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"Complete depression of the militarist class in Germany after the war" was called for yesterday by Dr. Herman Finer, currently Visiting Lecturer in Government here, since September 1942 Special Consultant on Post-War Reconstruction to the International Labor Office of the League of Nations at Montreal, and 23 years Reader in Public Administration at the University of London.
"I am sure," said Dr. Finor, "that Britain's problem will be greatly affected by the constant possibility of robot bomb attack, and it is going to mean more severity on Germany than we may have imagined. The Allies must do two things. First, the German militarist class with its agricultural domains must be completely depressed and big German industry completely depressed and big German industry completely controlled, so that proportionate encouragement will be given to the liberal and socialist elements within Germany itself that must bring about democracy. Second, we must firmly cement our British-Russian-American alliance so that the Germans will be faced with the permanent threat of two-front war."
Advisor to European Governments
Finer, who is offering during his three term stay here Government 10b, British Government, 15, International Organization, and 8a, Comparative Government, has conducted studies recently for several European governments on the practical possibilities of labor power as reparation after the war, and states that Russia particularly in her demand for manpower will find Germany a vast reservoir.
"Of the 30,000,000 civilian workers in Germany," declared the British political scientist, "there are at least 4,000,000 unskilled laborers who could be used to rebuild devastated Russia. This might certainly include high Nazi officials and organizers plus men in luxury industries such as the 100,000 barbers in the country. If this is done with care, it will give the Russians what they think they're entitled to, without ruining German economy."
Conceives International TVA
Finer, a dynamic little man with flashing brown eyes behind scholarly horn-rimmed glasses, in a recent book, "TVA: Lessons for International Application," set forth his international reconstruction ideas, the substance of which was incorporated almost directly into the charter of the World Development Bank at the Breton Woods Conference.
Finer asserts that the solution to successful rehabilitation will be in the establishment of an international borrowing source to which the Balkans, China, India, and the Middle East may come for long-term loans. "The World Development Bank supplies just that need," he says, "and it also eliminates the danger of one nation doing the developing and lending individually, a condition which leads to the borrowing country's obligation to buy from the lending and amounts to imperialism."
Cites White Man's Burden
"In the years after the war," continued Finer, "we must send men into the backward regions of the earth, as in Chile recently, to transfer skills to the people so that they may use them independently. Skill is the one thing you can give away without losing it yourself. And the net result will make loans to these countries good long-view investments, since new prosperity to the countries being transformed will mean added prosperity to the already industrialized nations experiencing an employment spurt in supplying the implements for the transformation."
Finer feels that he has returned to academic life for good, and plans to fulfill a lifetime ambition in the near future by writing a 1944 version of James Bryce's "The American Commonwealth.
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