Our Times Viewed From a World Perspective

MR. CROMIE was introduced by the President MAJOR W. JAMES BAXTER, M.C.

MR. CROMIE was introduced by the President of The Empire Club, MAJOR W. JAMES BAXTER, M.C.

MR. ROBERT CROMIE: Mr. President, Members of the Empire Club: The subject which the President has given me today, or asked me to speak to was a definition of our times, viewed from a world perspective.

Well, if you want to define our times, and our country, I suppose you have to look at other times and other countries. So in skipping around this world perspective, I will try and emphasize some things I saw in Europe and Russia this summer and see if we care catch from that some suggestion for ourselves, because, after all, if history is anything, it is just a record of the adjustments of the human mind to the new conditions under which it finds itself.

What will history say of you and me with regard to the adjustments we are now making to the conditions under which we find ourselves on this continent? If you want to see Canada properly, you have got to see the world. So, instead of talking about Canadian affairs in your time, and about Russia arid Europe, let us take three minutes of world geography.

You have here on this world map, which has become part and parcel of me, two billion people. Where do they live? What do they do? We are only ten million of them here in Canada; 120 million in United States or in North America 130 millions. In little Japan, not much bigger on this map than two fingers, there are 65 million people. You do not wonder why Japan is belligerent when you go and see how they have to inhabit the hillsides, with hillside land at twenty degrees.

Then we come to China with 450 million people; the Philippines with 10 million; and down to Java-just look at Java! It is not as big as your finger. There are 35 to 40 million people there.

You and I don't know what population is until you go and see these Asiatic countries. You have in Asia one-half of the earth's population or one billion people. And they are right next door to Canada, because we, on the Pacific Coast only take eight days to slip across to Asia's shores. That is something our Canadian manufacturers ought to be more conscious of. People make markets, you know. And one-half the earth's people are in Asia.

Then we come to Europe. 350 million people! Get those people in perspective, where they live and belong economically and socially as compared with you and me, and only then you begin to get your minds and thoughts around this earth, its people, and their problems.

Of course, every old crow thinks its own babe is white as snow; and we, in Canada, with 10 million people, whether in Toronto or Vancouver, consider ourselves the whole thing!

But when you get into some of those countries you get an eye-opener and you begin to realize you are only one .of this earth's two billion people. You may sit on the palace steps at Siam, as I did, when a little soldier about 4 feet high came up and told me to move on. I looked at him" but I picked myself up and moved on. He is King there, don't you see?

Now, there are 350 million people in Europe. Look at little Belgium. It is as big as the tip of your finger, with as bag a population as Canada and probably as much accumulated wealth.

Come now to Russia-165 million; South America, 100 million-giving us altogether 2 billion people.

Before hopping into Europe for our observations, let us spend two or three minutes at the Economic Conference at London. World leaders met there for six weeks this summer. They didn't settle the world affairs, those 66 various nations, but they did get under the same umbrella for the first time in the history of the world. That was something. They started looking at each other and when humans start looking at each other, whether we are white, yellow, brown or black, it is just the same--at this very minute, those 2 billion people are just like you and me. They have the same hates, the same fears, the same loves and the same greed. They eat, sleep, work and play as we do, only on different standards. So, if you want to get a perspective of people and things and conditions and times, find out the standard on which people live and only then you begin to know something about our past and present world. That Economic Conference in London did not settle world affairs because of different standards of living of the different world's countries.

All right. Let us take another three minutes then and see what creates different standards of living. First, you have technology-machinery--call it Technocracy if you prefer. Technocracy means Machine Rule, but the world will never be ruled by machine. If a man came into this room with a revolver, he would cow this audience, but it would not be the revolver, it would be the mind behind it. The mind of man will always rule the world and run the machinery of the world. But let us stick to our theme that it is machinery which creates world standards of living, so let us slip around and see how much machinery is used by the various nations.

In Canada and the United States, we use about $23 worth of new machinery per year per individual. When we sit down and think of all the terrific power at our command, we arc unconscious of how little power and how little machinery the rest of the world has. There is used $23 worth of machinery per individual per year on this continent. Next comes England with $11 worth of machinery for each individual; Germany with $9; France with $4; in Russia, about $1. When you come to China. and India, there is used about 50 cents worth oaf machinery per individual per year. These are rough figures but they picturize accurately enough the world's technology.

You and I sit down and talk and those who are not conscious of technology start comparing Russia with Canada; they start comparing China with Canada. Go to China and see them coaling a vessel, a human: chain of two hundred people, moving up a plank and dumping buckets of coal in the hull. Go to Siam and see them cutting the teak logs. See them put the log at an angle, and one fellow hops up on top of the log and another man; gets underneath in the little pit and all day long Work to cut two or three boards off that log which you and I do in a minute with machinery by running that log on a carriage past a band saw. Go to the Nile and see them lifting water up by an old buffalo or camel, or probably one fellow with a long bucket or a pail lifting it to another fellow. You say, why don't they get a pump? They haven't got machinery in Africa and Asia as you and I have.

So, it is only when you start looking at the earth and people and machinery that you begin to get your mind around different standards of the earth's people; and begin to understand the reason for those varying standards in the quantum of machinery.

Well, all right. Let us slip around town a bit before leaving London. You know when you go to the big banquets there and the theatres and the parties in the afternoon and the dinners at night, you think England is coming back in a wonderful way, but when you get to Lancashire and see three out of four smoke stacks cold, when you go to Newcastle and see begging women and children, you begin to realize that things are not coming back the way they should in England.

I slipped up through the Norweigian Fjords; I wanted to see those on my way to Russia. If you ever get a chance go and see Norway. Sit out at half past eleven at night and see the wonderful Northern lights. I went down to Denmark. I wanted to see how the Danes were capturing the British bacon market, and I began to realize how we, if we want to get world markets, will have to study specialization, whether of pigs, hens, wheat, or what not. Only then we begin to get a hold of things.

Then I went over to Sweden. Ins Sweden there is a lesson for Canada and United States. There is little Sweden alongside of great big Russia" in revolution, and Germany in revolution. Sweden escaped all that. She made her social adjustments years ago,; you and I laughed at them then. But Sweden stepped out of revolution into the necessary adjustments.

Well, we come now to Leningrad.

When you come into a new country and a new world, you are all sort of aquiver. What is it like? What do the people look like and feel like? As we came into that big air field at Leningrad, I was all eyes and ears. Coming down to ground you start driving the four miles from the air station to the hotel and you see the dirty streets, and you see big shops which are now used for habitation with a little curtain or something over the window. You have a feeling "Isn't this terrible?" But when you call on a fellow at his work, with his old clothes on, a farmer somewhere, or a woman in her house, you are conscious first of that same feeling, but when you start talking, you get a mold of her mind.

Well, it is just the same in Russia. When you get over that first "worker" feeling and get a hold of the mind of Russia, you are only conscious of that mind's hope and animation, and you realize Russia is on a sort -of economic honeymoon.

You are. sitting around at night. Instead of the nice food we eat here in Canada or United States, you have a cup of plain tea and some little biscuits with caraway seeds in them. The talk is animated. Russians everywhere seem to know where they are going. They have a reasonable technique for getting there. You catch the spirit of Russia and you see that they have something which we must get over here in a national way. They have an objective--They have national plans, they know what those plans are, and each one knows their part in those plans. They are making sacrifices, sure they are, but who on this earth isn't? I have seen people doing things in Russia that we wouldn't dream of, that we couldn't get our people to do until we gave some particular reason for it.

Now, in Russia, I had a hundred and ten separate interviews even though I was only there ten days. I will try and give two or three things that to me were revealing.

After all, you don't have to live with a woman all your life to know her. The more you live with her, the more you feel that she knows you and you don't know her. It's the same with countries and people and policies. So the judgment or ideas of persons who have to make a life study of things or people in order to understand them, rarely interest me. They are usually too close to their country or object to see it in perspective-see it in relation to other countries or policies. And it is only when countries or persons or conditions are compared with others that you get their true worth.

You go to Russia at a cost of $15 a day, including trains fare, a compartment to yourself on the train, a nice room in a hotel, nice linen, everything clean; international food. The food that you and I get in the hotel in Russia is just as good as in Shanghai, Constantinople or Jerusalem. When I got up in the morning, I was asked, "What do you like for breakfast?' I said, "What have you got?" "O, we have got some grapefruit" "Where do they come from?" I asked. "From California."

"Would you like a cereal?" "You haven't got some puffed wheat, have you?" "Yes, here was puffed wheat, from Saskatoon!"

So the food you and I eat in Russia is international; For the $15 per day you also get a good guide and a motor car from nine in the morning until one at noon. After that you pay for it yourself. For $10 there is a different standard of travel, a different standard of hotel;, and for $5 an entirely different standard. Instead of going by motor car, you go in street cars in large groups.

What do you see in Russia? A little fable is told by the boy who lived just outside of the palace and always had seen grand people going in and coming out, and he used to sit thinking that he would like to go in. Of course he couldn't go in. One day he saw a sow walking in; nobody stopped it so in it went. It poked around and after a while came out. The boy started talking with the sow. "What do the tapestries look like?" he asked. "I didn't see any tapestries," said the sow. "What does the King look like?" "I didn't seethe King," replied the sow. "What did you see?" "There was a lot of garbage, and it wasn't good garbage at that," said the pig. "I didn't care much for it and T came out."

You go and see in this world what you want to see or have the eyes to see. Wherever two people are on this earth, they can both see the same, they have the same hates and loves and fears and likes and dislikes, but if you haven't got the eyes to see and mind to analyze and background of perspective to compose the different standards of technology and how technology affects living standards don't blame it on the country.

Now, using this yardstick in Russia, let us poke about and see what we find. "What would you like to see?" they asked. They gave me a list of programmes. "Well, can I go myself?" "O, yes."

Leningrad is an interesting city, so I walk around. I go to see the fine big cathedrals, looking over my shoulders to see that nobody is following me. They didn't seem to pay much more attention than if I were in some other international city like Cairo or Calcutta or Constantinople. I went on the street car and they asked, "How far?" I said, "All the way around," and I sat for an hour and a half. Then, I began to get lonesome and I said, "I think I will go out this afternoon." I decided to go to one of the factories. I came to an electrical factory. We went through five stories and came to the top story--engineers and office staff were there to get the light. Well, I was not particularly interested in the technique of electrical manufacturing. I had been in the big plants in Schenectady and Tokio. Let us tall. to the people. We started walking through the floors. Here are big machines with girls putting filaments in the lights. To one of them. "What is your name? How long have you worked here?" "Three years." "How much do you get?" "A hundred and thirty rubles."

Instead of confusing with dollars, I will show you what Russians receive and pay in rubles. The cheapest wage I found was that of a little old woman taking tickets at the Tolstoi House" she got eighty rubles per month. The Commissars get eight hundred rubles. Ordinary labour gets a hundred and twenty-five to two hundred and twenty-five rubles. Skilled workers get from a hundred and seventy-five to two hundred and fifty rubles. School teachers get a hundred and thirty to a hundred and seventy-five rubles.

What does it buy? Their black bread and basic foods like that are rationed as England was rationed during the war. You get national food reasonably cheaply. Apartments are anywhere from twenty rubles to fifty rubles per month, according to how big, and how large the family is. When it comes to buying the stuff you and I eat, that is another thing.

I used to read of eggs being worth a ruble apiece, butter two rubles a pound, and ham at similar prices, and I said, "How carp Russians possibly live? How can enough food at those prices be bought to hold body together?" But when I got to Russia, I found that the basic food was black bread and cabbage soup, and an occasional bit of meat. The basic food of China is rice and the basic food of India is rice. You and I who eat the wonderful foods and goods technology has brought us are unconscious of how the rest of the world lives and works. We are unconscious of the fact that in India for instance the average annual income is ten dollars a year a family. Fancy you and I or our wives taking ten dollars to run our family a year!!

When you come to Russia, don't look for the things we have. That is an adjustment I had to make.

I went to the market there. Here was a small bunch of rhubarb. A ruble. Here would be butter. Two rubles a pound. Here would 'be raspberries. And I will never forget it--here was a little couple looking through the market; they looked at the rhubarb and felt it. They (came to the raspberries--just a small glassful. They went off and talked a couple of minutes before they decided to buy that small glass of raspberries--it was one ruble--that you and I have by the pailsful. Those are conceptions and comparisons you have to get of other countries before you can begin to get your mind around our times and our country. When we start thinking of these things and get it right, then we know what we are talking about.

In the factory, they get a hundred and thirty rubles a month. Any holidays? Three weeks a year up to five weeks, according to your production.

The woman in charge thinks I will be interested in something going on at the other end of the room. She takes me down. Here is a woman on a platform with about a hundred workers around her. What is she saying? "The production has fallen down and you see the disfavour we are in. We are going to lose our marks. You see this camel-a wooden camel the symbol of slowness; it won't be removed from this floor until production comes up. Think of the disgrace we are in."

When I went to Russia, I thought everybody was slave ridden.

When I went to Italy I thought that Mussolini was running Italy with a whip. When you get there, you find intelligent leadership--psychological leadership. Mussolini is giving realism, rather than partyism, don't you see?

And you get to Russia and you find just the same thing. Here was this woman belabouring her fellow workers and finally she broke down in a hysteria of crying. That was the worst slave driving I saw in Russia.

You go through the different floors of that factory and come to where they are making big electrical generators and you see guards around with their rifles because Russia's bogey is that somebody is trying to copy them all the time and steal their secrets. Technology being so new to them, they think it is a god-like thing. It is nothing to us.

Everywhere they wanted me to go in Russia, I wanted to go somewhere else. What is that building? Oh that is a post office. Let us go in. "There is nothing to see there," they told me.

I go in and sec the postmaster. He gets four hundred rubles a month. A hundred people work here. They get from a hundred and twenty-five rubles to the postmaster's wage of four hundred rubles a month. I asked if I might talk to some of the workers. They were taking in letters at one wicket and weighing parcels at another. What does that sign say over there. Oh, that is a savings bank. You haven't banks in Russia, have you? Do you take money in? Do you pay interest on it?

"Yes, we pay seven percent," they told me. If it is in for a year, we pay eight." "But, isn't that Capitalism?" "Oh, yes, but you only put in there the money you earn!" Oh, I see.

Russia is working to an idealogy of Communism, but it is actually putting into practice, modified capitalism. In Canada and United States we are working on an idealogy of Capitalism, and some of the things we are doing in the state show how near we are approaching Socialism. As Trotsky says, "We had better be careful about the people we recognize in United States and Canada." With his tongue in: his cheek, Trotsky says this.

Probably in 25 or 30 or 40 years the two of us will meet, because after all, the synthesis of what all people do is finally the right thing to do.

Some of our abuses of Capitalism we will have ironed out by that time and some of Russia's misconceptions of Communism, they will have ironed out, and we will meet in a workable world that we all look forward to.

Let us look around in Russia some more, then. What about the Rest Homes you go to? Well, let's go and see one. We go out and here is a place with 225 people in it. They are resting about; it is a nice warm day. They are mostly women. I don't want to go through the dormitories. I have seen those things. Let us talk to some of the girls. All right. "What do you do?" Here is a nice young lady, about 20 years old, a school teacher. "I teach school about forty miles outside Leningrad." "How much wages do you get?" "A hundred and thirty rubles a month." "How many holidays do you have? "I get five weeks this year." I talked with her five or ten minutes and then she said, "Where do you come from?" "I come from Canada. I am a newspaper man. I live in Vancouver. I have a daughter nearly your age, nineteen years old." "What does she do?" the girl asked. "Oh, she is 'preparing'," I say. "Preparing for what?" was the question.

In the meantime, half a dozen girls had gathered around and I started humming and hawing; I couldn't explain that because of social position or money or unemployment or something many of the girls in Canada weren't working--great numbers of them. I couldn't explain that, don't you see. In Russia, if you don't work, you don't eat, if you are capable of doing some line of work.

Well, let us leave Leningrad and go to Moscow and poke around. Before leaving Leningrad, I had dinner with the British Consul. He said, "Cromie, I am glad you have come. Why didn't you come here when you first came. You want to get this thing right. Things are not too bad in Leningrad but in Moscow they are very bad; in the Ukraine they are starving to death."

It always seems to me in world travel and in trying to form perspectives that no matter where you are, the farther away things are, the more romantic they are.

I started talking to a fellow on the train, a Professor of Historical Research. I talked to him and asked him what to him were foolish questions. Finally, he yawned in my face and said, "I have to go to bed. I have a big day tomorrow in Moscow. I take an interest in blooded horses and two of my horses are running tomorrow." I asked, "You haven't horse races in Moscow?" I didn't want to ask any more questions. I thought he was fooling me.

When I got into Moscow next morning, the first thing I said was, "Have you horse races here?" They said, "Yes, this is the Derby Day." I said, "Get me two tickets for the grandstand." The horse race commenced at one-thirty. I got out at two o'clock. There were 55,000 people at those horse races in Moscow! Twenty thousand were in the grandstand; thirty-five thousand were down on the paddock. Betting odds were given every few minutes=three ruble and six ruble bets. The Commissars were in the boxes with cigarettes held at the right angle, and with coffee being served. During the intervals at the races, you see the crowd turn and look at those who are up in the grandstand, just as at the Ascot races the crowd had stared over at the Royal Enclosure. I couldn't believe my eyes because this revealed to me the same class consciousness that we have in our country. This shows the fallacy of trying to make or class all people as equals.

That morning I took a walk around the hotel. "Who are these fellows walking around, these athletes?" "O, they are football players." "Football, here in Moscow? Get me two tickets for the game." "O, we can't get any tickets now. We tried to get a hundred and got ten." I met the captain of the all-Turkish football team. The Stadium seated fifty thousand people. Written applications for five hundred thousand seats had been received. The game started at six o'clock, and here were the two football teams, the All-Russia and All-Turkey teams, parading around the field -with band and mascots. I went to Russia to see slavery and gloom. I didn't go to see them leading a normal life like that.

I sat down in my seat and after half an hour I found that the fellow beside me was English speaking. "How are things in England?" I asked. "I don't come from England; I come from Canada." He says, "I live in Vancouver." And here is Arnold Webster, High School teacher in Vancouver, sitting beside me in Moscow, in a crowd of fifty thousand folks like you and me. "How shall I explain this crowd to the people of Canada, the United States and England?" I asked. I don't know. Here they were in Moscow of course living on a different standard than we in Canada and United States, but with the same feelings the same enjoyments as you and I have.

We were sitting in the hotel at one or two in the morning, Walter Duranty of the New York Times, Kincaid Reuters and a group of newspapermen and myself and we were talking away.

"Walter, did you put that horse race story on the wire today?" I asked. "O, hell, no, there is nothing to that." I said, "It was a pretty revealing story, Walter. I didn't know there were horse races in Russia.

I said to Kincaid, "Did you put the football story on your cables?" He said, "O, no, that is not hot enough news." I said, "That is a great revealing story. It was a great international game between an All-Russian and an All-Turkish team. The conception I had of Russia was not football or horse racing or normal enjoyments.

So the romantic and the dramatic in life is always somewhere else than where we happen to be. That is a point I want you to bear in mind when thinking of other countries and other peoples.

Emphasizing that point. I was in Shanghai one day and a woman in our party was going through the Chinese quarters. She was riding in a rickshaw when a slick Chinese pulled her purse and ran away with it. I got the Vancouver papers a month later. This story was headed, "Belgenland Passengers Robbed by Chinese Bandits." Our office was so concerned that they were going to cable me.

The same day in Shanghai, I was reading an English paper. The Headlines were: "Rum Runners Mowed Down by Machine Guns, Windsor, Ontario." "Communism is Spreading in Canada." From Vancouver, "So and So Communists Deported."

I turned to Mrs. Cromie and I said, "I shouldn't have come on this trip. Things are getting bad in Canada." The romantic and the dramatic is always somewhere else than where we happen to be.

Illustrating this same point with respect to Russia, I would read over there when wheat would go up a cent a bushel in North America, "Bread Prices Increase in America."

Rhys Williams, a friend of mine is a writer who had been in Russia through the revolution. He came back to Vancouver and I used to go walking with him a good deal. "How could you possibly leave an interesting place like Russia and come over here?" I asked him. "I came over to America to see the depression," he answered. He had read where a thousand unemployed had slept out in the 'jungle' in Vancouver. They have a place built out there, with a tire roof over them, in the subway. That was a big story in Russia. The romantic and the dramatic is always somewhere else than where you happen to be.

He said, "I was in Russia in 1917. I heard some shooting outside my hotel. I walked outside to a fellow sitting in a duska or cab and I said, "What is that shooting?" The fellow was reading a cheap paper novel. He said, "Oh, some galoots at the other end of the town are cutting up or something." He asked my friend, "Are you an American? Do you know Buffalo Bill?" This fellow was reading a Buffalo Bill novel the most hair-raising dramatic thing on earth to him, notwithstanding the fact that the Russian dynasty, a thousand years old, was changing over his head. The romantic and the dramatic of life is always somewhere else than where you and I happen to be. Learn that and you learn a great fundamental yardstick of life and countries and people.

We, in this room think we lead an interesting life. Yet 98% or 99% of our life is eat, sleep, work or play. One per cent is for love making and romance, for after all, man wasn't made only to work. The point is that other people on earth are just like you and me, and whatever condition of life is enforced on them because of environment, because of soil productivity, because of technology and lack of adjustment to new conditions: their life whatever it is becomes to them normal. That is why we in journalism have to mentally migrate occasionaly, because we start and figure out that only the two per cent of life in Russia or China that is dramatic and grandiose is interesting to our readers and they will assume that this reveals the lives of people: it does not.

This is an observation worth remembering. You must get your mind around the earth and its problems and man and his problems and his lack of adjustment to new conditions. When you have a country's history, its geography, and its psychology you have everything there is to know, and you have something the ordinary man has snot got. How so? To show that he hasn't got it, come back to this continent. The world is interesting to talk about; it is interesting to play with when you have a map like this. Come back to this continent. Look at our standard of technology, our soil productivity, unequalled on earth. What do we find? We will find, I think, that history will say we have failed for the minute, to adjust ourselves to these new conditions.

We read in the papers just yesterday that our political leaders at Ottawa both MacKenzie King and Premier Bennett instead of addressing themselves to the realistic things of Canada, are spending four hours and five hours in making speeches about titles and they are doing that while four or five hundred thousand of our Canadian boys and girls, from 19 to 23, 24 and 25 years old, haven't got a thing to do! When you sit in your office as you and I do and a young fellow of nineteen or twenty comes in and asks for a job, you can't give him a job. You can't say, "Sonny, go next door: they will probably give you a job." You know you are lying. And you can't say that he will get a job tomorrow or the next day. If we had a shortage of foods and goods; if production was a problem with us, that would be something, but it isn't. We have a plentitude of foods and goods but lack the social attitude and financial technique to distribute them. Also we lack the psychology to adjust ourselves to the new era of plentitude we now find ourselves in. After all it is man's ability to adjust himself to new conditions which determines history, which determines man's progress and his growth. How will future generations regard our lack of ability to adjust our new machine world.

We come back to this continent with $23 worth of machinery per individual in North America. The next nearest is England with $11; Germany, $9; France, $4; China and India $50, reflecting the technology and soil productivity.

We come back here and go to the Century of Progress Fair in Chicago and we see in five minutes a presentation of the evolution of transportation in the last one hundred years, the ox cart, the coach, the locomotive, the motor car, the flying machine. I get into a flying machine in Chicago at five o'clock in the afternoon and the next morning at eight o'clock I am in the aeroplane field in Seattle--three miles a minute. Yet you and I will spend four hours talking about titles. (Applause.)

Go and see the same evolution in relation to soil production. See Cyrus McCormick's old sickle, the reaper, the binder, the mower, and the thresher and see what man can do with machinery in one hour field work that used to take him three days. Cannot you see from that an inkling of some adjustments that have to be made?

There is an evaluation going on around the world today. We can no longer hide behind "big front shirts" with cobweb minds and garbage-can stomachs. We have to clean them both out, and keep them clean.

After three years of explaining to our boys and girls how there is no work for them, etc.,, etc. The girls say, "Well, what is my future? Where am I going to get married?" Can she marry a young unworking boy; should she marry one? Should she have to? Should you and I as business leaders sit down and not address ourselves to the adjustments we have to make? Should we sit down and have this great pile of nine million dollars worth of debt on which we are trying to pay the same interest rate that applied when Calgary Oil stocks were worth twenty times what they are now, and every other stock accordingly.

Or shall we trim interest notes down to an amount we can carry? Capitalism has a job to distribute the goods and foods we produce in this estate we call Canada and United States both constituting the richest continent on earth. It will be no trouble to adjust and distribute the goods if we start using the vehicles of distribution which are necessary and which we have So we have to change our conceptions of finance and its uses.

Our social conception and ethical conceptions have to change because, after all, if you want to know and do things today, you don't hark back to old ritualism, and formalism and political theorism; you go to the new leadership of realism. And when you go and see what Mussolini is doing, you find that he has got a grip on the mind and the thought of the youth of Italy.

He is giving intelligent leadership. He couldn't help it because he would be edged out if he didn't.

When you go to Germany and see Hitler--and I had a close-up in Europe recently--you make some reappraisals. When you go to Russia and see what they have done even if on lower standards than ours, you see that if they hadn't organized, they would be heading toward the fate of disintegrated starving China. Organization beats disorganization never forget that. When you come to Canada and United States, you see that we don't have to go through the revolution that Russia went through" that Germany is now going through, if we address ourselves to the problem of our country, which is realism; to the most valuable asset we have which is our own living people, rather than dead debts or money theories.

If you want some conception of the possible standards of living on this continent, just think that in Canada and United States we are now only using about 60 per cent of our PRESENT plant. We are only using about 1/10 of our potential producing energy and power. With an economic setup like this, you can see how rich we are just the minute we set our minds and plans to the task, of not only using our present plant to capacity but tap in and use at least a portion of our potential energy.

The earth's peoples are on the march. Radio and movie have now made it possible for the masses to look right into the Castle. This means that there will be no more government skulduddery behind castle doors. Radio means that youth no longer has to spend 20 years learning to read and write, and then spend another 10 years learning the significance of the thought and action behind that writing. The radio and movie through the ear and eye couple up the mind of masses with the mind of government.

So, governments have to be realistic; they have to deal with realities rather than with romance. Hope based upon understandable planes rather than hoakum is what our youth and grown ups demand. Our political and financial and business leaders must wake up to this fact, and when they, like the leaders in Germany and Russia. and Italy, address their thought and action to the heritage that we have on this continent" we will have a continent unequalled on earth, and living standards that no other country can approach. (Applause.)