Behind Europe's Fronts

...The Administration's proposals for enlargement and improvement of all three branches of our armed force are by no means excessive...

...That's what I wanted to write about this week—another o f the uncounted chapters of our democratic world's pathetic story which will be known for all time under the title "Too Late...

...The tone of the President's speech indicates that he feels as sure as we do that the great majority of the voters are not going to be either scared or befuddled on November 5. MORE TEACHERS NEEDED W H E N we read that in New York City mis week 40,000 teachers resumed their work of educating 1,100,000 boys and girls, we are likely to thrill with pride over the bigness of the thing...

...How can one write about anything else...

...Although no...

...We are full of faith and determination...

...As things now stand, there is no call for an expeditionary force to be sent across either ocean, nor have we an army prepared for action even on this continent...

...Napoleon made huge preparations to invade England, but at the last moment he dared not make the trial Such exploits as the landing in the Crimea eighty yeta age and at Gallipoli in the World War are hardly tc be coinpared with the present case...

...A year or two ago the notion cf invading England seemed fantastic...

...forced upon us by circumstances abroad which are most unusual and may never occur again...

...The dilution of labor which was fought in the last war is being accepted smoothly...

...Since my sympathy with dictators begins when they reach an exile, I wanted publicly tc greet this fellow refugee, despite my memory which whispers about Carol's personal responsibility for the collapse of the Little Entente, for the rape of Czecho-Slovakia, his "beloved ally," for the Nazi penetration of the Balkans since 1936, for the breakdown of European collective security, for ' France's defeat, for Europe's shameful death...

...Yet twice today and once in the night the sirens have screeched their warnings and we have heard the drone of enemy aircraft high overhead...

...We do call for speedy development of adequate armed forces on land and sea and in the air, thoroughly equipped and trained to the highest efficiency, to prepare for the possibility of our having to resist attempted invasion or blockading of any part of the two Americas and for the possibility that the course of events may make it both our interest and our duty to attack the totalitarian enemies of civilization where they live...

...The old industrial relationships go on...

...There will be no debacle, as there wa» in France...

...That, in the event of their success, they might quarrel over the divisiqjw cf the spoils can give us nc comfort It is well to be hopeful...

...After clearly showing that socialism has a chance to evolve from democratic capitalism, and is on the other hand hopelessly loss under a triumphant fascism, it makes no sense to vote for a soqialist leadership that is against giving the democratic capitalism of ^England, not to say, the powerfully well organized labor movement within its framework, the means to combat fascism...

...I call attention, to the refusal of manufacturers of equipment and munitions to cooperate with the Government unless their profits are guaranteed in black ard white, and I advocate the con- acription 0$ such manufacturing so-called "wealth-conscription" amesdment to the bill, and how our leading newspapers and all the other lackeys of capitalism, from Candidate Willkie down the line,, are rending the heavens with their - protests...

...psychologist, I've'studied the phenomenon of intelligent men's stupid behavior for years...

...They are truly subhuman...

...And another thing must be said...

...Now comes word cf the appointment as Japanese ambassador to Russia of Admiral Tatekawa...

...Better than any violent language is the simple observation that the nation, the states, the cities and counties normally do just this whenever they need land for public v ses and find that owners are unwilling to sell at a reasonable price...

...Equally to the point were the President's temperately strong words concerning the outcry against the proposed law giving the government authority to take and operate plants needed for production of war material, subject to judicial decision as to the compensation to be awarded to the owners...

...I feel sure something big and new for us is coming out of this welter...

...In short, this week I wanted to consider how i t ' occurs that scientists need so much longer to see obvious facts, ordinary persons like ypu and I have discovered for ourselves without any laboratories, without any fuss...

...I intended to write this week, on the peculiar emotions of a former Central European whes faced with a former king's peculiar fate...

...I refer you to the letter of "Heptisax," regular contributor to the Herald Tribune, in the August 31st issue of that newspaper...

...I see my friend F. H., a very decent and very intelligent British liberal, under the debris of his beloved city, and I hear him repeating what he told me two years ago: " N o , these continental affairs of European imperialistic rivalries are not our business...

...I claim that it is possible to obtain men by voluntary" enlistment more rapidly than the armycan absorb and equip and train them...

...and despite that disagreement, I expect, as a socialist, to vote for Thomas...

...ON THE "NEWSREEL" JY|ANY New Leader readers are taking rather vehement exception to the recent columns of Charles Edward rui»" sell, in which he has attacked President Roosevelt, t^*^T change of fifty destroyers for naval bases, and the third" term campaign...

...Carol's gorgeous musical show no longer runs and there were no curtain calls after the final performance...

...That these obstructionists do not speak the mind of the people has been strikingly demonstrated within the last week by the Gallup poll of young men between the ages of sixteen and thirtyone, a decisive majority of whom declared in favor of conscription, and by the general poll on aid to Britain, a few days earlier...

...One of 150 Norwegians could overwhelm the other 149, because he acted while the others talked and dreamed...

...His wish came true...

...Ever since 1 904 it has been generally taken for grantee —without any really sound reason—that Russia and Jsp*" are "natural enemies...

...Hopelessly old-fashioned, I'd prefer throwing stones at dictators while they are in power and greeting them in exile with a penny or ti/o...

...What they are performing now, in deadly courage, is nothing but a legend...

...yet more, his loss of prettige at home and abroad may be the beginning of hit end While all intelligent and decent men have their eyes fixed on' England, there comes from the other side of the globe a bit of news which has much more signaficance thtr appears on the surface...

...Those readers who have hastened to deluge The He* Leader with objections to Mr...

...I become more firmly convinced that peacetime conscription is utterly unwarranted, and I feel that in Supporting it—and thus playing into the hands of the sinister interests behind the proposal, The New Leader is not serving the cause to which it has so long bees dedicated...

...Russell's criticisms rnu»t that this newspaper has put itself on record in every ediPQ" as an active supporter of Mr...

...Yes, the line-up is developing as was to be expected four great powers, three of them totalitarian and the other imperialistic, bent on conquering the world and putting end to democratic and humane civilization wherever «j exists...

...But how uncertain even our modest joys have become...

...On the other hand, if the attempt i« made isd if it fails, his material losses and...

...for every foot of ground wni be defended...

...Our bosses still give their orders but in turn they get theirs from higher up...

...Classes are not' quite so unwieldy as they were twenty-five years ago, but they are still too large to permit good teaching...

...He is fighting on his own soil...

...There should be no "official caste" and no possibility for it to develop...

...I wanted to express the fear that next week some professor may conquer the headlines with the discovery that the stork does not bring babies...

...Now all the 150 Norwegians, the single Quisling partisan included, are poor pawns in the ogre's strong hands...

...Many think as does Heptisax but they are clever enough to be less frank...

...That is a subject to which we shall return...

...Yet, if the landing is made, his victory will not be impossible...

...The Roosevelt who was president thirty years ago would probably have said such persons were, either malignant liars or plain idiots, but F.D.R...

...London is burning, and among the horrible scenes which haunt my imagination, one spoils my dreams...

...Also, they must realize that it **J*\_ be negating the very essence of the democracy we so e»*» getically espouse, if we were to deny a columnist, promo**0 and of long standing, the basic right to free speech...

...We have had our baptism too...

...How inadequately equipped are those now in the armed forces of the United States...

...I also call attention to the attacks being made, in connection with- the conscription drive, on the forty-hour week, and in your issue x>f August 24, you have found it necessary to discuss this editorially...

...Perhaps there have been good reasons tor not doing this before...

...Roosevelt, the anti-Nazi ~*7and the third term...

...Not a whole pane of glass left in the center—but not a single person hurt...

...Reports have appeared in the public press that army enlistments in the United States are averaging over eight thousand a week, or at the rate of more than 400,000 a year...

...They will welcome the time when this republic can safely disarm—that is, when the enemies of world peace have been so thoroughly broken that the danger of war will no longer exist...

...But only those have a right to hope who do all that needs be done to make their hop** come true...

...They know, however, that this is a matter of the future...

...Enough food, clothing, houses, furniture,' books, pictures, recreation, medical care, and so forth fo'keep a quarter of a million persons in condition to do their work well...

...It would be folly to conscript several hundred thousand more men before the present forces were properly trained and equipped...

...earns more than the president of the U. S. A . , and so I'm losing myself deeper and deeper, in the labyrinth of this peculiar case...

...We think * is wrong on the issues discussed...

...Also, I wanted to complain about a writer's lot...

...I'm a little confused, as you see, and I wanted to write this line about my own thoughts...

...We do not know what they could have been...

...Wasn't Carol fired by a more ruthless, more bloody, more Nazistic dictator...

...Certainly Americans do not want war...

...Today he anxiously seeks an asylum...

...Russell sincerely believes he is right...

...The accusation he brings against them is sufficiently grave not to need verbal emphasis, for the practice of appealing to fear in such a Juncture comes very near to what the Constitution defines as treason—that is, "giving aid and comfort to the enemy...

...Many who should have known better have, just because of this old habit of thought, rejected the idea of a four-power alliance against democracy Germany, Italy, and Russia might act together, they said, or Germany, Italy, and Japan, but not all four...

...But London is burning...

...but the obvious thing had to be said in such a way as to remind all of us that we knew it before...

...It seems more probable now than at any time since Ui* the breakdown of the French defense that the attempt at actual invasion across the Channel is very near at hand...

...The proposed onbargo will, of course, apply to all exports cf this important material, and the motive will' be to conserve it for our own use...

...Social Democrats may congratulate themselves 00 having foreseen this rapprochement, as they foresaw the MotcowBerlin pact, which most publicists had thought impossible...

...It is hard to realize we are at war...

...We shall fight, all right, but only in defense of our own soil...

...The realization of these plans is being dangerously delayed by the partizan interests of second-rate politicians and the economic interests of profit-greedy industrialists, as well as by the open propaganda and secret machinations of a great variety of anti-democratic, unpatriotic, and in some cases literally criminal elements, from the Communazis and "Christian" Defenders up or down to the most eminently respectable of the appeasers...

...In nearly all the suggestions from legislators and in nearly all the speeches and writings that I have seen in support of military training, whether compulsory or voluntary, there is the implication that the need to arm and train menis a painful necessity, in itself an unmixed...

...Meanwhile, they are shocked by the revelations made a few days ago as to existing army's astounding lack of mechanical equipment To stint or delay the provision of such equipment and the training of men to use it is to play with the lives of men in the ranks...

...Because I am a socialist, I believe it necessary to follow up Hook's analysis by voting for Raosevelt this year and not for Thomas, British Worker Tells of Labor's Growing Strength From E. Starr To the Editor: The sun is coming in through our big windows and Somerset looks just lovely...

...Hook's Analysis Brings FDR Vote From HENRY PINSKJ To the Editor: Sdney Hook's excellent analysis...

...or the pacifists who are intelligent enough to understand the horrors of war and nevertheless insist that their nation fight the war exclusively on its own soil...

...Similar conditions exist all over the United States—in many places much worse...

...It has long been thought impossible to land a hostile force on the coasts of a fairly large, a rich, and a densely peopled industrial country, unless b y surprise or by the aid of treason within...

...But that army should be democratic in more than its origin...

...He has nothing but Madame Lupescu and a lousy 80,000 dollars a year...

...Editorials THE PRESIDENTS' SPEECH pRESIDENT ROOSEVELT spoke very much to the point Wednesday evening when he said "Only those who seek to play upon the fears of the American people discover"-—in the defense measures now being taken—"an attempt to lead us into war...

...And what would it cost...

...It is not only that England's fate may very likely determine ours and that certainly England's defeat would bring our first line of defense right to our own shores...

...even if our safety were net in the balance, » world without England would be an unimaginably poor anc crippled world...

...To do the task well, we need at least 10,000 more teachers...

...Women are getting the same rates as men...

...Guns and ships and planes are of little use to a frightened people, and undermining the nation's courage may do as much harm as sabotage in munitions plants or betrayal of military secrets...

...May we be ready to use the new social forces brought into being to smash Fascism to build something better than we have yet known...

...Despite all that, I wanted to give Carol my salute...

...Wasn't Carol, before he followed us into exile, sort of a shining knight of democracy i f compared with his successors...

...Such persons are neither to be envied nor to be admired...

...One hundred and forty-nine of 150 Norwegians dare to arouse the ogre's anger when such courage has almost no sense any more—but while it was still possible to save their liberty by taking up arms on the right side, they worshipped the fetish of "neutrality...

...It it enough to say now "Better late than never...

...But could the country afford to employ as many teachers as it needs...

...WHERE WE STAND ON WAR *J*0 avoid misunderstanding, let us repeat what we have said more than once during the past year that The New Leader is not calling upon the United States to go to war with Germany...

...Can a carpenter afford to use dull saws and chisels...

...A L S O I wanted t o . l i f t . m y hat in ho|»or of a remarkable scientific discovery, made by Dr...

...In this connection, please see the picture in the rotogravure section of the Herald Tribune of Sunday, September 1, showing a plank and the wheels of an old hay rick doing duty as an anti-tank gun in recent army maneuvers...

...who has loaf been known as an advocate of the establishment of close and friendly relations between the two countries...

...There are persons so cold or so cruel that they can contemplate these things without pain...

...Today we cannot feel so sure...

...It was a mystery...

...One hundred and forty-nine of 150 Norwegians have united for a most courageous action—exactly five months too late...

...BETTER LATE THAN NEVER JT LOOKS as though the flow of scrap steel from this country to Japan may at last be stopped...

...The day before yesterday he had all the power in his country—a Romanian trinity of Hitler and Goering and Goebbels in one person—his own dictator and his own field marshal and his own propaganda boss...

...And we call for continued and increased aid to the British people in the valiant struggle they are now carrying on...

...One of its purposes is to saddle permanent conscription upon the country...

...But London is burning...

...And now we just prepare and wait...

...Whatever the result, we feel that we should be less than human not to put up a good fight...

...It is surprising the amount of discipline we voluntarily take these days...

...But in this difference opinion there is room for the mutual tolerance so raven the world is ranidly forgetting, Letters To the Editor Hits Draft as Leading to Anti-Labor Drive From Robert Leemans To the Editor: There are other motives than anti-Hitlerism behind pro-conscription propaganda (although I do not accuse The New Leader...

...But no, it would cost us something more—the trouble of thinking straight about economic problems and resolving to cure economic evils...

...EAST AND WEST MEET JJVEN the pur^-and-simple isolationists—as distinguished from Communazis and pec pie whose minds are obsessed with nationalistic hatreds—must at this moment await newi of "the Battle of England" with the same tense emotion that one feels when a parent cr a brother is facing an unavoidable but possibly fatal operation...

...Once plainly said, that is obvious...

...In justice to our youngsters we ought to enlarge the country's teaching staff by a quarter of a million...

...You're telling me, doc...

...Russell's excellent command of t n ' . j * * ' guage has lent a pungent tang to his column...

...We know we have to go through it but generally speaking there is no fear...

...We seem to be on the route from the coast to Bristol so we get quite a lot o f warnings and traffic...

...Can a mason afford to use badly tempered mortar...

...But two other things are just as certain—that they will not shirk it if it becomes necessary, and that they do not want to be caught unprepared...

...But n o * 7 '" in his career or in his writing for The New Leader has there been any trace of insincerity, any literary knuckling down to an ulterior motive...

...Quite a theme for a column, I said to myself...

...Are they not pulling the country out o f a hole...

...He could earn neither the butter nor even the bread, had he not every week twice as much insight into the fate of the world, which a scientist goes along with a whole year...

...Also I wanted to express my unqualified contempt for all those diplomats, journalists, statesmen and other chaps who only yesterday licked Carol's boots and today are throwing stones at him...

...Even if that were not so...

...I WONDERED too whether I should not write about this apparently authentic story the N. Y . Times published on Sunday: "In the face of a growing fear of formation of a government headed by the pro-Nazi Major Vidkun Quisling, the five Norwegian parties, controlling 149 of the 150 seats of the Storting (Parliament), have forgotten their doctrinal differences and, braving German wrath, have, united in an antiQuisling front...

...Can a farmer afford to sow unripened seed...

...The question really is, Can we afford not to...

...Seven bombs were dropped in the center of our town about three weeks ago...

...To refuse such aid or to give it too slowly or on too small a scale would be dishonorable, and it would also be suicidally unwise...

...But London is burning...

...There have been 80 air raid warnings in the past five weeks here...

...Every night for three weeks, with one or two exceptions, we have had to get up and curl up in the cupboard under the stairs...

...Throughout the text of this law there runs the suggestion, indeed, that this is a grievous burden, reluctantly imposed upon the people, but that it is a tem. porary affliction...

...David Wechsler, chief psychiatrist of Bellevue Hospital, who declared last {Saturday: "Clinical or practical experience shows that even the bestregarded tests of intelligence give only incomplete measures of the individual's capacity for intelligent behavior...

...Suck an attempt would be something new in modern history...

...Only six months ago„it couldhave been a deed of salvation...

...however, we do a little sum in division and observe that there are twenty-seven pupils to one teacher, we must conclude that, after more than a century of the free school system, it is nothing to boast of...

...Conscription is the democratic way, as well as the practical way, to get a large army when unfortunately a large army is needed...

...Or is he dying...

...Were 0W government to make Charles A . Lindbergh its ambassador at Berlin, the case could not bcphtiner...

...But Carol, on the other hand, even in exile...

...I do not believe that there has ever been a time in our history when we should not have had compulsory military training...

...Inasmuch, however, as nine-tenths cf all the scrap steel which left our shores went to Japan, and as Japan can at present get but little of it from other sources, stoppage of the American supply may have an important effect upon the situation in the Far East...

...knows how to be emphatic without being vociferous...

...Incidentally, while improving our educational work, this would appreciately ease the unemployment situation, for there are easily 250,000 qualified teachers on the waiting lists today, some of them actually on relief or dependent on relatives, the rest doing work that could be done as well or bt«:er by men and women who sorely need the jobs...

...He writes: "My major objection to it (the conscription bill) is that it is an emergency measure...

...This story, in fact, might replace the future's text books, teaching our grandchildren the terrifying lessons of history's most stupid-epoch...

...As for war on the seas, a large part of our present navy, with its supporting air force, must be kept in the Pacific to hold in check the totalitarians' formidable Japanese ally, and the remainder is not more than we need to maintain normal defense in the North and South Atlantic...

...That is a comfort especially when they come from Bevin and Morrison...

...Growing old and modest, I am grateful fdr the slightest evidence that dictators are mortal— a fact which to our generation seemed to become less and less certain...

...I knew- the intelligentEuropean statesmen who knew Hitler's time table by heart and behaved like—well, like .European statesmen...

...I should really try to write this week's piece about Carol...

...One hundred and forty-nine of 150 Norwegians long to risk their lives in a deadly struggle against the plague, when such marvelous courage is merely a gestured—but when courage still could have develop into a realistic policy, they cursed as "warmongers" the few Norwegians who recommended' it...

...Even if Hitler succeeds in landing a substantial army, his victory will still be far off...

...The trade unions are on the up and up...

...Socialism, Common Sense, and the War" was somewhat marred by his casual footnote which read: '"My disagreement with their position on aid to the Allies is the only disagreement I have with the Socialist Party and its standard bearer...

...evil, .which is...

...Whit we can be sure of is that if the attempt is made it may be decisive in what Willi Schlamm rightly calls a woddwide civil war...

...or the intelligent liberals all over the world who are thoroughly informed about the fate awaiting them in case of Hitler's Victory but, when asked to make possible the only effective means of resistance, behave like— well, like intelligent liberals...

...No more can a nation afford to let its sons and daughters grow up without the best possible development of their minds...

...No one doubts that with our present national resources and our present supply of unused labor power all these goods and services could be produced, with benefit to all concerned...