The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
A Page of Features Americana Books and Writers Chatter The Home Front By William E. Bohn |»fl'f Miss Tomorrow's Chapter |f U three o'clook on Tuesday. Since ten this morning; I have \jWened to...
...In such a set-up, compromise is not just a temporary expediency on the road to some end...
...Even when between the parties fhey tend to take the form of oonpublicixed or, maybe, even non-publiciaahie deals...
...Yet no critic ever occupies an aisle seat or comes across with a word of comment...
...the totalitarian Kremlin Set, and putting the party-liners on the spot . . . But last week he brought a smile to our lips...
...Matthew Lear quotes a passage from Qraw?ord» Report on tfsHh A ru» *nc asks What I, arasmg others, here to sag about it...
...The Cangrom was turned late aa an rear —but Salvemini had spoken his piece...
...literati * Co.:—After Simeon Strunsky (in has Topics of the ' tks Times column) picked up and commented m W. B. Chetkberim's remarks of last week on "One World," the phone ran...
...It is only now, therefore, that Roosevelt really comes into his own and emerges as an enlightened and intelligent defender of the statue cum...
...taia Mx Crawford'* paljtieel naivete is sot nearly as aarprising v anocking a* that of u»« editors of The New Lea^t...
...Procter and Gamble never heard of Aristotle...
...For latecomers, a short resume of What Has Gone Before...
...The new book by Kenneth Crawford on North Africa posed, we thought, a serious question about the political coarse of the war...
...3: The big compromises in a two-party state tend not to be public, that is, between two parties in a public forum, but secret, that is, they occur within the party formations...
...The differences are not in principle or policy or even in interest, but in patronage and slogans...
...more extreme and definite policies find public and organized expression...
...Political agitation which appeals to specific strata is a major factor ha the development of consciousness of class-interest...
...The editors of The New Leader have a great record for courage and dear think tog during the past few years...
...A noble and self-sacrificing woman suffers in silence while the man she loves marries a much inferior rival...
...Spain...
...He has to talk about ideas, or occasionally have them, but their power of appeal is much more important to his success than their economic soundness/ He does not merejy compromise...
...This means that popular, as against party or organized minority, pressure is less effective as a check on representativeness...
...How they must envy their poorer sisters their hands made beautiful by daily immersion in the softening and glorifying suds...
...a war in which victory will be a technical, not a moral achievement, and in which trhe seeds for further wars are already being planted and cultivated...
...Ha observed that lago was "an unsolved mystery .. . like the Trotskyitea...
...So, you don't throw your vote away, even if you don't elect a president But to elect a president you have got to have more patronage and less principle...
...Right * Centre:—Apparently we V atarted something last week...
...Then you have a wry tiny episode of play...
...The poor chaps who do the writing, directing and acting have W impossible task...
...Dr, Herbert fete, one ef the country's leading economists, baa resigned as adviser on international economic affairs to the State Department...
...Yellow & Black BARCELONA...
...Well, there is something dis- armingly honest about this whole business...
...There was no mention of * millionaire or a nightclub of anything related to the goings-on of the rich...
...The President faces a tougher assignment abroad than he ever faced at home...
...10: The two-party system of America has not existed unmolested...
...Probing the Two-Party State By C. WRIGHT MILLS Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland AMERICAN POLITICAL PARTIES, THEIR NATURAL HISTORY...
...He is clear and informative about things of which it is important to be informed...
...Another extolled the virtues of a breakfist food...
...If it had been night I might have listened to Grace Moore and Richard Crooks or I could have enjoyed a Screen Guild Play with such actors as John Garfield, Maureen O'Hara and Ralph Morgan...
...Expectation is forever on tiptoe, but what one sees, or, rather, hears, it any one session is no more than a driblet...
...Not that we ware allowed to forget it...
...In a war that is fought merely fe« survival, afw of the things that are worth pi—ntog will survive...
...Will father cut mother's throat with a slightly dull razor-blade...
...In the two-party state there is less chance of this occurring...
...This is for workers in the homes...
...Ha aa exposing Stalinist professionals in the Army Specialist program te U. S. colleges...
...All right...
...In the end jea feel sorry for the poor little rich women who do not do their own dishes...
...The machine, its size and organization, makes for less flexibility...
...Surely one or two tables indicating by periods their relevant social traits would not have marred his pages too much...
...Binkley does not advance a full theory of American political parties, nor does he abstract revealing types of parties that have emerged in the history of the country...
...At the same time, he has mere powerful allien...
...So there I was, horizontal and helpless...
...It therefore may "sell out" those who were decieisa in vot.ng it in...
...Party managers minimize the public discussions of fundamental policies, while politicians solve them by means of the personal contact and the private integration...
...movements, parties and jeremiads...
...It would deal with political lieutenants and party-fixers who earn power and income because many people believe that things cannot be done legitimately...
...Dozens of high-powered executives swing into action...
...Left...
...confesses Etna, "la still trying to diriphar jast what that Ambassadorial optical flatter meant...
...That line must be considered a master stroke in the high art of advertising, for all the houses use it...
...Last weak she went to Eemyn Walsh McLean's dinner for ex-Ambassador I'm...
...But the substance of the dramas addressed to the working housekeepers fairly shines with simple folksiness...
...But it apparently has taken this landing of American troops to reveal to some liberals and radicals the role that President Roosevelt has been playing in this revolutionary world for the past dozen years...
...Compromised parties, on the other hand, refer to those in which there has been so much expediency, tolerance and compromise going on within the party that its leaders really can't do anything decisive nor stand up and say No to anybody...
...7: The two-party state, as Holcombe has remarked, is doubtless a convenient system for people already contented...
...It was Wendell Wfllkie, and he waited a copy of The New Lsadfr sent down to his office, quick...
...And she found, Admiral Standley waa "a bright, twinkling-eyed, grand old salt-sea tor...
...Will Rose bite her lips and shut her l»ve tight in her heart or completely abolish her blonde rival...
...he incorporates into his policies the specific desires of as many articulate groups as he can...
...The barter, balance and concession of parties, along with a near monopoly of the media of mass communications, hide the contradictions of the social structure, and for a time make them endurable...
...The economic royalists never had sense enough for that...
...4: The compromising party is, thus, different from the compromised party...
...I have \jWened to 15 plays...
...The underground grows more and more daring...
...If the two parties get so close together, through their compromises and their common attempts to win everybody in a variegated public, there may not be any real oppositional group...
...Scripts* are written...
...Front the standpoint at President Banna '¦fl'fi i M> tereational policy, the African ramnajgn cheagt* nothing whatever: it merely confirmed a raart' that was established originall* with the stsjjg nitaon of Potato and the ¦ppnanrtaant of jfrapr' — turn a war for the renewal of d*mocracy^S*iSatt the Praaiieni paiahuendy calls it *% mar ei survival...
...Beth parties are expedient fixers, and the "integrating idea" which the master politicians seek, integrates small articulate power groups, or patches up their loudest complaints...
...And the melodrama, which only a generation back was the drama of the unsophisticated, sometimes rose to magnificent levels...
...From that world I have returned...
...Mr...
...The authors of these masterpieces are, for the most part, anonymous—and the actors, too...
...The simplest folk songs or tales of other days were on a far higher level...
...Bet the upshot of this experience is not 100 per cent depressing...
...This is not addressed to the carriage trade...
...There is also a tendency for a few large states to become increasingly self-sufficient, for the small independent state to go the way of the small independent business man, and far cartels or government trusts, operating on a barter basis to displace the former system of free trade...
...His point of view makes it clear that he has written After Beard...
...T>et policy trades small immediate victories for an aUiaaate democratic defeat Unless it ar...
...It becomes the prime principle of the going concern...
...From Washington this weak came a email note, which we append—" Democratic Chairman Frank Walker M licking his chops at the thought of new diplomatic patronage....'' So it goes...
...Pal Freddie:—Demon Reporter Frederick Woltman...
...Not only are the themes the ordinary worries of ordinary life...
...My 15 masterpieces practically ignored the war...
...When the economic sphere of a society does not readily permit thii, the political system of the two-party state may come effectively to represent only one sector of interests...
...The other 13 sobbed about soap...
...It may remain rigid for some time after public shifts of conviction have occurred...
...A natural history would try to state how and when these different types of parties and party-men emerge...
...A "NATURAL HISTORY" of American political parties would presumably set forth types of parties and of party leaders...
...1: In a society as variegated in interests as America, a two-party system makes almost inevitable the rhetoric of vacuity rather than the ideology of particular strata...
...Then the idea of parties as representatives of definite interests becomes a fiasco...
...My doctor ordered me to stay at home...
...the Wortd-TeUgrmm, goes grimly shout his business, Ha baa already done a tremendous job of spotting the shenanigans an...
...The report is that Phfl, after maay bitter, setbacks, is taking his chances in the Republican Party with the General . . . and overlooking the small matter of Patteraon-McCorrnick sleeping in the same bad...
...One eloquent pleader mentioned an imminent diaper shortage and begged us to help win the war by using his sort of soap and so waking our diapers hold qut longer...
...it seems as if the rolling taords take as much time as the dialog...
...she confesses, "one of the met delightful functions I've ever attended...
...Drop ffce Mop THEN why the modified optimism...
...In one way the scripts are something less than honest...
...Quincy Howe Dear Mr...
...It was...
...There has been no relatively successful "third party" which questioned the system within which certain men get wfiat there is to get...
...It lies with his friends and his enemies alike...
...It works best when no big splits divide the actual or known interests of the total population, or where there are nonpolitical outlets for economic antagonisms and ascents...
...That is always a mistake...
...At least Churchill and Stalin know that Roosevelt is just as much opposed as they are to drastic social changes...
...King Carol of Rumania ban hired a press agent to help put over his "true story** to the American WJjj&m The agent is Russell Bird-well—who has worked for Henry Earner, and for Howard-Hughes in his campaign la behalf of the stnry Jane Russell movie, The Outturn...
...First came a note from QUincy Howe...
...They have always traveled light in intellectual baggage, ready for ' the change at the station, not being sure what train was coming next...
...Saivenuni arouse...
...The more "radical" such vote-getting programs are, the more diluted will be their adopted forms and their translations into government policy...
...He has written a good solid history of political life, moving carefully from the founding fathers up to the present, and making a convenient summary of what recent historians have accomplished...
...Yon see, jast aba at a decade ago a scandal broke over the Pitt campus...
...Ctrange BeoYellowa Dept.:—There were some very eertene naUitijBl mssalHamoa* in 1940...
...Nobody can remember when Molly Goldberg's lacerations and laments began...
...The first means, ideally at least, that two groups, each representing definite and antagonistic interests, integrate policy as best they can in order to realise all the existent interests possible...
...Our questions to Messrs...
...Note aa the Hlrter Criticism: Mike Gold reviewed Shakespeare's OtkeO* bnt weak...
...You begin with a long and animated splash of suds...
...Of course, in many state administrations, third-party men have won...
...and all other monster* of malice...
...For better or for worse," Crawford argued, the so-called "revolutionary" character of the war against Fascism has fled, and the basic war policy of Roosevelt-Churchill is "one of military expediency and power politics rather than reform and welfare polities...
...Each play goes on forever...
...President BooneveH tries to preserve as much as can he artecr/ved ef the free enterprise and free trade system, while making necessary concessions te newer trends...
...Organ njusic takes tie place of the curtain, and sometime...
...Yet I cannot help but think it unfortunate that Mr...
...For Wells said: "J have the utmost respect for the Bnseten people and the Russian army who are doing their share in eradicating Nestom from the face of the earth...
...There are several things one might say about it—jottings on the margins of this book...
...Sometimes these third parties have effected presidential elections and even the determination of policy...
...r*w« Who Spoke Up:—In London the other night a huge moetity: * was held in behalf of the two Soviet representatives, Micboeii and Feffer, now heading the Soviet Anti-Fascist Jewish Cv&mittee...
...Then more suds...
...There is never a soaring line into the stratosphere of melodrama...
...Not having the power, it will try to get it and the technique is...
...Beebe ajnerfing what the dim, dark cares of ocean bear or, if I may a*ke a second try Tor a more accurate figure, as if I had inad^rtently kicked over a plank and let the sun in upon forms of life ^ich usually remain unobserved...
...The patronage party does not need many ideas...
...Binkley did not give us more benefit from the 2000 biographies of congressmen in the Dictionary of American Biography which were examined...
...The former compromises variegated interests and principles within each of the two parties and the public stand which is finally taken is not so definite and clear cut...
...But I cannot restrain from protesting against the killing by the Soviet govern?—at of Erect anal Alter, who were the founders of the Jewteb Anti-Fascist Committee...
...On his gold chain, expediency hangs as the master key...
...407 pa$e...
...Now, now...
...The running time is 15 minutes...
...They have millions to spend to draw the attention and the cash of all the women working in all the kitchens...
...These soap dramas play to more people every day than all the combined plays on Broadway in a ]aag season...
...H. Stendtey, ier aptly back from Moscow...
...The more advanced industrial countries of Europe and the Near World are moving from n system of capitalistic free enterprise and free trade into a more collectivized way of life In which the state becomes more and more powerful and only the largest pressure groups can have much affect...
...We aaked a number of leading liberal and left-wing intellectuals to comment...
...You see...
...In this changing world...
...But, nee it was the early part of the day, I had to be content with the sospy sound of The Goldbergs and Ma Perkins...
...The tangle of compromises within and between the two parties may be so thick and sticky that it picks up the opposition as a precise organization...
...The purpose of the performance is to blazon the virtues of Dux or Bab-o...
...I can fgport that the soap dramas are accurately named...
...This holds of course for "the great succession" as well as for those you don't hear much about...
...There is no climax, no beginning, no middle, and— especially—no end...
...When only one of two parties has a chance to win power, or at least office and patronage, and when the publics to which it must appeal are variegated, such principles as they stand for tend to be the same, or at least so similar as not to leave much choice...
...Then, too, authors and actors have to battle against eternity...
...For the consciousness of economic interest does not, of course, follow automatically from the structural -fact of its existence...
...3.75...
...Which moves as to recall the story* of Prof...
...The other 13 all give us domestic situations—men and women under drab and usual strains...
...The second reply which came into this office in time te make the rlasnUina was a ¦tetasJMf...
...The more variegated the public to which they must appeal for support the more generally empty of decisive (deeply antagonistic) content their programs will be...
...Malm's reaction te "Miseton to Maooow...
...I must acknowledge that I undertook these explorations against my will I was fool enough to confess that I was not feeling extra Well...
...Tiey sign contracts...
...They say: This soap will make your hands beautiful and, incidentally it will dean your clothes and dishes...
...The affair featured the address of H. G. Wells, worldfamous English historian...
...What I have t* any...
...Well, here I am...
...what war aims, beyond those of Washington and London, liberals and Socialists were defending ? And related problems...
...It is as if tI had been down with Dr...
...Low: I suspect that it will take more than the landing of American troops in North Africa to arrest the two revolutions now going forward in two parts of the world...
...The essential mode of the American government" is "log rolling, or give and take...
...There is, however, a theory which runs through the book...
...All of this is, I admit, depressing...
...Geetene Salveraini at the Writers' Congress of 1985 organised by the Iremfla literary fronts...
...I rise to report that the artistic" standards of this section of our fg]k-drama are unbelievably low, but that the moral standards are correspondingly elevated...
...One of my ll plays'rooted for tea...
...Perhaps it is more compelling because it edges its way up oat of the facts, rather than standing out in systematic discussion: The secret of the successful politician in America is his clairvoyant opportunism...
...The whole magic machinery of radio starts to operate...
...who has ever since the •aqMtotton.jUp Men Mmst Ao» been^oaa^af^the w^Mst»l^m meat of officie: London-Waahiogtor war neJie{n«,«V Mr Mnm/rrf* appeared recently in these pages j August 14 L « . . t j Lewis Mmforti Mr...
...And there isn't any question that principles first advocated by third elements have later been adopted by the major parties...
...I low* Else Maxwell...
...it would exainiawT»artie* aa rmrely one element in the total distribution and ways of getting and maintaining the powers of big decision...
...He explained that nit his life he had fought for cultural freedom—under fascism, under capitalism, in all societies and all countries -\ r ¦-¦ New he wasted to register a protest against the manual imprisonment ef a great, free anilII by a tyrannical dteteturship—"the imprisonment.*' be explained, of Vkcter Serge hj Stain in Ruseia...
...How well they can succeed in this depends in large part upon how deep the articulated antagonisms are...
...All of the others are laid in the kitchens and dining-rooms of ordinary folk...
...In such a system the greatest politician is the man who can find the slogan which will disturb the least and attract the most 2: In a situation where power and income, property and privilege is already distributed in an extremely disproportionate pattern, the principle of compromise is likely to work for the already powerful...
...At the same time, the more backward nations of Asia are shifting over from a feudal, agricultural society into a more industrialized society that will have some of the characteristics of West European and American civilization during the laXh century and that will also share some of the totalitarian tendencies that the war has encouraged everywhere...
...Every blurb for supreme suds stressed the fact that it is patriotic to use this particular brand...
...Yet, in the latter, compromise tends to be more public...
...6: In a situation of heavy compromise and many concessions, there is a danger, very real in our present situation, that one party takes the responsibility for the acts of a government while not really having the power of decision...
...and joined the people at the bridge table...
...I waa itching te auk AdatStandley about Mr...
...All right, all right . . . Bnt one thing bothered Elsa...
...what its political direction, as of today, is...
...a> But some of his remarks were unexpected and the commit tee on arrangements were quite bewildered...
...The failure te recognise thin fact aaw is aa sinister aa the failure to reengwire .that the data* of democracy was being challenged by N astern in 19U...
...Imagine the great nap magnates, Procter and Gamble or Babbits sitting back in tjjfir cromium offices...
...One trail led him to the University of PillehiiBgh . .. And he really went to town on the university—"for more than a decade an ultra-conservative institution," etc...
...rie Vultures:—Out of the oppression and the accumulating resistance of the European people, the prospect ana oome for the re-establishmeat of a half-doaen new exile governments on a substantial working basis...
...Goldberg is trying to hold her daughter's husband from breaking away...
...Never for very long has it existed in pure and undefiled form...
...A wife tries to cure her husband of the rambling habit...
...That is my answer to Mr Matthew Low...
...Once you allow such a word to escape your lips jan are at the mercy of your physician and your kind but firm female relatives...
...It is condemned to plod on about u it is...
...Half a dozen times, according to one historian, they hove snatched victory from one major party—the other major party got it...
...and more of the same are ah aping np far ififii...
...One scene takes place in a hospital...
...The compromised party is everybody's friend...
...We wanted to know what "illusions," if any they had about the war...
...Definite ideas only estrange some element of the diverse voting public...
...If a policy attracts votes, the other parties will pick it up . . . and that is likely to be the death of the third party...
...In my whole 15 plays there was not one word about a king, prince or nobleman...
...They are **t down in the drabbest of words...
...One of radio's beat morning variety shows opens with the couplet, "Drop the mop, Get on the hop...
...Coalition governments may mean the dominance of one interest in the coalition which uses the appeal of the other...
...Tea might think that such a slumming expedition into the forenoon of radio would leave a fellow cast down...
...In the South you can find the one-party state...
...And there have been many third camps...
...Greatest Mystery of the Week:—Don't get me wrong...
...His name was—Frederick Wottaaaa...
...So you get mighty little actual play...
...The hope for a free continent is becoming brighter...
...This naturally causes consternation, left and right, bnt the fault does not lie with Mr...
...Parisians, disgusted by a German order that all Jews must wear a Mack and yellow star .ate the . left breast as a mark of idoateltnttan, are upsetting Nasi occupation onsherittea by adapting a new style wrinkle—a black and yellow breast-pocket handkerchief...
...nut before my )ip« could form the question, a friend ef mine, with even more temerity than myself, punned the fatal question ~ The conversation suddenly fell into a husk, "Admiral Standi** rsmmrdsd us both te silence, and then, shvAy, he winked one eye— the most stately but unmistakable wmk tee* I'm* oner son...
...lust as his New Deal tried to save oar ragged indivKtaalists from themselves and their own folly, so his foreign policy tries te shore ap all that can be shored ap of the status quo abroad...
...but in their weakness and confusion about this central issue, they threaten to nullify a large part of their good work...
...Salvemini consented to appear if he would be allowed- to speak his piece...
...But as to the plays, only two dealt with war themes...
...altered, the next hundred years will not he the handled years of renewal and reconstruction that mankind needs, hat a century of farther demoralisation, disintegration, and destruction...
...He is, in general, with the center-left, with more center than left...
...It deals with the folks who live in the little house halfway up the next block...
...There is never a second set or a third...
...The whole apparatus of the coalifioh may be more flexibly geared to shifts in political opinion...
...Alfred A. Knop...
...From beginning to end, each little play plods modestly close to the ground._ Inside and OutQuincy Howe, Lewis Mumford on the War By MATTHEW LOW /***ontroversy...
...The Admiral then moved on...
...American politics have contained the opportunistic politician in the compromised party in the two-party state...
...Howe . wrote the acid England Expects Every American to Do His Duty in the days before the war, and his realistic analyses of political events* over the radio have been subject of much discussion...
...By Wilfred E. Btnlcley...
...I lay all morning and wall into the afternoon while those radio plays droned on...
...We learn, to wit, that among the supporters of that snowballing campaign for Douglas Mac Arthur in the Piusndiatial race is—Phil LaFoUette...
...5: The danger of the two-party state is that it may turn into a one-party state...
...once more, compromise...
...9: The two-party system is one reason, not perhaps among the major, for the relative lack of class-consciousness in America...
...They do not say: This soap will make things clean...
...I should define the two contemporary revolution* this way...
...The continuity—what a wonderful word!—must be managed so that very little happens today but so that there is promise of great tkings for tomorrow...
...It would compare these party phenomena and show them in systemafic connection with the whole evolving economy...
...For a hundred and fifty years parties have argued over symbols and issues which were concerned with who got what within the general system...
...Miss Maxwell, now, now...
...Hook, Mum ford, Howe, Ltndberg, et at, haw prompted sharp and heated replies, and we pasa the first batch of them on to the readers, with mare listed for the next issue...
...The best that modern technology can produce is geared to play the message of soap into a million homes...
...Then there is no organized party representing large segments of the population...
...it does not even acknowledge quite fundamental disintegrations...
...A girl's sweetheart leaves town without an explanation...
...8: The two-party system is not so different from the multiple-party system as might be supposed...
...There is nothing snooty about it...
...In this respect this art form approaches medieval drama...
...A dispatch from the Paris correspondeftt of the newspaper "La Vaagaardia Eepsnola" said the style has swept the French Capital, with hundreds of non-Jewis* men and women Haunting the black and yellow colors aa a protest inulast tie Germans* anti-Semitic decree...
...But in the nature of things the soap stage never can rise...
...Imm Munafocd...
...We have not had deeply situated movements or parties with objective chances to change the whole political structure...
...Roosevelt...
...A husband returns to his domestic circle the victim of amnesia...
...And there is no indigenous political theory which would proceed from such a movement...
...It deals with Everyman and, especially, Everywoman...
...There it something strangely incongruous about the grandeur of the aachinery and the humble quality of the result...
...A young and popular political sell— toetrnetor was fired by the trustees for alleged "radical aetimie...
...Reading about past political parties and movement in this country, one is struck by the relative continuity of the American political order...
...Many theorists then praise the system because it blunts and attenuates the difficulties it reflects...
Vol. 26 • October 1943 • No. 44
