The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
A Page-of Features Americana The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN I USED to know Cari when he was about so Ugh. Now ho i, np 1 Ihere m Iceland. Bisparente are socialists, and he m socialist....
...It was the ultimate because it was unreasoning...
...The policeman was surprised to Bee Os, but when he found that we were all registered there wasnt a thing he could do...
...Before this war they all thought they were pacifists...
...She •theories'* of former Ambassador Joseph E. Davios, only to reject them...
...they do net believe m thewHeged "treachery" of the purged -Russian geaesais;-«hey give another and a more -plausible explanaoor for the absence of a fifth column in Beanie...
...We were debating for our existence as citizens...
...The word is that this sea sipl is only the beginning of "a new wave of censorship*n...
...It can eerve progress or cause an intellectual catastrophe, like the rule of a dead hand...
...I was up at the head of the line, and he said to me— gently, as if he were talking to a child: 'Did your grandfather vote?' We were ready for him...
...I'd like to read the books that real readers have been reading years—the classics The Decline and Fall of the Roman empire, Homer, Fielding's Tom Jones...
...Bertram Wolfs, Lewis Gannett Freda Utley, Louis Fischer, sad Henry Sektol Canby...
...Xative Son is a dramatic •ends* of the Negro, with a brilliant performance by Canada Let: and sow that the revolt of public opinion has stopped Us cetomg, it pfobsfcly will get to more people...
...Broadway was in sn uproar over this flagrant capitulation...
...Army, 1942, with all the lost faiths of the Lost Generation...
...It all started when we were at the university...
...Faith in reason...
...sits...
...The ban en The Militant" the Daily Worker writes,, "is a move that is many months late, and is only a small step toward what the governsaest should haroe long ago carried out . . ." Whieh is sa item you can toes out st those starry-eyed innocents (now being revived) when they start siswlmg about "freedom" and "democracy" and "civil liberties...
...So different ones asked questions...
...Ludwig Room, etc . . . Appeasement notions about Italy, now toeing given currency toy the Packard's best-seller...
...They dkm't want any trouble...
...It is my state of mind...
...You do know what and whom you serve here...
...Yon wouldn't have had it dBerent, would you...
...who was smeared Tuesday, Thursday, and .Saturday by Sender Garlin...
...Wilson's'request that they should be neutral in thought mm wed no word and deed was by no means unwelcome, especially so among college administrators whom it enabled to interfere with academic freedom on patriotic grounds...
...So we-fitted out the forms, thanked the members of the board and walked out...
...Is the meantime (after the book had %p*peaVed) the eOtnJnis-sars were abolished by the sSoviet Government, and the official Soviet press now openly recognizes that tension and difficulties had arisen at the Soviet front because of their activities...
...And you knew...
...28th—Che hesdKne reading-: "Attack on The BBBaaft ts a Skew at Fresuote of the Press...
...and the German government eaade the most of that'fact by sending professional propagandists to American schools and colleges, where they could shape our neutrality as their hearts desired...
...It was the inoperative, otherworldly liberty which Lather had vindicated for them...
...I've got to be really sure—from myself...
...Vta Mann brood, among others, are very, very angry...
...After a bssg time of ¦sgoskssoas, a oostssot with the Federation of Vasishaat has been signed...
...suggested that the Comrades simply oho ash aha party, argsJsg that if the CP...
...The feeling was general that the war was a dirty imperialist falling pat between international crrmrnsh...
...By Michel Berchiv aiid Eliahv Ben-Horm...
...It is logic...
...The mind and the heart •cannot be separated...
...Both made of patriotism a religion...
...Mann, hy the way, has been recently taken m by the Kremlin Set emd haw lent his name to The Black Book of Nasi Terror, to be psbHsbofi in Mexico, with chapters by the old discredited crowd, Vicente Totodano, Egon Erwin Kioch...
...It is Faith—with a capital F. . . . Did you know that the church knows that...
...Bag* land's House of Windsor is generously recognised...
...The book contains the history of the Rod Army, the Communist military theories, the actual state of the Army aad its strength, -the strategy of the first year of the SovietGerman war and the foreign policy -of the Soviet govern* merit for the last years...
...Laws, may be passed or repealed, but if twenty young Negroes have the nerve to walk up and vote now, soon there will be a brnidred, a thousand, and then millions...
...Pranelo Keen* te Tbe New Leader...
...I don't know...
...3Br amahs is James Aiateegi, aether of the bestseller BjammTWm% ame...
...Nothing can stop it...
...One changes one's thoughts, changes ways of looking at things...
...again, with an introduction which brings his quarter-of-a-century-old analysis up to date...
...It was in 1940...
...Ultimately, all were at the command of the monarch to whom they owed duty and obedience...
...THE office was almost torn apart when it was learned that the * .Swiss Legation had received a 1942 edition of the AlBtsaaeh de Gotha, tee -European Who's Who of royalty and aristocracy...
...The president had in his mind pictures oMjmchmgs—arid iie looked grave...
...Scott, expelled by Stalin for writing and talking too much, is now on rime, which makes bim "a dull-witted, self-seeking careerist...
...One compromises and makes adjustments...
...The professoriat were at the time rather pro-German, all that the majority of them ever experienced of Europe having been academic Germany...
...Jest released shusgh the msfls (reasons for action are unknown) is the issse of Msv...
...W. Norton...
...Now he is in uniform and they are proud of him...
...On Election Day we Went back...
...Woodrofr Wilson's first administration was in its^inrrf yea...
...G. P. Putnam's Sons, NewYork, 19*2^ §IX MONTHS after the politicians of imperial Germany had tatned, hlh^tmitm agreements into a scrap of paper by sending the armies of the niiln illinfaaf og-i invade Belgium, theJrJniversity of North Carolina had John Dewey down for a «ari«> of lectures...
...Mb) his hmthoH, a,irhinhss Felix, Charles and Rudolph...
...Chatter Inside and Out By MATTHEW LOW LARGO CABATJUtmO, Spamw nyssis^'aessaBs TSadHL boflre...
...4t varies...
...It is for all of this that this army is good for me...
...Is the thing you fight for the thing you want and love and respect—have faith in...
...So mason is not always the same...
...f\F the November issues of The MiktaaU, the Tretohytto weekly, V the 7th and 14th were destroyed by the Foot OBhSX Bjk savsss of Nov...
...These Negroes will be here and will be voting long after the senators are remembered only by persons who happen *°««« ™«* tombstones in the cemetery...
...FOR Kant the important thing was that his worlds were two...
...This little book was the work of an occasion, but its timeliness has outlasted an era...
...has lost the hhtsTShee of -its association would prosper unimpeded" through Ihe strength of s new, healthy left-to-center alagssssnt "Concealed Trotsky devotee...
...Dewey warns us to be on our guard against a similar attitude toward science, toward free communication and the values of the democratic way at home, "ft is immensely clearer than it has ever been before that the democratic way of Hfe commits as to unceasing- effort to (areas, -down -the walk of class, of unequal opportunity, of color, race, sect and nationality, which estrange human beings from one another...
...And somehow the subjection of the outer world bad to be the consequence, the expression, of the freedom of the inner...
...And I don't delude myself into believing that if and when I find the answer it will solve all the things that disturb me...
...You were «JM, and from your solidness I drew assurance...
...298 pvgev...
...When it was first published, American opinion was by no means unfriendly to the German interest, which later forced a war upon us...
...Kant worked out his system in a Germany of comminuted tyrannies of which the completest was Frederick the Great's...
...Yes, I vote, and so do some of my friends...
...I'm looking...
...Life...
...1 was Jan Yattin...
...A Page-of Features Americana The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN I USED to know Cari when he was about so Ugh...
...A private in the U.S...
...It has been a man's share, hasn't it...
...My reason can't answer that" * • » 4tfewtJeaV SeaafofsBJMbo and Rankin "j'HE other evening on my way to Wilmington I sat With a gentle * and softepoken "Negro soldier...
...pop, I don't think you knew it, but you sent me a real book...
...They couldn't think what to do, what to say...
...21st and Dec 5th are stiTi held sp...
...Jit is something that is above him and beyond bim...
...As for aha Haps burg, Dee Fuehrer was uncertain recognizing Duke Otto would offend Fascist Duke Aibreoht so be pat Buspesui Chsrtss down as dynastic head, dead those tost twenty years...
...and men do not die in vain for things they lore...
...Thus, it was no break with the ¦dominant German philosophy for Bernbardi to declare, in his "Germany and the Next War," that the German spirit was the spirit of freedom All the doctrines were metaphysical apologetic and rationalization, first, for Prussian autocracy and its aggression against the multitudes of-Other German autocracies, then for the Prussian-ruled aggression of unified Germany against tbe rest of the world...
...Your Hfe has been full—good...
...For the ultimate m faith that the world has teen there is the church...
...J*HE authors have undertaken a Hffficcflt task —to give a non-partisan evaluation and picture of the Red Army...
...It is only that this Faith in something is a tiling that I need and want very badly...
...a duty/ The policeman was'sputtering again—so that the members of the Board of Elections had to quiet him...
...They couMn't say anything against it After we had answered we wdtiM just stand there respectfully waiting...
...E long arm of unofficial censorship almost got sway with * -something big this Week...
...Hitler took over where the forerunners left off...
...Americans wanted no part of 4t, and Mr...
...They rogret that "the glorification of the Red Army has become so common that some foreign -circles have come to accept unconditionally the Stalinist explanation...
...Crawford, one of tbe ablest and most respected of ihe Washington correspondents, has been doing the "T.R.B " column for The Note RmpmhUe for the past year or so, and bis psogressivism, his independence and anti-Stalinism has been a thorn in the CP...
...only that liberty could be equally beyond the reach of defense or attack in this world...
...He Km now errft*JBd fa Mew Y»wk...
...Hitler contrasts this bloody Oneness of his with the empiricism', the pluralism, the individualism, the distributive economic, religious and intellectual liberties and free communication of the democratic way...
...S'J^ ta Vath<sr ******* state of mind...
...It was into such a mental atmosphere that John Dewey loosed his "German Philosophy and Polities...
...aad they'll stop at nothing te get has « the GuHd, oa The New Republic and on PM...
...Vincent Shsssa, 'Walter Winchell...
...It's beautiful—and strangely, so far at least, it ? not bad for my morale "Because men are noble, and men do sometimes clear the stars of mud and see the twinkle and color...
...By the time we had reached Newark we were deep in the poll tax business...
...He is in the meteorological service, has no complaint about his treatment and is getting on first rate...
...They mention, for instance...
...It is, nevertheless, to their credit that they have stated openly and frankly their opinion on several topical questions now under discussion...
...Look, Dad, in the .past I went to you and said: 'This troubles me...
...It's interesting in a way—and since it's me that it's happening to, I'm not Saying that there is One' Answer...
...Pressure from Cordell Hull brought it under the State, Department with Herbert Lehman so chief . . . » » ¦• mlmHE hatchet-men of the Comnde press have had a big week...
...But that can't Tast forever, Dad...
...It's the tale of a young fellow in this army, a Phi Beta, a seventh-generation son of poor southern landowners...
...It is good...
...Somehow, I've got to find out what's right for me...
...We told him that we had taken courses in history and civics —and we thought it our duty to go to the polls...
...Ditto his brothers...
...That is why they never approach man through the mind— through the heart, through the unreason—at the wedding-bed, the child-bed, the death-bed—times of the heart, never of the mind...
...for their vile campaign against Kenneth Crawford...
...It h something he does not question—ever...
...When he had sufficiently gathered his wits he tried to get rid of us in the easiest possible way...
...You knew—and know—where you stand...
...On the other hand, their lattesapt So avoid polemics about the Red Army has fed them <perhaps against their own eonrtotionl an endorse dubious implications of «•{!•*Atrial agreements...
...This or that thing in living brings to me a doubt Is this . . . Wmst...
...And while I'm looking my state Of mind may have taken some curious twists...
...The world of freedom was the world of faith, of intuition, inward, mystic, ineffable, whieh Reason could not touch...
...Soviet Soldiers By DAVID J. DALLIN THE RED ARMY...
...WHY-doesn't some one get up and simply point oat that skis new anti-Valtin business is based on no new evidsstos aJhasiiiii »si " The basis for the charge that Vstttn has been s Nasi agent within the past five years-is— ValtinV Out of the Night I It was subsequent to that that Governor Olson pardoned htm...
...It is solid...
...A state Policeman hummed and hawed and didn't want to let us in...
...Bsbsft Neville, hi sage-editor far the HeraU-Ti Botes, was -vacationing to Spain whoa the Civil War broke sat hi 19S* and became a foreign correspondent tor Time...
...folded, "the oud to Russia movement and ah other causes to which the CP...
...It ended by identifying the servility with the freedom, the impotence with the power...
...But we just stood there—and finally he got so embarrassed that he had to open the door...
...children, the-bad days, the good days...
...They interpreted history ne the eelf-nmnifeetotion at the original freedom of this Will or Idea in the course of events...
...he thought Stalin an irresponsible polities, which sashes him "» fool," "a scoundrel" and a "Bukhaiin-6th columnist " No...
...Somehow, you were sure...
...That put them on the spot...
...But we are citizens, we pay taxes, and up atcoBege we have been .tanning about our-rights *nd duties.' We think voting is...
...It was a pledge, a moral obligation of a man, an absolute necessity Aad you did that i * • * Faith Without God KNO# that you taught me faith in people, in life, in the * essential goodness of being and doing good, in the ultimate victory of mankind over man...
...he wss iPLsSJiiilsg to Warsaw when World WW II broke out and became a foreign editor of Mf...
...but it was no surprise to bote Hitler's hand on every pegs...
...And both did It by degrading the free, autonomous active individual of Kant's fantasy into tbe derivative effect of an whsolute Will or Reason or Idea which alone could be really free and autonomous...
...Hegel described the State as God on earth and made personal liberty the same thing es unquestioning obedience to political authority...
...Now, 27 years later, he sets it before us...
...The world of obedience and servility was the world of knowledge, outward, dialectical, rational, governed by the laws-of cause and effect, defined by science and manipulated by politics...
...Recently T.R.B...
...In fact we had rehearsed a lot of answers to fit any questions he might ask...
...A bunch of us went to the president of the university, who was, of course, a colored man...
...and there were more than twenty of us...
...The Commies are in a desperate way to get back into the oodsV st the Newspaper Guild, so desperate that the Milton fosfiaaii and -Not Els horn forces are falling out among themselves toying to cat m. Particularly infuriating is the hard-hitting iiberaliem of She GtiM importer...
...This is the Oneness whose Servant science must be, the Oneness demonstrated by all the tricks of the 'Nazi trade—the manipulation of mobs, the suppression of differences, the coordination of business, faith and thought in one single regimented whole of Ohward Nazi soldiers marching sure to war...
...end Robert St...
...He writes a stream-of-fonsciousness flood—just as he used to talk: ^ "^aSt,n^!!iI 8Urted*°je»d one of the books Pop sent through the Rand Book Store, Mud on the Stars...
...No coBege debate was ever as serious as this...
...Knerr was silenced by Stimson a short While ago, and now only William Bradford Huie is credited for the iAMk-eomiag book...
...No, Pop...
...PM's James Wecholsr poked stinging fun st the Guild comrades, now hanging ahsosssy from the limb of their Second-Front-Now bankeroo, and she oast or took pot-shots wt the CP...
...He denounces the latter for materia Ism, for selfishness, for the "subjection of personality to mere ntimber...
...8 were the American Trotekyites, and here the Communists stopped throwing punches long enough to reveal themselves as the dangerous totalitarian* they have always been known to be...
...What-else is there...
...It is this mind of mine that says: "Carl, you do know why you are in this thing...
...Philosophy, whether we regard it as but holding a mirror up to nature, or as" an event or a directive among events, does something to men aad their behavior...
...The judge of elections looked at us in surprise, acted as If he didn't know what to do or say...
...It might tie called bewilderment...
...All that I know and learn and do will be good for me...
...His successors, particularly Fichte and Hegel, made a one of the two...
...For example, they mention erithoe* criticism views of "foreign correspondents" ems have affirmed that "the military eonaaiaasre proved to be valuable in directing civilian ami guerilla resistance in areas behind -thegrout...
...We answered all of them—always coming back to that matter of patriotism and wanting to do our duty...
...I'll have to admit to a half fear that VSu7°UHf "if6 h00k8t0n ^°Ty and-°' y°u know-economics, pontics and—things as far from my mind as—as—war is from peace...
...Kant's Germany was ruled by feudal aristocrats to Whom the common man had no rights anybody need respect...
...If any wanted to be free they could be so only in their inward thoughts and private conscience...
...But mainly, I think, you taught me faith in Reason...
...I Books Behind Nazi Ideology By HORACE M. KALLEN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS...
...Sincere, pompous, sad second-rate" is how Edmen i easts si ts Mann, calling his political writings "portentous pronemtcsssssas of a literary artist with delusion* of intellectual grssisssn aad a solemn tincture of vague Gorman romantic phase op by...
...ffiBBWfe money and Kaiser-decorated Nicholas Murray Butler...
...But it is hot "faith, it is reason...
...In the end they had to let us register just because they could not find any way to keep the cmTVetaation going...
...From Kant on, it has worked on the German mentality in a certain way...
...And so even pure reason is a paradox...
...First plan for the Office of Foreign Bonof was to put it under Milo Perkins of the Beard of Economic 'Warfare...
...Watch for the polemieal resereusotoea >u11osto,si Irwin Ed man's blistering attack on "Thomas Mann as Thinker...
...really truer We would talk ft over...
...fa ssMMfcfc affairs, his "New Freedom" had 1- --------- ' lij IT 1 naajl iffTin U mwM relations, pacifism was all the rage and Bryanism was I ¦ it,PnmmUi*mB...
...They made,the Christian religion over into a symbol of their abeohiee'e dialectics They exalted the State Into the sovereign manifestation of tbe Absolute Freedom...
...Thus German philosophy...
...CoL Hugh J. Knerr's nasse has been omitted as co-author of The Fight for Air Power...
...It began as a sort of escape from servility in fantasies of absolute freedom, from powerlessness in fantasies of absolute power...
...The Crawford business is rosily in earnest...
...When he found we were hound to have a try at it, he just.said: 'Well, if you are determined to- do it, be sure that a lot of you go together.' "So we—twenty or thirty of us—went down to register...
...By John Dewey...
...Pop, will you admit that that exactly is an unbelievable paradox...
...little Pegler," "megalomaniac," "cbsession-ridden hysterics" are some of tbe pi ifiuMi things Use BtettnhAs have hurled st him...
...That reason and intellect can and will have the answer...
...Wholly objectionable" was the wsy The CathoUc Neu-e listed Richard Wright's Native Son, and the neat day (under pressure and the threat of action) Lee Sbu-bert announced the closing of the play...
...Hegel's doing so was involved with the justification of fhe tyrannical Prussian aggression which followed upon the defeat of Napoleon...
...Of coarse...
...P. Mot even one of their orderlies has enlisted' . . . Serge a* isasstitot j't great Boston Symphony, the last remaining nonunion orchestra in tbe country, has joined the union...
...As yet, Otto hasn't is on aped to break sway from Washington parties Csnoot she vising gentleman," reports Igor Csssini, capitaTaeeieay i oi—nipt) So fill oat his military papers...
...Reason: the promise of a $75,000 broadcasting senssast with CBS...
...Balcony Empire, are doe for a ride OootBSS Salvemini will blast the book in The Nation...
...It was, easy and grand...
...And whether or not I had the sense to ]l)e twee lot tbe same reasons and as a result of the same intellectual process, I was Still sure, too...
...It is heightened and lowered by—among other things—the heart...
...It is hot something too physical...
...John (The Land mf the Silent PispB,*0>) leaving London for Now York for NBC.....Otto of Hog oil mtg promised, at She formation of the U. S. Army's Austrian as*, shot ha nsaid isai off recruitment by enlisting as a pil»oto...
...Fichte's doing so was invohed with the struggle of the German states against Napoleon's tyranny...
...The dynasties of the Netherlands, Belgium, Yugeshrvia, Grssss, Norway, and Luxembourg have boon eliminated altogether...
...This business of the Army, for instance lUybe it has been easy for you (Mom and Dad), tbe rationalizing •el'the whole affair, I mean...
...On tbe whole, it is a useful book, especially for new students of Russia and of the 'Red Army...
...So we voted—and that was all there was to it" I want to say to Senators Rankin and Bilbo that tins little demonstration is far more important than their miserable filibuster...
...There are plenty of problems here, each of them requiring « apeeia-i study, -but in a volume of 270 pages, the authors naturally give only a sketch...
...Fichte was the first to identity the German folk or race as the Absolute's Chosen People, sent to impose upon the world the germanic Kultur which incarnates she Absolute's Freedom...
...As far as this is possible they have succeeded, for the problem of the Red Army is a rather political one end it is more than difficult to give a purely factual account...
...This time, it is brought out when war has already repeated itself, and the same foe, with the same treachery, by a similar event once more proves how Close to reality is Dewey's sober, objective analysis...
...He was educated at the State University of South Carolina —tbe colored section of it, that is—and was teaching in a high school down there until he entered the service...
...I started things by asking the young man whether he votes when he is at home...
...I don't know...
...And this is why you mast not worry about nfy unhappiness...
...Hegel made of war the truly creative .expression of the Absolute's dialectic, and the source of mankind's noblest virtues...
...and the things you dreamed, the Isnnly, the...
...aaar, as aa overseas draftee, he has become North African siliaaiiiiiiiloill tor Yank, the Army paper...
...He saw that autocratic paternalism could be identified with state socialism, that the socialism could be dissolved in nationalism, and the nationalism in the intuitive, mystic Oneness of folk, race, blood and soil, which are beyond the reach of reason end intelligence, and whose inward freedom is outwardly expressed by absolute obedience to the ineffable leader who is the bloody mystery walking on earth...
...The Post's Sam Hamper, alone among the regular reviewers, picked the hook apart the way It deserved...
...he had his suspicions about the Moscow Trials, which makes him "a purveyor -of recklessly prejudiced mendacity...
...And my heart asks: "Is it worth while...
...Next sp for excommunication was John Scoot son df Scott Nearing...
...Last issue...
...So I said: 'Well, sir, I'm not quite sure about my grandfather, for I wasn't round here in his day...
...aad quite rightly they assert thai "were it not for the Gestapo, Germany would have tbe laggtsi flfth-commn In Europe...
...It was nice to have faith in your things...
...The HPltont Is the uigsaaf sk» Jsssss Cannon faction (Socialist Wossats FWtrlU sha^Bs* flBtesrtmsst faction (Workers Party) aphfctohos Labor Aettoa, tsaBBisss bad mgton Times-HcTaid, enbrishsd hy sreh rasrtisssaj' Csteto ftoto torson, hi serializing The Seventh Cream, mil ton by sreh-revohsr tionary, "proletarian" novelist Aaaa flsghsra...
...Listed as "spoasom of * fool crime against the Americas people" were: Eugene Lynns, William Henry Chamber 1 in, Victor Riesel, PM, The New Leader, The Call, The Nation...
...For when you brought us up with _no God, it was your jdb to give us faith in something else...
...You do know what you do here...
Vol. 25 • December 1942 • No. 50
