THE EDITOR RESERVES THE LAST COLUMN

The Editor Reserves The Last Column THE alert editor of a Wisconsin rural weekly, and a liberal, world-minded weekly it is, was disturbed when he read in the big city dailies that Bob La Follette...

...The fact is that it had teeth but refused to bite...
...FINALLY there's the example of the League of Nations...
...The result was a harsh maintenance of the status quo which brutally crushed every liberal tendency on the continent...
...They know the United States cannot buy the friendship of other nations...
...They do not intend to sign blank checks now to be filled in abroad later by the very, reactionary and monopolistic forces they have been fighting at home for two generations...
...But Progressives are realists...
...The Editor Reserves The Last Column THE alert editor of a Wisconsin rural weekly, and a liberal, world-minded weekly it is, was disturbed when he read in the big city dailies that Bob La Follette had delivered an "isolationist" speech at the recent Progressive Party convention...
...La Follette] said in effect that if international cooperation was to mean cooperation between -the big monopolies of the countries then he was opposed...
...M.H.R...
...In 1815 the victorious powers, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, decided to police Europe after the defeat of Napoleon...
...We tried to police Central America in the 1920's and wound up thoroughly despised and the "bandits" and "insurrectionists" uncaught and untajned...
...Progressives believe in cooperation at home and abroad with the forces which share their ideals for political freedom and economic opportunity, and will help make them realities in the daily lives of the American people and the peoples of other countries...
...The League of Nations refused to use its teeth simply because the two nations which dominated the League had no will to use them...
...But he can't for the life of him see why this goal makes it necessary for us to sacrifice all our bargaining power, sign a blank check now, and announce that we are prepared to surrender, if necessary, to the very Tory forces in other countries which have been his ruthless and relentless foe at home...
...This police system blew up in 1848 with wars and bloody revolutions...
...When the delegates from his northern county returned from Milwaukee, the editor pumped them for the facts...
...He [Sen...
...These critics claim that voluntary cooperation among nations has failed to keep the peace and that the world must come to the concept of peace by force...
...THERE, in these paragraphs, was something the common man could grasp at once...
...Time magazine, no isolationist it, in an article last Fall made an observation no longer challenged by historians when it said: "It is popular today to blame the farce that the League became as a war-prevention body on the fact that it had no teeth...
...He wants a - self-respecting peace as he wants nothing else on earth, and he knows that international cooperation is essential to the preservation of peace...
...but if it was to mean cooperation for the benefit of the common people, the average and underprivileged citizens, then he was whole-heartedly in favor...
...Take an example closer home...
...And yet this is what critics of Bob's speech and of the Progressive platform (see Page 8) want to do —to agree now to enforce with the lives of American boys any type of peace settlement, no matter how imperialistic and how reactionary it may be...
...And yet history shows that the reverse is true...
...His report of their impressions shows how quick they are to grasp fundamentals, how wary they are in avoiding the temptation to think in headline words like "isolationist," "internationalist," etc...
...Conversely, a Pan-American policy whose cornerstone is a flat prohibition against military intervention has made notable progress in cementing peaceful hemisphere relations...
...When Progressives insist that they want America to cooperate in maintaining the peace if it is a peace rooted in justice and founded on a genuine effort to abolish the causes of war, they are accused by critics of ducking the issue...
...For Bob had said: "Progressives know that the forces which worked secretly to defeat the 14 Points at the [Versailles] peace table are now at work in every country...
...We tried to police the South after the Civil War and reaped a harvest of hate...
...This is argued on the sole ground that the Progressive platform does not endorse the concept of an international police force to stand guard over the undetermined settlement...
...There have been leagues, alliances, and national policies backed up by armed might—but to no avail...
...These ruthless forces of monopolistic wealth and international cartels thrive in wartime and occupy invisible thrones at the peace tables...
...Here, I submit, is a common man's and a common sense summary of Bob La Follette's speech, told with great economy of wordage and the force of simplicity...
...In discussing the League I always prefer to quote its friends...
...We are informed by delegates who were present at the convention," this northern editor reports, "that the daily press did not give a true picture of La Follette's so-called 'isolationist' policies as set forth in his speech...

Vol. 8 • May 1944 • No. 21


 
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