Where the News Ends
HARRISON, CHARLES YALE
Where the News Ends By Charles Yale Harrison /VJ? of the minor lessons to be learned from the recent debacle in Europe is that intellectuals make exceedingly inept military strategists. The...
...CECRETARY OF LABOR FB^ KINS will either resign ihortrf or find her post lifted out im under her placidity...
...Pro-Ally members, as a result of the intransigeanee of the leadership, will circulate a petition demanding that no disciplinary action be taken against those who would express themselves against the Nazis...
...Rumor has it that several important Socialists are up on charges for having publicly urged aid to the Allies...
...HE German-American Bund is * ordering its people in Montana to support Senator Wheeler...
...UNCLE SAM *J*HE Ford Motor Company is offered a contract to mmafacture 3,000 airplane engines for the United States sd 6,000 for Great Britain...
...Now Congress says they shall m denied this opportunity, shall be turned off to beg or itemf Does Congress really aim at making them hate America) No, but Congress just didn't think what it was doing...
...another loaf of bread...
...In common with all of us I am, as a liberal and radical, guilty of many and grievous sins...
...Winchell has been giving his 20,000,000 readers some of the most effective anti-totalitarian exposes we've read in many a month...
...Schlamm's readers were treated to miracles of strategic dexterity accompanied by a running fire of scorn ie* alltodk the clumsy Allied propaganda with a grain of salt...
...Your courageous struggle in these trying times deserves full support...
...to provide a basis for mock trials and mass executions, it loom very much as if what happened in New York on June 20 w t joint enterprise of two gangs of spies and stool-ptpnm...
...WILNER BRANCH...
...A platform from which every element of manly frankness was carefully ironed out in committee...
...Thus, on February 3: "How often, since the •rtfc started has he (Hitler) announced 'furious, unparalleled attacks in the West,'—but he was •never mad enough to do it...
...Schlamm last week turned upon the healthiest influence in France as the cause of the disaster...France did not capitulate, he said, she was, .earaslied...
...To talk exclusively about the preservation of democratic institutions and labor legislation when the very existence of democracy and labor as a social force is threatened, is shameless confusion, unworthy of -any group which claims to be realistic...
...Henry Ford refuses to prodaee any such goods for the British...
...Not the French working class but the French ruling class is responsible for the catastrophe...
...But it dares not say what its authors mean—namely, abandon our -friends and appease the mortal enemies of democracy...
...He says: "There is only one thing more dangerous than the lying of a demagogic cheat: the demagogy of decent men...
...trialists...
...It will binge on President Roosevelt's deal with Stimson and Knox...
...SENDS $25 CONTRIBUTION From S. BERNSTEIN Secretary of the Wilner Branch, Workmen's Circle...
...A platform meant to be interpreted this way at one place or time and that way at another, so that its thoroughly reactionary character may perhaps not be understood by the voters until it is too late...
...WAS IT A G.S.P.-G.P.U...
...Of course not -bat Congress did not stop to think...
...disparage the natural impulses of a nation and a people to protect themselves against destruction because in doing so gome social refinements may be temporarily Curtailed, parallels the counsel not to put a lock on your door because it may not match the period furniture to be installed ultimately...
...As though there are no schools in Nazi scores of social reforms and still at the same Germany, as though the Nazis have not instituted time found 47 billions of dollars for their war on the democracies...
...I need hardly tell you that it is most painful to me to sever close associations of over twenty-five years' duration...
...When all is safe, a little silliness may be excused...
...My skepticism proceeds from the realization that no matter how intense and admirable a man's hatred of fascism may be, this capacity is not a primary requisite in the make-up of a political and military analyst...
...Ufi Mali 'Hari in the Socialist Party tell us via the usual grapevine route that there was quite a' stir at last Thursday's "secret?' session...
...Our own little Dsjaem bureajaVfile service rermlp.** on June 14th Bill FosterVs** in the Daily Worker emtstoei the following: "There other path to freedom being for the masses...
...To the Editor: Enclosed please find check for if35 which our branch cheerfully contributes to The New Leader...
...You don't know the meaning of the phrase 'pasty-faced' until you've seen a Freneh factory worker...
...And in support of this I offer the testimony of a French newspaper, the Petite Gironde, which, after all, has a better right to speak than any of us: "Thus came the end of twenty years of errors and faults...
...j ' ' As this issue of The New Leader goes to press (late Thursday afternoon) it is not certain which of the half-dozen aspirants will have the more than doubtful "honor" of carrying the banner for the party of reactionary isolationism in this campaign...
...How protect domestic liberties from the danger which militarism in times of peace always involves...
...and that her name, like those of Mrs...
...Overnight the perspectives of the dwindling democracies have changed with cataclysmic rapidity...
...These Nazi war expenditures, as Otto D. Tolischus points out, are greatly in excess of the war budgets of the far wealthier democracies...
...Moreover, against Hitler's 200 divisions, it now appears that the French had not, more than sixty, and at no time, according to Petain, did the British Expeditionary Force exceed 10 divisions...
...Certainly not any tralr democratic elements...
...facts, shrewd maneuvers and material trends Dehind Europe's* fronts...
...the fracas...
...But that is no excuse for being silly...
...Stalinite unions, the attacks on anti-Communists in the Cafeteria and Painters elections...
...Times of danger call for good sense...
...And as late as April 6, barely'more than a month before the Nazi assault on the Low •Countries and France, our analyst of figures and facts blithely announced: "Speaking about war ih.earnest, Goering's most recent statement that Germany will soon strike militarily against the west is probably nothing but the old trick the Nazis like to use from time to time...
...I do not, however, want to be charged also with the guilt of sheer stupidity and inability to learn from mistake heaped upon mistake...
...And so France fell...
...WRITING of wars ream*"" " of rumors that our colleague, Charles Yale lfc»*J"2 was assaulted the other Lee Chumley's These glgS this department's slentts/liS It seems that HarriseiM*"'* defend (?) a friend (?) about to be slugged...
...Not the two hundred families who let France go to her death with her wealth untouched rather than take a cut in income...
...CONGRESS DIDNT THINK THE nation is facing grave danger—not absolutely imminent, but plainly in view...
...Dewey, Gannett, Hoover, Taft, Vandenberg, Willkie—it's Hobson's choice which of them is least fit for the presidency...
...acquire citizenship...
...Not the greasy spirit of the shop-keeper which counts the cost in sous no matter how tragic the moment...
...Thus, the battle of Skagerrak was a trap into which the Germans had stupidly stumbled...
...The double bombing might well have been planned to make it appear that both these groups were innocent victims of lawks) violence and to discredit all who detest both totalitarian groups...
...And so I think it's about time someone called an armistice on all armchair generalship...
...WASHINGTON reporters and ™ columnists hear that the biggest story to break there in 10 years will hit the front pages shortly...
...Notice the similarity in the play given to the National Maritime Union, the .Cafeteria Workers Union, the Transport Workers, Mike Quill, Elmer Brown, and other CJ.O...
...Yet, week after week Mr...
...It wants to have tariff protection "determined by scientific methods," modified by reciprocal agreements which . must be subjected'to the scientific process known as congressional log-rolling...
...And on May 21st, **** French and Belgian and forces were being slough**** Flanders, he wrote in tit *•* (we almost said newspaper) ep* "If British-French-Atnerkm* perialism should win the tWSP war, the results would U **• more reactionary than tktl *** after the World War vietsrf- j* Allies' cause is not a 'leetsr •** in contrast to Hitler's...
...Those from Great Britain presenting the Labor- angle have been especially illuminating and constructive...
...Ottawa...
...If to this amount is added the 27 billion marks spent since the invasion of Poland, we have a total of 117 billion marks or about 47 billion dollars at the nominal rate of exchange...
...Sue awl" the Allied imperialist in tkie** even as support, of .the Gens* imperialist, can only lead ti* deepest enslavement of htontsfc not to democracy...
...E what sense is there in letting them run loose with no lawfej means of earning a livelihood ? It will not make them km dangerous...
...A Congress, many of whose members do all they can to prevent our giving aid to our European friends, passes an act providing that no unnaturalized immigrant may be employed on any WPA project...
...First, the majority of the unnaturalized immigrants are such only because they have not lived long enough to Jleand o+i the, Jl&fjt By VICTOR BIESEL CELDOM have New York newspaper circles snickered so frequently as they have over the technical ineptitude, the amazing flare for missing the news, the lack of sublety shown in paralleling the Communist Party line, and dismal failure to live up to the 18 months of pre-publication ballyhoo «hown by PMr New York's first new daily in 16 years...
...It was the few days of vacation with pay...
...m","jjg numerous well-wishers raHi** * our columnist's defenss, j**^ suffocating him...
...to "srive America's 50,000,000 Christians an opportunity to vote for peace...
...Nothing less...
...However, when Sidney Hill man was appointed director of the federal youth training project, Len DeCaux thought it of such inconsequence that he buried the item, giving less prominence to it than to the appointment of the director of the Connecticut C.I.O...
...In edition, after edition there is a consistent build-up of unions long known as part of the CP...
...The insignificant bombing of Sylt meant "that the period of AngloFrench wavering is over...
...Bearing in mind the Reichstag fire, which no one tow doubts was arranged by Goering, and the explosion a tit Rathskeller at Munich, accurately timed to occur just ifter Hitler had left the place, and bearing in mind the "eoaspiracies" which were faked by Stalin's G.P.U...
...The New York local stands practically alone in its isolationism...
...And look at the labor page on June 26—it could have appeared word for word in the Daily Worker...
...i As a result of Hitler's new application of an old principle, it is terribly urgent that we rid ourselves of a host of phoney notions...
...He wanted the Allies to win, as most of us do, but in his over-anxiety every fluttering desire was transmuted psychologically into a fact...
...Hahn even thought it essential to wire his wisdom to Philadelphia...
...And, of course, PM's first guest columnist is Lillian Hellman, of the comrades' apparatus in the theatre...
...The workers of France won another bottle of thin, sour wine...
...Bringing to mind "hark from the tombs a doleful sound...
...Well, that is one definite point—a definite self-contradiction...
...French labor, on whose banners are inscribed the glorious years of 17&—184S—4871 and now 1940,' gave all it could: blood, sweat, tears and the flower of its youth...
...The Republican party wants peace...
...Analysis is -an operation performed with the mind, not with the heart...
...FOR many months I've been an interested if skeptical reader of Mr...
...this commentator prefers to call it the 'daily edition' of "Friday...
...It was Alf M. Landon who, with almost juvenile simplicity, struck the real keynote of the Philadelphia convention...
...A dishonest and cowardly platform...
...For we do not believe the majority of the American people are morons...
...The one solitary thing that it says clearly is—"Smear the Roosevelt Administration...
...On the other hand, if bigger news had -not detracted attention from it, the incident might have had a considerable effect upon public opinion...
...czSeiiers -"--To the Editor Abraham EpsteinlQuits LiD...
...So he has intensified his anti-rearmament activities...
...The purpose of these threats is nothing but the shrewd idea of keeping .the Allies waiting nervously, while Germany sets undisturbed on completely different fronts...
...Not a word...
...The refusal to see altered facts even when they are of the most epoch-making character' is reaction of the blindest HAILS "PLANES TO ALLIES" EDIT AS BEST EDIT From Thomas K. Finletfer To the Editor: May I congratulate you on your issue of June 1st I think that your leading, editorial on planes to the...
...kind, not radicalism or liberalism...
...With every kind wish, I am Very sincerely yours, ABRAHAM EPSTEIN, Executive Secretary, American Association for Social Security...
...Not a word...
...It is interesting to speculate whattke mouthpieces of capitalist interests would have said if a labor union had refused to let its members work on such an osier...
...r\REW PEARSON, like Walter Winchell, knows everything...
...office to soma minor post...
...DISAPPOINTED, despairing *for the future, Mr...
...nTETD like to return to Walter Winchell some of the orchids he has been handing out around town...
...The landing of Nazi troops in Norway was doomed to a failure...
...In Germany everyone was harnessed to the war machine...
...Not the conniving, contemptible French politician .than which there is nothing lower on the face of the earth...
...It wants permanent armament on a gigantic scale and wants also to "preserve the liberties which are the priceless heritage of America...
...Ignoring the criminal lack bf material which handicapped the general staffs, he repeatedly called for an immediate attack on Germany...
...It promises the Negro citizens a square deal and protection'from lynching...
...American public feeling always turn against those who throw bombs and tends to sympathize with those at whom they are thrown...
...Not a word...
...I can no longer remain in your midst, however, as -I can find nothing in common with a group whose leadership calmly continues to debate metaphysical dogmas when everything we hold dear and that upon which these values are based it toppling around us...
...Comments...
...Schlamm's intentions...
...President Roosevsttfr1** vocal in distributing, tear W**** others, but he would do V*& to look closer to home...
...axe-wielder in Buffalo—who this week urged upon the Grand Old Party the adoption of a "non-involvement in war" plank...
...Finally, in our opinion, a platform on which the Republican party will ride to defeat...
...periphery...
...Some call PM the uptown carbon of the Daily Worker...
...In such a case it is in order to ask the question, Cui bono) Who stood-to profit by the affair...
...Here are '"material trends" with a vengeance...
...Uke% Foreign News and Labor Party Articles From GRACE MacINNIS Secretary of the CCF Parlia-^ •mentary Group To the Editor: I want tq...
...We wonder whether he knows that Mrs...
...We shall not say of crimes since we still believe that those who have brought us to this pass were merely ignorant and blind—they .have drawn us into an adventure that dumbs us with stupor...
...a bombing in Twelfth Street could have been blamed on the Nazis and might have softened popular hatred of the Stalinites...
...t^IFS hasbeen simplified for the Republican Party poKcymakers by the Reverend Herman J. Hahn—who will be remembered as the S.P...
...31, and '32, when the Republican party was in power...
...Hits Dogmatic Isolationism Ta-4fie-Editor: .-^rjgent the following letter to the League for Industrial Democracy: rv=ir?i^»__t ___ ------------Hear Jiarry Undler: •!Sfwr?fwith tender my resigna.t&n as a "member of the Board of Directors of the League for Industrial Democracy...
...by the corps of prophets whose proportionate casualties surpass those suffered by thedefeated but heroic defenders of the Loire...
...Had only one bomb been used, the effect would have bam different...
...Hitler's men might have won sympathy and the Communists would have been condemned...
...it's as old as war itself...
...A COWAE0LY PLATFORM THE Republican convention of 1940 will go down in ' history as one of the most unpatriotic and ignoble gatherings of its kind held in this country within the last eighty years...
...congratulate you on the good foreign news articles which you have been running this sprjng...
...You can't build and maneuver bombers and warships with Weltschmerz...
...The jab *• go to either Tobin, Lafwnfc or an army officer now (l **> military government serrlm...
...Well, how about French and Dutch Guiana, Curacao, Guadeloupe, and Martinique...
...See how consistently there is no news of similar nature about AFL unions and leaders...
...But it dues not compare the lynching figures of.the last seven years with those of the HardingCoolidge-Hoover period...
...which French defeat was a foregone conclusion...
...It will cover the bonding of highways, underground airdromes, shipyards—and will he received 1by *bwh^'^seettli ism" from the nation's indaa...
...Not the traitors who felt they could make a more profitable deal with Hitler than they could with their own people...
...It must not be imagined that I here...
...Who doesn't...
...It wants to defend our "essential outposts...
...It promises to "put our idle millions back to work," but it dares not compare the unemployment figures of 1933 to 1940 with those of 1930...
...Indeed, as one who for years had ' to contend with the contempt for labor ¦ legislation on the part of radicals and liberals because such laws were supposed to hamper i the revolution, the sudden exaltation of these legislative reforms above the most imperative needs of the nation is so confusing as ; to verge on the treacherous...
...The militant Reverend Hahn must have been pervaded by a feeling of social justice when he ureed the G.O.P...
...And not by treason, stupidity or greed, as many of us supposed, but because "German tanks proved to be stronger than Leon Blum's 40-hour week, airplanes stronger than the subtleties of modern French poetry, the Panzerdivisions stronger than the ^Popular . Front's progressive social security laws...
...That is just the disgraceful weakness of the platform, from the standpoint of political honesty and courage...
...We have a good platform, he said in effect—a platform which we were able to adopt without debate and without a dissenting vote, and which our candidates, whoever they are, can interpret as they please all through the campaign...
...Allies is one of the best statements on the subject that I have'yet seen...
...That's hitting below OWS * transmission belt...
...It seems clear that neither bomb was intended to do serious damage...
...What we need in thia desperate moment is more applied mathematics and less wishful thinking...
...That is pure silliness, from two points of view...
...There woald be a sort of logic in shooting them—wickedly cruel logic, fit only for the dictatorships, but logic nevertheless...
...V One of the most significant "material trends" that has affected the outcome of the military^ struggle so far is contained in the fact that Hitler spent 90 billion marks for prepardness ; prior to the outbreak of the war...
...FORD VS...
...And so on until the moment of doom...
...icon imperialism is also S***j laden with guilt for the F** war...
...It will make them more dangerous, for it will leave them no choice but to become, if they can, the paid and servile tools of Nazist, Fascist, and Communist stoolpigeons...
...If in addition to this superiority of war expenditure and' fighting man-power we add some 9,000 tanks and about 12,000 planes, the reason for the Nazi victory becomes apparent at once...
...News Service, in* dastrial union chiefs are given quite a play...
...Robert H. Jackson, is being used by the comrades...
...Drew Pearson is a member of the Stalinite, Workers' Alliance front dubbed the Daughters of the American Depression...
...It was the few new hospitals that brought a proud people to their knees...
...Look through that fellow-traveling publication of Cameron MaeKenzie, then thumb through PM...
...One of our Civil War generals put the matter sue- ¦ cinctly when he summarized all military strategy as getting the "fustest with the mostest men...
...Ever since the dawn of organized warfare, successful strategy has been based upon elementary arithmetical principles in which an ounce, of horse sense is worth a ton of theorizing...
...For that the GermanAmerican Bund and the Communist Party are launching a boycott of the columnist The drives, strangely enough, started simultaneously...
...They cordially hate Stajg and Hitler and Mussolini...
...THERE are those win ttt* * the collapse of France km** lapsed the post-pact line of Russia...
...In one week he spoke before a Communist WPA group, several meetings of the Communist section of the American Labor Party headed by party-line Morris Watson, and at the 'anti-war" rally of the Stalinite League of American Writers and Theatre Arts Committee...
...There is" not the slightest indication that Nazi Germany has any intention of attacking the Maginot line...
...And somehow I feel it is indecent to quarrel and bicker at a time when a million graves are newly opened...
...And if I choose my colleague, Willi Schlamm, as a case in point, it is only because I feel that his bitter disappointment has recently resulted in a frame of mind which borders dangerously on reaction...
...Eiekiel...
...He needn't worry about alienating his Italian voters, and is satisfying them both now that their foreign policies parallel, each other...
...It is true that German workers slaved twelve hours a day while Frenchmen labored but eight, but that was because Germany was a bankrupt state while France was reckoned as one of the richest countries in the world...
...We recognize the heed of such a sober, interesting, fighting psper, and are glad to help...
...French papers please dopy...
...but in France while some were toiling eight hours a day in the steel mills and munition plants, others were disporting themselves at the luxurious hotels at Biarritz and on the Riviera...
...It wants to "uphold in war the Monroe Doctrine...
...Is that what Congress desires...
...It was the eight-hour day that did the trick...
...J*HE simultaneous "bombing" of the offices of a Commamat paper and a Nazist agency last week looks phony...
...They assure you, seriously, that schools aiw more socially valuable than bombers—when • the beast have bombers to destroy your schools...
...It dares not come out openly against the housing program and the progressive socialization of the hydroelectric power industry, and it rates the public intelligence so low as to hope that the common herd will not see=j«hat is meant by reducing to a minimum governmental competition with private business...
...TALKING of defense reminds * us that Vito Marcantonio is a lot happier these days...
...It is so Worded that, on every vijal and concrete issue, it can be made to mean this or that or the other thing as directed by a partisan pulse-feeler between now and November Fifth...
...And how about the Nazist and Fascist preparations in Latin America...
...Harrison said: Jjf* all fist-fights between /M*^ tuals, not a blow was Condolences...
...impugn Mr...
...no matter how sincerely held...
...We have but "one'problem before us—our continued existence as a free and independent nation...
...How about Iceland and Godthaab, the stepping stones from Naziland to North America, if Britain is vanquished...
...1 hope I shall not be accused of pouring salt on open wounds if I now proceed to resurrect some of the prophecies which led the gullible to hope for victory in a situation where only catastrophe was inevitable...
...The majority of these have come hem to escape totalitarian oppression...
...if the outrage in Battery Place had stood alone...
...and the announcement that Harry Hopkins has devised a 10' billion dollars public works program tied in with national defense...
...And if, among the unnaturalized foreigners, there an some—and some there are, but by no means a majority_ who sympathize with Stalinism, Hitlerism, or Mossolimsji and wish success to the totalitarian governments—-eves a their case what good is the act going to do...
...The most inglorious defeat in this war so far has been suffered not by the French armies, but...
...In that respect the blitzkrieg is nothing new...
...Signs of the times...
...They love their adopted hl?m land, because it has given them freedom and a chance to lire "fry honest labor...
...Uncle Sam very properly cancels the whole order and is looking for a captain of industry who won't think it is his function to dictate the nation's foreign policies...
...No amount of anti-fascist emotion should have iben permitted to obscure these grim facts in the face of...
...Schlamm's column of comment whose declared purpose it is "to analyze figures,and...
...Not the penny-pinching members of the French purchasing commissions in America who haggled over the price of planes as" France was bleeding to death...
...Schlamm proceeds, in his anguish, to offend every decent progressive in the world...
...But all six are about equally qualified' as spokesmen for a morally bankrupt party...
...Secondary issues which have no relation to this objective merely dissipate our national energy, determination arid unity in the face of the only task before us...
...That is just what the agents of the Berlin-Moscow axis in this country need...
...Henry F. Grady and Mrs...
...N the C.I.O...
...Not content with this arrant nonsense, Mr...
...New Ysrk...
Vol. 23 • June 1940 • No. 26
