Where the News Ends
HARRISON, CHARLES YALE
Where the News Ends By Charles Yale Harrison Scene: A laboratory in one of otar Eastern universities. The instrutocr, a mild-mannered, bespectacled young man in his early thirties, if a recognized...
...My opponent, Professor James Burnham and his crooked colleague, Max Schactman, are sneak-thieves, counterfeiters, embezzlers, petty-larceny crooks...
...New York, I'm sorry if I sound too emphatic...
...High-spirited whe.n stained red...
...But I'm not anxious to go, out of my way to denounce people who have come, honestly, to the Christian pacifist's position...
...Instructor (turning up the dials still further) : This one is very pale, despite his carmine coloration, and very weak...
...A Hitler at large in the world forces other men to be like him, in many important respects, in order to exist at all...
...However, a trained revolutionist takes advantage of every tribunal, even a pipette, from which to preach his message...
...his murder list ft is vicious, will try to shoot his way out if cornered, but 'tat police are hot on his trail and hope to nab him soon...
...He reaches for a petrie dish containing a, grayish gelatinous culture, places a drop of it on-a hollow slide...
...Bat there is no longer room for tolerance for the sort of muddled thinking which has led "Socialists" and "liberals" like yourself—which is still leading the—to cooperate with the Stalin terror...
...He adds a drop of carmine stain to the drop of culture...
...Rulers ot economic life, they seek political satisfaction by contrpi Washington...
...Your public«ssertion that you are pained A the crime and blunder of Stain's attack on Finland scarcely pouches the matters in dispute inAur published correspondence—^5ie large-scale executions, the xnan-made famine, the totalitarA methods of the Kremlin, the^xpunging of civil liberties, the nauseating political "trials," etc.Jltc...
...Like the amoeba it procreates by fission or splitting, a most unromantic procedure...
...I would suspect that a man who could make such an observation on M. Pivert was either a demagogue or a political virgin...
...But the solution must be strong...
...Your reason—thatxdespite everything, Russia is a "orkers' state, making a "Socialist" experiment...
...Long live the Fourth International...
...Among his fellows he is known as Professor James...
...Instructor: For some reason which science has not as yet fathomed, this particular bug perishes under sunlight, fresh air and an absence of a blood diet During an epidemic at Kronstadt in the early twenties it killed off nearly 16,000 victims...
...it has always been a tragic dilemma...
...He adjusts the dials on the instrument for sound and then proceeds to isolate a Single B. Trotsky-Coyoacanum from among its fellows by means of a micro-pipette...
...This Kid is noted for his low cunning in planning minders...
...The guinea pig proceeds to copulation With the greatest of elation...
...And now...
...Of course, the political bacteriologist is always faced with the possibility of losing his job when the subject of his inquiries infests ac entire nation, as in Germany, Italy and Russia...
...No doubt," he said...
...He beckons to a student...
...He recites sotto voice): The guinea pig is not very big, The amoeba is very, very small...
...student (still peering into the microscope) : They look pretty terrifying now...
...Ebj-' gene Lyons, editor of the American Mercury, and Dr...
...I'm really pretty ashamed of you, and I'm not a follower of Pivert either...
...Martov, the eminent Russian politico-bacteriologist, the native bug had succeeded in destroying hundreds of thousands of human lives...
...Instructor (dropping the bug back into its drop of culture) : As a matter of fact that was the bacterium which prefers to be known as James P. Cannon...
...From JOS9%H 7. SHIPLEY Drama Editor of The New Leader To the Editor: This may seem like inside ballyhoo—but it's -spontaneous...
...Let us hope they will never find a blood-stream again...
...I do not see where that touches, except in the most tangentfel way, the substance of myAiece in The New Leader...
...rTheir collaboration is more intimas every day...
...The class laughs...
...Y. The undersigned announces that he is severing all hit ««« nections with The New Leader with this issue.—JAMES ONEAL TWO CELEBRATIONS IT IS NOT often that two celebrations relating to the Leber Movement are held on the same day but it happens g? week...
...In 1917 when the bacillus was first classified and accurately described by Dr...
...New York...
...Our fresh air and mountains ought to do the trick...
...Of course, the ":n-the-k>nf-run" optimists were present to offer the usual sootkiat syrup...
...James P. Cannon is a bureaucrat, a low politician, a crook...
...The celebration will conclude with addresses over Station WEVD by Harry A. Gideons...
...They are determined, have vast funds at ta*» disposal, are disposing of large quantities of literature**" have many high-powered publicity bureaus...
...We are the only true Trotskyites...
...If they get it the labor and social ***?^J a decade will be largely scarificed because the Ot§9**W mane* «re divided politically and economical...
...Three are known to have been committed by hut...
...I need mention only a few: the bacillus Stalinis-mus, bureaucraticus John L. Lewisiensis, Van-denberga spirilla, Nazicoccus and many others...
...Recent testimony before the Temporary National Economic Committee in Washington shows that agncultursl production has increased 50 to 70 per cent in the pstt thirty years, that 32,000,000 persons on farms supply fa needs of 50 to 70 per cent more city dwellers than the ss»* number of farmers supplied thirty years ago and that tat capital investment for tractor operation of a farm is generally greater than for horse and mule operation...
...Burnham...
...First Student: Is political bacteriology ever likely to become a recognized profession like embalming or advertising...
...But you will notice that while they are shaped the same, the Trotsky breed is much smaller, and lacks the energy and pugnacity of B. Stalinismus...
...echoed proposals that sounded for ¦ all the world like something out of the Social Democratic Federation...
...Instructor: Unhappily, its love life is exceedingly dreary...
...As a politico-microscope would be valueless unless it were wired for sound, and since all politics are sound and fury primarily, we shall now hear what the microbes have to say for themselves...
...They are all milling about and seem to be attacking one another...
...Translated into terms cf private gangsterism the story would read as follows: Kid Hitler, a notorious gunman who is known to have committed a number of brutal murders, has given a strange explanation of his attempt at another murder...
...Now look into the eyepiece and tell us what you see...
...If the remaining crab) are withheld from Norway then Hitler's action constitutes I veto of the decision to extend them...
...There are the bacteria Libertad and Labora...
...your columnist Victor RieSel did recently that was really pretty bad...
...His is a class in political bacteriology...
...Down with pipettes...
...Then you flkomised rashly that you would cl^nge your mind on all of this, admit that Lyons was right, if Hitler were to make peace with sAlin...
...Instructor: A very shrewd observation, Johnson...
...This timidity, hesitation and indecision in the face of brutal actions by the totalitarian powers is too often characteristic of the powers opposed to them...
...of the economic forces that industry has felt since the Crw War...
...The latter an kicked around the lot...
...Yet life is a serious business to these squirming, fighting, minute organisms...
...Calming himself for a moment...
...Apology Awaited Those are Ae things you supported direct™ and indirectly by silence, by furious rationalizations, by pleading that murder is an old Rus?jan custom...
...Therefore I still a Ait your apology to the millions X Soviet concentration camps, tAhe thousands executed in the last purges, to the Russian worArs and peasants whose enslavement by a totalitarian state ^ou have condoned in a hundred ways, and to the Socialist ideal which you have insulted by applying its name to the Russian horrors...
...What makes it a dilemma, and what makes it tragic, is that once . you begin meeting force with force, you have already destroyed most of your morality...
...They say the last thing a newspaperman reads is his own paper...
...That's all for this morning...
...Too "Wrought Up" Some people (Christian pacifists, for example) say they would rather die whole than undergo such a transmogrification...
...First Bacterium (squirming at the end of the instructor's pipette) : We are the only true proletarian party in the world...
...together with the victim...
...Sinclair's re^onse was to send on a clipping from the magazine Common Sensi wherein he magnanimously aOTnits that the invasion of Finkted by Russia was to him "the painful social event of his lifetime," adding: "If it would not sound too cynical, I would repew concerning it the remark of TaHyrand: 'It is worse than a crime...
...of faec?t aggression...
...instructor: Not always...
...Long live the Fourth International...
...curtain...
...With microscopic dignity...
...The instrutocr, a mild-mannered, bespectacled young man in his early thirties, if a recognized authority in his subject which, at the moment, is receiving widespread publicity in the press...
...Second Bacterium (posturing and throwing its infinitesimal weight against the tip of the pipette...
...Urges 'Leader' Take Calm View Of Pacifists From WALTER MORRIS To the Editor: The problem has a beard at least a foot long...
...Second'Student (wko is now at the eyepiece): It seems to me that the Trotsky-Coyoacanum bug looks very much like the Bacteria Stalinismus...
...A perfect example of a blind-alley in nature...
...While the amoeba just sits And broods . . . and splits...
...Hitler did...
...We are the only true Trotskyites...
...Their argument is that in the long run the revob-tion increases jobs for rural labor and as a rule when t*ej attempt to buttress this optimism by figures they are tively answered by those who have intimate knowledge • agricultural trends...
...Instructor: Exactly...
...He is adjusting the mechanism of strange contraption which he calls a politico-microscope...
...Second Student (to a young lady at his side, in ad undertone): Did you ever hear this one...
...Very much like some of our best people in that respect...
...It was known for a long time as "the problem of evil...
...It dies immediately when immersed in a solution of aqua democraticus...
...No matter what happens, I've observed,, he always remains whole and intact Travels about in luxury from one part of the culture to another while his followers are busy splitting and devouring each other.- (Extracting another bug from the drop) :¦ Now here is a member of an opposing faction...
...First Student: He looks exactly like the other one...
...GioTersville, N...
...Now it's in a class by itself...
...Instructor: And now let's take Cannon out again and hear what he has to say in rebuttal...
...I don't know, of course, the exact date of its birth, but I suspect it was about the time in old Egypt that Breasted calls "the dawn of conscience...
...Fishing him out at the end of the pipette...
...It is to be hoped that the committee will also reveal the extent to which the highly mechanized farm has ** panded in the past decade as this is a corporate phases' agriculture, including absentee owners whose "contflP* tion" to farming is drawing dividends...
...instbuctor (taking a slide from a cage): Biological bacteriology, as you know, concerns itself with the study of the life histories of bacteria, their work in nature and the means of combating those which cause disease...
...What stands out is that agriculture is feeling the taf...
...Third Student: But why is the Trotsky-" Coyoacanum harmless in the United States and why was it toxic in Russia in 1917...
...PERILS AHEAD gENATOR WAGNER "said a mouthful in his letter* Local 89 of the International Ladies' Garment Wo*' ers' Union when he declared that reactionary forces aij determined to scuttle the Labor Act and that the sput * Labor's ranks encourages them...
...Bacterium Burnham (its voice now magnified ten thousandfold): It is we who are the proletarians...
...All oar opponents are scoundrels, thieves and knaves...
...The Workmen's Circle, the powerful fraternal organization founded forty years ago, will celebrate its fortkoi anniversary throughout the country while in New York fa members and friends will celebrate in Madison Square Gat den Sunday, beginning at 2 P. M. The same evening a buffet supper and reception in honor of Bertha H. Mailly and Algernon Lee of the Rand School of Social Science will climax the Third-of-a-Century drive of the school for support by trade unions and other tympe-thetic organizations...
...Henry Neumann of the Ethical Culture Society from ten to eleven o'clock...
...Comes the revolution...
...They split to multiply and then they proceed to devour themselves...
...They are born, live, split and die in a world all of their own...
...Instructor (dropping him off the pipette and switching off the micro-microphone): To us, of course, it all sounds fantastically humorous...
...As the curtain rises we find him at a work-bench surrounded by a group of about fifteen students...
...Instbucob: Yes, of-course...
...THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION JNCREASING attention has been given to the revoluuat in American agriculture in the past ten years...
...But that likelihood is remote in America—at the moment...
...The New Leader congratulates these two great institutions and their officials for their splendid work over severs] decades...
...It was eight inches long in Plato's day...
...I will proceed...
...They believe that their martyrdom would have a redemptive power that nothing else can have, possibly...
...TIME: The day after tomorrow...
...invests*** which the poorer farmers cannot afford with the reta» that they must yield their meager assets in the compet»"* struggle...
...Without coloration this particular bug is nondescript and almost invisible...
...Today they are belligerent but harmless...
...hates...
...The farmer is producing more than he ever did"!** his income has not kept pace with his increasing productic* Tractors and other machines require a capita...
...Ms^ private and governmental surveys reveal that this hnal tactor of individualist enterprise is undergoing changes "llist profoundly affect rural life...
...If I remember, the Communist press for a long tim...
...The class laughs uproariously...
...These figures were presented by Louis H. Bean of fa Department of Agriculture...
...It's been gathering a group of colleagues for me whose nose for news and keen analysis of it when they round it out of dark corners, puts the paper far above the old days, when it was merely the best labor paper...
...Instructor: Now the strange thing about the Trotsky-Coyoacanum is that when it is not toxic and fattening in a political Wood-stream, it turns on its own kind and devours itself...
...Today, however, we will observe a variant of Bacterium Stalinismus, namely, the rod-shaped Bacillus Trotsky-Coyoacanum...
...In political bacteriology, however, we are concerned with organisms which infect the body politic instead of the body physical...
...it is a blunderi' " To all of Tfhich I replied as follows: V My dear Si^l?ir: Thank you for the excerpt from Common Sense...
...a thin squeak is heard faintly): Pip squeak...
...But increasingly for some time I've had to read every bit of The New Leader...
...Norway is charged with being an accomplice of Britain in a proposed invasion of the former by the latter...
...He added thai these ditional foes" of the working masses "would abolish projects and bring back the aoup kitchen" and halt <¦* expansion of slum clearance and public housing...
...Instructor (with an almost imperceptible smile): Most assuredly...
...You fellows had better come upstate for a week-end and rest up...
...Some of the darkest forces in American life are no* * the march...
...Monsieur Pivert knows that, his wartime proposals . . . are echoed daily in the Communist press...
...In all other respects, however, they are alike...
...That is why, despite its constant procreation by splitting, the sum total of its numbers do not increase...
...There come times when moral men must choose between defending themselves and their ideals by meeting force with force, or taking what the religionists call "the way of the Cross...
...Hitler is responsible for the war and the Pis*-dent states that a state of war exists...
...When kept out in the open they're absolutely non-malignant...
...Last week every organism in this, culture (pointing) split in half, yet when we counted them yesterday their number remained the same—802.'- A truly astounding phenomenon...
...Fourth Student: Is there a germicide specific for it...
...I'm not so wrought up as all that, and I hope I never will be...
...Norway and the gangster decided to slug Norway and put him in the protective custody of the Kid...
...Instructor.(turning up the dials): Let's hear what he has to say...
...Becomes very dispirited and unhappy when without its coloration...
...Characteristic of the species...
...Instructor: Precisely...
...Letters To the Editor Upton Sinclair's Half-way Recanting Skirts Issue From EUGENE LYONS To the Edifl: In an expanded correspondence a couple of years ago, Upton Sinclair undertook to concede that his support of the Stalin t«ror was a mistake—if Stalin and Hitler would get togethe^ In a recent New Leader, I, the other party ra.iue controv«tfsy, reminuea nun of this undeirhAng...
...Instructor (smiling): Oh, yes...
...The most interesting of all the bugs we are likely to study this semester...
...Are they harmless...
...The Kid charges that a neighbor of his victim had planned to attack Mr...
...Now I don't hold this, position myself, and I know you don'tr-and Willi Schlamm seems almost hysterical for want of warlike action...
...Student: I.see some movement, but the outlines aren't very distinct...
...But whatever you like to call it...
...Student: I see them quite clearly now...
...First Student: And what are its sex habits...
...Bacterium Cannon (furious and lathing out futilely at the pipette): Comes the revolution and there will be no pipettes...
...On the face of it...
...KID HITLER *T*HE latest batch of "documents" released by Berlin do not differ from those the Nazis issued after the conquest of Poland...
...CREDITS TO NORWAY I AST MARCH the Expert-Import Bank extended a crei of $10,000,000 to Norway of which only $200.000 W used when the Nazis made war on that country, it gov appears that Norway is not to receive the balance of tas credit because the President declares a state of war onto between Germany and Norway, The loan was extended for civilian purposes and cHbsa needs are even greater now than before the Nazi» invocad the country...
...In turn the students peer into the eyepiece to observe the operation) : Now let's hear what this one is.saying...
...At nq time in the history of our country has there been a greater need for graduate political health officers...
...The body politic today simply teems with dangerous bacteria...
...One has been the Red Cross of the Labor Mas?-.' ment and the other has the distinction of being the pioneer in labor education in the United States- Both deserve it-creasing support and we wish them many more yean of useful service in their respective fields...
...This notorious gunman is still at large and it is known that he has other prospective victims or...
...Second Student: But aren't there beneficial political bacteria...
...Second Student: It's unbelievable!: Instructor: As a matter of fact the controversy about the latest fission or split is still going on in this very drop of grayish culture...
...But there was one thin...
...Within that gray drop of culture these bacteria, like human beings, have their petty loves and...
...So what...
Vol. 23 • May 1940 • No. 18
