TIMELY ToPICS
THOMAS, NORMAN
By Norman Thomas TIMELY ToPICS Every week Norman Thomas write* in his pungent style his own comments upon the salient events of the moment The German Socialist* 11/11 A I has happened, what...
...Now we a r e wondering what poison of Nationalism or fear of l i e u Fascist enemies has infected them to lead them, to whom we have so long looked as our teachers, to break with the S e c .ml International because the executive committee of the Second International, in the absence of German members who were held at home, so vigorously denounced the Fascist triumph...
...2. The Social Democracy held down to about 18 per cent of the total vote in the election...
...The most urgent task, however, is not to desl with the trifling vexations of t h e msnagement but to fight against Fascism...
...8. All Communist papers suspended, and all labor headquarters occupied by the military...
...THE AUSTRIAN RAILWAY MEN VIENNA, March 26.—In spite of the decision of Parliament, the management of tbe Austrian Federal Railway is taking measures against the railwaymen who took part in t h e strike of March 1st...
...The t r u th is that we never went to war to make the world safe for Democracy, but only for the profits of American trade with the Allies...
...He can make the poor think that it is not t he rich but only the rich Jews they need to fear and hatel In the long run the rich Jews will make some kind of peace with Hitler and only the militant workers will bear the brunt of his wrath...
...So it will always be...
...r Our President TTHE enthusiasm which conservative Capitalist * papers diligently inculcate for a President who "does things without bothering about Congress" has hypnotized even some of the unemployed workers who do not seem to understand that, so far, th* President's banking program, his economy program, and his projected railroad program all mean a decrease of purchasing power in t h e hands of th* masses...
...8. The Austrian Social Democracy cut off by Hitler's rise to power from their last hope of support against a ring of Fascist enemies...
...From a Hohenzollern to a Hitler is a step backward front every point of view...
...from the Socialist point of view it was a defeat all the same...
...Here are some of the items of their victory: 1. The Communist Party itself outluwed and refused a seat in parliament...
...It is with the labor forces to t h e r i g h t of Socialism, especially, t h a t we must seek some understanding of the magnitude of the crises here in our own country and in the world, Tbe New Continental Congress in Wsshingtoa on Msy 6th and 7th must become more than ever a means of effective action against Fascism...
...This in turn means an increase and not s decrease of unemployment...
...This tragedy will continue until the workers organize and speak for themselves...
...Toadying to Hitler I T is amazing to see how the opposition to Hitler* ism in Germany has knuckled under...
...No conceivable dewicee will make the President's workcamps other than s mark of the drift toward the Fascist state...
...Every possible device is used to undermine their solidarity and break the front they are putting up against the endeavors of Austrian Fascism...
...rid they were held at least partly responsible by the German people for the misery of the whole post-war pe riod...
...The German Social Democracy has not withdrawn from the L.S.I.—Ed.] I am writing away from New York and without full and accurate information concerning the nature of this break with the Second International...
...6. All civic rights suspended indefinitely at the pleasure of Hitler's executive committee...
...The Republic is as good as dead: Germany is sow under a Fascist dictatorship...
...They upheld the treaty obligations, and the pay ment of the war tribute...
...Walter Lippmann, mouth, piece for a certain type of intellectual, tries to jus...
...Let us maks the New Continental Congress a proof that we ar* awake...
...Their s o tions thus far against Fascism prove that they are equal to the taak...
...For years the Communists have been carrying on a guerilla warfare in the streets of all the larger cities...
...Many times since 1918 we may have questioned their tactics but usually they seemed excusable in the light of circumstances and often their mistakes seemed to arise out of their very loyalty to the principles )f democracy and fair olay...
...Such action requires a positive program...
...The five hundred million dollar federal relief bill which he advocated Is superior to the Hoover program in administrative features and because it avoids the hypocrisy of calling gifts to states and municipalities, loans...
...The Roman Catholic Church, which in the main had fought Hitlerism, had made a tentative peace with its foe...
...We must get together for the purpose of opposing Fascism on the widest front on which effective cooperation in good faith may be possible...
...For years the German Socialists have seemed to have the strength, the courage, the discipline, which the rest of us coveted...
...Over 2 million Communist voters Went over to Hitler at the last moment...
...The Social Democracy stood firm for the workers' rights in a bourgeois republic...
...By Norman Thomas TIMELY ToPICS Every week Norman Thomas write* in his pungent style his own comments upon the salient events of the moment The German Socialist* 11/11 A I has happened, what is going to happen to the German Social Democratic Party—thst is the question of the hour for all Socialists and Socialist sympathizers...
...tify his own war-time desertion of his former rao% icalism, by seeing in the triumph of Hitlerism in Germany proof of certain qualities of the Germsn people or certain dominant section.of them against which we had to fight...
...I t was to have been carried out on March 25th and 26th or April 2 d . These daya an unusual movement of railway cars was observed on the railway system...
...The movement in the colleges, beginning in conservative Brown University, of students who announce that they will not be dragooned into war is a thing to make our hearts rejoice...
...FOR UNITY OF AUSTRALIAN LABOR MELBOURNE.—With a view to ending the dispute between the two factions in the Australian Labor Party this year's annual conference of the Victorian State Branch of the P a r t y has demanded a special conference of the whole Party, in which representatives of all factions should decide on a basis of unity, with a view to restoring the living standards of the workers...
...The Communist Party on the other hand got what they have been striving for with might and main for years...
...No conferences which Secretary Perkins may hold on Roosevelt's behalf with labor leaders must blind the workers to the fact that the Roosevelt Program is giving us the economics of t h s Fascist state to the tuns of liberal professions...
...We help only the hungriest of the hungry in order that human beings may not die on our streets of actual staryation, and our officials applaud the docility of workers kept from rioting by a crust of bread...
...American papers carried pictures of a great bonfire of Communist literature, allegedly turned over by former Communists, who have now become Fascists...
...A resolution passed by the Conference declared that the tight,he tween the Scullin and Lang factions for the leadership of Labor in Australia is being used as a golden opportunity • by the United Australia Party, and by employing any financial interests, to reduce wages to the coolie level...
...A plan has just been exposed for running 17 trains to carry over 18,060 armed Heimwehr men to Vienna...
...The plain truth is however, that this five hundred million dollar appropriation will only provide relief from the federal government to states and cities at about the present rate, while the need is vastly increased...
...The railwaymen know that the present attitude of the management depends closely on t h a t of t h e government, and is directly inspired and encouraged by it...
...Yet still we drift to war...
...ths calculations of their own welfare workers for a mere subsistence program is characteristic of America...
...Some Jewish leaders, in spite of, or because of, an outrageous economic boycott have been broadcasting appeals to their fellow Jews to make no public protest against this national movement in Germany...
...It is the youth of America who would have to fight the next war in the trenches to whom we must look...
...Men of all parties, including the Socialists, have fallen their victims, and it is mainly this senseless and criminal tactic that has given the Hitler men the reason, and the excuse, for putting down the whole working class movement by armed force...
...The Conference also adopted a recommendation of the Executive, declaring that members of the Workers' International Relief, Friends of the Soviet Union, International Class-War Prisoners' Aid, Unemployed Workers' Movement and Liberty Defense Corps, are ineligible to be members of the Australian Labor Party...
...4. The workers' bitterest class enemies in complete possession of every governmental office...
...One thing which the Fascist victory in Germany makes clear is the u t t e r failure of our participation in the great war in terms of any ideal ends...
...If the management of the Federal Railways la in league with the Fa cists, the railwaymen are one with the Austrian working class...
...A President who has slashed wages and salaries has a s yet found no money for housing and hospitals but consents to put a big navy appropriation into a bill ostensibly for the relief of the unemployed...
...Vet in the election they lost only a small part of their strength, and deserve endless credit for their heroism in the face of many bru'al attacks...
...Hitler, of course, has found anti-Semitism a convenient way to hold together rich and poor in his extraordinary party...
...The action of the New York City Board of Estimate in appropriating only about half for the month of April of what they knew was necessary on the basis of...
...Now That Hitler Rules t i l l I I K i - i n with th« approval of about 40 per cent ol the Cerman voters...
...We shall miss the lesson of all this unless we see the urgent necessity here in America of killing the Fascist viper while it is still small...
...So he rationalizes his share in the making of a war which did not end war and a peace which did end peace...
...Whatever admixture of idealism crept into this fundamental economic struggle was frustrated by the method of war...
...What will worry Socialists around the world is less the break, serious as that is, than our great concern lest our former teachers in Socialism may, even temporarily, have surrendered that international solidarity of the workers which is the heart of Socialism and the only defence against that social degeneration which Fascism is...
...It is sadly evident that it is not to our leaders that we can look to protection from armed conflict...
Vol. 15 • April 1933 • No. 14
