organizations, got together twelve men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press of the United states.
“These twelve men worked the problem out by selecting 179 newspapers, and then began, by an elimination process, to retain only those necessary for the purpose of controlling the general policy of the daily press throughout the country. They found it was necessary only to purchase the control of twenty-five of the greatest papers. The twenty-five papers were agreed upon; emissaries were sent to purchase the policy, national and international, of these papers; an agreement waa reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; and an editor was furnished for each paper to supervise and edit properly information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers.
“This contract is in existence at the present time, and it accounts for the news columns of the daily press of the country being filled with all sorts of preparedness arguments and misrepresentations as to the present condition of the United States Army and Navy, and the possibility and probability of the United States being attacked by foreign foes.'
'"This policy also included the suppression of everything in opposition to the wishes of the interests served. The effectiveness of this scheme has been conclusively demonstrated by the character of stuff carried in the daily press throughout the country since March, 1915. They have resorted to anything necessary to commercialize public sentiment and to sandbag the National Congress into making extravagant and wasteful appropriations for the Army and Navy under the false pretense that it was necessary. Their stock argument is that it is ‘patriotism’. They are playing on every prejudice and passion of the American people.”
The twenty-five great newspapers above mentioned know that they have it absolutely in their power to arouse the American people to fury at any time and on any subject, real or imaginary; but in this instance they are not entitled to all the credit. They were ably assisted in American pulpits by prominent representatives of the Church of England, whose voice, when it pays, is loudly for war, for murder, for violation of the command, “Thou shalt not kill”, and for ignoring the plain statement of the founder of the Christian religion that “they that take the sword shall perish with the sword”. To make a true preacher of the gospel one must have other qualification than abilitv to wave a battle-flag and put up one continuous howl for money.
During the war Uncle Sam gave and gave and “gave until it hurt”. He gave $1,000,000,000 for the making of shells, and not enough American shells went to France to load the American guns ten minutes. He gave $478,000,000 for guns, and only 72 American guns reached the American forces during the war. He gave $150,000,000 for building terminals at Charleston and at Norfolk from which not a boat sailed during the war. One of these terminals, up the riVer from Charleston, on which $20,000,000 was spent," was situated in water so shallow that a ship could not reach it anyway.
Uncle Sam gave $120,000,000 in building nitrate plants which did not produce a pound of nitrate during the war. He gave $117,000,000" for gas shells and not an American gas shell was fired during the war. He gave $100,000,000 for building battle tanks, and the first American tank reached France after the armistice was signed. He gave $70,000,000 for a powder plant at Nitrate, West Virginia, and as soon as it was finished sold it for $8,000,000 and threw in $8,000,000 of material for good measure; and he spent $7,000,000 on a training camp in Virginia after the armistice was signed. Nobody can deny that Uncle Sam is a good spender. Everybody in the country that had a dollar, or could make a dollar, was expected to dig down- and pay, pay.
And America was a good friend- to Britain during the war, too. In April, 1918, when England was threatened with a revolt in India, the United States came to her rescue by selling her 207,000,000 ounces of silver coin at $1 per ounce, when the market price of the silver in the dollars thus sold and melted into bullion was $1.40 per ounce. Great Britain was the gainer by this transaction, in the sum of $82,800,000.
American courts were not free from British influence during the war. When Hindoos were arrested in San Francisco, and sent to the penitentiary for trying to free their country, the British Government paid the wages of the agents of the United States Government add superintended the trial.
Great Britain spends three hundred million dollars on aerial navigation to win the, next war, and America spends but a tenth of that amount. Great Britain, Australia and Canada give bonuses to soldiers, but the United States is too poor to do so. Great Britain continues to build vessels for her navy on the principle that the British navy must be twice as large as the American navy; and America wonders.
Senator France, of Maryland, made the statement in December that the American State Department is dominated by the British Government, and is subservient to it. More recently, however, the United States, as a participator in the World War, and as a contributor to its successful issue, seems to take the position that the game of bluff has gone far enough, and that the United States has the same rights of discussion and participation in the rights and privileges secured by the war as any other nation, regardless of whether or not that nation is a member of the bogus League of Nations.
British Finances
THE following is a comparison of the expenses of the British and the Amprican governments for nine years ending with 1920. In this calculation exchange is figured at the now prevailing rate of $3.80 to the pound.
American
British
Year
Government
Government
1912 . .
$ 925,695,713
. $ 715,395.334
1913 . .
967,737.255
750,473.282
1914 . .
1,006.662,216
. 2.129.869,425
1915 . .
1.052.848.682
. 5,924,791,833
19m . .
1.072.894.093 .
. 8.332,828.298
1917 . .
3,016.183.746 .
. 9.925.641.339
1918 . .
21,813.356.508 .
. 9.768.283.800
191! • . .
18.514.000.000 .
. 6.329.937.128
*192o . .
11,477.627,210 .
. 2.652.342.700
$59,877,005,432
$46,549,563,137
‘Estimated.
The estimated wealth of the United States before the war was $250,000,000,000; after the war, $300,000,000,000. The estimated wealth of the British Empire before the war was $130^
000.000,000; after the war, $230,000,000,000, the added wealth being largely in the Mesopotamia oil fields, in the African territory taken away from Germany, and in the elimination of Germany as a competitor.
During the war the private wealth of the 340,000 British citizens whose fortunes exceed five thousand pounds sterling, increased by more than ten billion dollars. Five hundred of the peers of the realm own a third of England, and four thousand landowners own a half of the entire area. Some of the greatest fortunes are identified with the liquor business; there are twenty-nine brewers in the British parliament and, on the authority otJohn Bull, many vicars and clergymen are stockholders in the breweries.
With all its greatness, it is possible for the British Empire to be obliterated within a year’s time, as was the case with Russia. The thing that could end it is insolvency, and this might come suddenly. Europe is sinking deeper and deeper into a financial morass, and the British Empire is with difficulty making both ends meet. Britain is Europe’s principal creditor.
From April to December, 1920, the total British national revenue was £888,803,728, and the expenditures £842,68^,719. We have not the data at hand, but understand that Britain has been counting sales of war stores as revenue, which is like a man counting as profit the proceeds of a fire insurance policy, after a big fire which has burned him out.
Considerable has been done in the way of reducing expenses. The salary list has been gone over; some high officials have had their salaries reduced and some have been slightly increased. The salary of the Prime Minister has been increased from £5,000 per year to £8,000. Members of Parliament receive only £400 yearly.
The British Empire is the greatest trading corporation in the world, and the shrewdest trader. It imports four million bales of cotton per year, but for the past two years has had a committee investigating the proposal to grow all this cotton upon its own newly acquired African lands.
One of Britain’s important industries is the insurance business. The annual premiums on this business from America to England amount to about $600,000,000. In the effort to force Britain into granting an Irish Republic there
has been a considerable effort at boycott of British insurance on the part of many Irish-Americans within the past year.
Among the items which were bought by the British Government during the war were: 1,186,000,000 sand bags 164,314,787 pairs of socks .
81,538,000 yards of khaki 61,899,626 pairs of boots 49,508,669 blankets 23.776.345 jackets
t 20,190,810 pairs of woolen gloves
The first shells for the British army cost the Government $7,000 each, but not for long. The first thing the makers of these shells knew the Government put all the factories on a strict cost-accounting system, and no doubt saved billions of dollars in so doing.
Specter of Unemployment
UP UNTIL October, 1920, British unemployment was low. Five million ex-service men and two hundred and ten thousand officers had been reabsorbed into industry, leaving only one hundred and sixty thousand able-bodied ex-service men and twelve thousand officers still unplaced. But by January, 1921, when the League-of-Nations hard times was in effect, a tenth of the population of Britain was without employment, and the premier was at his wit's end to know how to deal with the problem.
There have been unemployment riots, and still more significant than the riots themselves have been the preparations that have been made to stand off the rioters. On October 18th a mob of twenty thousand stormed the government offices. Bricks, stones, paving debris, bottles and clubs shattered the windows of the Treasury, the War Office; the King's Privy Council, the Home Office, and other government buildings.
Strong policed barricades have now been erected, obstructing the approaches to these buildings, and the huge iron gates that were at one time considered useless accessories of the public buildings are now kept closed. The ! official explanation is the fear of Sinn Fein activities; but, as we have seen, the official ex-■r planation is seldom the real one. The real fear r is that inspired by the knowledge that a million ex-soldiers are out of work. Lloyd George stated in January that it may be necessary for
millions of British people to emigrate to the colonies. ?
The difficulty is that England is so largely‘ a manufacturing nation that a falling off in < world trade affects her first and worst of all the nations. The demand for new shipping has -fallen off, and with it has come a lessening S demand for iron and steeL The workers are not so efficient as formerly, and costs are away * up. A German bicycle can be bought in England for one-fifth the price of a good English wheel
The people of England know from experience that labor-saving machinery does save labor, and this adds a perplexing factor to the situation. As long ago as 1897 blast furnaces in England were put on eight-hour shifts, thus making room for one-third more men than formerly. And the steel mills, which in America continue to run on twelve-hour shifts, in England operate on eight-hour shifts, and are usually closed down for the week end. Even with all these concessions, the number of unemployed is great and growing.
MiUtarigm io Unpopular
TOURING the World War Britain raised an U army in the British isles numbering the almost unbelievable total of 5,704,416 men, while the total troops of all kinds raised within the Empire was 8,654,467. The number maintained at the front was 6,616,000. The number of soldiers from the British Isles killed was 662,083, with 140,000 missing and prisoners. The wounded numbered 1,644,786. The total losses of the Empire, killed, missing and prisoners, amounted to 1,216,000 and the wounded to 2,500,000. After the war President Wilson declared that it was a commercial conflict
After such an experience it is not to be wondered at that the people are sick of militarism. At the conclusion of the war, in obedience to the wishes of the people, the British Empire completely eliminated conscription. When it proposed this at the peace conference it had no backing, even from the United States, despite the fact that reduction of armaments was one of the fourteen points upon which peace was supposedly based.
Today the empire is holding a land frontier, stretching from Egypt eastward amounting to about 4,500 miles. In Ireland, in September,
there were 75,000 British troops; there were 19,000 in Constantinople, 60,000 in Egypt and Palestine, 6,000 at Aden, 101,000 in Mesopotamia and 200,000 in India. Recruiting for these armies is dwindling, and the number of new recruits, it is said, does not equal the number of desertions from the infantry.
Tn the effort to find soldiers, the Government has even had under consideration a plan to restore the old-style scarlet uniforms, once so attractive to maidens and to some men who like to look like showmen. The Government was even disposed to waste the three million pounds sterling which the change would have made, but such a storm was created that it had to give up the plan, except for what are termed the Household Cavalry and Guards.
…