Facing the Facts

Of all the plain words on the world crisis last week (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), none were plainer--or better received--than those of Rhys Manly Sale, energetic president of the Ford Motor Co. of Canada. "There is not enough awareness of the danger in this country," Sale told the members of Toronto's Canadian Club. "I can't see this policy of business-as-usual with a touch of defense for flavoring."

Sale called for an immediate increase in the armed forces (with conscription if needed), a speedup in defense production, higher taxes, and a ban on the Communist Party. Said he: "We have the wherewithal for a defense effort ten times greater than the puny program now in effect."

Sale's blunt talk echoed far beyond the high-ceilinged Royal York Hotel ballroom. Within a few days he received more than 100 applauding letters from private citizens. One of them, from a retired political leader, said: "This is the speech the people of Canada have been waiting for. It sharpens the sense of our peril and our shame."

Leading Canadian newspapers immediately took up Rhys Sale's theme on their editorial pages. Said the Ottawa Journal: "Mr. Sale, we think, spoke for a growing number of the Canadian people." The Vancouver Sun agreed: "Most Canadians share his complaint." Toronto's Globe and Mail said: "It was refreshing to have an outstanding business leader facing the facts, realistically appraising them and then putting his views clearly on the record." The Toronto Telegram called the speech "the loudest, clearest alarm bell that any Canadian has sounded since the outbreak of the Korean war."

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