Where the News Ends

CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY

Where the News Ends By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN Travels in a Democracy HERE are a few notes of travel impressions in an America that is becoming increasingly geared to a war economy. I find that...

...They are conscience-smitten at thought of their luxury...
...took part and one got the feeling mat the American small town, however much it may sufsr from some of the defects which Sinclair Lewis satirized in "Main Street,""is one of the ssart socially democratic communities in the world...
...If you are not staying at the Robert E. Lee Hotel you are apt to be putting up at the Stonewall Jackson, and in Lexington...
...Instead of paralysis of production facilities for lack of adequate purchasing power, there is rationing of essentia...
...suggestion of war with country parading it There is as excuse for the Exchange ????> a highly successful profit-ajB&f corporation, in a time wben thai nation is at war witbGarssaay...
...Children must hereafter be born in fit homes...
...These men, it is evident, are scared stiff by the prospect of facing an unlimited electorate...
...In his Monday speech Mr...
...Missing the bus now might necessitate a longer and more costly war later on...
...We cannot wait until after the war, when the already developing spirit of rampant nationalism may hold sway and expect then by some miracle to accomplish what history teaches us must be accomplished while we fight...
...It is scarcely necessary to say that travel is seldom an epicurean delight at the present time...
...An act of undelayed justice for all aliens in America—no matter who their ancestors or what the land whence they came— will dispel the doubts that the excellent intentions of the Attorney-General are being used in adjoining quarters for deplorable machinations...
...Under the circumstances The Hew Leader in printing Mr...
...The pulling and hauling for the-nation's youth would cease,' V< .Senator Pepper, who made the announcement, speaks of a board which the all-powerful director would have at his elbow, a group of "farmer, labor and management representatives to make his decisions stick...
...Southern Democrats grin gleefully—like bad boys playing a good trick...
...According to their opinion our main purpose must be to turn back the "yellow hordes" which threaten us from Asia...
...I happened to attend an Armistice Day «ele> bration at the State Teachers' College in Oswego, New York...
...It seems that the study, perhaps excessively careful, has not been completed yet...
...Senator'McKellar gave the nation sight of his secret fear when he remarked: "Our so-called leader is leading us straight into the Republican Party...
...Must then all public action and discussion stop...
...It may be well that the proposed further publication of the pro and con arguments regarding the cause of The United States of America >ve...
...But it is not so splendid that a number of German exiles, who suffered hardship and indignity at the hands of Nazism, who fled to this country as tested-allies in a common cause, still are labeled "enemy aliens" with curfew and restrictions and above all the iniquity of being "technically" thrown back to the enemy camp which they hate, against which they fought and fight That this writer happens to count some friends among those German exiles, is no reason for deserting them, for denying them help— even if help be only of words...
...from 600,000 Italians in this country...
...What people in the world eats the most...
...The imperialistic overtones in the passages about the "yellow hordes" are characteristic...
...We hope that when this Office is set up there will be such a representative board, but we hope its function will be quite another one...
...they would say, the reply being: "The Russians, because they don't know what to do with their money...
...Biddle—whatever fine things he may have said otherwise in his speech—has insisted on national demarcations...
...THE STRANGE CASE OF MR...
...This confidence they will have if their own men are sitting at the center...
...Bo they are moving to have their stipends re-puced...
...That corporation has been operating successfully for a great number of years...
...It is criminal to have the Army and war industry bidding for the same men—with sole authority for decision in doubtful cases resting with the draft boards...
...The vibrant forces of modern science and industry are but awaiting the chance to break forth into ever-widening streams of well-being for all mankind...
...Much still remains to be done to *** field...
...Now come the chairmen of five House and Senate committees and make a revolutionary proposal to put the whole business of manpower, materials and production under one head...
...THE Russians, always adept in satire, resorted * to humorous conundrums in commenting on the hardships of rationing and of the bare shelves of stores, contrasted with an abundance of paper money...
...Instead of unemployment, there is shortage of labor...
...By attacking both enemies with great force we have recognized that we fight— not just to save our skins—but to put down dictatorship and give democracy and decency a chance to expand in the world...
...It jnay even- occur to them in time that such a ljuncil can be permanently useful...
...It can no longer be successfully maintained that our war in Europe and Africa endangers our operations in the Pacific...
...Ackerman and the newspapers strikes at the very foundation of Democracy, for it is established that while a cause is sub judice comment on the case and the issues involved may not be publicly made...
...One of my trips took me into the charming Shenandoah Valley and into southern Virginia...
...The nation is to be congratulated on the fact that even a few congressional leaders got together...
...Then and then only Bid-die's speech and order can be greeted with unqualified applause...
...How come that in the nine years since the advent of Nazism and now — ten months after Pearl Harbor — the Exchange Buffet has not become sufficiently outraged by the atrocities committed by the Nazis, parading the Swastika, to incur the expense of retiling its floors ? It seems to me that if a nonprofit institution like the New-York Hospital could sustain the expense of removing the Beea-tika from its smokestack at .ja time when there was not...
...Our victories are inevitable commitments...
...The townspeople, as well as the sta-dents...
...It hit upon the Swastika which at that time was a relatively meaningless emblem of Indian or some other origin...
...There are few regions of America with more distinctive local color and more live traditions of what Northerners call the Civil War and Southerners The War Between the States...
...His speech was seized upon by the majority of newspapers throughout the country with reprints of editorials and comments...
...An optimistic thought that has occurred to me more than once is: what a tremendous rise in living standards would take place if the all-out production which has thus far only been released for war purposes could be applied to peacetime objectives...
...He may be acting the part of a Midwestern Disraeli...
...Ohio, crowded to the limit and humming with war work, mildly suggested Sverdlovsk, or Magnitogorsk or some of the other boom towns of the Five-Year Plan...
...Thankfulness must welcome an exoneration, enabling, on less conspicuous levels, many harmles ipr useful Italians to live free and to find employment, ???????1 cannot be stinted to a demolition of fences that did not mal far speedier assimilation of those 600,000 immigrants in the mass of the American people...
...A budding social problem that struck the eye there, and that exists to some extent in every crowded war center, was the spectacle of gangs of children in the early teens running about the streets late at night, and apparently under no kind of ho» control...
...Akron...
...Willkie "voiced ideas which we have expressed over and over in The New Leader...
...Even the entire answer of the Associated Press to the bill of complaint was given publicity...
...It robs the war of all ideological meaning, of all global signifcance...
...His speech, ringing with human felings and with genuine love for the "other Italy," must stand above such suspicions...
...Speaking last week before a great meeting in Birmingham, he said: "The value of the economic sphere is not within itself but beyond itself, and so it must be orderd not primarily with a view to its maximum effectiveness as an economic machine but to the best attainable human relationships...
...As perseverant as unheeded, we have been repeating that this is no war of nations panached with ideas...
...The speech made by Mr...
...It wasn't surprising, after this light, to read of mounting figures of juvenile delinquency...
...Ackerman and other newspapers have transgressed...
...Until then let us all by precept and practice respect the majesty of the law...
...Trains are often crowded and one sometimes has to sit up all night...
...As we go to press this effort to wreck the machinery of democracy goes into its sixth day...
...Policies should be laid down by a board...
...Then it was the Italians...
...If his argument prevailed then there would be no public discussion of hundreds of vital issues about which the public . must be informed...
...vailed service and transportation facilities are being steadily pared down...
...The placing and training of manpower both for civil and military purposes would become a unified process...
...By sending the larger force to Africa we have recognized a plain strategical fact...
...I find that even short visits to various parts of the country are almost always productive of interesting impressions...
...SALARIES OF ARCHBISHOPS COME Americans are horrified at the thought of having their incomes pared down to the p25,000 level...
...This particular proposal for establishment of a unified control of War Mobilization will soon go into the hearing stage, and it should be thoroughly debated...
...He stated among other assertions that "the newspapers of the I United States were being subjected to a freezing process by the Government and that the lawsuit filed against the Associated Press was simply a further move to .freeze the press into a new mold...
...Japan, they said, is the only power which has actually attacked us—so Japan is our only opponent...
...Unless today, while the war is being fought, the people of the United States and of Great Britain, of Russia and of China and of all the other United Nations, fundamentally agree upon their purposes, fine and idealistic expressions of hope such as those of the Atlantic Charter will live merely to mock us as have Mr...
...The important thing is that the farmers 'and factory workers and businessmen •hould have complete faith in it, should follow )ts lead with confidence...
...That is an awkward question, and one that must be answered more satisfactorily if we art to pull our full weight, moral and material, in the war...
...Whether this is so, requires' serious consideration...
...After this is done then the license granted to the press may be exercised to the heart's content of every editor and journalist...
...commodities and gradual disappearance of non-essentials...
...If this is his game the future playa will be fascinating to watch...
...t) ¦ Baltimore, Bid...
...Was it meant to prop the diplomatic plot dramatized in Myron Taylor's mystic voyage to the Holy Grail ? Italy is most cogently and endearingly asked to break the chain that binds her to Nazi Germany, later on to receive from the hands of "democracy" the clerico-royalist chain that is being forged not so secretly in some smithies on both sides of the Atlantic...
...There is some significance in a martial tradition, and no part of America is prouder of its part in the present war than this old stronghold of the Confederacy...
...Worcls of hope we read in Biddle's speech, when he said: "I wish to emphasize'that in thus removing the label of enemy alien from Italians, we do not forget that there are other loyal persons now classed as enemy aliens...
...one to the Germans...
...Citizens of Lynchburg, an old Virginia town built on hills overlooking the James River, are apt to tell the visitor that no one was drafted in Lynchburg during the last war...
...Now we have taken North Africa, and our men are face to face with Hitler's in Tunisia...
...WILLKIE WENDELL WILLKIE is the most startling ™ phenomenon that has recently appeared in American politics...
...There must be enough food and of-the right kind...
...A member of the faculty with whom I was talking, a serious restrained man, observed: "Sometimes it's hard to answer the questions of our your.g men who don't quite see why they should fight for democracy and opportunity overseas when they are denied these things at home...
...because the town overfilled its quota with volunteers...
...Instead of shortage of money, there is shortage of goods and services...
...Acker-man and the concerted wide and special publicity given to the cause has been declared by Kindergarten students of the "art of publicity" as unadulterated propaganda intended to incite public opinion against the action of the Government and in favor of the Associated Press, and was intended to prejudice the case of the Government...
...All of us—American-born and Americans foreign-born—should insist on demanding that the acquittal of the Italians be understood as a preface to the total and prompt repeal of the Enemy Aliens Act, with discrimination among aliens to be made henceforth according to heart and mind, not to blood and soil...
...If the Senate of the - United States has no part in defense, then little can be said for the importance of any factory turning out guns or planes...
...making...
...OBTAINED another impression of the Soot* * in war when I visited a Negro teachers' college in North Carolina...
...In some ways the man talks like an ex-president, a public figure who has been released from the bonds of party and official responsibility...
...but on balance America is more inform* and more thoughtful than it was 25 years EDITORIAL COMMENT OFFICE OF WAR MOBILIZATION THE NEW LEADER has long contended that ~ the Selective Service System and Manpower Commission, should be made one...
...But the familiar problems of the war economy, growing shortages and an abundance of nominal purchasing power, are already before us and certainly will not diminish in urgency as the war goes on...
...And in our upper house, where such vital matters as manpower and unified control of war industry wait on the agenda, the solcr.s to whom we haive entrusted our fate are engaged in disgraceful sabotage...
...Some remarks about the implications of this act have become timely in the intervi Of course it is splendid that Sforza or Toscanini or others of high rank in political and intellectual service, are ? longer "enemy aliens...
...This cannot be BiddleV order...
...It might restore our two 'houses to the public esteem which they formerly enjoyed...
...They fear that their wealth will breed Suspicion and distrust in the man on the street...
...But the thought will not down that there must be some purpose, some ambition, at the heart of his deeds and words which gives them cohesion and objective...
...If this means anything, it means that if all of the regularly qualified voters of the South could go to the polls the Republicans would win—or, at any rate, Senator McKellar and the likes of him would be defeated...
...Every now and then some vicissitude on my trip would create a feeling (one couldn't quite call it nostalgia) of "This is where I came in...
...LETTERS TO THE EDITOR G. A. Borgese Asks Extension of Biddle's Order on Aliens, Fears Political Maneuvers 1 From G. E. BORGESE m> the Editor: * A full month has elapsed since Columbus Day when the Attorney General wiped out the stigma of "enemy alien...
...The man combined idealism and practical sense in just the right proportions...
...Only all-around sacrifice and self-denial can lead to tolerable solutions...
...Who are the richest people in the world...
...CONGRESS ON STRIKE MO Bilbo,, no Rankin, no poll-tax Senator from *^ any poll-tax state will henceforth be justified in denouncing working-men for any strike which hinders war production...
...f. The anti-democratic Democrats are holding theit party up to national ridicule and threatening it with defeat...
...Virginia, a small town when both Lee and Jackson are buried, the devoted Daughters of the Confederacy have put up a memorial plaque for the stable that housed Lee's horse...
...It is fairly safe to bet that democracy will survive and that these southern reactionaries will be destroyed by their own cunning...
...Senator Barkley gave a complete reply when he said that if the Democratic Party can survive only by taxing the right of poor people to vote for Federal officials, "then the Democratic Party is built on sand...
...And for me, an American who lived in various parts of Europe and Asia during the eighteen years from 1922 until 1940, there is the additional fascination of becoming better acquainted with my own country again...
...Possibly the man from Rushville and Fifth Avenue is using them to start a grass-roots Republican ground-swell that may force his nomination upon reluctant party leaders...
...But the Archbishops of Canterbury and York have another sort of worry...
...getting into war and fighting wars: in Russia during the first Five-Year Plan, in Japan from 1935 until 1939, in France from the spring of 1939 until the collapse in 1940...
...Led by papers like The Daily Sews, they have been yelping that Japan is practically our only enemy...
...Says Discussion on A. P. Case Violatates Judicial Procedure From CHARLES JACKSON To the Editor: Immediately after the suit was filed by Oie Department of Justice against the Associated Press, Mr...
...From now on anyone who opposes beating Hitler and Hirohito simultaneously cannot be counted a good American...
...The filibuster against the anti-poll tax bill can be truthfully characterized by the use of no more sweet-sounding term...
...The Congressional leaders are proposing a single czar for the whole war production effort plus the Selective Service System...
...Senator Bilbo threathens to continue the use of his secret weapon till the session ends with the ending of the year...
...local doctor who represented the American Lagios, an earnest, kindly man, as different as possible from the loud-mouthed rougkmeok who oceasiee-ally gets the Legion'a bad name in labor-baithSsV the president of the college, one of the Issel pastors, the mayor, the postmaster, the ?Iberi who spoke during the exercises were all, one feK, just folks to their friends and neighbors 1s Oswego...
...A czar is aili every well to •at things done, but a czar wrtn^control over policies would be quite a different matter...
...Now Senator Truman, Congressman Tolan and the others have turned themselves into a steering council for the national legislature...
...NO FAVORITE ENEMY...
...To -save—as they think— their jobs they run the risk of losing everything —jobs, reputations, influence and the very party through which they have attained their positions...
...First it was the Austro-Hungarians who were exempted from the treatment of enemy aliens...
...Usually each committee chairman is wildly working for the spotlight...
...Scratch an isolationist and you probably find an imperialist...
...Carl W. Ackerman delivered a prepared speech in which he is "reported to haree charged the Government with having instituted the cause to suppress the freedom of the press...
...This argument conceals a ounning implication with regard to our objectives...
...The Associated Press be suspended until the matter has been finally heard and determined by a court of competent jurisdiction...
...Was it meant to please Otto von Haps-burg...
...The War Production Board, the Ofiice of Economic Stabilization and the Maritime Commission would all be blanketed...
...Their situation is now being carefully and sympathetically studied by the Department of Justice...
...was another wisecrack, to which the answer: "The Russians, who could easily eat up a week's rations in a day...
...Up to the age of eighteen all young people must receive the best possible education...
...Jackson's view...
...It is to be hoped that all American clergymen are reading such edifying excerpts from the Archbishop's lay sermons...
...The idea behind it is that all we have to do is to lick the Japs and come home again, that this is just another war, that it has no meaning or purpose beyond saving our skins...
...A Note on the Swastika From ARTHUR S. SAMUELS To the Editor: There exists in New York a chain of restaurants trading under the name of Exchange Buffet...
...Often enough he interprets such generalities in terms of blunt proposals...
...Cushioned by enormous accumulated wealth and great productive power, untouched by bombing, we are of course nowhere near the state of privation which Russia experienced during the First Five-Year Plan or which all Europe is suffering today...
...events of this week—along the Mediter-* . ranean and in the Pacific—should put a permanent quietus on the propaganda of our isolationists...
...Displaying a dubious tenderness for Hitler, they repeated with painful monotony the notion that we should not waste ships and shells and men ift Europe...
...Another feature of the Oswego mtettsj was the comparative absence of the "Damn 4* Kaiser and the Huns are snakes" attitude of · war rallies of 1917 and 1918, the dispusltsH ? look ahead and try to do a better job of P...
...He spoke with every evidence of sincerity and earnestness...
...Chicago...
...democratic institutions or blow them out of public life...
...It must be taken for granted that the service these restaurants rendered to the public all these years was quite satisfactory or they could not endure in business for so many years...
...Clergymen must not hesitate to lead in the bringing about of such conditions...
...This rule is absolutely necessary tq prevent the slightest interference with the proper administration of justice and any act which may be deemed to embarass the orderly processes of justice is a contempt of court...
...It is a war of ideas armored with power...
...Now, it appears that at the time of its inception the Exchange Buffet sought some decoration to distinguish it from other restaurants...
...Even if no intention to do so, yet what has been done by Mr...
...He and his friends are playing with a form of dynamite which in the end will either blow up our...
...At the same time a task force of our Navy turned the Japanese right about face in the neighborhood of the Solomons...
...Hitler's forces have reached a point at which an alborrt- attack may give us quick results...
...One criterion is applied to the Italians as such...
...Monopoly cases are in court for years at a time, as are cases involving public utilities and rate making...
...And war economy anywhere in the world means problems that are just the reverse of those which are created by the old-fashioned capitalist depression or crisis...
...still another to the Japanese...
...Wilson's Fourteen Points...
...8 This item will give increased authority to the liberal ideas on economics and government recently -voiced by the new head of the Anglican church...
...For from 1928 until 1940 I have been living in countries that were preparing for war...
...Editors Note: We cannot share Mr...
...Otherwise doubts may arise in suspecting minds...
...If Hitler can be disregarded, then we are not fighting against fascism either here or abroad...
...It is highly strategic to journey with as little baggage as possible, because America's normally unr...
...They should be made to stick by a single executive, fhis authority will exercise more compulsive power over civilian Americans than any other ever set up...
...Villard's article has fallen into' the same error into which Mr...
...These thoughts are, of course, identical with those' expressed in various forms and at various times by the President...
...I venture to predict that a good deal of the history of the aftermath of this war will center around efforts to find the means to realise this end...

Vol. 25 • November 1942 • No. 47


 
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