NO PEACE IN THE HOLY LAND

"The Palestine guerrilla organisation Al-Fatah, has issued a warning to pilgrims and tourists not to visit the Holy Land this Christmas. A broadcast over the secret Al-Fatah radio said it would not be responsible for the safety of foreign visitors to Bethlehem and Jerusalem for the holiday period" - The Australian, December 16.

The mounting turmoil in the Holy Land is typical of the state of the whole world today. Questions of rights, justice, truth and traditions concerning the Holy Land are obscured by propaganda and effects. It is now reasonably well known that Communist penetration of the Middle East has proceeded at an ever-increasing rate over the last twelve months. It is true that Communist-backed Arab guerrilla forces are operating against Israel. But the West will continue to aid the Communist advance, and to alienate what remaining pro-Western sympathies still exist throughout the Moslem world, so long as it supports the Israelis as if they have all the right on their side.
A report in the press of December 16 provides a typical example of Israeli thinking.

After meeting President-elect Mr. Richard Nixon, General Dayan said that he had no fears that the incoming American Administration would change America's policy towards Israel. Later, addressing a United Jewish Appeal conference, General Dayan said that Arab border attacks were designed to make Israel's frontier position "intolerable".
"But there is no prospect of moving us back even one yard", he said.

If a foreign force had taken part of Australia by military force, we have no doubt that Australian guerrillas would also be attempting to make the foreign force's frontier "intolerable". This is the reality of war. The war in the Middle East started with the aggression of Political Zionism, which used terrorist tactics against the British to force them to relinquish their Mandate to a Palestine, which the Zionists demanded. At a time when the Soviet is backing the Moslems, it is easy to overlook that the same Soviet was backing the Political Zionists when the initial aggression against the Arabs in Palestine both Moslem and Christian, was taking place.

One of the results of aggression was the creation of a major refugee problem of nearly one million Palestinians. A number of distinguished Jews like Mr. Alfred M. Lilienthal, American expert on the Middle East, have protested about this tragedy, and have pointedly asked where is there any manifestation of Christian conscience. But controlled propaganda has drowned out the truth, with the result that there is a dangerously one-sided and misleading picture of the Middle East realities. This is why the Communists continue to win in the Middle East.

It can be predicted with certainty that there will be no peace in the Middle East until justice is done to the Arabs. Sir John Glubb's extremely moderate little book, The Middle East Crisis, (Price 65 cents post free from Box 1052J. GPO, Melbourne) is essential reading for all those who wish to have a real background of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Sir John Glubb also puts forward solutions, which, if adopted, would be in the best interests of the Israelis as well as the Arabs. But if the Israelis, backed by the international forces of Political Zionism, are going to persist with the view that they are entitled to retain control permanently the areas they conquered in 1967, they are providing the Soviet with the ideal conditions in which to continue presenting themselves to the Arabs as their only friends.
Peace can only come to the Holy Land when the West insists upon justice for all the peoples living there.

A HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL READERS

INFLATION MENACE CONTINUES EVERYWHERE

"Any further rise in the price of steel would be a catastrophe for the ship-building industry, according to Mr. T. McIver, the deputy Chairman of the Tyneside ship-building firm of Swan Hunter.... Mr. McIver said the ship-building industry would be bitterly disappointed that the British Steel Corporation proposed to raise prices" - The Australian, December 16.

The fact that prices continue to rise in Britain in spite of Fabian Socialist Harold Wilson's restrictive financial policies, highlights once again the truth that nothing but a modification of Keynesian Fabian Socialist financial policies can halt an inflationary process which is one of the Communists' greatest assets in eroding Western nations from within. In his book, The Fabian Socialist Contribution to the Communist Advance, (price 45 cents from Box 1052J, GPO, Melbourne) Mr. Eric Butler quotes John Strachey, leading English Fabian theoretician, and author of The Coming Struggle for Power while a member of the Communist Party, as outlining in his Programme for Progress that inflationary credit expansion policies were "an indispensable step in the right direction", arguing that "The very fact that no stability, no permanently workable solution can be found within the limits of this policy will ensure that once a community has been driven by events to tackle its problems in this way, it cannot halt at the first stage, but must of necessity push on to more thorough going measures of re-organisation".

It is the growing instability of every Western nation, which is producing the ideal situation for the subversive activities of the Communists. There is no solution to the destructive inflation menace which does not face up to the current Keynesian technique of inflating costs, (which must be recovered, if they can, through a process of higher prices) by pumping new financial credit into the community as a debt. A large part of taxation and rates are today allocated merely to meet growing debt charges. But taxation and rates are also financial costs, which producers must attempt to recover through higher prices.
Attempts to meet the situation through price and wage controls merely produce an increasingly explosive situation.

Any constructive and effective anti-Communist policy must come to grips with this basic issue of inflationary credit expansion. But even an anti-Communist leader of the caliber of Mr. B.A. Santamaria leaves this question alone. In a recent TV commentary summarised in News-Weekly of December 11, Mr. Santamaria suggests a three-point programme for dealing with inflation:
1. Wage rises "adjusted automatically with rises in production".
But there have been fantastic increases in production in the post-war years. Irrespective of how wages are increased, they must also increase financial cost, which producers must endeavour to recover through increased prices, or by reducing profits. Most profit margins have already been reduced severely in what is a highly competitive economy.

2. "The Tariff Board, should not be bludgeoned by Mr. McEwen into permitting the most powerful manufacturers to write their own ticket on prices by giving them inordinate protection".
We have no special brief for manufacturers, "powerful" or otherwise, but tariff protection, which is obviously essential, makes a comparatively small contribution to inflation. A study of the total profits reveals that there is little scope for any worthwhile reduction in spiraling prices by attempting to force greater competition through less tariff protection.

3. "A different Restrictive Trade Practices Act - with teeth in it - ... to enforce competition inside Australian industry. Price-fixing arrangements between manufacturers and traders ought, as in Britain, to be illegal unless proved positively to be in the public interest".
Monopolistic practices are, in the main, effects of the inflation problem, not causes. Neither in Britain nor in America has anti-monopoly legislation prevented prices from rising.
Not only "Big Business" but also quite often the corner greengrocer, exploits the consumer. The effective answer to inflation is not more restrictions and Government bureaucracies, but a removal of the basic causes, this in turn encouraging genuine competition and effective consumer control.

Speaking at the Country Party's annual Federal Council meeting in Canberra on December 6, Mr. W.L. Moss, chairman of the Country Party, said that "Looking back over the figures and circumstances, it seems we are hell-bent on a spurt of unrestricted inflation of internal costs".
Mr. Moss asked the question, "who governs the country?" Well, Mr. Moss's party, under the leadership of Mr. John McEwen, is part of the coalition Liberal-Country Party Government. It must therefore accept its share of responsibility for the "unrestricted inflation" mentioned by Mr. Moss.

Mr. Moss might consider taking the Country Party out of the coalition as one way of opposing "unrestricted inflation".

LITERARY FELLOWSHIP DENIED TO COMMUNIST AUTHOR

"The Minister for Immigration (Mr. Snedden) yesterday refused to grant a Commonwealth Literary Fellowship to communist author Frank Hardy. Mr. Snedden represents the Prime Minister on the Parliamentary committee which must endorse the recommendations of the Commonwealth Literary Fund advisory board" -The Age, Melbourne, December 17.

According to press reports, the advisory board had unanimously recommended that Hardy be given a grant to write a novel, which proposed to deal with the "moral" dilemma of Communists following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. We fail to understand why a well-known Communist like Frank Hardy should be provided with Australian taxpayers' money in order to discuss how he and his fellow totalitarians react to the criminal activities of Soviet Communists.
Mr. Snedden is to be congratulated for his veto.

The Hardy case was first publicised on November 12 when the leader of the ALP, Mr. Whitlam, said "the literary fund was precluded from making grants to people who were communists, but not to Fascists". Has Mr. Whitlam never heard of Mr. Judah Waten, to mention one well-known Communist who has received financial assistance from the Literary Fund?
As no Fascists have ever received a grant, this statement is merely a red herring.

WE COULD FILL THAT 1969 FINANCIAL FUND

TODAY : MONASH UNIVERSITY JOURNAL RULED OBSCENE

"Oakleigh Court magistrate, Mr. R.W. Hill, yesterday ordered that 8000 copies of Lot's Wife be destroyed. He said he was satisfied that a special edition of Lot's Wife, called 'Untruth', was obscene" - The Sun, Melbourne, December 12.

Lot's Wife is the Monash University student publication. It has gained a most unsavory reputation because of its pornography masquerading as literary talent. It was revealed in the court that 20,000 copies of the special edition had been published, and that 12,000 had been sold before complaints led to action by the Victorian Vice Squad. The increasing circulation of pornography amongst young people is a disturbing manifestation of the break down of a Civilisation. It adds to the undermining processes of self-discipline and cohesion in society. The Communists do not permit such destructive activity in their societies.

ON TARGET BULLETIN

A PERSONAL MESSAGE FROM THE NATIONAL DIRECTOR

Dear Friends, a momentous year is drawing to its close, Events of great historical significance took place. The forces of darkness appeared to be advancing everywhere. But so it was 2000 years ago, when the Roman Civilisation was dying.
From our vantage point in history we now know that while the Roman Empire was decaying at the centre, where but a few patriots like Cicero were desperately calling for a return to the values which made Rome great, in an obscure part of the Empire an event that was to change history forever and ever took place: Christ was born in the little village of Bethlehem. The Christian revelation was given to man.

True, Christ was rejected by many - "He came into his own, and his own received him not… but the seed of life which he brought took root amidst the ashes of the Roman Civilization, and from that root developed the finest Civilization yet known to man. I suggest we ponder on this tremendous historical fact as we celebrate the anniversary of Our Lord's Nativity, and grasp the truth that so far from being depressed and overwhelmed by the plight of the world, we should be inspired by the knowledge that in the eternal truths which Christ brought we have the answer to man's problems, and that by dedicating ourselves completely to incarnating those truths into the whole of our society, we can establish the foundations of a new and better Civilization.

The celebration of Christ's birth comes at the end of the year. It comes just before the start of a New Year. It is symbolic that it divides the old from the new. It is therefore a most appropriate time for pondering on the year that has passed, humbly attempting to asses what has happened and what we in the League of Rights have achieved. Only by looking back can we prepare for the future. And because of the nature of our mission, what we have done, and how we have done it, will help govern what we might do in the future.

Beyond doubt President Lyndon Johnson's statement on March 31 was not only an admission of personal defeat, but also an admission of defeat for the whole of Civilisation. The full bitter fruits of that admission of defeat have yet to be tested. But already we have had samples. As if waiting for a signal, immediately following the Johnson capitulation the forces of revolution and subversion responsible for that capitulation, intensified their activities everywhere: Communist agent or dupe Martin Luther King was gunned down by a hired killer and America was plunged into an orgy of nation-wide destruction and murder; "student power" became a violent reality in all parts of the world, dealing France a blow from which it has not recovered, in Canada the incredible Pierre Elliott Trudeau was brought to office though a frightening demonstration of how the forces of evil can successfully use the modern mass media to mislead a people; new manifestations of perversion of every type, much of it portrayed on stage and the screen, indicated that the anti-Christ felt that no restraints were any longer necessary; and the Moscow criminal , confident that the West had lost the will to survive stepped up their aggressive global programme of expansion.
Their brutal invasion of Czechoslovakia and contempt for the West, graphically demonstrated to the whole world the dreadful reality of the Johnson admission of defeat on March 31.

It is important that we never forget that the great defeats inflicted on the West in the post-Second War years have not been in the material field, but in the field of the spirit. Many of us recall those days when we thought that the sun would never set on that bastion of peace and world order of ideals and justice, the British Empire and Commonwealth. "Those were the days my friends, we thought they'd never end", but they did end. Undefeated in military battle for a hundred years the British world order has been surrendered because the will to resist the forces of evil was undermined.
Ever since the dreadful Suez debacle of 1956, the British have felt a deep humiliation. Now the Americans are being humiliated. A moral defeat is much more disastrous than a military defeat. The West has lost its soul, and it has no future until it recovers it.

In the face of a year of major defeats for the West, it has been an inspiration to me to see the real progress of the League. In my message last year I stressed the importance of greater quality in our work. We have seen that deepening quality of activity. We saw more new faces than ever before in one year brought to our ranks. Irrespective of what walk of life they come from, they all have been attracted to the League primarily because they have grasped that it is concerned with rightness, that it offers the individual the opportunity to develop himself in constructive and purposeful action. It has been most pleasing to me to see the positive objectives of the League being emphasised much more during this year.

I believe that in the full-time staff of the League we now have a highly developed team with a wide-range of attributes. Here is real unity in diversity. This is evident right throughout the movement. Last year saw a major expansion of the League concept around the English-speaking world. In a long and sometimes lonely six months of hard activity I was sustained by the faith of my wife, and by supporters. But we are putting down the foundations upon which there can be constructive building.

More and more are looking to us. Last week we received a moving message from the South Vietnamese Ambassador in Canberra, Mr. Tran Kim Phuong, who said how grateful he was for the League's support for the South Vietnamese stand, and expressing the hope that we can help win the important battle for public opinion.
The League offers an opportunity for all to do something, irrespective of his talents.

We can only build if we all stand in the right place. Michel Quoist in Prayers of Life said: "The bricklayer laid a brick on a bed of cement. Then, with a precise stroke of his towel, spread another layer; and …laid on another brick. The foundations grew visibly. The building rose tall and strong, to shelter men. I thought, Lord, of that brick buried in the darkness at the base of the big building, No one sees it, but it accomplishes its task, and the other bricks need it. Lord, what difference whether I am on the top roof, or in the foundations of Your Building, so long as I stand faithfully in the right place?"
If sufficient of us stand in the right place, upon the destruction now all around us will arise the structure of a new Christian Civilisation.
God bless you all this Christmas Season,
Sincerely yours, ERIC D, BUTLER.