Carl Sandburg's Lincoln
HESSELTINE, W. B.
Carl Sandburg's Lincoln By W. B. HESSELTINE STORM OVER THE LAND. A PROFILE' OF "TBE" CWTL WAR. TAKES MAIS'LY FROM ABRAHAM-LINCOLN: THE WAR YEARS: ?????? Sandburg. Harcourt, Brate. 440 pp. J3.60....
...Nor should we...
...The Nazi government was fully aware of tbe set-up,' the American and British governments were not, though Standard Oil and Shell were the two other major partners in tbe cartel...
...It is, as a matter of fact, one of the very few really intelligent reviews of Sandburg's Lincoln...
...But never did he see beneath the surface.' His Lincoln did not grow during the War Years: he was' just as big at tbe railroad station in Springfield as hie was in Ford's Theater...
...The publication of Abraham Lincoln: The War Years brought disillusion...
...Your food" grinders are like anything else...
...Look...
...You have tSebest ideas, the best writers...
...Standard dismantled this plant at Farben's request because it was disturbing the market and would impede' Union Carbide and Carbon with whom Farben bad agreements and did not want to compete...
...It is neither history nor mythology—and worse, it is not poetry...
...Today, perspectives are apparently shifting, and the recent broadcasts from Berlin "defend" the British Empire against the "intemperate slurs" of "ungrateful, unworthy allies...
...Tbey have - noted that historians have written substantial volumes on minor characters, hut that no competent, trained historian has essayed a biography of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln...
...who was dying in a Nazi concentration camp...
...When Imake a sale I always follow it up...
...of the progressives,- a drawing in of horns all around, a petering out of campaigns which were full of enthusiasm...
...I love 'em all...
...Offensive parhaps inaugurated parall allied, meeting cumchinese frinstance chsirmanning proceedings para proposed here parvemon bartlett," etc., etc...
...Their ideas are fine, brilliant, useful—at least they would be useful if enough people eould see through the post-graduate language and understand what tbey are driving at—and how about going out to lupch with me...
...Proof of this analysis comes with Sandburg's new book...
...Our main job, according to the writer of plain every-day English, is to keep the hungry hordes of Asia from spilling over here...
...Russia and Britain, the News thinks, can take care of him...
...So Dieterle has been requested by the Hollywood bosses (at the suggestion of Washington) to touch things up...
...he had ridden the roads that Lincoln traveled...
...The right of way goes to Monroe Lerner who started this shindig...
...He was ready to hurl himself at the error like a half-back going off tackle on a V formation...
...The world monopolies were eager to come to terms with the aggressive German state, but the remorseless logic of the war machine drove the Nazis on...
...We talked and agreed on some literary matters (e.g., Stephen Spender is a fiVje reporter and a great poet), disagreed .on some political qnestfpWr* bpt had a good left-wing time tearing a great many things apart...
...t ¦ . Spinach for the General "f USED to lecture at the dental college...
...May they live long and continue to profess for The New Leader...
...After a time I was hardly conscious of the nature of the encouragement, but he never deserted me...
...ij?Now look," went on Dr...
...I should say, rather, it should be further revised...
...And Patents for Hitler is the story bow several giant American concerns became the virtual pri«--~" of Germany's imperialist dreams...
...which saw the cunning Carnegie, the ruthless Frick and wily Gary develop the basis for a world technological age...
...Wednesday:—The sudden news is that no Nobel peace prize this . year, as announced only yesterday...
...He has taken time off from reforming the economic system, the political system, the social system...
...Many of the stories found in the book are familiar to readers of Tbe New Leader...
...Only a " 4bid puritan would want us to dress all of our ideas up in the...
...Hitler's benefit...
...All of which seems to me very significant...
...You know how to make everything interesting for intelligent people...
...What's good for them they don't want...
...He is, you see, from the Solomons—but Maryland...
...But the conflict between "industry" and "business" which Thorstein Veblen etched to deeply Into our consciousness with his discussions of "sabotage" again crops up...
...The Secret International By DANIEL BELL PATENTS FOR HITLER...
...And in Reimann's book the documentation is little short of devastating...
...Monday: Into the office today lumbered Hendrik Willem Van Loon, a great big giant of a man, who strikes one not a little like tbe late Heywood Broun...
...Their successors, the men who today run the great industrial empires, are, in comparison, faceless creatures with colorless minds and souls...
...It was right and fitting that the Poet Sandburg should write a biography of Abraham Lincoln...
...Frank is a small but compactly-built man, with a soft but authoritative voice...
...And I thought of W. ?. Auden's brilliant Ihnes to him: "What better than your strict and adult pen / Can warn w from the colours and the consolations, The showy arid works, reveal / The squalid shadow of academy and garden, / Make action urgent and its nature clear...
...Standard erected ah acetylene production plant at Baton Rouge to experiment on synthetic rubber, only to and a cheaper process for nylons, plastic and other products...
...Now, in Abraham Lincoln he had an epic theme...
...What did I find...
...We want all of toern to find good things in the paper, and I think they do...
...The reason historians eschew these Jarger tasks lies deep in the very nature of historical scholarship...
...tbe trip- About tbe inauguration and the organization of tbe new government were clustered the pertinent anecdotes...
...Can't you fellows jack yourselves 4...
...When he has completed his fact-finding, the historian presents, with whatever art he has, his narrative of past events, showing as well as he can, the relationships between cause and effect...
...Friday: See from the reviews where Ernest Hemingway believes that only sterilization wiTl serve as "the ultimate' settlement" with the"Nazis...
...Saturday:^ Ran into Clement Greenberg, of Paritee» Review...
...In its coming a long way from the individual industrial entrepreneurs of sixty years ago, corporate wealth has become anonymous and institutionalized...
...Morgan and Rockefeller, hollow names of their forebearers, are merely convenient fictions for American capitalism...
...as the printers gently put it), and now I suppose I am forgiven...
...He did not mature, ripen, mellow...
...All he telb/me is that he is dorrfg interesting, important and dangerous week...
...The fireworks of yesterday's adventures are gone...
...Vanguard Press...
...Last Friday he came charging in...
...On the table in the hall is The New Leader still in its wrapper, but there that guy sits reading the Daily News...
...Inside and Out" will be resumed in this space next week...
...although Germany never felt itself bound by these agreements and consistently violated them without reproach...
...Sunday: Was told of and !read Christopher Isherwood's neat and clever story in The New 1 'orher...
...The world had been explored and allocated...
...You are scared...
...Tbe theme of The War Yean was the war: not Lincoln...
...He had the air of a man who has just that minute—and for the 6rst time—discovered that there is something wrong with the world...
...If they have •'good environment,'they are good...
...We needed a poet's Lincoln, and we found an author who could be lyrical on minor themes but who lacked epic power...
...The patent system forced the United States to assist in the curtailment of new technological developments vital to national defense...
...The earlier meeting bed at least the clean-cut enthusiasm of people like Pearl Buck and Lin Yutang, the latter being something of a surprise, for I remembered him from books and lectures as a mannered, powdered person, but he is speaking now with extraordinary fixe and bitterness...
...The documents, as every historian knows, were full, complete,—and inadequate...
...Saturday: Thought Edgar Snow's dispatch to the Safevepost» "Must We Beat Japan First...
...Which is Horrible Thought for the day...
...By diente>¦ Reimann...
...Upon this thread, as upon a clothes line, tbe author hung anecdotes washed in the mild suds of a poet's rhetoric...
...Now listen, Doc, it...
...Henry S. Commager explained that it was a' "people's Lincoln...
...The new...
...Drawn mainly from the Bone Committee disclosures, the bulk of the illustrative material deals with the partnership between I. G. Farben and Standard Oil in particular reference to synthetic oil and synthetic rubber...
...Louis while the waiter reinforced me with food and drink, "I think The New Leader is tops...
...Although most of the stories are gone, the book is but an anecdotal sketch...
...We are afraid of the two million readers of the...
...Friday: To the sins of the Stalinists add scholatieisqu Note where their pressure has moved the OWI to...
...The individual is required to defend his very life before a ruthless and cunning enemy, to, devise the most intricate ways of killing—or escaping death— yet we are told that he is legally incapable' and foolhardy...
...They have, too, typewriters, pens, pencils and telephones...
...His eyes were shining...
...Liberal forces ought not to leave the exploitation of this potentially pop-plar idea to the reactionaries...
...What in the world happened to the code sheet, we don't know...
...7Ae *1i*te ?/ %atf By MELVIN J. LASKY Notts in October ¦"pjeraday:—Post-mortems long into the night with Dan on India, after Dave Munro and Vic Riesel had gone...
...that we have to feed them features all of one stripe...
...How many people know the names of the men who run Westinghouse, General Electric, Alcoa, U. S. Steel, or the giant world-wide International Telephone and Telegraph, Imperial Chemical Industries, Dutch Shell (tbe towering and crafty Deterding has passed away, virtually the last of the "private world emperors...
...Who give us nearer insight to resist / We expanding fear, the savaging disaster...
...that I have anything against the professors...
...Keep The New Leader high-dses...
...Sunday:—Winter gloom has apparently hit England, and Stephen Spender reports that "there has been a damping of the...
...316 pages...
...My youthful colleagues are, of course, more «inservative...
...Instead of being alarmed by attorney Rifkin's enlargement of the topic, he takes it all in his stride and raucously calls for all-out reform: "I believe the legal concept of infancy should be revised to give the 18-20-year-old the right to vote...
...Or'change in the four dread years he watched a nation's suffering...
...He isn't afraid of anything...
...The new .world was already divided...
...It is—if one doesn't mind i mixed metaphor—"a profile of the Civil War...
...But the soul leaves no documents for the historian's prying eyes: the documents which are available can tell what happened to a man but not what happened in him...
...The grandiose Fisk and clever Gould gilded an age which saw a Rockefeller, spurred by puritan, piety, wreck his competitors to build a vast empire...
...There hasn't been a really'first- : rate analysis of the Indian question yet...
...These random thoughts are prompted by Guenter Reimarm's Patents for Hitler...
...But didthey pay any attention...
...The historian has a valuable function to perform in society — but there are limits to his powers...
...Saturday...
...It's Dr.^xmis Beiss, the reformer from Newark...
...These two ideas: the curtailment of the new technological revolution, and the shifting bases of economic world-power—I.e., the substitution of paper agreement for international rivalries' ancl consequent strides towards appeasement and safeguarding of the status quo—form the framework of Reimann's detailed account of the shenanigans of Standard Oil-I...
...who sent bis congratulations...
...Thirty or forty years ago, the prize rumor was one which had the award going to Kaiser Wilhelm II...
...It certainly is a dirty and traitorous idea ef things...
...Over the past two decades we have been passing through a "technical" or second industrial revolution, a development whose first phase the War has brought to a close, and whose new larger chapter the War is writing...
...Tor I was not too young at the time to remember with vivid impressions that strange city where in European travels I spent a year of my youth...
...THIS was the result: Patent rights were used * to sustain international agreements which divided up the world market and provided for the strangling of strategic industries in America...
...That too is a significant implication of Reimann's reporting...
...This seems to me to involve a contradiction...
...No one expected Sandburg to be a historian: one had only a right to hope that he was a poet of power and insight...
...tee promoters and builders have passed away...
...At each point along the line be pinned the appropriate anecdotes...
...Here he must trace the evolution of a human soul, assess the facts of personal development, find the causal forces and measure their effects upon the subject's character...
...And taken together with Reimann's previous book, it is a sharp commentary and analvsis of our economic world...
...give yourselves an injection, do something to rouse yourselves ? that you can rouse other folks ? Uttky's Comeback JAM always for waking up, striking out in new directions, trying * something different...
...History these days doesn't even allow'fabulous stories to start circulating...
...It is neither storm nor profile: it is anecdotes ar...
...I expect sharp dissent from some quarters, but the character of the current German propaganda lends strong support to the analysis offered in this column last time...
...But ** don't have to let it go at that...
...I am scared...
...And if his eye happens to wander to the editorials or the Voice of the People, he sees such expressions as goom-by and ftinkeroo, the same words he hears round him in conversation...
...For the old concept was that he lacked the independent judgment necessary to the management of his own affairs...
...The salient thing about these men is that they had the "say" in the affairs of their corporations...
...You should see what that remark brought into The New Leader office...
...They seem to be everywhere, these signs that "the government is moving to the Right rather than tbe Left as the war goes on...
...He talks about old and familiar things (how foolish some people have recently made themselves about these very subjects), but there is nothing that be says that is not fresh and inspiring...
...His shoulders were heaving...
...Friday: Was distressed to learn today that J. J. Singh, of the All-India League, has refused to speak on tbe same program with a Moslem...
...could notice it...
...As Lincoln journeyed to Washington, the author told the stories relating to...
...Did their pa- ¦ lints pay any attention...
...Look at this editorial...
...There are not a few people in the world' who feel that he may yet be,reckoned as the greatest Maifor our times...
...That was the meaning of appeasement and defeatism on the part qf so many ^ capitalist groups in all lands...
...Standard Oil-Farben "treaties" followed the "Nazi flag...
...OIXTY years ago capitalism bred a stock of ^ "Robber Barons...
...The crticism is true, but the historians should be commended rather than condemned for ignoring these greater personalities...
...Here were stories about Lincoln,—stories' that Lincoln told, the words that men remembered, the words that Lincoln wrote—but nowhere, any insight into the soul of the wartime President.' Occasionally the poet-author struck off a prose poem on 'some minor theme, sometimes be gave over to panegyric, always be retold the stones effectively...
...But am vastly amused by his stories of all the wide-eyed wonder and open-mouthed amazement when he answers the wheret-are-you-from's with a curt "Solomons...
...Everyone knows what had happened to Lincoln: one needed a poet's interpretation of what happened in him...
...He was only half awake—running his eye over the funny strips...
...Saturday: V. M. tells me that his recent short-wave broadcast outlining Italian Socialist principles was heard by Arturo Toscanini...
...It pointed to a diatribe intended to prove that we don't need to send soldiers and machines to Europe to fight Hitler...
...Two years before, the 158,000 Swedish kroner went to heroic old Carl von Ossietsky...
...2.50...
...THE publication of this one-volume digest of Carl Sandberg's four-volume Abraham Lincoln: The War Years calls to mind that critics have long bemoaned the absence of "definitive" biographies of many major 'figures 'of American' history...
...They had all to lose and nothing to gain...
...Bertraad Russell was fuzzy, Anup Singh conventional, Henry Polak stuffy, and Norman Thomas sentimental...
...He would be lost as far as you are concerned...
...But he , lies "em...
...And by the way, tbe Document of tbe Year has been written by Ignazio Silone in a letter to friends, now printed in The New Republic as "The Things I Stand For...
...ftcrf Four-Letter...
...It is dirty, mean, disloyal...
...ab« drops a few suggestions about tbe Polish-Exile situation which might fit into Leon Dennen's angle and shape up as a leading <-tory...
...People prefer the garbage they find in the News...
...Director William Dieterle was apparently guilty of "deviationism" " in picturing Johnson, of Reconstruction ill-fame, in a somewhat favorable way...
...He came in talking—with a little whirlwind,of people and waste-paper eddying round the ends of his coattails...
...JJriday:—Went through some special reports by Salvemini on $be ¦ Italian situation, which Dan has dug up for a big propaganda story...
...The New Leader is like whole- · •ome food...
...Contradicting there the traditional view expounded by Lenin that imperialism must create fiercer conflicts between rival powers, Reimann pointed out" that the post-World War I history is an era of attempted imperialist stabilization...
...Maybe you think all I there is to it is getting a good grip on the forceps and jerking out a molar...
...So we must fight our own little separate war against Japan...
...Sunday: Quincy Howe picked up my comments on People*' War and War of Coalition on his WABC broadcast, and it made me happy to hear his substantial agreement...
...Thursday: A last-minute London cable came in from Sam Solon...
...In the high period of Peoples' War, the Nazis devoted themselves to the denial of the enemy's democratic war aims...
...An Army officer fraud swindled the money, and the world should have known there and then that this was the passing of the glory of "peace...
...Nothing very new or striking was said, and the only thing of note was the disturbing lack*of information among most of the reporters...
...Marx-Engels correspondence on the U. S. Civil War told a different story...
...The historian bases his account upon documents...
...The author carried Lincoln from Springfield to Washington, from inauguration day to Fort Sumter, to Bull Run, to Gettysburg, and to Appomattox...
...The historian turned biographer faces a task for which he has inadequate training...
...so hours were spent unraveling the cablese...
...Thus after the fall of France in 1940 a new royalty agreement was negotiated between Farben and Standard Oil wherein patent sales in the French market, which formerly went into a general pool, were now allocated to Farben...
...I can understand them...
...His technical training has taught him to handle documents, to assess their merit, and to balance one against another...
...a very penetrating and very important piece (though the Kremlin Set will, now probably drop Snow, for his answer was "Yes...
...His anthology of blood and violence, Men at War, is advertised as "the perfect gift book for the boys in the Army...
...The dark, awkwardly built houses are gone, and the dreary, muddy streets are no more...
...It is a new age of light metals, plastics, and synthetic products...
...It's an amazing fact-crammed documentation of a thesis he elaborated in his earlier Myth of the Total State...
...And In a larger realm, a greater harm was done...
...I wonder if anything can be done about the "vicious way Vni Warners' film of Mission to Moscow is running...
...But put it in plain language—with a funny twist now »M then...
...I like, especially, John Dewey, Professor Maclver and C. Wright Mills...
...Both missed' tbe point...
...Tis» waiter brought apple pie and coffee...
...the girls telephone in from the business office, "That man •v is here again," I need no further identification...
...But is this what we had come to expect of this most pn mising of British novelists...
...What was required was stabilization...
...What a man...
...He argued: "To give the right of francbise to boys and girls of eighteen would be a negation of our legal concept of infancy...
...I think that it wquld be psychologically beneficial to give the vote to the 18-year-old...
...This was a matter of business," Reimann writes, "and he apparently JMjlfoV^Pant to mix his private views with tbe management of his financial interests...
...The thread that held the book together was the public events of the Civil War...
...Written patent agreements as safe if 'duller and make less noise...
...Rockefeiler was not in agreement with the appeasers, but has refused to express publicly any opinions on tbe policies] of Standard Oil...
...Melvin J. Lasky, for example, put his quills up when 1 told him about Dr...
...But here a while back I got a subscription from a plain working man over in Newark...
...An international oil cartel, Catalytic Refining Association, was formed in 1938...
...the Teddy Roosevelt affair, of course, bad its wrinkles, and there were a few beautiful footnotes to the choice of Charles E. Dawes, and of Neville Chamberlain in 1938...
...It is in Melvin's honor that we sing our new office song, Praise *? Lord and Pass the Erudition...
...world ruling class is crowded with administrators, patent lawyers, business-diplomats and fixers...
...Perhaps that concept should be- revised...
...Here the deadweight of an older vested-interest financial structure is holding back this new technical revolution...
...Those strips are drawn for dope-heads like him...
...The biogApher who would penetrate beneath the documents must be more than an historian—he must be a psycho-analyst, a clairvoyant, or a poet...
...News...
...He had dreamed in the land where Lincoln had slept...
...Don't be too solemn...
...Any proposed measure must be judged on the basis of its probable effect...
...The Poet Sandburg felt the tonal value of words,"and could make sentences march in cadence...
...Whenever he saw rite wilting he would bring on reserves of nourishment.- When the stock of •pple pie was exhausted he shifted to pumpkin pie—then to cheesecake and blintzes...
...What a grand old man SaLemini is!—so curiously inspiring in his bitterness—for here is a man who never forgets for a moment that he is (not "after all" but above all) a Socialist...
...The public events of the war are presented in chronical order, but there is no analysis, no penetration, no theme...
...His finger fairly stabbed the page as he presented ,his evidence...
...ask MGM to make changes in the filming of the life of Andrew Johnson...
...Not so 19...
...People turn down spinach and eat hot dogs and c|ndy...
...Gave us another piece, and told us some wonderful stories, so full of Van Loon wit and charm, I wisn I could get them by the censor at the next desk...
...If he had taken the trouble to open that par-tfulsr number of The New LeadeF he might have read: 'the signal characteristic of Maitreyanisnt is the attitude of generalized detached-attachment.' He would throw the whole number away...
...Not with me.* I tried to teach the dentists about food slid teeth...
...He didn't want to eat, but I did...
...It is an amazing expose of the mainsprings of world capitalism...
...Storm Over the Load, is frankly a digest of its four-volume predecessor...
...Reiss' ideas...
...This is so obvious that a demagogue like Arthur Vandenberg has now introduced a constitutional unendment looking toward the making of this change...
...Certainly the situations'into which this law thrusts the 'infant' are more difficult and require more mental awareness than any other situation which life is likely to offer...
...But the book is worth having...
...Why give Vandenberg the undeserved credit of being a friend to youth and democracy...
...These children may not have a vote, but they have a voice...
...He was carrying the ball for language reform, and all the conservative teams in the world would not keep him from making a touchdown...
...So I used to tell the dentists ttfget their people to drink milk and eat vegetables...
...Show what's wrong with the world and how things can be "bde right...
...Four great volumes set forth a'' succession of anecdotes...
...p4e crfome tynani I AST week George Rifkin rounded on the correspondents who have ** been asking votes for soldiers—all soldiers—even those in the 1>19 group...
...It's hard enough for an against-the-strcam mag," he writes hotly, "without being knifed by friends and eeo-tributors...
...To Waldo Frank's first press conference since his return from South America and the brutal assault on him in Argentine...
...Wednesday: ?. E. in to give us some new material on the Trotsky case in Mexico...
...Patiently explained that mention was made, but had to be cut ("there ain't rubber type, Lasky...
...We needed no new myth for the masses nor a new exploration of the documents...
...What are we afraid of...
...Our plans lor a radio round-table forum are upset, but its importance is unfortunately wider...
...They could and did make decisions unfettered by considerations other than their business whims...
...All that he wants to reform now is the language of the professors...
...It is an absorbing story of secret deals, and international chicanery...
...What a propaganda crew this Kremlin set...
...see how easy it is to read...
...he had felt the soil where Lincoln trod...
...Monday: Read and was moved by a special Polish report on the Nazi destruction of the city of Lodz...
...We can dress good stuff up so tbey will like it...
...In the meantime, the apostle of plain speaking went on with his barrage...
...But the only movement was the movement of public events: Abraham Lincoln did not grow, mature, or change...
...Although the details are complex, the pattern is startlingly simple...
...Our **?ers run from professors to workers and back...
...He is, by the way, very pessimistic, and high circles in Washington don't cheer him up very "much...
...That is the Daily News picture of the whole duty of America in this global war...
...Now the monopolists—no longer on a national but a world scale—were seeking to keep peace, a desperate peace at any cost...
...He lingered in the offing...
...The Town Hall Hall debate earlier was pretty much of a disappointment...
...It is a succession of events: it is a series of stories...
...They're all fine...
...Reimann traces the amazing resurgence of I. G. Farben following the close of World War I and their slow shrewd manipulations by which tbe international patent rights for vital processes worked entirely to their own, i.e...
...Apart from the handful who read the Senate Patents reports, few know the names of Parish and Howard as tbe directing custodians of Standard Oil...
...That's my point...
...ranged in sequence but without consequence...
...So over to this man's house I went to see how he and your paper were making out...
...G. Farben and other American-German ties...
...They created a lusty tradition in American business enterprise...
...said Lasky, "we have all sorts of things reported and discussed by all sorts of winters for all sorts of people...
...Their task, as representatives mainly of absentee capital, is to seek safe and sane investments...
...She feels at home...
...He is expert at extracting facts from verbiage, at-separating the rare jewel of triith' from the dross of falsehood...
...Don't you think that' the present law extending the draft revises that concept a bit...
...Heifher at Lindy's Nor Longehamp's CO I led this human dynamo to a proletarian restaurant in the *» neighborhood of Union Square...
...Here tbe author has eliminated most of his stories, and presents the war...
...He was a great guy, that waiter...
...sort of clothes...
...Perhaps—perhaps even in this material world—the soul of the Poet Lincoln could strike some mystic chord in the Poet Sandburg...
...M^K., now a Navy ensign, came in on a sudden leave...
...Monday: Dwight Macdonald mad for my quoting Silone without citing tbe source as Partisan Reriew...
...It **sn't have to be put into baby talk for them...
...Tuesday: A splendid review came in from Hesseltine...
...Among aware, intelligent people we can find thousands of new readers—if only ous stuff is fresh and lively and important...
...Professor J. G. Randall complained that Abraham Lincoln: The War Years was not history...
...If millions of persons don't get the right ideas, then we are lost...
...Million of persons can't stand, the Daily News...
...EU tell you...
Vol. 25 • November 1942 • No. 45
