LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Abstract

THE number of unemployed registered last week at the Labour Exchanges was 1 1/4 millions; and to these must be added the three-quarters of a million workers now on short time. Even these figures, however, are an under-estimate of the seriousness of the present social disease, for, in spite of doles, the Labour Exchanges are still not attractive enough to recruit every fit subject. The question for civilisation and not merely for England is what our effective governing classes propose to do about it. Mr. Arthur Kitson, whom we are glad to be able to regard as a partner in our attempt to disseminate the true principles of financial and social economics before it is too late, writing in the “Times Trade Supplement" last week, declared that the Government’s confession of inability to cure unemployment unfitted them for office. The complete remedy, he said, is childishly simple; and it can only be either indifference or unwillingness on the part of responsible people that prevents its adoption. But if that is, as it stems to be, the case, we may be ,certain that the disease will not permit this attitude to be maintained.. In the absence of the cure, one of two courses will shortly be imperative: either the distractions of an external war, the locus of which is already, we affirm, being prepared ; or something approximating to the “ heavy civil war ” suggested by the Moscow International. Events of this kind, being largely “ unconscious ” in the psycho-analytic sense, are not merely speculative, nor are their normal agents their real authors. They belong to the world of psychology and obey strict psychological laws. Unemployment at a certain intensity produces a dissatisfaction which is reflected in “ revolt ” on the one side, and in an increasing “militarism7’ on the other side. At a higher degree of intensity, the ‘‘ revolt ” becomes articulate and simultaneously the Government thinks of war. With another turn of the screw the choice between war without and war within becomes imperative; and, in the case of our own country, the decision may be said to have been already made.