It is undoubtedly true that those within the Socialist party of Great Britain who profess the Christian faith are party well aware of the pitfalls that await the unwary who desert moral law. These individuals will understand, therefore, why the Socialist government is today suffering the tribulations of the transgressor. The words in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, “With what measure ye mete, shall be measured to you again,” will no doubt occur to them.

In the name of nationalization — coal mines, railroads, utilities, steel mills — the Socialist Party has been robbing the more provident members of the community. Now, as the result of the Iranian Parliament following this example, Conservative and Socialist alike, is liable to become the victim of an equally criminal act of folly in the confiscation of the property of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, in which the British government owns the majority of the shares. [AIOC]

The great oil installations of the company do not belong to the Iranian people nor to the Iranian government. The claim to confiscate them is based on no moral doctrine. As far as the oil itself is concerned, a lease most beneficial the Iranian people has been granted to the company by the Iranian government and has forty-two years yet to run. [1993]

Yet a group of state worshipers in the Iranian parliament has calmly decided to seize the company’s property and compensate the owners with Iranian paper dinars. [rials, not dinars]

Fundamentally, is there any moral difference in this criminal proposal to plunder an oil company from the plunder of the trucking business, for instance, which, under Socialism, has already taken place in Great Britain?

Surely, in Iran, the British Socialists are only receiving the measure meted out by themselves!

And let’s remember, too, that the British Socialists confiscated the trucks of honest Britons. How can they complain when half-starved Iranians confiscate the property British government? The Iranians at least confine their proposed depredations to the property of the foreigner. They also rob a rich government—not poor, struggling businessmen. So strictly speaking, we are not being fair to the Iranians in comparing them with British Socialists!

Those Socialists who have tied Christianity to the chariot wheel of Socialism must approve this Iranian venture with all their hearts as a very Christian proposal indeed—that is, if they possess any coherent sequence in their ideas. One might even wonder why the British Socialist party has not risen as one man to acclaim the noble ideal behind the proposal of their comrades in Iran.

Can it be that when the shoe is on the other foot, and at the wrong end of an act of confiscation, the British Socialists suddenly lose their faith in Socialist doctrines that have for so long blinded them to morality? In its role of shareholder in the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, is the British government suddenly aware of fundamental truths on which it turned its back when it robbed the trucking business?

These Iranians were only following Socialist doctrine to the letter. And here the Socialist comrades who, some six years ago, sang the “Red Flag” in the House of Commons, sang them not blessings and approval — but battleships! [The Labor Party’s official anthem, sung Aug. 1, 1945] Were men ever so badly betrayed by fellow-doctrinaires before? Who, in this wicked world, is an Iranian to trust?

And, if we get excited here in the United States about the loss of these oilfields to our British allies, let’s not forget it was our loans and subsidies that largely made it possible for the Socialists to nationalize their own industries in the first place. The penalty may be greater than we now imagine.