PM Puzzles New York
RIESEL, VICTOR
PM Puzzles New York Million-Dollar Daily Follows CP Line By VICTOR RIESEL Strange rumors floated through the city that June afternoon when Gotham awaited Ralph M- Ingersoll's ultramodern...
...He can reveal by action and statements whether he has been victimized—or whether PM is the American counterpart of Willi Munzenberg's late Communist afternoon paper, the Welt am Abend (Germany) the similarly Stalinite newspaper Ce Soir (This Eyening), late of Paris...
...pro-Communist Federation of Architects, Chemists, Engineers and Technicians...
...Victor Riesel, who tells the story here, intimately knows the New York newspaper scene, being one of the leaders in the anti-Communist fi^ht in the Newspaper Guild...
...It was a novel journalistic enterprise, for PM was not to take advertising and was dependent on the funds raised by a former editor of the New Yorker, Time and Fortune...
...As personnel man for tfie mysterious Publications Research Inc...
...David Ramsey (not his right name) was editor of the Communist in 1936...
...There is no middle ground...
...Louis Gimbel, Lessing J. Rosenwald, P. K. Wrigley, Dwight Deere Wiman and Huntington Hartford of the A & P. On PM's board of directors are men associated with the Guaranty Trust Co., the Long Island Railroad, the Hotel Waldorf Astoria, the Metropolitan Opera Co., the Continental Illinois National Bank, the National City Bank, Simon and Schuster, the Book of the Month Club and several private Wall Street banking houses...
...Donald Ogden Stewart, general factotum for the Communist-controlled League of American Writers...
...It isn't...
...L Jimmie Wechsler even drags in a hideous Comic strip from the "newspaper" of United Retail and Wholesale Employees' Local 65, the local Jed by pro-Communist Arthur Osman, who, is being boomed by the Stalinites in their plans for helping Harry Bridges' raid on jurisdiction of Sam Wolchok's United Retail and Wholesale Employees' International...
...He has long been a transmission belter, a writer for New Masses, and recently was part of the staff of Cameron McKenzie's pro-Communist magazine Friday...
...In the American Newspaper Guild the Los Angeles unit is notorious for its transmission belts...
...Elizabeth Hawes will throw her hands up in horror at anyone accusing the League of Women Shoppers of being a Browder front But it is, and Miss Hawes, PM's "News for Living" editor, is active in it and part of the Park Avenue periphery of the C;P...
...In utter defiance of logic," I •9» for such huge armament, **h all its material and moral wt.can be justified only by some probability that it will be ••eded for war in defense of our Interests or our ideals or both...
...a^lsebkstiOu'aTthe Ink few issues of PH—typical of whet hue eeccJriM 4sj?-4fanjel that without much sublety the pobcy parittB— that ef Hie Cssamunist International...
...New York youth leaders have long considered him one' of the brain trust of the Young Communist League...
...That, I hold, must be the attitude of every- American Social Democrat, now that the chance of saving at least a foothold for democracy on the European continet has been thrown away...
...They openly preached this gospel until the Moscow line changed enough to let them lure in their liberal dupes...
...If we have so often spoken to deaf ears, that has not been our fault...
...And of course there is Will Gropper, who wasn't listed in the aforementioned advertisement as the Freiheit, Daily Worker and New Masses cartoonist...
...WHAT is the meaning of that Defeatism that now menaces us...
...By not daring to think of going to war, we have invited war to come to us...
...Unless we mean to fight to win at all costs, there is no sense in fighting at all or even getting ready to fight...
...It was recalled that Dashiell Hammett, ex-detective of Hollywood fame, began interviewing applicants for a mysterious streamlined daily way back in November, 1938...
...Miss McKenny, it will be remembered, fought on the Herman Shumlin TAC front to prevent Broadway from raising Finnish relief funds...
...5$ we did not do this is the fault of the isolationists...
...1I/E return to the Communists' stand with more puzzlement than ™ ever...
...A contract signed between the 20 directors and himself gives Ingersoll "complete, absolute and exclusive power to formulate the editorial, advertising, circulation, production and promotion policies...
...Have these people not been thoroughly, prepared and indoctrinated to "see" this ? For years one h*<'heard here end there, from the ignorant poor as well as the ignorant rich...
...A few weeks later they began to change their line...
...At one time Huberman was considered a fellow traveler, a friend of the local Stalinites and was a member of the national council of the League of American Writers (1938-1939...
...The establishment of hostile bases in Alaska or Newfoundland, in Martinique or Uruguay or Ecuador, would cripple our defense...
...Ingersoll adamantly refused to accept the money of any financier who refused to sign such a waiver...
...Four days before publication P,M paid thousands of dollars for full page advertising spreads in many metropolitan dailies publicizing its staff members...
...He is now in Berlin...
...has exerted in the recruiting of the staff...
...He worked openly with staff members of the semi-official Stalinite western daily, the People's World...
...ONLY three or four months ago men who ought to have known wlter were telling the American jsple that it would be physically apossible for any European enany to invade the United States...
...On that basis he convinced his backers to sign away—-despite a $1,500,000 investment—their rights to interfere in PM's editorial policies during the next five years...
...In the June 14 advertisement David Ramsey was listed merely as assistant financial editor...
...Many are not and are completely biased...
...Five-Cent Front Many people regard PM as an interesting venture—journalistically, typographically, aesthetically, literary...
...Many of our people are Tired, disillusioned and afraid, and while they have been in this condition they have been widely and deeply indoctrinated with fake, malicious and selfish reasons for it...
...Tacitly admitting that the Atlantic Ocean is not an insuperable barrier to invasion, they began t» tell us that, if only we knew bow to behave ourselves, there would be no real danger...
...And so it has come about that these great champions ef jjefcor unions and democratic rights' been Snug the doors S^easMtCcrtma "spiritual" invasion of a system whose first and dances* victims arc labor unions and democratic rights...
...In his last months Heywood Broun did not conceal his contempt for Randau...
...The impression given was that this was his first writing assignment...
...This brings us to the most important aspect of the whole crisis, for America, and the relation of the Communists and their liberal partners to ft It lies in the question: What will be the effect upon America of Hitler's conquest of Europe...
...Why haven't these conquered peoples revolted against Hitler while he was all out to conquer the remaining two most powerful European countries ? - , If they have done nothing so far, if they could do nothing, what chance will they have when Hitler is no longer absorbed in war and can give all his attention toward keeping his conquered peoples in subjection...
...Whether anyone likes it or not, our own conduct thus far has left us no choice for the future...
...Our interest is political...
...In each edition the material paralleling the line of the Communist Party becomes clearer and less subtle...
...Boyer recently was head of the League of Women Shoppers...
...Observers are puzzled over the failure, since for more than a year—with concomitant ballyhoo—Ingersoll Iiaerhadr.lu^Ja tfjked experts developing new streamlined technical and editorial methods of presenting the news...
...How far have they succeeded...
...Many a scotch and soda post-deadline conversation was punctuated by newspapermen voicing surprise at the hiring by Ingersoll and Managing editor George H. Lyon of many Communist Party members and sympathizers to grace the columns of the new paper...
...Their pamphlets, periodicals and speeches are full of this theme in varied, and even more violent, terms, especially in the early 1930s...
...And it is not the coasts nor even the whole frontiers of the United States that have to be defended...
...Cultivated, it appears, in the name of the Sacred Cause of the Inevitable Revolution...
...Or to realize that the Communists and their liberal dupes have, with professional care and intent, prepared the soil for that Defeatism that now rises upon the horizon with Hitler's imminent total conquest and subjugation of Europe...
...A fact, striking to all acquainted with left-wing circles, is the amazingly high proportion of Browder's boy scouts who populate PM—and its key desks...
...it is not Socialism which walks the boards in all its glory, it is its classic mortal enemy...
...Vfj/HAT led Ingersoll to hire Dashiell Hammett in the early days of Publications' Research Inc...
...Anyone who tsought otherwise was branded as in hysterical alarmist or a wicked war monger...
...She has contributed to Champion and the Sunday Daily Worker, and is the author of Eyes on Russia...
...Margaret Bourke-White, long known as a fellow traveler, is PM's head photographer...
...j<te_~__ It is a logical surmise: If Mussolini can enslave the Italians for two decades, and if Hitler can hold the Germans in an iron grip for seven years without the slightest sign of revolt, it would appear that they have a most favorable chance, what with their long experience and their infinitely practiced technique, not only to get Europe under their control but to hold it successfully under a rather too absolute subjugation and for a longer period than one cares to consider...
...Every newspaper tradition of objective reporting is ignored...
...If invasion from beyond the seas •We impossible, or if it could be Wetted by sweet reasonableness °o our part, there would be no """sin our preparing to repel it fy armed forces...
...Jjet's ignore physical invasion entirely, and begin with this: For twenty years, Mussolini, and for ten years, Hitler, have been shouting that democracy is an "old, worn-out slut," a fake, a fraud, a used-up system...
...An ardent advocate of collective security before August, 1939, he publicly has been urging isolationism since the Soviet-Nazi pact He has damned President Roosevelt the Dies Committee and the California Yorty probe...
...But the undue prominence accorded to men like Harry Bridges, Elmer Brown, Clarence Hathaway, Arthur Osman, and unions like the Warehouse Workers Local 65, the Transport Workers and other Communist-controlled C.I.O...
...from which PM sprang...
...He was better known as the youth secretary of the late transmission belt the American League for Peace and Democracy...
...Those who do not hold this view ought to be consistent enough to oppose all armed defense and declare for quick and complete surrender...
...On Sunday, June ^^23, PM ran a feature on Mexico...
...There he worked as Harold Patch, Some youth groups already have protested to Ingersoll, informing him that Greenwald would get no news from them because of his background...
...The Communists, or at least their shrewd leaders, know this, and to head off being pinned to the wall with their own guilt, they, and their few remaining liberal friends, seeking any whipping boy handy, have recently concentrated their fire and directed the whole blame at their own ex-hero, F:D.R., whom but a year ago they were bedecking with laurel...
...PM was well colonized by local Stalinitee...
...described as "formerly of Sheridan House...
...Shumlin is a loyal member of several Communist fronts and a signer of the notorious Open Letter for Closer Cooperation with the Soviet Union...
...machine...
...It publishes important resolutions and plenum proceedings of the Comintern and its affiliates...
...THERE are others: Marion Bachrach of the Washington staff of PM has sponsored the party-line Conference on Constitutional Liberty in America, and the Provisional Committee of the Washington Committee for Democratic Rights...
...It is an old Bolshevik trick, practiced with profitable skill in Russia before the revolution, when Lenin, through the cooperation of men like Maxim Gorky, was able to obtain fat contributions to the partychest from Moscow multi-millionaires like Morozoff, men of good will and innocent heart, who believed they were contributing to the cause of human emancipation when in reality they were helping to bring about a catastrophe...
...A defeated Germany, surely in terror of a worse Versailles, would have used the Pact as an avenue down which to.rush into the protection of Stalin —which he, no doubt, would have given—for a price...
...V-J PM featured a large picture of Clarence Hathaway, editor of the Daily Worker, linking it with a caption and.story insinuating that the Communist leader was the victim of some plot when actually he was nowhere near the bomb that was exploded on the Daily Worker premises...
...It is against a Nazi-Fascist combination that already controls the man-power and the material resources of all central, northern, and western Europe, from Sweden to Portugal and Sicily, and that will soon control those of southeastern Europe and northern Africa as well, in combination with Soviet Russia and with Japan—this last not a totalitarian state, but a'thoroughly anti-democratic and expansionist one, and having aims which for years to come can be harmonized with those of the totalitarians...
...Invasion From Within Defeatists' Attack on Democracy "As Fraud" Paves Way to Totalitarian Rule By Ross B. Wills INHERE are many, not only Communists but others of widely * different persuasion, who insist that Hitler will still face the job of subjugating his conquered peoples, and they add, or imply, that he isn't likely to succeed in that, at least for very long...
...fall that *» ssd a vital interest in saving JfcfiM-.World from totalitarian ?P™*tion, had done all that we '¦'•.could to help the democrasnd had promptly begun to "^¦ithen our armed forces so y°.be able to help them more *lW»ely...
...His praise of Harry Bridges has been frequent Harold Greenwald was hired as PM's youth editor some mouths ago...
...I TNLIKE other dailies on which a newspaperman is not news, PM plays up its stuff, initialing even two or three line trivia...
...When it hit the street on June 18 it fell a dud among newspapermen who expected a bombshell...
...former Comintern representative...
...was an editor, signed the New Masses letter to the President of April 2, 1940, sponsored the Joint Peace Conference of Philadelphia, edited the American Student Union "Advocate," and contributed to the New Masses...
...Jules Korchien, PM's housing expert was formerly with a Soviet corporation in Moscow—where his wife worked on the Moscow Daily News—with the Federal Housing Authority, where, according to the former USHA publicity man, Charles Yale Harrison, he was cordially disliked and looked upon as a Communist Mr...
...very good friend of Ingersoll...
...Page 15 of the June 21st issue carried an interview with Harry Bridges, West Coast Stalinite waterfront union chief...
...A literary agent, who -suggested that the assistant editor of a well known anti-Stalir.ite newspaper be hired as labor editor, was told that no man with his political opinions could find a place on the new publication...
...TPHE cost, in every sense of the * word, even if actual war does not come, even if the preparation for defense is so strong that no attack is made, may be greater than anyone now definitely foresees...
...One is : hardly calmed by this assurance, in the reflection that Hitler appears already to have done that very thing...
...Our whole nation must pay for its mistake in following this false counsel...
...This sort of taBc is still going on...
...But to the initiated the situation gave cause for questioning...
...affiliates exposes all too clearly what the game of the Gommunist contingent on PM is...
...Nothing was said of Davin's year and a half association with the New Masses as unofficial managing editor...
...It will probably continue through the campaign, and perhaps much longer...
...Further back, on page 25, you will find a feature on Mike Quill's Communist Transport Workers Union—in the "News for Living" lection, ho less...
...Nothing would be left from which they could exact payment for the war, and unless they could recover their losses, collapse would seem certain, or at any rate, extreme change in their governments...
...What opportunities will it bring them...
...And Mr...
...When Ingersoll broadcast that "PM is in business to tell as much of the truth as it can find out—because it believes journalism's function in a democracy is to seek truth in contemporary life and to print it without favor or fear," he professed to lay the basis for his policy of non-interference whether by investors or space buyers...
...Listed as head researcher was Tom Davin...
...PH is anti-defense, anti-rearmament aatt> Roosevelt It has criticised much but has failed to say anything editorially unkind about die German, Italian and fneeiatt governments...
...Well, Der Tag is now upon the world, and Upon America...
...There are others in top spots who are known throughout New York as party members or important front men...
...But heaven help us, with that great irony with which Fate mocks the fine-pretty schemes of men, Just when these ubiquitous gentry had got the stage well net for the Grand Entrance, Surprise...
...Critic Robert Rice wrote for the New Theatre Magazine, and Charles Obermeyer of the education department contributed to the-Communist organ, Science and Society...
...A liberal tabloid was promised, and every newspaper office in town waited to see whether it would revolutionize the field as did Captain Joe Patterson's Daily News in 1919...
...But dull or not, PM's editors have spread through its S2 tabloid pages much more than a smattering ef Coasluessat jmjMpuafm mVthe form of the "liberal" point of view...
...However, within a few weeks after hiring of working newspapermen began...
...QUESTIONS are being asked which can be answered only by Ralph Ingersoll...
...The Communist is the official organ of the Communist Party of America, devoted to discussion of Communist tactics and the theory and practice of Leninism...
...Certainly Hammett was not the man equipped to handle the job of selecting the staff for what promised to be an important event in American journalism...
...We refer to those who do not require a political Baedeker to find their way through New York Communist and pseudo-Communist circles...
...But that is water over the dam...
...The enlistment of this group of money men for the financing of a paper like PM should not confuse the reader...
...and they then began vaguely to praise democracy, whilst they continued to hammer away at the very essence of it, and even more effectively than before, because it was now disguised...
...and the Comintern's Swedish Aftonbladet (Afternoon...
...What this country needs is another Hitler...
...IT is not against one or two hos" tile nations that we have to arm...
...Working with Boyer there were Ruth McKenny of the New Masses, and James Dugan o^ the Daily Worker...
...Ingersoll, it is worth analysis...
...For it has become clear that the Allies would have lost even, if by some last-minute miracle, they could have turned the tide against Hitler...
...That has been the spirit of our movement from the days of Marx and Engels and Lassalle down to the present time...
...By advocating armament, the *hvtionists show that they now ***w (and probably knew at the ?¦*) that, if the British defense * »t last broken down, totalita*j%*ttaek upon this side of the **«**, and eventually upon the States, is not only possi¦6 but more than probable...
...PM likes to stress ridicule of fear of fifth column activities...
...The ad copy contains their story...
...Shumlin too, was consulted by Mr...
...In the same edition, two "News for Living" reporters went out of their way to line up a majority of youth groups opposed to FDR, made a story of it led with the Communist-con t rolled American Student Union and Americar...
...A ND so it goes, in edition after edition...
...There are others on the staff, like Mike Clary, formerly of the Eagle, and Amos Landsman, recently of the Journal, who "-ork closely with the Communists inside the Newspaper Guild...
...Certainly one could not fancy the victorious Allies putting more Chamberlains and Daladiers at the head of their governments, seeing what bitter cost these had been to them in the past...
...f\NE of the most unpleasant realizations arising from this crisis is the apparent fact that Germany alone was prepared for victory—prepared by seven years of Spartan living, by deep and cunning indoctrination, and by intensive preparation not only for war, but for total conquest...
...Well, what have we here...
...and presently, with the aid of their duped liberal friends, they went to town in spreading this infamous corruption under even more effective lines, because disguised...
...He is assistant editor of The New leader...
...Roosevelt's plan for universal military training becomes a drive for "regimentation...
...President Roosevelt is accused of "having designs on the mind of the youth as well as on their lives and bodies...
...Former editors of the New Masses have revealed that Laura was well known around the offices as an important Party sympathizer...
...Newspapermen around town who refer to PM as the "uptown edition of the Daily Worker," or the "daily edition of the magazine Friday," know of the influence fellow traveler Laura Hobson...
...Since the staff is so im|>ortant to Mr...
...In the same department is Jimmie Wechsler—J.A.W.— formerly of the Nation and points left...
...Because we were afraid to attack the enemy where he lived,.we must now count on his attacking us where we live...
...Progressives in the newspapermen's union have charged frequently that Randau participated in communist fraction meetings on the World-Telegram...
...A day or so later Leo Huberman was announced as labor editor...
...Win or lose, then, collapse for the Allies seemed inevitable...
...A telephone call from him received a curt reply...
...He was also one of the 400 who signed the statement giving Stalin's dictatorship a clean bill of health, hailing the "peace policy" of the Soviet Union and denouncing ail critics of the Communist dictatorship as "red baiters...
...An incomplete defense might prove to be worse than none...
...To minimize the difficulties, to ,hope that maybe it will not be so bad as all that, would . be a fatal error...
...Hammett had opened an expensive suite at the Hotel Plaza, where he acted as managing editor for what on June 18, 1940, hit the streets as PM...
...The trouble with him was that he had criticized Communist activities and intrigues in the C.I.O...
...We have seen clearly and spoken frankly...
...To be mild, perturbation would hardly describe our reactions were.we to hear that Nazis and Fascists had colonized a powerfully-backed new New York daily newspaper...
...Hammett...
...Fascism, marching upon the stages in the most savage and ruthless torn that man could conceive...
...And for years, the Communists did that very same thing in America—that is, they actually went about preaching that "American democracy is a fraud," a "used-up system," a "fake...
...He gave space to Communist Workers' Alliance charge that those who expose fifth columnites now on relief are "stool-pigeons," and perverted the wording of the affidavit required by the government in the best Daily Worker style PM's strange practice of going short on news but finding room for party line items and features has puzzled some readers—but hardly those trained to detect Communist propaganda...
...These records simply show the many years that Mussolini has kept the Italians in line, and the seven long years that Hitler has mos.t completely subjugated his Germans...
...PM's new journalism, its features, and its abandonment of staid, hackneyed—and outmoded stiff collar reporting adds a refreshing touch to a frequently dull field...
...One of the nation's leading magazine writers and an authority on labor—he has two important bonks to his credit—was asked for a detailed outline of what he couid do...
...The- statement was aimed primarily against the Committee for Cultural Freedom organized by Professors John Dewey and Sidney Hook...
...For all that they could have won would have been their own lost—and badly damaged—territory...
...Still less comfort can one find in this speculation when^one considers the cold records of Hitler and Mussolini, not to mention the convincing evidence of Stalin's case...
...Instead of showing presidential candidates, or President Cardenas, it was^lustrated with a large photo of Communist Chief Lombardo Toledano...
...The American people were subtly prepared against Dor Tag...
...Never have the democratic Socialists of * any country doubted that freedom is worth dying for if need be, and therefore worth fighting for, by physical as well as moral means, when the occasion arises, with the will to destroy its enemies...
...ERY likely we could have escaped the need for such gi***Sc preparations for defense if made it clear last...
...Aynament and all kinds of warlike preparations on a scale far beyond what is yet openly taftv'd (jf* is the only course left open to us...
...The advertisement listed all 151 mem- . bers of the editorial staff...
...And one could hardly imagine the exhausted, bankrupt Allies having either the will or the energy to attack a combined Germany and a fresh Russia...
...It is dictated by the magnitude of the danger, and that is already enormous and is growing day by day...
...And also—why...
...And then, for no reason, a few pages further, the reader was given a feature on Elmer Brown, fellow traveling president of Typo's Big Six...
...She is still a member of the Stalinistcontrolled American Artist Congress, despite recent defections by Lewis Mumford, Meyer Schapiro, and others who resigned after documenting their charges that the congress was a tool of the Communist Party...
...The Comintern ha* an equally huge stake in controlling important media of information...
...Aiding Leo Huberman in the labor department is Leon Goodelman...
...A SSISTANT "opinion" editor of PM is Ben Crisler, former movie critic of the New York Times...
...It has been the misfortune of those who could not or would not hear...
...This is not meant to suggest that PM devotes its columns solely to lengthening and broadening the transmission belt...
...We have been, going through a decade of internal crises, due to the depression, .tile droughts, floods, and to some extent misguided efforts to allay their damage...
...whether it would fulfill its mission as a paper for* "those pushed around by others...
...But that it—and the world—and America—deserved or required a conquest by Hitlerism, all thinking people must strongly protest...
...They exercise little editorial influence, however...
...But many of us already realize, and most others will come to realize, that no cost can be too great for what we have in view —to exclude totalitarianism from these two continents, with the hope that in years to come we may help to extirpate it in the rest of the world...
...Instead of mentioning the Nazi-Soviet pact in his indictment he followed the Communist line by writing that "With the non-aggression pact of last August Russia turned the tables ea the Western leaders who hoped to shunt Hitler to the Ukralnew On the same page he blamed the United States for setting oil to Italy during the invasion of Ethiopia, but casually neglected to recall, front page stories, confirmed by the respective governments, which told of the huge trade and oil agreements signed between the Soviets and Italy, not only during the Ethiopian "incident" but during the Spanish Civil war as well...
...Investigation of PM's "sixty families" revealed that the new tabloid was financed by persons whose fortunes derive from dividend coupons clipped on profits of Chrysler Motors, Standard Oil, Sears Roebuck, The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, Wrigley Chewing Gum, Westinghouse Electric, and the Saratoga Race Track...
...Tom Tippett, manager of personnel, was former manager of the Federated Press, sponsor of the party-line Provisional Committee for a Trade Union Conference on United Action and a speaker for the Communist Trade Union Educational League...
...Surprise...
...Ralph Ingersoll, publisher of this new daily, has sought to make the issue one of commercial rivalry by other papers fearing the growth of PM...
...We need not look very-far to see...
...If at some times and in some places we have failed to act in that spirit, it was through error in judgment, perhaps sometimes (though I think not often) ~ through lack of moral courage...
...Hammett himself was one of a group of seven who signed the initial letter asking many hundreds of prominent persons to sign this document, which condoned all the crimes perpetrated in the Soviet Union up to August 14, 1939...
...Another story, on the seme page, boosts the CIO's American Communications' Association, a partyline union led by fellow-traveler Mervyn Rath bone...
...Only Hitler was prepared to win, only Hitler prepared to make the most of victory...
...PM is an audacious adventure...
...Parallel with the Communist line is the Axis line...
...PM Puzzles New York Million-Dollar Daily Follows CP Line By VICTOR RIESEL Strange rumors floated through the city that June afternoon when Gotham awaited Ralph M- Ingersoll's ultramodern conception of what New Yorkers would want to read...
...These had been set up in the respective countries in anticipation of a sharp turn in Moscow's line...
...Assistant PM editor of the national affairs department is Tom O'Connor, who Jed the Communist faction of the Los Angeles Newspaper Guild...
...Opinion Editor Louis Kroncnbcrprcr is still in the League of American Writers...
...And its ultimate aim was never altered in the least: that aim was simply to create distrust and disaffection among the American people and turn them away from democracy...
...They sign it...
...An entire column is devoted to ridiculing efforts to expose the Ffth Column—PM's attitude being that sach talk is merely hysteria...
...Last March it was revealed that PM's angels were of the multimillionaire class which has little sympathy for a crusading newspaper...
...His publicly expressed views in and out of the Guild have for years been consistent with those of the Communist Party...
...Certainly in this country, as the present"world crisis developed, not only through recent months, but through recent years, we have done our part as best we could...
...Many of them are good newspapermen, unbiased...
...Is it a victim or a Communist front...
...No other dailies used this angle, preferring to confine themselves to - photographs of the "bombed" offices...
...Ruth McKenny, former New Masses editor...
...Aid to the Allies becomes in the pages of PM "steps leading towards war...
...we must •bow our willingness to live on food terms with the totalitarians —if we would just mind our own business, the masters of Europe would leave us alone...
...we must refrain from doing or saying anything that might irritate Hitler, or hurt Mussolini's sensibilities...
...Korchien until recently was leader of the C.I.O...
...Social Democracy and Defense Advance of Hitler Narrows Issue to Appeasement or War By ALGERNON LEE MEVER have Social Democrats' been pacifists...
...A sheer insult to New York was page 7 of the first day's edition where Tom O'Connor gloated over the fact that appeasement of dictator nations was responsible for the fate of France...
...This brings us to concrete problems...
...Its four columns—the Communists are the fifth—are typographically dull, as is the old-fashioned headline type...
...Leon Goodelman, of the labor department, uses an inch ef precious space to advertise an outright transmission belt "peace" rally...
...The PM staff writer of local news is Carl Randau"s wife Leane Zugsmith, New Masses feature writer, sponsor of the Communistcontrolled American Committee for Democracy and Intellectual Freedoai, contributor to Soviet Russia Today, and the late Fight, official organ of the American League for Peace and Democracy, writer for the Sunday Worker, and signer of the Open Letter for Cultural Cooperation with the Soviet Union...
...We must stake it clear that we were not interested in the fate of the Old World...
...News of the impending daily had swept through the country like a panzer division through France...
...Nathaniel Kieth, financial editor, formerly contributed to Russia Today...
...EDITION after edition in recent weeks have added to the con*"* fusion of a daily paper financed by some of America's wealthiest families, featuring news, labor, foreign affairs, and other essentials in a manner strikingly in consonance with the Communist Party line...
...Quite' clear to the initiated is also the fact that those who selected Hammett in the winter of 1938 for the job of recruiting the PM staff are responsible for the undue proportion of Communists in important posts on a paper financed by such financial, industrial and-commercial leaders as Marshall Field, John Hay Whitney, Mrs...
...On Monday, June 24, Jimmie Wechsler sneered at the government's effort to rid the WPA of Nazis and Communists by distorting it into a drive on all left-wing elements...
...Writers turn out stories, which in effect are editorials, with occasional reference to the news...
...Assistant foreign editor of PM is Carl Randau...
...If it were a socialist, or even a democratic, victory that they sought out of this war, as they claimed, would they not have been far more in harmony with this goal if they had openly plumped for an Allied victory, instead of being indifferent to the outcome at best, when indifference was as good as actual support of Hitler...
...What ought to be and what will be the response of Organized Labor...
...Ingersoll even at that time had created a legend about the proposed paper which attracted reporters all over the country...
...That Europe's civilization has been headed for a smash-up these twenty-five years, no thinking person would dispute...
...It is the first metropolitan newspaper in America to eharge more than 3 cents and will not get mass circulation...
...Are we not likely, owing to this unhappy internal propaganda, to hear it again, and in chorus this time—and with ominous meaning at last...
...They knew that Hammett in his quest for a staff for PM had consulted Dorothy Parker, a front for at least one Communist refugee relief committee and contributor to the New Masses...
...Our duty is positive, not one of abnegation...
...Weeks after this was presented he had not heard from managing editor Lyon or Ingersoll...
...In order to prepare the ground for the Inevitable Coming of Socialism, the Communists set out frankly and openly to disgust the American people with democracy, add to free them from clinging to a corpse...
...PM was planned to appear shortly after the Nazi Communist pact was signed...
...In the Daily Worker of July 25, 1936, you can read of his support of the Communist ticket...
...In many instances individual backgrounds were presented, but in the case of the Communists there were no thumbnail sketches...
...A well known newspaperman who had covered Washington and New York applied for the same job and was turned down because he was "too prominently identified with the Socialist Party...
...The magnitude of that preparation does not depend upon our wishes...
...The principle stands — Social Democrats, as such, think freedom worth fighting for to the end snd at all costs...
...Ramsey also writes regularly for the New Masses and was educational director of the Communist-controlled International Fur Workers Union...
...More recently this writer heard him referred to as the "Jack Stachel of the Y.C.L...
...a rig1 Lillian Hellman, who last winter was threatened with a nervous breakdown over the prospect of a Finnish invasion of Leningrad...
...president of the New York Newspaper Guild...
...In the city rooms of every afternoon paper there was glee over PM's failure to prove a threat to others in the field...
...Certainly it will be enormous...
...He is a close associate of Jay Leyda, formerly of the Moscow Bureau of International Revolutionary Literature, signer of the notorious statement of May 3, 1938, condoning the Moscow trials...
...More now even than in times of peace, we as champions of democracy and of the toiling masses, have to face facts, think clearly and have the courage to speak out our best thought...
...Brown will be remembered as having endorsed the Moscow-Berlin pact by stumping for Mike Quill's election during, the councilmanic race in 1939—after Quill had been denied the ALP nomination as a Communist stooge...
...Youth Congress, and then headlined the story "Youth Polled on Regimentation...
...But it does not follow that we must forget everything else, that we must say amen to everything that may be proposed in the name of national or of bi-continental defense...
...and assistant editor in 19.37-193S...
...Nor was this PM's only inconsistency...
...IN utter defiance of logic, these lame persons are now joining in the demand for armament on has, at sea, and in the air on srch a vast scale as would enable ¦ to defend all the lands in the Western Hemisphere, from the Arctic Circle to Cape Horn, and iho, to police and if necessary fWee.any of the other countries * this hemisphere whose govern¦•fct might be inclined to aid and •bet the totalitarian powers...
...O'Connor, was made local president by the Communist caucus there...
...A FTER that sultry August day of the Nazi-Communist pact Dashiell Hammett suddenly departed for wherever mystcry writers go, and PM found it expedient to enlist some non-Communists as members of its staff...
...On Thursday, in the third issue, the plan for universal military training is indicated by a not very subtle comparison with Nasi military camps for children...
...He sponsored the American League Against War' and Fascism, contributed to the Communist youth magazine Champion, of which he...
...James L. Wick, one of the most important American consultants on daily circulation, reveals that now there is not a newspaper publisher in New York City who concedes more than the slimmest chance of success for PM...
...No man but one high in party councils would be entrusted with the editorship of the magazine...
...The tactic of "innocent" papers is an old Continental tactic conceived by Willi Munzenberg...
...It is not quite apparent what many of these people will think when Hitler has wiped out the last vestige of democracy in Europe...
...This latter group holds key spots—bottlenecks on PM...
...He refused to he interviewed by any reporter but the one from PM...
...They have been deliberately Cultivated to tolerate the idea, since long before Hitler actually threatened the world, that democracy is a fraud, and a "used-up system...
...This will be the subject of my article next week...
...This later became known as the statement of the "Committee of 4Q0," a statement that was blown sky-high by Ribbentroprs trip to Moscow to sign the StalinHitler pact...
...Will there not be many to see the "truth" in Hitler's "Idea...
...Curiously enough, never "another Stalin," save of course among the baptized...
...Will they not have seen with their own eyes, virtually, how Hitler, aided by his fascist brother Mussolini, easily defeated -ami crushed that "old, worn-out slat" democracy in Enrope...
...And the first of these is .—how will preparation for effective and defense affect the working people...
...Richard O. Boyer writes on foreign affairs for PM...
...TPHIS infiltration has dulled the paper...
...And, of course, Stalinite Shames O'Sbcel is prominent in "the-letters -to-the-editor" column with an attack on British imperialism...
...Otherwise, why haven't the Austrians, the Poles, the Czechs, the Norwegians, the Danes, the Hollanders, Belgians, et al—why haven't these utilized the infallible classic device of Marxist revovolution and "turned the imperialist war into civil war...
Vol. 23 • July 1940 • No. 29
