John Fisher Reports

MR. HERMANT: Members and Guests of The Empire Club of Canada: Canadians everywhere know John Fisher and, because of him, know Canada better. Born at Sackville, N.B., he is a graduate of Dalhousie University. As a Member of the Bar of Nova Scotia he worked with the Rowell-Sirois Commission. John Fisher is a lawyer, newspaperman, writer, lecturer and broadcaster. He is perhaps best known through his National C.B.C. broadcasts, "John Fisher Reports". Mr. Fisher won the Beaver Award for the "Best Canadian Commentator". He has twice been awarded the La Fleche Trophy for distinguished contribution to Canadian Radio. Last year he received the honourary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Western Ontario. Hundreds of thousands of Canadian from the isolated Magdalen Islands on the Atlantic seaboard, to the equally remote Queen Charlotte Islands on the Pacific Coast, from St. John's to Victoria, in all parts of Canada, in its Legislatures, Pulpits and Factories, recognize his voice and appreciate his distinctive style. It is a great privilege for us to have him with us today, and I will now ask John Fisher to report to The Empire Club of Canada.

MR. FISHER: Monsieur le President, Mesdames et Messieurs; Il me fait grand plaisir de vous addresser la parole en francais.

This is downright traitorous, isn't it? ... addressing The Empire Club in the Royal York Hotel in the City of Toronto in French! That is bad! But I did it deliberately to point up a little fact: that is the nature of our country, whether we like it or not. We are that way ... one-third French-speaking and two-thirds English-speaking, and I suppose as long as there are people in the world we are going to be composed of basically two, and we might as well get the fact in our noodles, as well as we might get a few other things in our heads that seem very difficult for Canadians to acquire ... namely, that this same country of duality, this same country of the north has an enormous and staggering potential, and by the time they have put us away, and Father Time has pulled down another card and put up another century mark, you might find this to be one of the great forces in the world. You might find that this country, by the turn of the century, will have staggered and flabbergasted the predictions of even the most enthusiastic living at this very hour.

I thought, too, that I might go back and dip down into the well of privilege, for I have been very privileged by my Corporation and by my friends, to see this country in all its facets and moods and phases, to visit all the little nooks and crannies, and I think perhaps it is my obligation, occasionally, to share it with others. But I would like to say, since I am flanked on the right and left by some C.B.C. personnel, that all these peregrinations of mine, all these magic carpet voyages are not at the expense of the taxpayers, but there are some very kind Canadians who make it possible for me to get around.

Now, let us take a little trip far to the east of Canada, because we don't hear enough about Newfoundland, and I think we should, and I think the first thing to bear in mind about Newfoundland is this: how we did it. Every single school child in this whole country of ours should hear the story of the negotiations with Newfoundland. We did it in a British way.

Now, just contrast: supposing Newfoundland were Czechoslovakia, and the great U.S.S.R. had decided to bring Czechoslovakia into the fold. She would have done it with hatchet men, with softeners-up, with axe men, with Red Army manoeuvring, bands blaring and propaganda. There would have been pressure all the time.

The United States, despite her long and dear friendship with us, could not have resisted the temptation with Newfoundland to send in their televisions stars and their radio stars, and have people interviewed. The Hollywood Queens and the Hollywood stars would have appeared in Newfoundland. There would be a public relations expert with a barrel of whisky ... the greatest insult to Newfoundland rum possible.

No, the Canadian did it in a British-Canadian way, because he is a queer bird. He is a product of environment ... he is a product of a couple of centuries of evolution, I suppose you might call it, so we said to Newfoundland: We haven't any army at your border, we are not going to send the navy, we won't have any public relations guys in there. Sit down, Newfoundland, at this table ... we are going to talk to you. Any time you have anything to say to us ... if we are not generous enough, speak up.

That is the British way. Newfoundland really had no right there. She said we were not giving enough several times. We said, Okay, let us argue about it.

Wasn't that wonderful? When we finished there we still didn't have the bands, the hatchet-men and the softeners-up. It was done in the constitutional way.

I think that was very beautiful and should be shared with the children of Canada, to impress upon them the worth and glory of Canada.

Canada as a nation is unique. I think it was Arthur Irwin, in his beautiful piece of prose ... the first man ever to put it down ... who said that Canada was the only nation in the whole of the Western Hemisphere which achieved its independence in the constitutional, peaceful, evolutionary way. It did not-cost us any blood. Yet we are as independent as a Republic ... just as independent as the United States. Yet we are the only republic or nation in the whole of the Western Hemisphere which did not break its links, its sacred links with Europe. So today we are united in the sympathy and the bond and the friendship and the warmth and tradition of the Crown. Over the years and generations this new kind of a partnership has been formed ... all your Commonwealth of Nations.

Now, it is probably strange that you should have me at an Empire Club because people hurl some pretty vicious invectives at me. They call me Chauvinistic, that I am anti-British ... they call me everything.

I think they are wrong. I hate Nationalism with all my soul. I am a Canadian. I think it is a Canadian's duty to be enthusiastic about his country. We allow an Englishman or a Scotsman to be enthusiastic about his country, and never question it. We allow the American to be enthusiastic about his country and we never question him. But we have always been a little too cautious or cynical about the Canadian who spoke out loud about his own land.

When I say it is strange I should be at The Empire Club, in the eyes of these people it is strange because the kind of an Empire I respect and honour is the kind we have today, about which I have been speaking ... the Newfoundland way ... the partnership of the Commonwealth with all nations equal, where there is no domination any more and if one partner is in trouble we say, here is a billion bucks ... take it ... don't ask any questions ... we are glad to do it because we think you need it ... and one is selfless and we think it will eventually help ourselves the next day.

It is a beautiful thing. In other words, the old Empire that so many old people go nostalgic about is dead. The Empire of Victoria, of Kipling, is gone long ago. It will never come back. I think of Newfoundland ... it is wonderful ... in its place has come this great lesson for the world ... how nations can get along without any constitution, without any pressure, but simply out of good will and a recognition we are better off by working together and linked by this beautiful thing that has nothing to do with politics or pressure or actualities of the moment. That is the kind of a British Commonwealth to which I subscribe with all my heart. So when Canadians accuse me of being nationalist and anti-British, of spreading tales and canards ... when a certain publication asked me to write an article a while ago and I said the old Empire of Victoria is dead, they refused to publish it ... they thought it was anti-British and detrimental. I maintain that people who talk of the Old Empire are doing more harm to the beautiful thing called the Commonwealth of Nations than any darn fool nationalist in the Province of Quebec, or some extremist in the West or in the East. Let us admit the beauty of the moment and how we have evolved this thing.

Canada, will never break away from this. She couldn't economically, she won't politically and she won't spiritually, and she wouldn't want to do it.

When you hear a Canadian talking Canada, that isn't disloyal. Every link must be strong ... a chain is as strong as its weakest link.

When you look at the movement of humanity you find more and more is moving West and if this great and enormous potential, called Canada, can be strong and united, for sure, as the Nordics say, the stronger will be your family of nations called the Commonwealth.

That is my political thesis in a nutshell on the subject of British relations. This Canada's potential is a thing I am sure must fascinate those in the Old Land, those at Westminster today because, as you look around the world and see the juxtaposition of powers and see the darkness of the curtains and the things happening to millions of people all over this planet of ours, it makes us stop and wonder and I suppose as the cynics, or as these totalitarian specimens look out on the world, surely the great thing to the north of the United States would possibly be considered one of the world's plums and it seems to me it is incumbent on us in Canada, it is Christian, it is religious, to work in order to fill it up, and in order to bring people out from behind the barbed wire of Europe, wherever they may be living, and let them share in this great thing we have on this continent.

We bring in a few thousands a year and certain Unions get worried that they are going to take the jobs; other people are worried that they are going to take houses, and that there will not be enough jobs and not enough houses.

Gentlemen, if we in the democracies cannot find some way to bring in not thousands but millions, some day we will be forced at the point of a bayonet to do it, and then we might be bringing in the kind of people that perhaps we wouldn't want. If we will not do it we will be forced some day at the paint of a bayonet to do it, and the United Nations, if it works, will bring pressure, and suggest and ask us to do it.

I suggest that we start to lay the groundwork now, and what we need in this country is thinking on the subject of our potential and the subject of giving God's children wherever they may live in the world, a chance to share in the bounty and glory we have in this Canada of ours.

You know, I think we have always under-rated Canada. I don't believe in spellbinders ... I don't believe in people saying "My country, right and wrong" ... I think that is silly and dangerous. The part I like about Canada ... it has grown up so much in the shadow of the greater forces, Great Britain and the United States and, to some extent, France, and to an extent, the world, because Canada trades with the world. That has developed a Canadian approach which is quite wonderful. You will always find a Canadian more enthusiastic about things outside than he is about things at home. For instance, it is easy to enlist the support of a Toronto man on the subject of the United Nations, and he can go to New York and sit with the Indian Delegation, and the Canadian will probably be the most sympathetic man there. He will understand the Indian problem ... he will listen to the Jewish problem from Palestine and Israel ... he will understand that ... he will understand the South African problem ... anything outside his own country. Get him to understand the Maritimes, or Quebec, or the West ... he is rigid and cold.

There is an element of good in that, and a psychological aspect ... we are never quite sure of ourselves. I think that is beginning to change, but it is not changing, to my way of thinking, quite quickly enough.

Let us take this enormous development on the economic side. Before I get to that, let me point this out, which I started to say ... I believe that Canada having grown up in that way, with its British heritage, its American ways, is actually perhaps a half century or a century ahead of the United States in terms of political sophistication or political maturity or political stability ... perhaps a half century or a century ahead.

On the other hand, in terms of economics or distributing its assembly line in terms of per unit cost or distributing the factory across our country we are probably a half century behind the United States.

But if Canada, with this growth, and with iron in Quebec and in Labrador, and water power all over, and the seaways ... if Canada can come up economically to get down the distribution cost ... if you can have economic costs coming down, once you can improve the economic situation then you have the prize plum of the world right here in the Dominion of Canada.

As I said when I spoke to you once before, Canada is a great machine, it is like a great assembly line, roaring and charging ahead, and with a man sitting on top of the machine with a great lever or brake and when the machine goes a little too fast or shows too much speed, the brake is applied in the name of British caution, fair play, noblesse oblige, play the game, or whatever it is.

I would like to think ... sometimes maybe I am an incurable romantic ... that the purr of that machine sometimes has the laughter of the French, just as I would like the French-Canadian to have a little more appreciation of our sense of materialism. If we could have a little more of his basic philosophy, the love of basic things, love of family, the love of Church, and if he could get a little more of our spirit of hygiene and bathrooms, what a country we could have, with both contributing.

That is my little comment ... ... as they say in Quebec.

I get an awful pasting ... people say I must have been born in Quebec. I wasn't. My grandfather was an Anglican clergyman. My people are still fighting as to which one got off the Loyalist boat first when it landed in New York. Probably that is half of what is wrong with New Brunswick ... they are still quarrelling over who was first on the first boat.

I felt it my duty long ago to go down to Quebec and learn the French language. I wish I could speak ten languages. I think if this country would open its eyes and if all would learn more of each other's language it would be an advantage that would be simply superb. I never met an educated English man who couldn't speak a second language. In Europe they think nothing of speaking two or three languages. Canada would have a wonderful advantage if we were big enough to get around the prejudices. Mind you, if we did know a little more about each other I think a lot of extremes and arrogance on both sides would simply go down the St. Lawrence. It is there ... I could rant and rage up here, and nothing will change ... let us get together and build a bigger nation. Let us pay tribute to the fact we have been pretty remarkable. It is really a wonderful thing, with only fourteen million ... and we haven't reached fourteen million until December 1st, according to the bright boys at Ottawa. On December 1st we have fourteen million. Now, fourteen million from Newfoundland to the Yukon ... six and a half time zones ... with fourteen million shoulders to hold up the second richest roof in the world, with the problem of language, with the see-saw of British and American, with a very tough country of freeze-up and break-up, black flies, Christmas trees, and long stretches ... I think it is the greatest miracle of nature the world has ever seen on a per capita basis.

Canadians are never allowed to say that. Nobody stops them, but Canadians are so cautious, so afraid of being out of line, they never bother to tell the story to themselves.

So, consequently, while all this neglect was carried on Canadian slid over into the United States, so that today there are about seven million people of Canadian ancestry living south of the border. Just think what we could do with another seven million people in this country. I wish we had them. But they went to the United States, not because of the height of the grass or the ring of the cash register, entirely, but largely out of the attitude in the United States ... they are a little quicker to recognize talent, not quite so concerned about ancestry. I don't know ... they just weren't quite as cautious as we were in telling every day about the American way of life. We didn't bother. Now, I think it is coming and if we could bring up the economic side how wonderful it will be in this country.

In my travels the last year I have been around quite a bit. In the last year I visited the British Isles, France, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, forty states of the forty-eight, and from Newfoundland to the Yukon, and the thing that impresses me about my travels in the United States are twofold: First, no matter where you go in the United States today you can feel the industrial pulse. In other words, the Americans have at last learned the secret of decentralization of industry and even in the south they are booming today. Go to the State of Arkansas and you find all kinds of new shoe industry that came from the New England States. You find big plants in the north who point out that it is more economic to have a little tiny unit, a part of a big thing, a little part there, and they find labour relations are better in a small town. Everybody knows the other fellow.

I think one of the great revolutions today is in the South, so much so that the centre of population in the United States today is now approximately at Kansas City. The centre of population is about Kansas City and it is being pulled south and west and especially to the west, with the enormous development in Texas and California, both industrial and chemical development.

Also, go to Milwaukee and St. Paul, got to Seattle in the northwest, and go down to the Carolinas now, and to Virginia, and you find the industrial assembly line is moving all over the United States.

That gets rid of the awful problem we have in Canada of the jealousies and the poor extremities. Here we have the three little Maritimes, suffering and bleeding and bawling too long. Here the West has always a chip on its shoulder about Ontario and Quebec. Why is it that the Canadian plants have not decentralized? Is it a state of mind or is it purely economic? Is it because we are a nation of a thin line, therefore it is not economical for a harvester company to establish its branch factory in Saskatoon or Winnipeg or Brandon? Or is it just that things are going here nicely and as is the Canadian way, don't overdo? I don't know ... it is probably a mixture of both.

Now, a very distinguished Canadian implement company when it started operating in the United States in a big way discovered it was economical to put up a plant in California, that it was economical to put up another plant in Wisconsin, but that same Canadian Company, not too far from us, has no plant outside of Ontario in Canada. Why? Is it a state of mind or is it economics? I wish somebody would give me the answer. It must be part of both, because I understand that the biggest sales unit of that particular X Company has always been in Saskatchewan, which is totally farm country. Yet the factory is here. Now, it would not detract from Ontario one bit if we could learn in Canada to decentralize and let the rest of Canada share in the industrial dream a little bit. It is one of the greatest things that could happen to this country.

Now, are there signs on the horizon today it is coming? I think so ... a little bit. I think it is coming. I think once Canadians get the feeling it is worth while they will do it. It isn't only a state of mind. I can see the industrialists' point of view. I went through a big plant yesterday. I said, "Couldn't you put a plant out West?" They said, "There aren't enough people. Give us people and you will see us move all over. It is only natural we should be in Ontario and Southern Quebec ... we have population and proximity to coal, and so forth."

That is the first thing I noticed in the United States ... they are moving today all over with their big manufacturing concerns.

Now, the second thing in my travels that I noticed is the enormous and almost childlike respect for Canada. My lectures in the United States have taken me all the way from Miami and Portland and from Los Angeles to Portland, Maine ... the two Portlands ... and I have come in contact with a great many top American business leaders. A man told me the other day in the United States that he had seven million dollars that he must invest each single week, he must find a place for it. He said he would like to put the whole thing in Canada but the laws of the different states will not allow it.

I said, "Why?"

He said, "You are a very stable country, very cautious, your laws are sound, you don't panic, you haven't the terrible problems of clashes that we have in our country. You are about the level we reached at the turn of the century as far as industrial and agricultural balance, in terms of the exploitation or development of your resources. Canada cannot miss."

This was about two months ago. He said, "As a matter of fact, I predict your dollar will soon be unpegged and it will not be too long before your dollar will demand a premium because your country is so well administered and the developments going on are enormous!"

Now, I learned from Americans all over more about titanium ore, and all these Canadian things that I do from Canadians. There is hardly an American Investor's Analysis out today without some mention of the Dominion of Canada. You notice in the American edition of Time -I didn't see the Canadian one and there is quite a little distinction-the American edition had a tremendous story on the Canadian growth in population, about our industrial expansion, power expansion, and so on. All through the United States, the top business man feels we have got something.

Always in Canada there is a nice blend between Business and Government. We have not the terrible clashes you get in the United States today between the Republican Party and Business men and those in Washington. It is softened a little in Canada because we recognize we have to do some things together. Consequently, we have to do a lot of things. I was thinking of the Dollar Sterling Board, and the Boards that work with Government. We feel there is no infringement on rights ... that is an old British idea ... they are working for the good of all. That is a strong Canadian characteristic.

A lot of these top fellows tell me that Quebec is a province to watch. I met the Timmins Brothers a short time ago and they told me when they really get rolling and start building railways, they will move ten million tons of iron ore a year. That will be the equivalent of 35 trains a day down and 35 up ... a major railway operation. You can't move ten million tons of ore with that kind of a railway operation without a lot of people.

I don't admit for a moment we are going to have another Pittsburgh or Cleveland, but something is going to happen in that marvellous land that Cartier said God gave to Canada. Something is going to happen.

There is great interest in the titanium field ... it is a metal to watch. I read an article in The Reader's Digest about titanium ... it has the strength of steel, the propensities of nickel, and the developments will be terrific once we get going on it.

The things that will happen in Quebec in power ... Ontario is thrilling up to this point ... Ontario has used a great deal of surplus waters and the next development in the way of power is going to be in the Province of Quebec. There will be more development in the Tadoussac to Labrador than all the rest of Canada. I have seen some of the rivers and the Grand Falls on the Hamilton River in Labrador are, I think, something like twice the height of Niagara. I don't know what the potential is ... it is simply staggering. That is going to happen.

Now, Gentlemen, I want to conclude my little talk on the subject of cynics and cobwebs. There are all kinds of little guys in each generation that get in the way. I would far rather meet a big guy who thunders and rants and a big guy who can't get his mind straightened out, than the little cautious Joes and cynics who always come up.

"They never will find gold in Ontario", they said as late as 1905, at the time of Cobalt. You will never get gold in Northern Ontario. Well, it seems we have dug up quite a little bit since that time. I guess the only people who exceeded us were the South Africans. Why they dig gold out of a big hole in Canada, and dig it into another big hole in Fort Knox, Kentucky, is beyond my ken, but as long as it keeps going it creates employment. But gold has meant everything to this Province of Ontario.

No, Gentlemen, you will never get gold in the Province of Ontario. The overburden of the clay is too high, too great.

They said the same thing about the Wright Brothers in 1903. In 1903 a distinguished Professor of Physics in British Columbia said to his graduating class: "I have been reading in the paper about some crazy goons called Wright Brothers who said like a bird they would zoom through the sky. Gentlemen, that is impossible. I will stake my reputation as a Doctor of Physics on that statement. Steel is heavier than air. Man will never learn to zoom like the birds."

Well, I think people get around quite well with our mechanical birds, whether they use a North Star Rolls Royce engine or not.

You remember the predictions after 1887, about the turn of the century ... a lot of people thought nothing would ever develop in the West. There are still people in Toronto who say that Northern Ontario is nothing but rock, bush and black flies ... what is there ever up there? There are lots of people in Toronto who don't believe that Northern Ontario holds one of the great prizes, not for metals and minerals but for agriculture ... farm land. I spent three days this summer roaming through the clay belt and I saw farms in production that I had never seen equalled anywhere else ... not on this continent but in the world. I saw farms away beyond the Cochrane limit producing 600 bushels of potatoes to the acre and I don't think you can equal that in the banana belt of Southwestern Ontario, despite the beautiful balance and expansion. There are sixteen million acres of potential farm land in Northern Ontario. Your Northern Ontario seed potatoes are today being shipped to New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, to provinces that always prided themselves on their own potatoes. Northern Ontario seed potatoes go to Texas and to Oklahoma. They are in great demand.

Northern Ontario timothy seed goes all over the world. I have never in all my travels, even in tiny, tilled, worked Denmark, even in beautiful pastoral England, I have never seen clover crops the equal of Northern Ontario ... a so-called cold, barren land of rocks, Christmas trees and black flies.

You see, we don't know half the time, we are not told, and we listen to the little blue guys ... they say it can't be done. I bet you, before you and I are put under the sod this very hotel might be heated by gas from Alberta. That is not strange. Chatham gets gas from Texas. Detroit is partly heated from Texas and the whole United States is criss-crossed by gas pipelines. I won't be surprised if that pipeline goes to Montreal some day. We may have more than one. Who knows the significance of iron here, and oil there? If we get the St. Lawrence seaway I don't see how you can hold the country back.

There is no land so dependent and in such a favoured position to reap fruits from the engineer when he sows. This is a professional engineer's country in the sense we have always been held back ... we didn't know what to do with the Christmas trees or the rocks or the white water. Now, in this electrical knowledge of refrigeration away up north, the bulldozer, the geiger counter, the motor, the wonder drugs and the airplane ... all these things and all they mean ... who are you to say to me that there won't be thousands and thousands and maybe millions of people living five hundred miles north of Toronto some day?

They said that people would never live in Chicoutimi, they would never live in the Saguenay, they said they would never live in Timmins, in Sudbury, in Calgary ... who wants to live in Edmonton? I wouldn't mind living in Edmonton today. I wouldn't mind having a little chunk of real estate in the City of Edmonton.

It is so easy to be cautious now. On this oil and iron ore development the thing that bothers me is this, that the Canadian does his best to entice American investment capital to come into this country. We say that is fine ... it flatters us to think the Yanks are so impressed with the stability and potential of Canada that they will send billions into this country. Then when they get their money in we sit back and nip at them and you say we will soon be owned by the United States.

Well, now this is true. Instead of being owners ourselves of our resources we will wake up some day to find we are owers ... the "n" is gone. Owners ... Owers ... note the difference.

Today I think sixty per cent of every dividend is passing out of the country. That is why in Alberta, despite the predictions it is going to be another Texas, you do not see the direct result of the boom as in Oklahoma and Texas. That is good to a point. You don't see the apartment buildings, the garages, the little factories, the office buildings that should be thrown up on the Alberta landscape today. You do not see it because the cream, the gravey is not left there, because Canadians in this great tremendous thing called Toronto, Montreal, and big fat, middle aged London, will not get off their seat and take a chance in oil to the same extent the Yanks do. Play it safe! As long as you have a nice bank deposit, you will hold on to it, or a slice of Brazilian Traction, which is outside the country. That is true. There is very little Canadian money coming in to Alberta oil.

In Edmonton they had a banquet to honour the retirement of a President of an oil company. There were six hundred at the banquet and I don't suppose there were enough local Albertans or Canadians, except four, with enough money in Alberta oil to provide axle grease for their own cars to drive there and home from that meeting.

Why? You can't tell me there isn't money in Toronto or Montreal. Sure there is money. Canadians are Ottawa conscious ... they play safe every time. We are going to wake up with an awful jolt if we don't have a little faith in our own country.

It is wonderful that British capital is coming, and that American capital is coming. May it always come and may they always have faith in us. May we never do anything that will frighten them away. But surely there is a place in the scene for faith in our own show. Let us get the lead out of our shoes and get at it. Are we going to be content with being a nation of copycats, of branch plant operators, or are we going to get in and pitch and drive ourselves?

It seems to me, Gentlemen, in this age of fear and peril and the terrible threat to the world that comes from a certain quarter, it seems to me that business must be full of gamble and full of daring, because the moment business withholds and is cautious, that is exactly what Uncle Joe wants ... it is exactly what he wants. If you can get people afraid and not doing the things they should do, or doing the thing they shouldn't do ... he doesn't have to have a war ... a little Korea here, something else there ... people will get cautious, easing up, people get jittery and excited, they don't jump in the way they used to ... and he wins by default, if you like, or wins without great cost.

So it seems the very essence of democracy, especially in this country which is so young ... you see, the United States population is pretty well fixed at 150 million ... the Canadian population has that youthfulness in it and we haven't put the fixation point on it yet that I have seen ... we are away at least, and I think Canadians in business, for the very sake of Democracy, must express it.

That is my theory ... this is no time to be cautious. We simply must recognize it is a very dangerous world ... it always has been dangerous and in every age of man little fellows stood up and said, "This is the end". It never has been, it isn't going to be tomorrow. True, it is dangerous, but let us get rough and tough ... let us plunge ahead and do some of the things we know should be done. It is always going to be the same ... never a world Utopia. That is what Democracy is ... a reflection of the things it feels and movements like religion put the emphasis on the individual ... if you are smarter than the rest of the fellows you get up on your own steam. That is a very sacred privilege. We don't have to worry about this so-called Uncle Joe if we do the things in Democracy that we should do. There is nothing wrong, basically, with the Capitalistic system. There may be some abuses ... we know that. Where it does get into trouble is that we, as human beings, abuse the system through greed, selfishness, hypocrisy. If we could play the game a little more, if we could get a little closer to the basic religious conception of man and recognize other people are a little different, what a force we could put in Democracy.

I believe if we did that the one man in the world today who should be afraid is Uncle Joe, not our people. For a generation before he has said it is foolishness to believe in God ... that is for soft-bellied Western Democracy. There is no such thing and he has brought up a whole generation to believe there is nothing bigger than Man.

Okay, suppose anything starts in this world, and something happens to his political setup ... he can't look to anyone ... he has denied, he has put a void up there. But in Democracy, especially the free world, we have the triumphs of the past, the distributions of the assembly line ... not good enough yet, but the best in the world we have all the accomplishments of Science. The ideas of Democracy always get better each year, and we have also the knowledge, when we get into trouble, all we have to do is look up and say, "We put our faith in Thee, Oh, God, and we are not afraid."

If anybody should be afraid today I think it should be Uncle Joe. If Democracy can't stand up and be enthusiastic, then we don't deserve to have the sacred privilege of Democracy.

VOTE OF THANKS, moved by Harry Oldham, United Kingdom Trade Commissioner.