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  • A Social Dynamic for Canada? A Problem of Strategy in the World War of Morale
  • Philip Child (bio)
Philip Child

The distinguished Canadian novelist and essayist, is devoting much of his time to a study of Canada and the War.

Footnotes

1. See Note A at end of article.

2. It has seemed useful to employ the term “social dynamic” in this article, in default of a term to which moderate progressives would be less likely to take exception, because there is at present no other name which connotes so exactly the body of social aspirations some of which, though not all, are shared alike by conservatives, liberals, and radicals.

3. Harold Laski, in the Picture Post, Nov. 9, 1940.

4. See Note B at end of article.

5. Picture Post, Nov. 23, 1940.

6. It is hardly necessary to point out the inconsistency of these pretensions. Before the war it suited his purpose, as the best means of exploiting the class struggle in the democracies, to pose to banking and industrial interests as the defender of private property against collectivism. Since the war he has reversed the direction of his propaganda, seeking to exploit the discontent of the masses with the social order, and to discredit the leaders of the democracies, since it is the masses who carry the guns and man the work benches. The change of tactic has also its obvious relation with his foreign policy as regards Russia.

7. Cf. Rauschning, Hitler Speaks, p. 50.

8. Mr Herbert Morrison, in announcing the suppression of The Daily Worker to the House of Commons last January.

9. The timing of the Proclamation of Emancipation after the battle of Antietam is an interesting historical analogy. See Charnwood, Abraham Lincoln, chap. x. American isolationists in calling on Great Britain to state her war aims were doubtless aware that if she did so while the United States was making up her mind about aid to Britain these aims might alienate the sympathy of American believers in “free enterprise” if the social implications of the war aims were too radical, or of New Dealers if they were not radical enough.

10. One of President Roosevelt’s four freedoms is “freedom from want” (speech of March 15).

1. War taxation will lower the respective pre-war standards of living to a greater extent in the case of the receivers of dividend and salary than it will in the case of wage-earners in war industries, whose wages are pegged to the cost of living. Excess profits are taxed about 75 per cent. Proposals to tax them 100 per cent, made by the C.C.F. party, supported by the Conservative opposition, were defeated in the House by the government majority. The government claimed that to do so would cause injustices and would involve insuperable administrative problems.

2. In endorsing the President’s plan for aiding Great Britain, on January 12. Obviously the number of business men who equate democracy with free enterprise must be a matter of guess-work, though the financial press gives some indication.

3. As quoted in the press.

4. For statistics on wages and standards of living, see F. R. Scott, Canada Today, pp. 52ff; Leonard C. Marsh, Canadians In and Out of Work; also Canada Year Book.

5. Canadian Unionist, Nov., 1940. This quotation is characteristic of the more radical labour leaders and of C.C.F. party speakers.

6. The problem is not unreal or academic. Legislation to enforce this right upon labour is a part of the American New Deal (Wagner Labour Relations Act).

7. It should be said that Quebec, which is unalterably opposed to communism, is nevertheless more conscious than other provinces, of impending social changes. The Roman Catholic Church has in fact announced a social dynamic in general terms. See the Pontiff’s address in December, 1940; also editorials in Le Jour and L’Action Catholique, and remarks by Cardinal Villeneuve on the development of a “corporatism” similar to the Catholic co-operative movement in Nova Scotia.

8. Goldwin Smith, quoted by Sir John Marriott (Picture Post, Nov. 9). Proponents for a revolutionary social dynamic (“revolution by consent”) claim that morale depends upon...

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