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| Click image to enlargify From Picture Post Magazine, July 13, 1940, pp 12-13 |
[...] They dreaded the sovereignty of Hitler less than they dreaded the sovereignty of their own working countrymen. They allowed their country to be lost. They will not even save their own property for long. But the world believes that the British industrialists are not like that. Truly, with such an audience looking on, they have much to lose.
What of the prospects for the great mass of the middle class of Britain? At present they are perhaps the most satisfied section of all. They are comfortably off. They have a pleasant margin of choice in their lives. They can choose how they will work. They can choose what they will do with their leisure. If they want to make a good job of their work, they have reasonable opportunities for doing so. A lawyer can be a good lawyer. A tradesman can be a scrupulous and efficient tradesman. A journalist can be an honest journalist. On the whole, nobody interferes with the middle classes, nobody bothers them. They are free to make a success of their job or not, according as they feel inclined.
If we lost this war there is on thing that would immediately happen to the middle class. They would forfeit all right to choose. They would be told what work to do, and told how to use their leisure. The lawyer's life would conscripted for the purpose of finding "legal" justifications for all Nazi actions. The tradesman would be squeezed out of business. The journalist would write what he was told write. Life would be a matter of taking orders from people whose mentality was odious, but whose spies were ruthlessly efficient.
Each of the three main classes of Britain stands to lose some different sets of rights. But there are still two things in which all of them have a common stake. Religion -- and children.
Manufacturer and riveter, landowner and farm hand, clerk and doctor -- they are all free to worship as they please. Catholic and Protestant, Quaker and Jew, Methodist and Plymouth Brother -- their faith is not subject of interest to any secret police. Their church's funds are not looted to help make any bombers. In a conquered Britain, on the other hand, the Nazis would have no room for any god except the Führer. As the National Zeitung put it on June 3rd, 1937: "God has revealed Himself, not in Jesus Christ, but in Adolph Hitler."
Finally -- children. Everyone's children. Squire's children and villagers' children, duke's children and dustmen's children. Whatever the shortcomings of our educational system, every child does still get a chance of learning the truth for himself, instead of having false history and false racial theories pumped into him, with a daily dose of hate and indignation for good measure. In this summer of 1940, we are fighting for the hopes and happiness of the children of to-day and of 1950, and of A.D. 2,000. The prospect if we fail? Hear the words Dr. Ley, German Minister of Labour: "We begin with the child when he is three years old. As soon as he begins to think we put a little flag in his hand; then follows the school, the Hitler Youth, the Storm Troops and military training. We don't let him go . . ."
Jay's thoughts: In our modern-day, are we truly free to choose much of anything for ourselves any longer, or is it an illusion of choice? Are you free to run your business the way you see fit, or has the New Inquisition and our government trampled all over your rights? And what about the children? Are they not indoctrinated by public health's youth programmes and socialist academics at every opportunity? We are losing our civil liberties and freedoms one by one every day. We are losing the war for freedom and common sense against those who seek to control your every move and thought. We have little of our freedom of speech protections left in modern-day Britain. Opinions are stifled by a hostile press. Ordinary citizens are prosecuted for exercising free thought and expression. How free are we right now, in today's Britain? Have we allowed this country to be lost to the socialists?
And again, what about your children? How free are they, and how free will they be eighty years from now? Do you even know who is educating our kids, what our boys and girls are being taught, and what, ultimately, our children believe?
