Where the News Ends
SCHLAMM, WILLI
By Willi Schlamm Where the News Ends WHENEVER your faith in Britain's war dB» ciency weakens-*—just read the German war communiques, particularly those which deal with the results of British...
...The British fleet should have left the Mediterranian a long time ago, instead of risking a fatal trap, and the same British fleet should have prevented the Nazi conquest of Crete at any cost...
...And once the majority of the American people realize that, too, you will be surprised how quickly the present, rather stupid all-out criticism of England will yield to_ a wisely restrained, highly intelligent discussion* of the real issues...
...If this were England's war, it would be lost now...
...Agricultural employment has not been increased by the defense program...
...These self-styled Socialists do T»ot even pretend to represent working-class ambitions ©r ideals...
...What is the reason for this Ainbalanced state of mind concerning England...
...Its continued upbuilding must be it-vital part of a just world order when the present conflict is over," U.S.Appeasing Spain In Vital Morocco Seen From RALPH DE TOLEDANG To the Editor: While Britain has fortified raltar against land attack throo»* Spain, Germany bas been quietly moving into the French sad Spanish Zones, possession > of which makes the Rock usele* * the British...
...In spite of all pro-British sentiments among your friends you will find the ever-ready spirit of stubborn anti-British criticism, and even prejudice, as long as Americans think they are invited to aid England in England's own war...
...Instead, you advocate a slave's safety, and a coward's withdrawal...
...Is* the face of their hatred, the desire to preserve our gains at home amounts to less than nothing...
...Thus, he unceasingly looks for arguments which he can use-as justification for his reluctance against investing too much in the other fellow's business...
...The French friends I met then in Paris were of course not only ashamed of what was cooking but outspokenly in favor of all-out aid to Czechoslovakia— as far as their conscious political statements went...
...All that the piffling, pompous orators are trying to say is that they think it would be nicer if they .could introduce you into a universe where it is easy to get rich and thinking is not a required subject...
...It is a dangerous age...
...Yet than a weak protest ft^f^J State Department, Botfliug" ¦* been done...
...Yeti shrink into your selfish ego and urge America to follow you...
...It is hard to lose a friend by his physical death...
...The truth is that, essentially, the world has not changed...
...In fact, your chance of spending a part of your ' life in times of peace is better now than it was then...
...All he got was the Kremlin run-around...
...Some rather illuminating data were presented on the question last week before the National Conference of Social Work by Howard B. Myers, research director for the Federal Works Projects Admin...
...But perhaps I can contribute a rather general thesis, the basis for which I acquired years ago in France...
...But not so Sir Stafford...
...The alternative to LaGuardia is Tammany Hall and the Kelly machine...
...but it is even more painful to lose him by his spiritual death: above all at such a time as this, when one looked to Frank Lloyd Wright to be a leader of the fight for freedom, wherever it might be threatened, and a defender of democracy, in every country where men still were faithful to the ideals of humanity...
...By Willi Schlamm Where the News Ends WHENEVER your faith in Britain's war dB» ciency weakens-*—just read the German war communiques, particularly those which deal with the results of British bombing raids on Naxi territory...
...Letters To the Editor Frank Lloyd Wright's Defeatism Aids Slave Empire—Mumford From LEWIS MUMFORD To the Editor: I have just sent the following letter to Mr...
...the R.A.F., penalizing the French cities on the Atlantic coast, is foolishly driving the French people into Hitler's arms—and why hasn't England yet occupied Dakar...
...But this excursion of the leftist politician into the realm of realpolitik failed to win a response, for no British government could put its seal of approval upon any part of Stalin's loot without wrecking England's moral position in this war Sir Stafford's efforts to keep Stalin from cooperating with Hitler in the Balkans and in Berlin's program of aggression in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, the full import of which will soon become apparent, proved "likewise futile, for the simple reason that the marriage of convenience concluded between the Moscow and Berlin dictators in August, 1939, cannot be severed by divorce...
...There is opportunity for new decisions, new alignments, new controls...
...For a while things run smoothly...
...I am, however, deeply convinced that no nation on earth could possibly have collected such a perfect score of idiotic fallacies as that with which the British are credited during any single gathering of New York armchair strategists...
...THE FORGOTTEN UNEMPLOYED PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT made his fight for the Presidency in 1932, amid the then rising tide of human misery in the very depths of the depression, as the champion of the Forgotten Man...
...The other is the left-wing Laborite Cripps...
...And that's the incredible credulity with which the Nazi tales are readily accepted in the anti-Nazi world, particularly by troubled liberals who fancy themselves on England's side...
...With painstaking accuracy, with never-failing efficiency, these R.A.F...
...They are so separated from the workers that they have forgotten all about them.J They propose to fight Mayor LaGuardia solely because he is standing up and taking his part in the struggle "to defeat the dictators who threaten to destroy democracy in the world...
...We cannot help agreeing with Miss Abbott that the appropriation of $875,000,000 to meet this need is "cruelly inadequate...
...In his desperate efforts to win some measure of success, he actually went so far as to suggest that Britain recognize Soviet Russia's seizure of the Baltic states...
...You take your place at such a changing, challenging time...
...Yesterday, however, there came to me a broadside, with your name at the bottom of it...
...It was never any better than it is now...
...There are two men in the British diplomatic service who typify, at different ends of the political scale, the illusions of British diplomacy concerning Soviet Russia and the foreign policy of the blood-stained dictator in the Kremlin...
...Then they break, they shift, they tear...
...To his credit it should be said, however, that he finally gave up his illusions concerning the possibility of enlisting the Moscow gangsters in support of Western democracy...
...The important thing for you to know is that you step on the stage at a crucial time, at a dramatic moment...
...Some of them are deliberately engaged in spreading Axis propaganda...
...And it is mighty encouraging, too...
...Their pretended concern for these issues is their means of defending their isolationism...
...Private, individual lives may be anything in any age-successful, gay, amusing, drab, poor, disappointing...
...There is poverty...
...I am glad that I wrote those words...
...I'HERE must be, in the specific case of an - - * American's personal relations with England, a lot of revealing historic explanations which others are more competent to explore than thtt writer...
...It is clear that defense spending has not yet broken the:-back of unemployment," Mr...
...Nothing less will suffice to meet existing needs...
...But a decent human being hates to admit, even to himself, this weakness...
...you are willing to abandon to their terrible fate the conquered, the helpless, the humiliated, the suffering: you carefully refrain from offending, if only by a passing reference, those Nasi overlords to whom in your heart you, like Lindbergh, have already freely given the fruits of victory...
...for they were called forth by a man whose work and spirit I have long admired and will continue to admire...
...The British government, on the other hand, is preparing some sinister appeasement of Germany...
...New York has played a fine part because, under Mayor LaGuardia's leadership, we have had an honest and progressive government responsive to the people's needs...
...But now—to satisfy their spite against Mayor LaGuardia— .they are willing to stab democracy and liberty in the back...
...We are no good, we say, "but we hope that you dear, brave, educated young people will take hold of this misshapen thing which we hand on to you and fashion it nearer to heart's desire...
...Myers" calculations...
...They'd rather eat their own bombs than drop them, erroneously, on a munition plant...
...This, in brief, is the problem as stated by a competent government official entrusted with the task of keeping the nation informed on the extent of continued unemployment...
...The trade unions have had a city administration which is definitely on their aide...
...In former times, age talked down to youth and completely missed the mark...
...YOUTH, HERE IS YOUR WORLD THIS week the young\will be graduated from the colleges and high schools...
...Myers' report that total employment in April was still below the peak of 1929...
...In fact, and strangely enough, whenever and where-ever the...
...conversation touches a subject of a slightly British nature, the laws of logic are immediately suspended as if the spiritual realm, too, were ruled by emergency regulations...
...It's just humany impossible...
...In his book of memoirs published after the outbreak of the war, Sir Neville confesses with an innocence truly surprising in a hard-boiled diplomatist that he was rather taken unaware by the Stalin-Hitler pact...
...With the nation prepared to spend $43,000,000,000 on defense, it would be criminal to so neglect the task of moral defense as to permit the vast army of the needy to shift for themselves...
...We hope that the fight now being made in Congress in their behalf by a minority of people's representatives will succeed, and that the niggardly appropriation of $875,000,000 requested by the President for unemployment relief for the fiscal year EWJr-42 will at least be doubled...
...Shipping niovitf around the coast of Africa, *i* the Cape, would be more vula«e* able than it is in the North At-lantic today...
...Both failed miserably in their tasks...
...Norman Thomas's followers cannot possibly elect anyone...
...History is like the seasons or like a play...
...Beating Tammany has preserved respect for the democratic' prooess...
...Nothing approaching a shortage of labor is visible in the near future because unemployment remains at the 6.5 million figure, with an additional reserve of millions of potential workers standing behind this jobless army...
...However tough "life" may leem, they will not have to listen to any more baccalaureate sermons or try to keep their minds from wandering during longwinded commencement addresses...
...If this perfect record of hitting non-military targets exclusively is not the most amazing grade of efficiency, I don't know my own telephone number...
...Miss Abbott estimated that of the 6.5 million unemployed, from 3 to 3.5 millions are in need...
...must be in possession of a simply miraculous bomb sight: Of scores of raids, admitted by the Nazis, the English planes have bH non-military objects exclusively...
...It was in the days around Munich...
...Today we are obliged to call the attention of the administration and of the country to thla very issue—the forgotten men and women of the still vast army of the unemployed...
...Myers concluded...
...There is race hatred...
...The men who led in the performance of this deed have fallen so low that they have lost all sense of moral direction...
...Not once has one, of the innumerable British bombs hit a factory or a bridge or an ait port After all . . . it could have happend by chance at least...
...It will enlighten your readers on a phase of the struggle which has now come "into the forefront...
...Whence this alarming conflict between the, intellectually accepted sympathy for another nation's cause and the subconscious ever-ready opposition against it...
...May I express to you our deep appreciation for this splendid statement...
...Their apologies" are an insult to any young people who are worth their salt...
...Employment in certain industries, such as pigling, has risen only slowly, in part because of technological advances...
...The Mayor, whatever his faults, has done much to,-ware} attaining many good ends...
...Since that time the country's total labor force has grown by nearly 7 million workers...
...This writer is definitely not of Anglo-Saxon stock and has therefore, admittedly, insufficient knowledge to what length the stupidity of British generals can go...
...but you are not man enough to state openly the only terms on which Americans could >purchase peace or security in such a world—namely by active cooperation...
...Casablanca, in tht French Zone, has a fine hafbor which, used as a submarine sot' air base, would bottle up the HM-iterranean and make Britisb naval operations in the SttanS impossible...
...As Senator Robert F. Wagner recently stated: "In truth and in fact, the Jewish National Home in Palestine has been a world-sanctioned experiment in democracy...
...Nor because he has failed to satisfy the requirements of organized labor...
...The defense stimulus has been very highly concentrated in a few industries and in a few areas...
...For W the British bombsight is that good in avoiding military objects—how excellent the results will be, when the R.A.F...
...Because of the constant advances in technology, the relationship between volume of production and employment is not a direct one: production increases today are accompanied by smaller employment gains.than was the case even a few years ago...
...None of these people, I am sure, would ever say that he has any doubts about defending America just because the U.S., some decades ago, did certain things to Mexico and, in acquiring the Panama Canal, did not exactly act along the lines of unselfish brotherly love among nations...
...Did you write that broadside—or your worst enemy ? In this strange tirade you use the word gangster, not to characterize Hitler and his followers, but to castigate those who would fight to the death rather than see Hitler's "new order" prevail in any part of the earth...
...In plain words, you are ready to accept a world order based on totalitarian corruption and slavery and terrorism...
...You may have to risk your life in the air, on the land, on the sea-even under the sea...
...The Mayor is not opposed because be has failed to give the city a good administration...
...Putting together what I heard only- during the last week from people who, as far as their conscious mind goes, are pro-British, the picture is something like this: Eden's recent statement of England's war aims is jingoistic rubbish, directed against the innocent German masses...
...lads confined themselves to strictly non-military bombings...
...But not Sir Neville...
...We have made a mess of the world...
...According to the German reports, the R.A.F...
...If you young people had started out in 1841 or 1741, you would have had to face the same realities...
...According to the general consensus of my liberal friends, there is not only not a single mistake which the British have not made (and that might even be true) but what they have done was all a mistake...
...Human need and misery have not declined in the Southern states, in the corn and hog states, in the former drought areas, and in the fruit-growing valleys of California...
...FAILURE OF A MISSION gIR STAFFORD CRIPPS, British ambassador to Moscow, has arrived in London to report to the Foreign Office...
...There is war...
...Despite the rapid employment gains of the past 12 months, there were still 6.5 millions unemployed in April of this year...
...Nor bas Britain alone p$* remiss...
...but you have not a word to say against the Slave Empire that Germany wfeuld set on its ruins and extend far beyond its present borders...
...But the life of man in the world has always been tough...
...AH that they can do is to divert votes from the Mayor, to serve as an ally of Tammany Hall...
...This incurable romanticist undertook the job of weaning Stalin from Hitler when in the spring of 1940 he went to Moscow as ambassador to try his charms upon Joe the Ripper in an effort to restore the fake Popular Front by means of which Stalin wrecked France but which Sir Stafford was convinced was none the less wise and desirable for England...
...In one campaign they can support Hitler abroad and the municipal racketeers at home...
...After a while, I discovered the mechanisrti n work: my friends were willing to come to Czechoslovakia's aid, firmly believing in the righteans-ness of her cause...
...Twenty industrial areas have received 68 per cent of all the prime defense contracts awarded by May I. These twenty areas contain only 2 7 per cent of the population of the country and only 24 per cent of WPA employment...
...Now the old folks adopt an apologetic tone and miss it just as definitely...
...Sir Stafford must now be a sadder if not wiser man...
...The drive into Syria must antagonize Weygand, the last pillar of eventual Anglo-French cooperation, and why didn't Wavell occupy Syria six weeks ago ? &JIUCH as I would like to laugh off this pathetic *»* diarrhea of inconsistent but evep^sting criticism—I can not...
...Our foolishness is equal even to that of our fathers...
...The Spanish Zone, bestir fortified during the Civil w"**?* German technicians, can nam* Wot water of the Western end of the Mediterranean...
...And frankly—as long as Americans consider this to be England"t war, I do not think th»t,-i with all their sympathies for England, they will give sufficient aid...
...THE LOWER DEPTHS OF PACIFISM TPHE depth of degeneration of certain pacifist groups can - be measured by the announcement last week that the followers of Norman Thomas will run a ticket against Mayor LaGuardia in the coming municipal campaign...
...They constantly talk of preserving democracy at home, of widening labor's gains, of making more secure the rights and liberties of our citizens...
...DUT there is something even more startling than the official Nazi picture of England's military achievements...
...For years this pact appeared inevitable to those versed in the roots and purposes of Soviet policy...
...Stephen Wise Lauds Article On Palestine from STEPHEN S. WISE To the Editor: Our attention has been called to the fine editorial which appeared in the New Leader on the defense of Palestine...
...In the social and political advances of the past decade...
...One is Sir Neville Henderson, ambassador to Berlin from April, 1937, until the outbreak of the war...
...All of the services of the city have been improved...
...It is significant that simultaneously with the arrival of Sir Stafford in London, the cables from the British capital and elsewhere are carrying new cock-and-bull stories about an impending break between Stalin and Hitler, showing that certain newspaper correspondents are no more competent in the domain of Soviet-German relations than diplomats...
...Myers admitted frankly that the expectations cherished .by many concerning the decrease in unemployment as a consequence of this expansion have failed to materialize, and warned against the undue optimism entertained by some concerning "the number one economic problem" of unemployment...
...This action has nothing to do with the welfare of the working class...
...We welcome you—not to a world of peace—but to a world of war...
...The United Ststss Treaty rights in Morooeo have been violated...
...Beyond that, and without any awareness, they were fervently trying to discover any weak spots in the Czech position...
...Most of .these correspondents are ignorant and incurably credulous...
...And thinking comes harder than fighting...
...He failed at every step...
...It is clear from^flr...
...Wright, one of the world's prominent architects, and thought you would be interested: My dear Frank Lloyd Wright: A few days ago I corrected proofs on a, brief tribute to you and your work which will come out next week in the New Yorker, by way of reviewing Gutheim's collection of your writings...
...They are bound together for better.or for'worse...
...But how deeply disturbed is your liberal in huj' will to aid England whenever he is reminded that India did not voluntarily jom the British Empire...
...But some of us don't care too much1 what hap- ' pens to England—and are nevertheless on her side because we have realized that this is the democratic world's own struggle with totalitarian darkness...
...command decides to Act them...
...Even-in the summer of 1943, unemployment, will total several millions...
...The facts were confirmed by other speakers, notably Edith Abbott, of the School of Social W4rk Administration of the University of Chicago, who did not mince words in assailing the government for the cavalier manner in which the unemployed are being treated in the excitement incident upon the industrial expansion arising from the national defense program...
...Any German -city is a conglomeration of military and non-military objects...
...This sentence is rather confused, but so are some of my friends...
...but they believed, just si firmly, that they were called upon to fight for Czechoslovakia's cause—not for their own...
...Something must be profoundly wrong when usually intelligent people, consciously in sympathy with England's cause, so easily lose their self-control whenever they see the slightest chance to utter an unfriendly word...
...Under their control we should have the old graft, the old racketeering, the old brutality...
...They stand or fall together and no amount of disinformation concerning the prospect of a break between them—disinformation designed to confuse and deceive illusionists in London and Washington—can alter this fact...
...Granted an.increase in employment of 2.5 millions for the next twelve months, there will still be 5 million unemployed in the summer of 1942, according to Mr...
...There could hardly be a greater set-back for the forces of democracy (than* the return of the greatest American city to this sort qf corruption...
...Morocco i* furthermore the threshold • French West Africa and DakarThese facts are not unkaW* Yet Britain is willing to Franco's word ihat the recmA seixed International 3fe** ? Tangier will not be militarfe**' British Intelligence mo* ** aware that a number of mansions in Tangier bats hf taken over by Nazi military sonnel...
...Thia statement is supported by authoritative figures from official government sources...
...You hurl reproaches against the system of empire, meaning by this onJy the British Empire, an empire that widened the area of justice and freedom and peace...
...that French Moroco* J* swarming with German "lt*t ists...
...For months immediately preceding its conclusion, informed press and diplomatic circles , in Berlin knew that it was coming...
...he intellectually understands the fight's importance...
...We confess our sins...
...If you are to be of any use, you will have to think...
...By the millions they will start what we call "life...
...B_ut no, you don't know British stubbornness...
...What a spectacle...
...Of these, less than 1.5 millions are now on WPA, Under the President's proposed curtailment program, this number will be reduced to a million or less by the middle of the summer...
...In this calendar year the values which our ancestors have built up through the centuries are threatened and defended...
...The lengthening of hours worked by those already employed is another factor in the increased output...
...Benes . . "Actually, isn't there something in what Henlein complains about, although, of course . . .?" and" so it went...
...Counting the families and dependents of the needy, we have no less than 10,000,000 human beings now in dire need in this country...
...and I have read and reread the words in it with growing astonishment: with astonishment over its crassness, with incredulity over its blindness, with anger over its shameless defeatism, and with indignation over its callous lack of moral perception...
...Just between us, tail me—haven't the Czechs really . . .?" "Honestly, wouldn't it have been wiser, if Dr...
...It will not be a report of great diplomatic successes...
...The animus of this action, as expressed in the platform adopted, is interesting and revealing...
...istration...
...It must be protected and cherished today as an outpost of freedom and social justice...
...And in the depths of his soul, no one is too anxious to fight for someone's else happiness, not even if...
Vol. 24 • June 1941 • No. 24
