SHORTEN THE WAR!
Shorten The War! ONE OF THE MOST heartening news dispatches in many months was an Associated Press cable from London indicating that Allied leadership might at last be awakening to the costliness...
...There were no bitter editorials or hysterical radio denunciations...
...tet 'em Starve' TTHE REFUSAL of the British government to permit shipment of medicine and food to the sick and hungry children of occupied Europe, even under guarantees that the food will not fall into German hands, must rank with the man-made famine in India among the great ironies in this war to carry "freedom from want" to the whole Well-fed American apologists for the "let 'em starve" policy of Mr...
...When a company strikes for higher profits, it is "a stoppage dictated by business necessities...
...ONE OF THE MOST heartening news dispatches in many months was an Associated Press cable from London indicating that Allied leadership might at last be awakening to the costliness of one of its greatest blunders...
...Grafton does not tell us, or the imploring people of Europe, how they are to become strong enough, after four years of privation, hunger, and disease, to fight with their bare hands the most ruthless and heavily armed secret police in history...
...Every American who wants to hasten the hour of victory and who wants to see a firm basis prepared for the peace settlement must encourage our leaders to abandon the unfortunate phrase, "unconditional surrender," and to appeal, instead, to the masses of German people to turn on their Nazi oppressors, drive them from power, and make an honorable peace with the United States...
...Howard E. Kershner, director of relief in Europe from 1939 to 1942 for the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group of unimpeachable standing, disclosed last week that the British people and most of the British officials approve a policy of feeding the starving people of Europe under adequate safeguards, but that "a few people," led by Winston Churchill, are implacably opposed...
...Churchill and his cronies contend that the people of Europe must first show they are deserving of the right to a piece of bread by revolting against their Nazi oppressors...
...I suggest giving the German people something more important than their lives to lose —namely, a better place in a new, better world— and I will wager anything that the European war will be over within a year after we have adopted, and carried out, the scheme...
...This would be an excellent time, we think, for every newspaper, magazine, and radio commentator interested in the earliest possible victory to quote this passage from Howard K. Smith's book, "Last Train From Berlin": "From long, close experience with the German people, I know this: unless the British, the Russians, and the Americans offer, with deep sincerity, to the German people another way out besides life or death with Nazism, this war is going to last for an unnecessarily long time...
...Every possible safeguard against permitting the Nazis to benefit from our errand of mercy has been proposed: close supervision of the feeding by neutrals, maintenance of only small stocks of food and medicine at any one time so that Nazi seizure would be of little value "to Germany, stoppage of operations in the event of any German effort to violate or evade the safeguards...
...Kershner to ask out loud a question which many Americans are pondering in their hearts and minds: "Will you tell me any good reason why we should play second fiddle any longer to our magnificent ally just because a few people are against it...
...Looking The Other Way NEWSPAPERS and radio commentators were looking the other way the other day when a number of Iowa coal mine owners halted operations because "OPA ceiling prices would not be sufficient to permit profitable operation of the mines...
...It also plays into the hands of British and American Tories who will use the "blame everything on Germany" line to protect their own selfish interests...
...Just because we ought to stand with this ally is no reason why she should stand on us, as I think is the case...
...Our present attitude plays into the hands not only of Dr...
...It is nice to know that the representatives of the United Nations are gathered at Atlantic City drawing blueprints for the future relief of the sick' and the starving, but the present calls more urgently for action...
...In what was obviously a trial balloon which cleared the British and American censorship, the AP cable carried this significant report: "An appeal by the leaders of the tri-power alliance to the German people to scrap the Nazi regime and conclude the war honorably without further bloodshed and ruin was suggested unofficially today for consideration at any possible meeting of President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, and Premier Josef Stalin...
...The time to feed and heal our friends is now—not after their minds and bodies have been permanently weakened by malnutrition, and disease...
...But the same issue of the Chicago Sun which carried Grafton's price-tag on bread and medicine carried a dispatch from Stockholm reporting that the people of Norway, Holland, and other occupied countries, were weak, exhausted, and disease-ridden after four years of a bare subsistence diet...
...After all, they will argue, it was all Germany's fault...
...The price for a square meal in occupied Europe today is revolution against the Nazis," said Samuel Grafton, the syndicated columnist...
...Such an appeal would be fully in accord with the announced Soviet policy of making a distinction between the German masses and their leaders...
...This language is reserved only for miners striking because they can't live on what they were getting...
...This apparently was not "sabotage," "defiance of the government," or "aiuar-rogant effort to create inflation...
...Yet Churchill remains adamant, leading Dr...
...Every time we call for the annihilation of the German people as our only war aim, we are actually pouring gunpowder into Nazi cannon to be shot at us...
...that tuberculosis, scarlet fever, diptheria, dysentery, and stomach disorders were leaving their mark on the plain people everywhere...
...Goebbels, who uses the statements of bloodthirsty Americans to strengthen his warning to the Germans that they must fight to the last or be annihilated by the vengeful United Nations...
...we were blameless so let's return to the status quo as it existed before the guns went off...
Vol. 7 • November 1943 • No. 48
