The Daily Monitor

Can a citizen of a totalitarian country, specifically, of German, Italy, Russia, or even Japan, properly make the claim at any time that he is engaged in "private business"?

Totalitarianism being what it is, with every personal concern subjected to the state, it may rightly be assumed that citizens of such countries traveling abroad are always working more or less for their country's interests, not their own, unless the two happen to coincide. They wouldn't be allowed to go abroad, in the first place, if this were not so. In the second, any "private business" they may have 'is so interwoven with state police and state direction that it cannot be "private."

We are slow to realize this, being geared to a system where a man can have private interests and pursue them independently of, or even detrimentally to, the national interest. Yet our own experience and the experience of South America, shows plainly that no citizen-in-good-standing of a totalitarian country can do this. Traveling abroad they are all, and in the nature of the case they must be, in the service of their governments to a greater or less degree. Let's not forget it.

After all, Congress probably isn't passing any more bills than the rest of us.