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But, adds Author Straight, if we are shocked by such exploitation, how can we expect the U.S.'s "equally piratical empires in Latin America [to] be tolerated? The peoples of these nations despise us as much as the natives of Northern Rhodesia despise the British. . . . The people of all the world have had to sweat blood, living in compounds, dressed in loincloths, eating mush and drinking dishwater to provide us with cheap metals and other materials so that we may drive around in shining automobiles."
"The one great social need of Asia," says Author Straight, "is that Asia should be allowed to benefit from its own wealth." This can be done, he believes, only by the combined efforts of the United Nations to build Asiatic industries. Long-term credits at low interest must be extended to Asia's nations.
Europe's heavy industries and commerce must come under the control not of individual governments but of the United Nations. Anglo-American domination of United Nations policies must give way to "a Supreme Council ... of ... the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, and China . . . [with] regional councils."
The Council ("the central executive of a provisional world government") will plan European reconstruction on the basis of United Nations requirements. To this end "Russia and Britain and America must now conclude agreements with the governments-in-exile and the European underground." All anti-Nazi movements must be recognized; propaganda must "incite social revolution in Germany" and, when transmitted to Occupied Europe, must cease to be merely "stirring accounts of old ladies snubbing Nazi officers."
Freedom Is No End. If conservatives flinch at the thought of such a program for Europe, they will buckle at Author Straight's designs for the U.S. Straight believes that the reconversion of U.S. industry to peacetime needs will take from seven months to two years, and that citizens cashing in war bonds and drawing on large wartime savings will find in those years a lack of civilian supplies to spend money on. Only government control can prevent inflation, prophesies Straight. Government must direct reconversion, "determine the location of industry that emerges from the war," maintain priorities where needed, retain title to its own plants. It will have to provide a public works program for perhaps 4,000,000 dislocated workers. Price control and rationing must continue for the sake of the "worldwide relief program," wages must continue stabilized.
Federal programs must be drawn up for nationwide housing schemes, broadened social security, regional development. All monopolies must be either taken over or indirectly controlled by government; railroads must become government-owned. To counteract the danger to democracy of so vast a government authority, local groups must form "community councils" to supervise housing, health and education.
Concludes Author Straight: "Freedom is no end in itself ; it is simply the presence of opportunity. . . ."