Page:Why I am an Atheist by Bhagat Singh.pdf/5

September 27, 1931 a danger to society. He was to serve a father, mother, sister and brother, friend and helpers when his parental qualifications were to be explained. So that when man be in great distress having been betrayed and deserted by all friends he may find consolation in the idea that an ever true friend was still there to help him, to support him and that He was almighty and could do anything. Really that was useful to the society in the primitive age. The idea of God is helpful to man in distress.

Society has to fight out this belief as well as was fought the idol worship and the narrow conception of religion. Similarly when man tries to stand on his own legs, and become a realist he shall have to throw the faith aside, and to face manfully all the distress, trouble, in which the circumstances may throw him. That is exactly my state of affairs. It is not my vanity, my friends. It is my mode of thinking that has made me an atheist. I don't know whether in my case belief in God and offering of daily prayers which I consider to be most selfish and degraded act on the part of man whether these prayers can prove to be helpful or they shall make my case worse still. I have read of atheists facing all troubles quite boldly, and so am I trying to stand like a man with an erect head to the last; even on the gallows.

Let us see how I carry on: one friend asked me to pray. When informed of my atheism, he said, During your last days you will begin to believe. I said, No, dear sir, it shall not be. I will think that to be an act of degradation and demoralization on my part. For selfish motives I am not going to pray. Readers and friends, "Is this vanity?" If it is, I stand for it.

London, Sept. 11.

Parliament has met. The special Session is in being. But so far nothing has been said to change the main conclusions I had reached when I wrote upon the issue a week ago. The salient features of the crisis were these: There was a heavy withdrawal of securities from this country, which was met with payments in gold until the point was reached when more gold could not safely be allowed to leave the country. As the recall of securities continued, the banks, lacking the ready money wherewith to meet this demand, were in difficulties, and made an urgent appeal to the Government to take steps to save the situation. If they failed to do that they represented that the £ would drop in value with disastrous consequences to the whole world. It was then that foreign bankers were consulted and a loan arranged. But it has not yet been denied that one of the conditions of the grant of the loan was that severe economies must be effected in Unemployment Insurance finance, including a cut in the benefits paid to the unemployed. It has also been established that the majority of the Labour Cabinet turned down many of the economy proposals recommended by the May Committee. It has also been revealed that the leaders of the Liberal Party, after learning from the Government on Friday, August 21st, that the Government had turned down one third of the proposals submitted by the Economy Committee, expressed their surprise, and after consultation with other Liberal leaders, joined hands with the Tories in stating to the Government that their economy proposals were not adequate, and that many more cuts must be made, including a cut in Unemployment Benefit. It was after this interview that the Labour Government fell. Nine tenths of the Labour Government refused to submit to the joint Tory and Liberal demand. That is one of the outstanding facts in the crisis.

This entire situation is so profoundly important in view of all that is taking place in the world today that many of its features call for careful consideration. And the first matter that demands consideration is the policy of the banks. It would appear that the banks claim the right to pursue any sort of policy they like, to exercise unfettered control over the money placed at their disposal even though that policy should create a first-class crisis which involves, recording to their own account the collapse of the £ and with it of our credit, and when their policy does lead them into trouble, to call upon the Government to help them out, even to the extent of having to make terms with their fellow bankers overseas which actually involve outside interference with the internal affairs of this country.

It is an amazing situation. But it is still more amazing when we are told, as Lord Rothermere has declared, that the crisis was largely due to the fact that the banks had been borrowing short and lending long. Such allegations ought to be carefully investigated. The German crisis, which caused much of our money to be locked up, was thus the immediate, but not the real cause of the crisis. Such facts as these have shaken the confidence of the public in banking methods, and the entire Labour Movement is going to demand that this whole question be gone into immediately, and that a definite policy be formulated to be put into operation as one of the primary measures of the next Labour Government. With this last named end in view a strong Committee has already been set up.

But a wider and more fundamental issue has been raised by this crisis, that, viz., of why it should be possible, when a nation's financial position is obviously sound, and when the talk of bankruptcy is ludicrous in view of all the facts, it should be possible to throw the whole world into a panic and to create a situation which is on all fours with a condition of bankruptcy, and in which, if the panic were allowed to continue would actually throw thousands of businesses into bankruptcy, and millions of people into penury and despair. If Great Britain is not solvent, no country is solvent. The latest estimate of our net national wealth gives a figure of £18,000,000,000. Our investments abroad are ten times larger than the investments of foreigners in this country. Those figures are sufficient to show the absurdity of any idea of this country being in a condition of bankruptcy. It may be contended that this wealth is privately held, while the crisis was national and governments. Such contention, however, calls for comment.