THE PEOPLE'S CENTURY
301
Charter p;romises a better
economic
world order. But whereas
Wilson was able to make specific proposals-since they did not
conflict with the maintenance of capitalism-Roosevelt.Churchill
are not. Reorganization of world economy so as to achieve "free–
dom from want-all over the world" would destroy the very sys–
tem of capitalist private enterprise they are committed to defend.
And so they must talk only in philanthropic generalities, which are
contradicted so grossly and persistently by the actual policies car·
ried out now, that even the Man in the Street can see that there is
little solid content there.
It
is true that this "freedom from want"
theme is better than any other propaganda approach today, but it
is not enough
in itself,
without implementation in action, to arouse
any real popular enthusiasm. The Charter was as much a propa-
ganda failure as the Fourteen Points were successful.
.
Only some form of democratic socialism could inaugurate the
age of worldwide plenty now so freely, even frantically, promised
us, in different ways, by Hitler and Roosevelt, Goebbels and Wal–
lace. But none of these gentlemen harbor any such subversive
intentions. After two years of the horrors of the "New Order" in
Europe, it is not necessary to labor the point so far as Hitler is
concerned. But it is perhaps worth examining just one aspect of
the Democratic program: the place of backward, colonial peoples
in
the post-war world.
In the April issue of
Horizon
Viscount Esher writes, on the
"freedom from want" promise in the Charter:
It is legitimate to wonder how long and how careful was
the consideration given by two busy and anxious men to those
pregnant words. Did they just think how splendid it would be if
all men were free from want?-leaving it to other days and other
men to implement their gesture, and build the new order on that
golden brick.... Yet now that the bright Seraphim have blown
their trumpets, and left us with the theme, it is surely our duty to
develop its implications upon the minor instruments o£ thought,
practice and experience.
It is not in the national but in the international sphere that
the tough problem must emerge. I do not believe that the work·
ingclass of the West have in the least realized that in this sphere
they are the rich, and that it is they whose standard of life must
be temporarily lowered if freedom from want is to reach the
toiling masses of India, China and South America. The English
workingman, with his cinema, his dog·racing and his football,
protected from birth to death by free milk, free education, health
insurance, unemployment insurance, old·age pension; and the
