The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
A Page of Features Americana Books Chatter The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN t Tfce Boy From Gfoversviffe !| WANT to give all the publicity I can to Walter Morris. His book ;Iis called American...
...Darlan, and the whole Vichy cabal were in on the North African operations, and that they're part of a "combine" which will control the French Empire during the war...
...He must find a way of life with a deliberately adopted ideology that is worthy of a civilized human being...
...He retraces rapidly the origins and historal development of each of the races and nationalities of Eastern Europe, describing their affinities and differences and their individual struggles through the centuries until they emerged in 1919 as independent nations...
...It may be that, given the present economic and psychic structure, totalitarianism is the logical development...
...In the meantime, they are doing fine propaganda for Darlan...
...Farewell, you Western Union chorus Whose vocal chords vibrated for as...
...I was startled to hear my cousin...
...The book is a diary stretching .from the twelfth year to the thirty-fifth...
...Fried's purview in this book, but it is one of extreme importance, and has suffered from neglect...
...So he puts on his uniform with a low pulse-beat...
...What About German Generals...
...Farewell, then, Happy Birthday greeting...
...They thoKoughly debased the traditional military qualities, such as the concepts of loyalty and honor, secrecy and exhibitionism...
...Hanc has a chapter on "the future of Eastern Europe...
...I realized that we could never make the magazine what we wanted it to be with this arrangement because of his extravagance and real editorial stupidity, and so in September I decide...
...Somehow, in the crazy world, he must find activities good enough to make part of a dignified and defensible career...
...Such a system, based on a League of Nations with teeth, was only possible If the Allies, having won the war...
...Hanc points out, in a larger, more universal system...
...Make what you want of this—but believe it, chum, Goebbels' real interest was hardly the desire to give ?. M. world-wide prominence...
...From Spain to Pearl Harbor TpHE Spanish defeat was a nightmare to this young man, and it * is easy to see how the hammer and sickle became his symbol of rebellion...
...Then Sherman was, I'm sure, quite wrong...
...The growth of democracy and international relations make wars and armies outdated...
...And he was an outstanding partisan for General Franco in the Spanish Civil War...
...Something the kids have to bone up on at examination time...
...All set for the life of an invalid author out of joint with We...
...As artist he has had a tough time...
...Foreword by Jem...
...Since political democracy was not achieved to the same extent, an entire nation was militarized, for the masses had only the duty to serve and not the power to choose their leaders...
...THIS WEEK...
...CASUALTY Singing Telegram Is Gasuality of War...
...What we repress he deals with daily and consciously...
...William J. Schieffelin...
...The natural guess is that Mr...
...and not surprised to note, enamoured of the ^Stalinist method of discourse, systematizing his arguments number one, number two, etc., and making use of rhetorical question and answer style, which is often quite tiresome, especially in conversation...
...In any case, whether he's a Quisling or not...
...The whole business is as serious as the ordinary young fellow's struggle to land a job with an advertising firm...
...which maybe some day I will retrieve in one way or another...
...I find no evidence whatsoever of Communist influence in the editorial policy...
...Hart's name has been linked with most of the prom.nent anti-democratic groups in this country...
...Fried rnai-«c a distinctive cohtribution toward it...
...They worked quietly and well...
...i * THERE WERE A COUPLE OF STANDARD OIL OFFICIALS * at a bar...
...This we did...
...The Communists, he found from participating in their work, regard the individual worker as nothing more noble than part of a mass, a dark pool of power to be manipulated by the enlightened power-politicians above...
...3.50...
...Recently, Herr Goebbels' Der Angriff reprinted Mayer's piece, playing it up big and using the same photographs for illustrations...
...He has appeared on Christian Front transmission belt groups and moved hand in hand with th~e Brooklyn Tablet bunch...
...The book ends when the medical examiner of the draft board -says...
...It was the Founding Fathers who gave most attention to the problem, and it has not since been so extensively studied...
...We are still too far off from victory to be able to say with the least amount of definiteness how we will remake the world...
...A reading of Hans Ernest Fried's The Guilt (ff the German Army will serve to indicate the reasons for distrusting any section of the German Army to do "anything but work ceaselessly for the welfare of militarism in their land and elsewhere...
...and that got him mad...
...Meanwhile a weak government could not distinguish among its enemies, and at ftmes encouraged the militarises as a bulwark against the radicals...
...fill h-a-»e* much to he desired...
...Regional blocs for mutual defense and cooperation were feasible only, as Mr...
...Thus, while the 19th century saw the development of democracy in many countries, this development was limited in Germany Nevertheless, Germany did develop to its full one concomitant of increasing democracy: the mass army...
...Every experience, every word of every philosopher, every book, every friend must be considered, combatted, accepted or rejected...
...Military characteristics such as hierarchy, neutrality in politics, authoritarianism, extreme reliance on-explicit and formalized codes, and great caution in sticking to the letter of things, are not all suited to the civilian realm...
...Stalin," he concludes, "like anyone else at home in power, analyzes his problems in terms of power...
...Avery'Hop-wood, despite all loyal Michigan adoration, was not much of a playwright...
...Always he sees the faults in his own work and buckles to all over again...
...As I read the notes on life in Ann Arbor I am rather proud of the old place...
...But he can't stick it very long...
...And, best of all, he got official recognition...
...In some such analysis as this lies the key to understanding modern Germany...
...Research for these articles was done by Isabel French formerly prominent in the Washington America First crowd...
...Macmillan...
...I tried every way I could to get people interested...
...In August...
...Fried makes an intensive study of the relations between the German Army and the National Socialist Party since the first World War...
...Try this one—about Ben Gold, the potent head of the International Fur Workers' Union: "Quite a dandified manner, I Was surprised to note...
...Here...
...But he and the other aspiring boys and girls —though they had only distant views of workers—were all on their side...
...Who would help stop Mussolini from laying hands on Yugoslavia's Adriatic coastline...
...What we hide he discusses openly...
...A copy error made it out to be "The People's World...
...Yet it seems to me much too early to talk of what will come after the war...
...Hanc's history is essentially the history of "the quest for stabilization and peace" in that part of the world...
...It has been, in addition, honest since its inception and it seemed to me...
...One other question comes up again and again: Why does Germany breed so many militarists and why do Germans so often follow them ? The answer to this question is essential to a wise handling of Germany if the Nazis are destroyed...
...if the New Deal is hiding there...
...The ink had hardly dried on the treaties defining the new boundary lines, when the "victor" nations started on their long but fruitless search for security...
...7 we finally decided to fight just because we had been attacked...
...And for newspaper folk 'hat's practically a -revolutionary idea...
...If it was war that choked your song...
...Bruce Humphries...
...This man had set out from earliest youth to find a basis for human, individual values...
...Some are not suited even to the military establishment of a democracy...
...Among them was Max Yerxan, who himself had very little money but because of his work as head of the YMCA in Africa for twenty years had considerable excellent contacts...
...Adam Clayton Powell's Harlem newspaper...
...This is one of the lessons inherent in Mr...
...Which of them would dare guarantee Czecho-Slovakia's frontier with Germany...
...Here is a point that is worth elaboration...
...He states that the 19th century Prussian aristocrats and conservatives needed the masses to free Prussia from Napoleon, yet did not want the masses to gain influence in any direction...
...Every language has its saws Down the ages they have won applause Concerning the health of laughter The nobility of pain The ideal of the Hereafter While love is called insane The elements of life j In adages rnn rife The thought profound The vein is light rhe wisdom old and sound And foolproof tight Armour has embodied that in form Which we have termed the mundane and the norm Within the homely things of earth He sees not what they have, but sees their dearth And in that lack we see The very stuff they be...
...And telegrams once more can be Read to oneself in privacy...
...100 pp...
...For men of the Morris stripe that is not enough...
...This is a subject which is outside Mr...
...They circulated the myth of the "stab-in-the-back" in order to retain their reputation as strategists and fighters, and then proceeded to sabotage the Republican government they were supposed to serve...
...Adam has long asked me to do a column for the paper and I am now doing it...
...in North Africa who paved the way for Clark and Eisenhower...
...When he turns to the problem of the rehabilitation of Germany in the event of a victory by the United Nations, Mr...
...At.twelve he seemed to be on the road of the temperamental rebel...
...The world which will come out of this war will be the consequence not only of victory but also of the quality of that victory, when it will come, with whose aid we shall have won it...
...The report was based on information received «from very reliable sources, but I believe that in this case a mistake ha« been made...
...The meaning of such a move is . . .") Another characteristic, shared by so many New York Party members: over-simplification, a habit of 'talking down' to one's hearers...
...Inside and Out By ROBERT TREVOR THE BATTLE OVER MILTON MAYER'S SATEVEWJST article on the Jew has subsided, but here is an added footnote to comfort those who felt that such treatment of the Jewish question would be of comfort to the enemy...
...Farewell, insistent, raucous bleating...
...His book ;Iis called American in Search of a Way, but if he were just an .ordinary American on his way I wouldn't-care two hoots This man is as rare as a Virginian without pride or a Californiaii without a cure-all...
...He met other students who talked the same language...
...But his clever mediocrity made money on Broadway, and —in this case at least—some of that money placed firm ground under a young author's feet...
...2.00...
...But he has no gripes or grudges—no chip on his shoulder...
...A man who could see through people with such a sharp eye could not long be tied to the party line...
...I did not ask him where he had raised Ihe money because I did not consider it my business, but I imagine that it comes from trade unions in part and from friends of his...
...The new set-up is intended as expediency and more temporary than our contact with Darlan...
...Fried does not deal with this point directly, but he offers a hint in one place...
...But the man lives in the presence of the eternal verities—or the eternal lies_or whatever there is that is eternal...
...CAMILLE CHAUTEMPS AND HIS WIFE ARE TELLING THE WASHINGTON SOCIALITES that Petain...
...And I convinced you Would there not still be j Two points of view...
...however, that I haven't fat a dime in the paper and that I will be glad at any time to prove that to you...
...Peopie's Voice got into financial difficulty...
...Attacks on the Jews, even by "friends" of the Jews, always come home to roost in the files of the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda...
...apparently, far less realistic discussion of socialism and the labor movement than when I was there whole ages earlier...
...talking about the National Maritime Union...
...important that this paper be saved...
...leaving me in a hole for a large sum of money, somewhere near $30.000...
...Hart has also been identified with the Franco movement in this country...
...He is, back inside himself, as fair as any half-hearted, thin-blooded guy who sees a lot of truth on all sides...
...and at what price it finally will be bought...
...These cameo profiles 'are priceless...
...It is necessary for him to reach conclusions about God and heaven and hell and what is worth while...
...MONG the many curious notions created by World War ? is the conception of the respectable revolution...
...He charges that they listed him as an "American Quisling...
...hell have a tough time demonstrating in court that he's a 100',* American patriot...
...He exploded a bomb on Main Street...
...The militarists, of course, had their own ideas...
...I do want to tell yon...
...It meant money when he desperately needed it, and it meant recognition when that was even more important than money...
...Don't get the idea that there is anything "crazy" about Walter Morris...
...It is a luxury to go back to myself—where I really live—arid write out of myself...
...Against this conception he rebelled almost instantly and with a basic bitterness, i * * * to War Without Bands QUICK disillusionment cast our hero back once more into the maze at the juncture of a dozen beckoning roads...
...When he looks into the future he sees this war as "Something in a history book...
...Morris was there in the early 30's there was...
...I had no money, but Adam Powell called me up anyway to discuss ways and means o: saving the paper...
...He is an American with a soul—practically a Russian soul—or as good as Russian...
...How he came by it I have no idea...
...A standing Army, like war itself, is an anachronism in a liberal and closely-knit world such as we expect to see if the Nazis are beaten...
...thing that gave Mr...
...ISSY PATTERSON IS ALWAYS WORRIED ABOUT PLOTS ^ in the government...
...Petain is "fooling" the Nazis but will swing over to the Allied side at the appropriate-time...
...Here is what he says: At a meeting of the Council on African Affairs...
...it turned out that the Nazis led the paek...
...The Greystone Press...
...I was very much interested in People's Voice inasmuch as it is one of the very few Negro papers in this country that is militant without being either smutty or sensational...
...By TOM WINSLOW THE GUILT OF THE GERMAN ARMY...
...There is yet another great myth which has great atttraction for many spokesmen of the United Nations:—the belief that the German Army is really opposed to Hitler, and "when the time comes" its ranking leaders will take over and introduce some sanity and eonservativeness into German politics...
...Add now another to the roll Of things of which war takes its toll: The vocalized communication Is out, it seems, for the duration...
...I should tell you that it is published by Macmillan...
...slightly oiied...
...Morris was awarded two of the Hopwood prizes...
...I asked him where he had received such a totally incorrect impression and he said, "I saw it in The New Leader...
...Artist and Workers...
...Maearyk...
...What makes the Army such a problem to a democracy is the very anarchronism of war and its instruments in our world, a point which R. M. Maclver has made, and which "realists" who poke fun at "idealists" like to quote for its alleged quaintness...
...I didn't see the article in The New Leader and I am not inclined to get very much excited about it...
...Lti_:______[_l...
...By Hans Emest Fried...
...Some British and American leaders apparently feel that at a given signal the revolt against the Nazis in Europe will spread throughout the Continent and that the victorious rebels and patriots will immediately turn over their governments to the advancing legions of the United Nations which will then set up popular democratic governments at the peace conference...
...This author never wants to shoot a publisher, never conceives a spite against successful authors...
...We force them back into the dark comers of the mind along with sex and childhood ambitions...
...At least he experienced no such thing...
...Fried's three types of German post-war militarism) could not proceed until the liberal government and its followens, who wanted nothing so much as they wanted peace, were totally destroyed or suppressed...
...Precious manuscripts have been returnedAvith faint praise...
...The magazine climbed to what is rather a tremendous circulation in the trade field (42.000) and had advertising that amounted to more than $3,000 an issue...
...Very sincerely, JOHN HAMMOND...
...This is on page 157: "Seeing that I have long since discovered that when I try to write in a manner that is supposed to be intelligible to the workers, I succeed enly in producing a shameful piece of vulgarization and an altogether false tone, I've decided to try to reach my own standards, fairly and honestly, by using the full organ of the English language to the limit of my ability, instead of confining myself in the labor press, to one or two stops...
...DREW PEARSON REPORTED THAT THE * OWI (Office of War Information) has taken over the Havas Agency and hired the entire Vichy personnel, leaving the aWti-Vichyites "out in the cold...
...In this aura of folklore and humor i He knows to make a man out of a rumor j His garden patch is rich with nurtured roses i The humble weed untended overlooks the posies : In Speaking of Destruction Armour gives some valuable instruction: "Neither Vandal Hun nor Goth Holds a candle To a moth" ! And in the realm of Argument i He shows us reason vainly spent: "If you convinced me...
...then, are the facts: In March of this year I bought Music and Rhythm magazine and put in a lot of money, about all I had available...
...In the past election, they supported lor the roost part Democratic and ALP candidates, but they came out for Miss Lane, a right...
...He tried writing for the party press, and his sharp, honest reaction to the experience tells worlds about the man...
...He never goes sour...
...In fact, she's the sort of person who look* under her bed every night to se...
...Incidentally...
...Bqt thjs man keeps himself turned inside out...
...that we would have to suspend publication...
...Weimar Republic reveal the problems a democracy faces with respect to its military system and leaders...
...IOSEF HANC, a gifted Czecho-Slovakian versed ·* in the questions of European diplomacy, deals here with Europe as laid out by the treaties of Versailles, Trianon, and the others, in the years following the peace of World War I. We are accustomed to thinking of post-war Europe as having been entirely laid out at Versailles, but the truth of the matter is that it was the result of several treaties, some of which the Allies had little or no part in the making...
...He wrote on July 21, 1940: "As an alternative to capitalist democracy I would like social democracy, a democratic collectivism, a cooperative society—but it may be that history is not so obliging...
...He soon was sending cartoons to Judge and drawing till he got sick...
...say: "I understand, John, that you have bought a paper in Harlem and that you have installed Max Yergan to run it...
...On Dec...
...He discusses in turn the militaristic roots of National Socialism, the activity of the professional officers after 1918, the formation and dissolution of the Free Corps, the nature of militarism, the debasement of the traditional military qualities, the Nazi brand of militarism, and finally offers a plan for the building of a democratically-oriented German Army if the United Nations are victorious...
...Max raised the money, all of it, and not one nickel of mine is anywhere to be found in the paper either in the form of a loan, stock or anything else...
...He is born to be an artist, a writer...
...HENRY-J.-KAISER-FOR-PRESIDENT BOOM is starting * ¦ up ;:i the West and being picked up by certain pro-business interests in the East...
...Well, here's a little plot for you...
...Hence they early joined with the small Nazi party, as well as other nationalist groups...
...Teachers were sending him home...
...This man yearns for ideological clearness, and in this complex world he fails to find it or see the possibility of it...
...The only persons he has no mercy on are liars and cheats...
...European Storms By BENJAMIN MOTTE* TORS ADO ACROSS EASTERN EUROPE...
...Returning from the battles, they already planned their program to maintain their influence at whatever cost in blood or loyalty...
...I think that Max Yergan agrees with this point of view and I know that Adam Powell is vociferous in it...
...Despite the glorification of the soldier today as a great democrat, soldiering is not a career, in peace, which lends itself to democratic development...
...In talking to Max yesterday, I understand that he has a stock interest in thr paper but that Adam Powell continues to have complete editorial control...
...There is already talk of a businessman's ticket which would include Albert W Hawkes or Harvej Firestone as running mate...
...The United States muffed its chance in Spain and from there on down an error was chalked up every time there was an opening for clean-cutting action...
...There is a fine passage on page 186 which starts: "There are problems of power and problems of value...
...In a scholarly and well-documented (if occasionally redundant) work, Mr...
...To the outside we present a hard surfaee...
...381 pages...
...JbfERVIN K. HART IS SUING the Friends of Democracy for a "* million dollars...
...But at the University of Michigan he found one instructor who saw talent in him...
...From childhood he has been seeing through frauds...
...And this analysis leads up to the dictator of Russia and the Comintern...
...Who dared to incur the ire of Soviet Russia by promising to come to the assistance of Poland or Rumania...
...Richard j Armour...
...At sixteen life was "ebbing away...
...Hanc's book is scholarly and comprehensive...
...Since Max Yergan put money into the paper, I have been reading it very carefully...
...But I was saddled with a partner who owned fifty per cent, by whom I was obstructed in e*ery way and whom it was impossible to buy out...
...had held together to win the peace...
...Yet when these notions are honestly and rigidly-held, the results are not disastrous...
...ng Socialist, and Ben Da-vis, a Communist, for Congressman-at-Large solely because of the fact that they felt Negroes deserved more representation in Congress...
...We ordinary Americans have furtive notions about values...
...Cissy has been writing a series of smear articles for the Times-Herald under the general title of Having Wonderful Time Boys and by-lined Georgiana X. Preston...
...Newspaper headline...
...Riefcard Armour...
...With the outstanding exception of the Little Entente, conceived as a protection against Hungary's unabashed claims to renew her thousand-year-old despotism, the nations bordering the Baltic and the Black Sea, as well as those through whose territory flowed the Danube, were frightened away from any plan of mutual defense by the threatening shadow of the revisionist powers...
...It so happens that I believe that the Communists have mad* an awful botch of the whole Negro question in th* last year and a half and that both PV's and PM's line has been infinitely sounder and more militant...
...There are stories that I bought the paper and insisted that a Communist board be appointed to direct its policies...
...Toujours Armour I By ELIZABETH CHARNEY YOURS FOR THE ASKING...
...Thiawas when he was~bac1c rn-Gioversville, making his living by rutdung a mimeoshop...
...We've got that tiger skinned," said one of them, "and we can roll up the pelt any time we want " Correspondence I AST WEEK, THIS COLUMN LINKED John Hammond with The People's Voire...
...If Private Morris keeps a diary during his war days, I «hall be willing to pay full price for it...
...To enlist the deep loyalty of such men we must have an openly declared people's war of the sort discussed in The New Leader by Danny Bell and Mel Lasky...
...A subtle point from a conjurer's hat I Philosophy in four lines flat...
...Morris comes of regular American stock...
...This was what the German militarists did, and that is why it should be clear by now that we cannot expect them to oppose Hitler in our own favor...
...It is quite probable that those who envision such a series of events will be rudely shocked by upsets at many points...
...By Josef...
...What is disastrous for a democracy is the debasement of these qualities, the practice of upholding them only when such a course is favorable to the attainment of some end which is not stated openly, and of acting in opposition to them when the same purpose is served...
...If my attempts to write yield up no measure of satisfaction, the fire goes out and the whole process stops...
...Later on, in '37 and '38, Walter joined the Communist Party...
...3.00...
...The difficulties of the...
...But he goes without enthusiasm...
...What is the meaning of such a move...
...Morris a basis for confidence is his W university experience...
...He is sensitive to the point of going sick over the brutal gyrations of politics and business and war...
...When Mr...
...Fried loses some of the clarity of his...
...no matter -what happens...
...337 pages...
...This column is quite undecided about the Admiral, but it has to take off its hat to the State Department official...
...as well...
...He stresses that the perpetrators of this war must be punished and a democratic Army built...
...earlier chapters...
...Yet one wonders to what extent there can be a "democratic Army" anywhere during peace...
...It is, at least, something more than big...
...On the surface we were just saving our skins...
...I talk exclusively about the music work) and its problems...
...But what I started to say is that there •fg practically nothing about ancestors...
...Despite their defeat during the World War, German militarists were unregenerate...
...Fried's study, although he neglects to make it explicit...
...I honestly believe that if Stalin's mind could be shown operating ait fond, disillusionment would come like a thunderclap and at least ninety per cent of his followers would quit him flat...
...K. You're in the Army now...
...In a world in which nations have relatively little intercourse with one another, and in which the large part of the population in each land is in subjection to a small gioup, the place of the army is clear and obvious...
...There is something deeply religious about the man...
...This story is wrong in emphasis a*nd implication, we are informed...
...Communist's line ncwadays, although better than six months ago...
...Holding the same imperial notions as before, the German militarists could not but oppose the Weimar Republic, for they knew that glorification of War and of the Army, and the militarization of Civilian Life (Mr...
...John Hammond has written me a letter on the subject, explaining the situation—and I have no reason to doubt his word...
...You will enjoy what he writes about Rabbi Wise and Mike Gold and Robert Minor...
...They are also telling their friends that...
Vol. 25 • November 1942 • No. 47
