Democracy in Torment
SCHLAMM, WILLI
Democracy in Torment Socialist Swedish, Danish Gov'ts. Face Destruction — or Aid to Nazis By wILLI SCHLAMM Closing ones' eyes has turned out ftf Be the •wor^ of all possible bad policies. ...
...and would be lass decent than such an attitude towards the victims of totalitarian infamy and their own sense of r e sponsibility...
...From a review of the press comments, such a situation seems hard for the average American to grasp, but it is hard only because the American psychology is without a monarchial background...
...Gayda will not carry out at once the threat to suppress all the Swiss journals...
...The Danish government had, of course, no choice between capitulation and resistance, once the Nazi troops stood on its soil...
...The Hays organization has been giving the Museum of Modern Art Film Library/an annual grant of $30,000—the $7Q,<40 annual balance being supplied jointly by Nelson A. Rockefeller and John (Platteburg) Hay Whitney (who appears to be a particular target of the comrades these days...
...Washington correspondents, who can predict 1944 campaign slates,, fails dismally to see through their own union leaders...
...Section 1, Paragraph K, any attempt to resign would bring with it a large fine and expulsion...
...By Charley Edward Russell The News Reel H0...
...There will be a slam-bang fight at the next meeting of the N.EX...
...For everj- Danish Socialist, Father Stauning (as he is called) may have saved, he has made easier the murder of one hundred British Socialists...
...No sentimentality whatsoever would have limited Himmler's lynching of all former supporters of the self-exiled government...
...He is taking the White House place " that was filled during early years of the Roosevelt administration by Louis Howe as the intimate adviser and representative of the President Jersey City's Mayor Hague has already protested at taking orders from an ex-Socialist...
...But how could the Swedish Social Democratic Party allow herself and her leaders to connect their names with such documents and such policy...
...Thousands'of Swedish Democrats and Socialists (not to speak about many political refugees, still trapped in Sweden) would suffer extermination...
...Should not Hansson rather have resigned than carry out a policy of virtual aid to Hitler's war against Attlee's and Benin's England, although obviously under duress...
...It ha* wow been revised...
...Or interview selected members of the United States Chamber of Commerce...
...But for him there would have been no Communist upheavals in Northern Italy that produced Mussolini...
...Two iccounts of a naval action were sent out, >ne by the British, one by Mr...
...That fact makes all the difference in the world—that and the other crystallized fact that so...
...But only a thoroughly superficial onlooker, who never in his life felt the painful strain of responsibility for other peoples' life and welfare, could refuse to comprehend the dreadful, the tragic dilemma for Stauning, Hansson and their friends...
...now they have to pay with humiliation for' idealism, with shame for pacifism, with starvation for their native idea that anyone can calmly continue to eat butter, when everywhere else guns explode...
...They ' acted, and still act, as subjectively decent men...
...It is the most impressive repetition in history, accelerated by but one new element...
...In addition to the country's entirely unhampered transformation into a basis of direct warfare against England, the Danish farmers, workers and intellectuals, in whose names Stauning had performed the marvelous job of democratic reforms, would have been treated as hostages for their leaders in exile...
...Under present circumstance* this means that Mr...
...If Mr...
...Secretary Eugene Dennett are key men...
...Here is the old Holy Alhaiide, sjfter the 150 years ;it has hung, as a stuffed specimen in the museum of history, come to life again, and careering all over the lot...
...Face Destruction — or Aid to Nazis By wILLI SCHLAMM Closing ones' eyes has turned out ftf Be the •wor^ of all possible bad policies...
...Whitney's patriotism would be better served if ha drilled less and watched his donations more...
...many European democracies have attempted a- compromise with the monarchical system and witJi the caste always inseparable from that system...
...scores of National Negro Congress delegates will be present—and of course .the much toured Congressman Vito Marcantonio...
...But despite her kind words, well vouch for the accuracy of the following: The Party is being held together only because there isn't sufficient splitting energy left...
...I consider the decision of Stauning and Hansson to be wrong...
...As Mr...
...Laurence could net be employed by Mr...
...The entire Danish army was no match for a single German division...
...York Times may soon rumble with more than*the streamlined presses...
...We should openly face the fact that two Social Democratic governments in Europe have 'chosen to accept Hitler's orders rather than abdicate...
...And after all, it usually simmers doicn to this, that a man values more his privileges, rank, swank or profits than his country, faith or decency...
...What are sentimental fluffs like a ballot box and liberty compared with the solid advantages under the universal swastika...
...Watch the transmission belts turn up: Every borough has its Community Peace Congress, People's Peace Committee, Mothers' Peace Movement, etc...
...So the old emigres after 1793 found congenial refuge with noblemen in whatsoever other country—refuge and support...
...f\UR old friend "Fighting Words" is back again on book stare shelves...
...In Denmark and Sweden, if anywhere, democracy was put to work, arid'-~--while elsewhere peddlers of super-radical panaceas killed time and democracy's chances with cockeyed quarrels, the Scandinavian Social Democrats calmly built up a decent home for peaceful and adult nations...
...We need not evade the fact that the flood this man released as "Moses in Red" started the whole illimitable reaction that has ended in triumphant despotism...
...OECAUSE Jean Horie, New York City secretary of the American Youth Congress, is too openly a Stalinite, she has boen replaced as executive secretary of the Emergency Peace Mobilization Committee of Greater New York by Dr...
...It certainly is the same old Holy Alliance, disguised now: with .a piekelhaube and a pair at pants and much more ably managed but unmistakably the identical old beast...
...Secretary Goldblatt, in Washington, C.I.O...
...all you readers of history, come and have a look aj this and see if you have ever encountered (or imagined) its like...
...There was not the slightest doubt that such an agreement, saves Hitler hundreds of ships the British could catch were the "Nazis forced to bolster their Norwegian bases by sea...
...Despite all formal statements to the contrary the Stauning administration, acting under Nazi control, bears for the moment and for the future (which counts even more) the responsibility for Denmark's darkest and most shameful experience...
...And as always in genuine tragedies, the guilt was created in the past, working with 'blind violence into the present and future Denmark's and Sweden's democracy could not by any means have avoided the consequences of wishful pacificism and national egotism...
...After aH juicy dividends are better than elections and a full belly than constituent assemblies...
...in all countries they have exactly the same feeling about rag-tag...
...VUR little-read contemporary, Lillian Symes, is much perturbed over our "Winchellism on the Left...
...Congress is cold toward...
...We could excite Miss Symes' anti-British temperament even more—but this is all the item is really worth...
...When Norway was attacked and s combined Swedish-Allied action could have crushed.the Nazi invasion at the start, Sweden kept aloof, in order to avoid the suffering and the shame of war...
...We are now at the stage in which we are regaled with accounts of the excellent behavior of the Nazi conquerors toward the people whose lands and liberties they have stolen...
...Gayda points out, this action in itself constituted an intolerable' insult to Italy, to Fascism, to the very Jjuce himself...
...This sparkling hterary Bem wa* writtsn ,'t* these peaceful popular front days before the pact, by Dorothy Parker, Vincent Sheean, Dashiell Mammett, and edited by D&naat OcnUm Stewart...
...What have the workers gained from its destruction but enslavement and the demonstration that it was the only protection...
...So considerate, these Nazis are...
...One -of those aghast at the open Communist direction of the Guild convention is William Laurence, science editor of the New York Times, which the local Guild officers have long hesitated to organize because the vast majority of the Times' thousands of employees were anti-Stalinite ,and might have swung the balance of power against the local commissars...
...Consider the why of this visitation of low temperature and see where that leaves us in regard to modern feudalism...
...The devil himself could not have invented a more painful one...
...While there was still time to do their essential share in a hopeful defense of the common democratic heritage — the time' they were invited to send efficient help to Finland—the Scandinavian democracies preferred to let their neighbor die, in order to remain alive themselves...
...This year the Hays office denied the Library's grant...
...Still, it is to be hoped that Mr...
...that brought a~bout this unexampled defeat of the popular cause, a city has been named and statues wreathed...
...but I try to make others and myself understand the depth and seriousness of their dilemma...
...the staid New...
...The subjugation of Denmark would have proceeded exactly according to schedule...
...The Northern democrats, educated in an atmosphere" of simple decency, for the honest pursuit of humane happiness, did not conceive this brutal state of things in time...
...Mr...
...Documented charges of Communist infiltration into strategic PM posts will be made in current editions of the AmericanMercury and the Saturday Review of Literature...
...It is neither idealistic pacifism, nor sound national egotism, but just a fool's blindness to wait until one is attacked onself: that happens necessarily not before there is not the slightest chance for resistance...
...Being a City College lad myself, we could tell a tale or two about Walter, but suffice to sayhe is the legislative representative of the Stalinite Teachers Union Local 537...
...Gayda's reacent, modest and conservative staff...
...But if you really think that phenomenal or singular, listen to some New Deal critics and see if you can detect any essential difference...
...Italy is their near neighbor...
...1X7HILE we're in the Press Department, we'd like to report that " our own Deuxieme Bureau did a kttle probing last Friday afternoon after Ralph Ingeraoll's full-page reply to PM's critics...
...A late report has it that PM will take advertising and reduce its price to 3 cents sometime in September...
...It explains the Holy Alliance, for as it was with the kings, these beneficiaries of the existing society are bound by a tie of common Interest and terrorized by the same spectre in whatsoever clime...
...So are local officers of Labor's Non-Partisan League...
...but for him there would have been in Germany no excuse to destroy the German Republic...
...The surrender has doubtless broken his nation's and his party's moral forces...
...i That, it appears, lis the aptest condensation of the controlling thought of the upper elasses in France as it has been and still is the controlling thought in similar classes in other countries...
...Hard-boiled reporters, who yawn at Armageddon's headline stories, ere taken ill J$r their own shop representatives...
...And a tragedy began, which even amidst the universal European ordeal deserves special pity...
...Our agents report that the "leaflet"" was net seen in the New York Times, the Daily Mirror, the Tnnraal VtmWen, the New York Post, the World-Telegram, the, Sun or the Tribune...
...unions...
...the Nazis would control immediately not just a part, but the entirety of Swedish resources and communications...
...They don't bash the natives over the head with rifle butts* and actually leave them the shirts on their backs...
...They do it in all countries...
...Better ** Hitler than the C.G.T...
...The National Maritime Union will send 700 delegates, the American Youth Congress several hundred more...
...Instead, he stayed and gave the Nazi occupation a legal aspect...
...In honor of the man...
...His dream has come true...
...Walter S. Neff of the City College psyche department...
...Refusing the responsibility for Sweden's virtual joining the Nazi orbit, Hansson would, on the other hand, have saved his nation's and his party's honor and claim for a brighter day...
...JJeally nice fellows, when you come to know them...
...The next day the Gallup poll reported 57 per cent of the people of the United States ready, uncoerced, to vote to abolish the republic here...
...than the newspaper offices in which it was reported circulated...
...The kings of the present day, who are the Privilegees and Profit-mongers, put the old thing in action again to safeguard their power and perquisites...
...In Memphis last week thousands of American vewspape- workers were more securely clamped into the Comintern's apparatus...
...So the Swiss press printed both, leaving then.- readers to choose as to probable veracity...
...tin* couldn't bt found in Berr Browder's Yorikers domicile...
...Once in power, /flooring's Swedish jfriends would have yielded not only to Germany's demands (as Hansson did), but would have also transformed Sweden into a totalitarian jail...
...Without any formal occupation, Sweden has become a mere German province since the breakdown of -Norway's resistance...
...It implied doubt—doubt of the Italian character, doubt of Italy's destiny to reform and to manage the world, doubt of the divine mission and status of Italy's great leader...
...Dilemma Great The Nazi war came to them...
...More flagrant adherence to the CJP...
...Their balance Bheet was clean and positive, their work perhaps the one and only encouraging lesson, European democracy taught the world during the past decade...
...Nothing could be earner than to accuse the democratic governments in Denmark and Sweden of high treason against the ideals of liberty, because they continue to exijjt under Nazi control...
...In the long run pacifist policy does not avoid a single risk, but merely all'the chances of war...
...WASHINGTON is still laughing at the way in which John L, Lewis was surprised when he discovered that he had b+en left out on a limb when Senator Wheeler decided not to oppose Roosevelt for a third term...
...Our friend the Montanan—who by the way did little to help Jeanette Rankin beat anti-Semite Jacob ThorkeU son in the recent primaries—forgot to inform John Lewellyn that the bandwagon was around the corner and he was going to jump on...
...Miss Symes has gpod reason to be perturbed...
...Ingersoll has really seen the "leaflet" he charges is being distributed by competitors, he has been more fortunate...
...Even if it were true that moral arguments do not count for the formulation of a national policy— the national egotism, disguised as pacifism, is not just an immoral, but simply, a wrong policy, wrong from a purely egotistic point of view...
...tdeoUgtrsI dictatorship np in Millionaire Sow had something to do with the sadden cot...
...After the Austrian occupation, Himmler, Gestapo head, singled out Zalman for speedy arrest...
...Little excuse was given, but well wager Commissar Leyda—recently of Moscow—that Seymour Stern's exposure of CP...
...A New Technique In Subjugation YES SIR, everything is going right along according to schedule and program, thank you...
...easily they can see the glories > of a muzzled press across the border and perhaps they will make haste of themselves to join the goodly chorus that day and night swells the grand old anthem, "Duce, You're My Pippiro, I Love Only You...
...Zalman died on May 29th after more than two years in the concentration camp of Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen...
...And there is nothing new nor geographical about that...
...f<, , Besides the objective of security in power and pelf, there is now the tremendous impetus that lies in the hope of "stable labor conditions," no more strikes and no troublesome unions...
...Dr...
...we * would like to reveal that, Hollywood and Ben Hecht notwithstanding, newspapermen are fanny people...
...This camp is one of the most brutal camps operated by the Nazis...
...In California, C.I.O...
...Gayda Resents Doubt Of Italian Veracity *T"HE dastardly crime of the Swiss press, now reluctantly re* vealed to the world by the patient, long-suffering Gayda, seems indeed of a depravity indicating an even sterner retribution than he genial Italian censor has suggested...
...From Brooklyn to the Bay in Frisco, mimeographs twirl turning out blue-prints for an automaton national Peace Mobilization...
...No, the balance sheet of Sweden's and Denmark's Social Democratic parties is not as clean and convincing any more, as it used to be a few months ago...
...If Vito isn't punch drunk from constant rounds of "peace" talk at local fronts, his constitution is as strong as his Stalinism...
...Liberally we condemned the French parliament for voting, although with pistol at its head, to end the republican form of government in France...
...Local officers everywhere are members of the National Maritime Union, tha A.Y.A., and Stalinite CjI.O...
...What would have been the consequences of flight...
...Accepting the farce of a "friendly occupation" at its face value, Stauning could" probably prevent in some cases, damage to some decent Danish peoples' life, fortune and personal liberty...
...Step by step the Social Demoocratic government of Denmark is forced, by the logic of its remaining in power under Nazi orders, to line up economically and then even, strategically, with the German drive on the British Isles —the last trench of Danish democracy as well as of Stauning's British labor-friends' survival...
...Alternative Is Fascism To resign at that moment would have meant that the proNazi elements, in Sweden much stronger than in any Northern country, would have been the only available successors...
...But neither can it be doubted that Sweden had not the slightest chance to refuse the German demands: completely cut off from any possible military support, the ' nation would be virtually a helpless victim of an easy and quick Nazi intervention, possibly carried out in Cooperation with Stalin...
...Men like Westbrook' Pegler, Ferdinand Lundberg, or this commentator would find newspaper doors shut, once the Guild became sufficiently strong to secure closed shpps...
...A writer and attorney, he was vice-chairman of the Harand movement, world organization against race hatred and human distress...
...JAY LEYDA'S face is red...
...Both Social Democratic parties have carried out, in past years, the best constructive and progressive job ever witnessed in Europe...
...The Yipsola are back at their old tricks—passing resolutions against Porter's pro-British Labor Party article in a recent edition of the Socialist Call...
...The kings of the antique world put it together that by eombined effort they might safeguard their thrones and fat preserves from the common horde and rkg-tag, aroused by the French Revolution...
...Backer, publisher of the Poet, or Joe Patterson, owner of the Daily News...
...Thirty-three years ago he declared democracy to be the curse and bane of the working class and his mission to destroy it...
...No matter how many personal keyholes he peeps through, no matter how many political beds he hides under, the gentleman is usually 100 per cent inaccurate...
...This will be the Comintern's moat important American front—dedicated to proNazism, Anglo-phobia and an American-Russian friendship pact...
...Laurence isn't taking matters quietly...
...over virtually the whole of Europe, democracy has been annihilated as he wished it to be...
...the New Europe another chance...
...It too* loo raw...
...Paul Porter, of the Kenosha Labor, finally succeeded in getting a column to express Ids anti-Hitler views...
...The Call editorial board is split wide open on aid to the Allies...
...Because Hansson yielded, the Nazis could spare the relatively momentous efforts they would have had to make, were it to have been necessary to enforce their desire against Sweden's legal government...
...Not being able to make the world, believe in a more or less voluntary Danish cooperation, the German authorities would have to immediately impose a pure Nazi administration...
...The Stauning cabinet in Denmark and the Hansson cabinet in Sweden are still in power, although both nations are today nothing but tools in Hitler's hands...
...Gerhart Seger, prominent anti-Nazi fighter, made his escape from this camp early in the Hitler regime and exposed its horrors in his book: "A Nation Terrorized.** Heards on the Left By VICTOR RIESEL *T*0 paraphrase our favorite comedian, the lisping Lew Lehr...
...From the West Coast's State of Washington to Joe Cwrran's sea-going cells the comrades- make ready for the Chicago orgy...
...The wo were totally different in content though dealing with the same event...
...What were the consequences of Stauning's decision neither to flee, nor to resign ? Since his government, backed by a huge majority in the parliament and the nation remained, there was no possibility of entrusting the petty Fascist groups, eagerly waiting for such an opportunity, with the power...
...So an old French count thre\v himself into his blazing castle rather than see his former serfs go free...
...The Holy Alliance on a clean-cut balance-sheet basis, and I'll wager that there wasn't a groan in Cliveden when France was stillettoed...
...in New York...
...In the last two weeks the Swedish government, led by the outstanding Socialist Hansson, signed economic treaties with Hitler, yielding Sweden's essential raw materials for Germany's production of war against England, and gave the Nazi army formal permission to transport arms and soldiers across "neutral" Sweden to Norway, from' where they will be used for the ruthless onslaught against the British Isles...
...The comrades are keeping it all in safe hands...
...an excess profits tax," says the Washington despatch...
...Nazi Kultur Dispatches from abroad received by Jewish agencies here report the death in a German concentration camp of Dr...
...Zalman was the particular target of Nazi ire because of the high regard, despite his being Jewish, in which he was held by the entire Austrian people...
...Denmark was occupied in a few hours...
...Came the pact and the book was Mfithdrawn, fm^ntimtm by Harcourt Brace...
...Desperately the Northern states have tried to escape involvement in an ordeal from which there is no escape...
...It means, too, that under the Guild constitution the union management 1ms set up a terror system which can be used to blackmail —and blackmail politically—all opponents of the Guild's Communist leaders...
...Still there remains, objects Americanus, the implacable hatred with which the upper classes of Europe view the rising of the herd...
...Jack Altman and a large New York group may shortly be expelled for urging aid to England...
...A LL too little attention is being paid to the coming August 31 "peace mobilization conference" of the Communist ,Pnrty fronts in Chicago...
...WATCH Harry Hopkins...
...Zalman was instrumental in the passage of much social legislation in Austria preceding the occupation by Hitler's army...
...In Indiana, the Evansville Peace Council—CP, of coarse— prepares for the Chicago meeting by distributing leaflets quoting Charles Lindbergh's talks...
...He was placed in a concentration cam p. where his Nazi jailers vented their especial hatred for him by "cruel and inhuman tortures," in the words of the dispatch, which drove him almost to madness before death ended his sufferings...
...This leaves only the Daily Worker—and Clarence Hathaway and Mike Gold are not as commanice tire as they might be...
...Let him temper justice with mercy and give these reckless enemies of...
...The duke of 1789 is the industrialist of today...
...In her Socialist Call column she writes that "if it's by Riesel, it ain't so...
...His card was returned by pro-Stalinite Organizer Jack Ryan, who wrote that according to Article XII...
...Furthermore, open Nazi intervention in Sweden might have increased the potential elements of Russo-German tension so dangerously, that Hitler would have recoiled from such risks...
...Rather Privilege and Profits ' Than Country and Decency "DETTER no France than a France ruled by the rabble...
...Resignation* hevi begun pouring into Guild offices throughout the country...
...For these few advantages (I do not see more of them) Stauning has paid heavily...
...This may sound ludicrous to you—but expulsion from the Guild means that the expelled one may never work in any Guild closed shop in the future...
...Communism the Handmaiden of Reaction 'THROUGH the vast desolation and ruin of once fair hopes that * have come of this upheaval stalks always one sinister figure whose share in bringing about the disaster is still inadequately celebrated...
...Here is the culmination of all apparatus activity involved in revamping the League for Peace and Democracy structure into some new national organization...
...and the necessity of difficult large scale actions in Sweden's difficult terrain may have split Germany's forces so badly that Hitler may have to postpone the attack on England for a couple of weeks— '• perhaps losing his opportunity, to launch his attack this year...
...It is the shade of Nicolai Lenin...
...By controlling the livelihood of the American newspaperman, the Guild's fuhrers set up a GPU network which will drive antiStalinites from newspaper work...
...Much the more exemplary is their sad fate...
...Now she gets plenty of the suffering and all of the shame...
...throughout the trade...
...But Stauning could have tried to leave the country with his cabinet, in order to maintain the nation's most solemn protest against the rape...
...Nothing else in our times is likely to afford so much pregnant material to the philosophical historian of the future...
...Laurence resigned lest week but found that she Guild fuehrers wouldn't permit him to do so...
...Moritz Zalman, who before the Nazi invasion of Austria was regarded as the man "most hated by the Nazis" in that country...
...The next stage, which may be expected soon ladies and gentlemen, will reveal the 'beatitudes that the New Europe will confer when perfectedi-peace, orden security, work for nearly everybody, and guidance by the Fuehrer-just lovely Heahsm-we must have realism...
Vol. 23 • July 1940 • No. 29
