The British prototype or our presei. d bland discounting of "election heat" 1a. Danger of Socialism Seen was reported in your columns, two days it- Dec.11,48 after the result was announced, as fol- it- Attitude After Our Election Compared lows: "Today, as on the day after a of With That of British in 1945 national election in America [sic], the g- Conservatives conceded that they had be To THE EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK TIMES: overstated their fears in the heat of election, and were ready to grant that James Reston, your chief diplomatic k the country could 'muddle through' correspondent, in a post-election com- d without disaster regardless of the par- mentary published in THE TIMES of :- Nov. 4 pointed out that "we were ty in power." :- The many Americans now comfort- wrong not only on the elections but, o what's worse, on the whole political di- ing themselves with confidence in com- n promising with labor will derive scant rection of our time." Unfortunately, this succinct diagnosis of our funda- encouragement from the analogous ear- a mental political naiveté is even more lier British reaction, as cabled to you 1 valid today. Aug. 8, 1945: "What has happened in , 1 British politics in the last month can Even most believers in liberal capi- 1 be translated into American terms by talism and the free economy are imagining that Sidney Hillman's Polit- busily whistling in the dark to dismiss I ical Action Committee, having attained the real implications of the campaign. the status of a full-fledged national They are successfully soothing them- political party, has been returned to selves with such wishful escapisms as power with a secure Congressional the following: a candidate's campaign bark is worse than his office-holding majority." Economist Quoted bite. Mr. Truman is, after all, no Com- munist. Continuation of the Keynes- Similarly, the authoritative Econo- Roosevelt-Hopkins tax-spend philoso- mist of London - which subsequently phy will immunize us from "man-made" has excoriated the Labor Government depression. The business outlook is for revolutionary measures, as the cap- rosy, per the predictions of industrial ital levy and pending steel nationaliza- as well as political leaders. Those citi- tion-the week after the new Govern- zens concerned over the mandate for ment's accession to power announced as political subsidization and collectivist its opinion that "the risk is not that planning are merely reflecting the the Labor party will change British chronically manic behavior of "Wall society too much, but that it will Street's scared rabbits." And most change itself too little." And in the dangerous of all' is the comforting third week of the "honeymoon" period bromide that "we have nothing to fear The Economist, under the soothing cap- but fear itself." tion "Old Wine in Old Bottles," con- cluded that "Mr. Attlee has not, after Precedents Abroad all, gone in for boldness or experiment. Such complacency is rendered par- Both in its personnel and in its struc- ticularly dangerous in the light of re- ture his new Government is conserva- cent precedents abroad. The drastic tive." socialization in England, Sweden and Let the American citizen of today Norway has taken place within the realize the real danger that in carry- framework of high consumer purchas- ing out a "mandate" for politically ing power and active industry. On the profitable class division and subsidiza- London Stock Exchange equity prices tion our Government may unwittingly have actually registered a net advance lead us to complete state socialism. Let despite the Labor party's advent to those of us who are laughing-off the power. prospect of Fabianization here, realis- While prophecies based on foreign tically remember with David Hume precedent are of course uncertain, the that "it is seldom that liberty of any attitude of important segments of the kind is lost all at once." Otherwise we British public immediately after the will deserve whatever we get. Labor party's 1945 election victory A. WILFRED MAY. should be carefully weighed by us. Par- New York, Nov. 26, 1948. ticularly significant to us now should be the widespread misjudgment by the British business man's typically phleg- matic reaction the day the election re- sults were announced. nt