The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
A Page of Features Americana Books and Writters Chatter The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN Wer Regionalism AFUNNY thing is happening. For a day or two after Pearl Harbor we were all hotly...
...Here is the old bonanza psychology all over again—and ? the humble neighbor town...
...offiL ^ew'*e is celebrating his 77th birthday by running for the **e of City Commissioner down in Daytona Beach, Florida...
...I would not say precisely that folks in the apple country dislike California...
...You sec them al...
...During the great strike of 1913 he wrote for The Irak Woric+r, in his youth he was actively associated with James Connolly, and he used his influence oh behalf df the prisoners after the 1916 rebellion, * 4 * ?/fOST recent commentators on Yeats concern *** themselves exlusively with rather arid debates as to the comparative merits and demerits of his earlier and later poetry...
...A number of prominent fellow-travelers have broken with the party, including Gonaden Peru...
...for example, in the successful organization of the escape of Roselli...
...Walk bnto a nightspot, and the current glamour boys are no longer the htds With lucre who for so many ages commanded the maitre dliotel...
...the tall, skinny, walking and talking W ,,^5^010 who used to talk the money out of your pockets...
...It close* with a detailed account of youth resistance among the essentially a-political youngsters who form tne large block of the ideologically untrained...
...This is in addition to the several big housing projects already built and operating...
...ago Johannes Steel, bn the air and in bis New York...
...Among them were No 1 Zapata Vela...
...On that one page are blended hatred 3 the East, of Wall Street, of Union Square and of Harvard university...
...else who desires goods made of essential materials...
...We have created the best of its political intelligence...
...535 pagts...
...There is less than we would want of new-material, due to inevitable break-down in communications with the outside...
...We are one of the great stocks of Europe...
...This man whom some would like to discuss as an esoteric poseur wit* a predilection for English "society" people had too many facets to be drs-missed in this way...
...new crucifixion of the innocent cultivators of the soil...
...He comes irom New York...
...and Cesar Garixurieta (who led the Communist slander attacks on Victor Serge...
...So last week The Satimt introduced a regular crossword puzzle department...
...The defections have been heavy...
...How far can one count on those whose chief reason for rebellion is, as these authors have stated, the desire "to live their own lives...
...In fact the single new item that impressed me most and seemed to indicate a broadening basis of resistance in future is contained in the chapter...
...Strange, very strange...
...Needless to say...
...It is no more than is required -?*«?0...
...column...
...They hated the compulsory aspect...
...In no time at all it became the cynosure of the nation...
...356...
...j37 pages...
...Suddenly the story "breaks" all over again' The World-Telegram's Freddy Weitmar writes a leading front-page feature...
...Clearly they were Nasi spies Ami Alter was ? Russian, anyway...
...But some effect towards inculcating a democratic npirlt more than nominal i> needed And how abtrat the movie* ? Short...
...huddled over a table, discussing the Wallace speech, or North African, politics or the shape of post-war plannjiHr^-or maybe it's just the latest dirty story over from Algiers...
...r . . Several...
...Morale: good...
...Romantic Ireland sDead andGone By EBNEST BOYD W. B. YEATS...
...The book is written with directness and sincerity (the translation is admirable), and the undoubted authenticity of the information lends it a cachet lacking to most other works dealing with this subject...
...The Font follows through with S-Cotumns Mam City editors start calling us for special sidelights...
...Reading this life of Yeats one is touched, not only by the loss sustained by the disappearance of the last of the literary giants, but also by the fact that Sirs has determined that we shall never look upon his like again...
...It is beneath the dignity of the heroes of the Northwest...
...It may be that even a couple of graduates of the University of Chicago, despite the peculiarities of their president, may be able to serve as water-boys or stretcher-bearers...
...To those who have followed with interest the bits of information in the press, the news of sabotage, of manifestations, of organized resistance, who have read with mingled hope and hopelessness of the stand of the Marseillais a few weeks ago, who have heard, perhaps, from returning Americans or from recently emigrated Europeans of the unrest and driving despair of millions under Hitler^ this book brings essential background mareriai It presents a picture of the nature of this resistance that should be studied if we are to evaluate the worth, in final conflict, of the news we read and the stories we hear about the Undergrounds...
...Admittedly, the picture is incomplete...
...The Mexican party has had other serious trouble* which have split it...
...The story which the New York Tims» revealed in a special story this week—of how General Emile Bethouart, now in Washington, escaped court-martial in French Morocco by the November 7 invasion—wa« first told in these columns in our "Behind the North African Campaign" feature...
...Everything is artificial—even the girls...
...Down Wirft Harvard I IKE F.P.A., I always got a special thrill out of every beating ? the Michigan team gave the boys from Cambridge...
...Even the sunny southern exposure ? of California fails to exhibit a seamless solidarity to an unsympathetic world...
...There's a new crowd in poUer...
...These boys have banded together, according to reports forwarded to the ?>«· Beginning group that to which Weyl and Jansen belong), and have called themselves "The Pack...
...were Theodore Spencer's witty review: look it up: and WiTliam Phillips' diasenting remarks on Wrn Saroyan's widely-hailed novel...
...The government is building 3500 cottages, but they say 10,000 more are needed...
...If Freud ami Jung had never come along, I might have gone to my grave thinking that this fervor against the crimson was but the natural feeling of fine, upstanding sons of the West against the effete ana feebly pretentious aristocrats of the East...
...If Mr...
...He could And a lot of dope in the case-records of the Psychiatric clinics...
...It is really something...
...many Jewish boys...
...Laat Thursday afternoon, as we were hitting the presses, the news of Erlich and Alter came through...
...and who has confessed that it wa* a hatchet-job on strict orders...
...Leon Dennen phoned it in to us...
...One of the more interesting elements of this book is the lack of hysteria revealed in the account of the Enemy at Il'ori-—Surveillance, Arrest, Prison...
...name!y a spontaneous fraternizing between minions of the regime and the oppressed people of Germany, is suggested as a solution by accounts of similar fraternizing that took place between the Cossacks and the people of Petrograd in March, 1917...
...Redeeming features of the issues, too...
...THE SILENT WAR...
...TPhis 1* the Armj...
...Ban announced that at his scheduled symposium the fcrtich-Alter question would be taken up...
...But'then came modern psychology, and we learned that the root of our feeling was a secret and ill-concealed admiration...
...The MacmiUan...
...Cinder ilia has blossomed out as a princess...
...CINCE America's entry into the war, there have been at least a dozen books of an informational character that have stressed, with varying emphasis and accuracy, the importance of the Underground movements to an Allied Nations victory...
...The obvious grasp Jansen and Weyl have of the potential of revolt, their wideawake realization of the pitiful numerical inequality between the trained and untrained, cause them to treat the problem of post-war Germany in a tentative manner...
...Seattle is lower than, inferior to, subject to fellows appointed in Washington and functioning in California...
...and it includes the puiulit columntsta, news correspondents, and ?-adio comrhentatovs...
...This is no answer...
...Steel is on the spot...
...Ost la guerre...
...For a day or two after Pearl Harbor we were all hotly united...
...wailed and wept...
...So Colonel McCormick...
...The people listen to the same radio broadcasts, got—if the editorials and letters to the editor furnish a reliable guide—when they think It is about the welfare of some special little neck of the woods...
...managing editor of Tht Xntioit...
...What do they have down there but a lot of sunshine...
...Now I read the papers from over the country, and wha^ I see is every city, every state, every region whooping it up for itsell It's a strange things The papers carry the same news, the same syndicated columns, the same comic strips...
...In Mexico and South America this new turn for the Spanish CP...
...At least this seems to me to be the upshot of a burning editorial in the Tribune of last Saturday...
...Hone, very rightly, neglects purely literary discussion, and concentrates on the by no means simple task of giving an adequate account of Yeats the man and his manifold, often apparently contradictory, activities...
...The Seattle Chamber of Commerce and an impressive array . of civic leaders made request that the Northwest have a WPB regional office of its own...
...This perhaps is implicit in the -nature of the problem under discussion...
...W* are the people of Burke...
...Down with the War Produc...
...We against whom you have done this thing are no petty people...
...We hope, the waiters will get around to recognizing vom lnside-4-0uter, and maybe serve him with a napkin and a glass of water, too...
...Hone consistently traces the workings of these dual characteristics of the cultured Irish throughout Yeats's career...
...Surely, Mr...
...Clifton Fadiman, for example, while inaccurately stating that Yeats fc buried in Ireland, toys with the horrific thesis that Yeats was a Fascfstac^Hy-ttinrled reactionary...
...Three leaders of the party fraction in the Chamber of Deputies resigned...
...AS a general «icture of Underground activity ** over a number of years The Silent War stands alone...
...Too:—Qi course, we don't have any scientific * poll...
...This is an anecdotal chapter...
...Muhteaff war out...
...The feeling of the Northwest against sunbaked California is an old story, and it has its funny aspects...
...One man who was a sheet metal worker a few years ago is now employing 7,000 men...
...San Francisco, they said, could have no insight into the needs of a section so far away and so different...
...Typical, for example, of Yeats's interests and his courage, were his Activities in the Irish Senate...
...But...
...So what...
...The bright capital of real estate and glamor girls has long admired itself as the miracle city...
...Inside the Underground By FRANCES...
...A»^6 a^wit fortune came out of the hides of generations of Winers, howls about this man Weiner and the New Deal and...
...The obscurantists had determined to make Ireland the only civilized country in Western Europe where divorce is impossible...
...cynically of "the aUeyed incarceration of Erlich and Alter...
...f iterati & Co.:—A few months ago there was a very nice literary *^ party on Riverside Drive thrown in honor of Robert Benrtlnet...
...So by coincidence .Vetr Mntmtm editor Ruth KcKenney publishes Jake ?ome which is...
...It would be of interest to compare this account of a spontaneous resistance group with those of other observers whose experiences must surely have turned up some analogous human developments...
...The platform suggested by the heart...
...They wanted to be free...
...and Mexican CP...
...A contract whh one of the country's leading biographers was recently cancelled, after church pressure...
...1865-1939...
...We were mad—and all mad at the same fellows...
...Vyshinsky shot back arain...
...Soldier after soldier has told us of the same anti-Semitic stories, all With the same ugly pattern of prejudice as it crops up at mealtime...
...The name commentatot^SArl the by-line writers hold, forth, the gals hang on every word, and the captains dash madly around giving them service...
...Oed Star Chamber:—At that time Erlich and Alter were still alive...
...With the most idiotic censorship laws Eire has vetoed almost all her important writers, regardless of their religion or lack' of it...
...The last two pages of the book enunciate a specific program: "The destruction of the positions of power and the economic bases of the Fascist regime...
...The letter's work has been unremitting and at times even spectacularly effective (as...
...Lippbrfott...
...Assigned to the script are conservative right-winger Alva Johnston and liberal left-winger Paul Green, representing no doubt the interests of capital and labor, respectively...
...The Ambassador was taken aback He stared at him blankly, shrugged his shoulders, and walked out...
...We have created the most of the modem literature Of this country...
...of the Nazis, and tears streamed down the face* of Jew* and Gentiles alike The "Stop Hitler Now" meeting tn Madison Square Gander this week was full of ileep tragedy, an unforgettable evening...
...Soon...
...New York is composed of Wall Street and Union «PJare...
...The practical result of their feelings was that they carried on unceasing warfare against the Hitler Youth . . ." (p...
...But San Diego is expecting to proceed as a city of 400,000 or better after the war...
...Vidal Munoa...
...TkY Hume* Comedy—"a rather pueri> performance, compounded of infantile day-dreams and adult homilies...
...The song of the Hebrew * prayer for the dead rang out through the heH, memorialising the Jewish victim...
...Its population grew so fast that it had the census takers jumping...
...It was the part...
...Look et Leon Tretoky...
...Its citizens were humble folk woo made their living in humdrum ways—let's say like fellows who live in Jersey City or Bridgeport...
...What kept the Pack together was their hatred of the Nazi regime because it took away their chances to have a good time while they were young...
...Apparently sht doesn't read the editorials...
...Hone stresses a fact which perhaps only an Irishman can really understand when he says that Yeats "never thought of the English—even if there were times when he preferred to live among them—as anything but foreigners...
...Spirit: high...
...Once English became the language of the country it was inevitable that this small, poor country should have to export its writers and artists, and that even those who remained at home could only hope to exist with the assistance of the wider public to which English gave them access...
...personal knowledge of the poet and his famih'arity with hie work make it possible for Mr...
...the replacement of war economy by planned economy based on the needs of the people" (p...
...257...
...He was careful to point out that he wis speaking for the Protestant minority and that nobody could compel any Carholic to divorce contrary to his religions notions...
...J Three-In-One Prejudice finally, on its Saturday editorial page the Chicago Tribune manages to tie in together for its hate-Roosevelt drive all the Wcient western grudges which prairie blatherskites have de-n*B*k UP°n for Penerations...
...They are rather scornful of it...
...So by golly we were all set to fight and work4 end show the world that nobody can play tricks on us and get . #^That was fifteen months ago...
...tade of young Harvard graduates holding down desks in the legal departments of the office of price administration and war production board when they ought to be holding up a rifle in the infantry...
...We sat on the story of the desertions from the Richilden so long, it finally got awmy from us and broke the other day in the daily press...
...Inside and Out By MATTHEW LOW 'The huge a «die...
...we feel sure, work wonder...
...or when it rains, or when a leave-slip doesn't come through, or when ? dirty job has to b* done, or when there's H shortage of anything at all...
...Marceau Pi vert, et al...
...the replacement of its machinery of terror by democratic self-government of the working people...
...a 9-line stick buried somewhere Almost a week went by...
...The activities it recounts differ sharply, for instance, from the schyzophrenic undirected gestures recently carried out in Holland (Sam Grafton, by the way, is the only commentator who rightly appraised these activities in their true lipht as wasteful, unencouraginjr because unorganized...
...Lussu and Nitti from the island of Lipaii), yet it has been carried out with ihis same essential and selfless descipline...
...Its prosperuy, far more secure than . that of the-old Forty-niners, was basid on digging gold out of the entire nation...
...But ^T^^ick will do to beat the administration...
...In fact, his lifelong and unconcealed belief in Irish independence, so far from promoting his material interests, handicapped them, and his refusal of...
...By Jon B. Jansen and Stefan Weyl...
...Mike Gold K«s been agitating in his column in the Daily Worker for a full-length portrait of an American Communist whkh, he says, i* wanting in oaf literature...
...There is, of course, a district office in Seattle...
...They say that there are enough young Harvard lawyers ia Washington to fill the Army rosters and solve the manpower problem...
...L'GT reader opposed to ? ab» relic: Aurel in Pemandet, ? NT transmission-belter, and Lamonotta...
...his side was defeated...
...But the Chicago Tribune and "Congressman Harness have gone tee far...
...The forfeiture of exhibitionistic gestures frequently requires the most patience and courage...
...It may well he time for · kind of "Propaganda Ministry" to conduct psychological warfare on the home front...
...The chapter is useful for its emphasis on lack of waste, both of men and material, in the work of planned resistance and dissemination of information...
...Curiotogy for Broadway :—We don't know much about shifting class structures or dislocations in the circulation of the elite— but we can spot a trend when we fee one...
...Nattmtlly...
...And nothing is being done, when so many thimr* ean he tried...
...ad all about it in the letter to the editor on Page 8. Then help pve Gwrge a birthday shower...
...2.75...
...1 don't expect to change millions of minds overnight, or to have all the men in the A»my subjected to daily lectures from the sermon on the mount...
...As the Timet rather enviously remarks: "Most of us in Los Angeles still think of San Diego as a lovely, peaceful town of 150,000 or 200,000...
...It canned rather smelly fish...
...We hicks from Michigan, Wisconsin and Purdue ought to have a few cracks at Hitler...
...By sailing Weiner "a Union Square agricultural authority" he reaches I rea'ly high point in demagogy...
...The authors state that "It will not be different in the present war...
...So—down with the fellow...
...Bendiner was standing by the bar (which explains how we overheard) when one English guest approached him...
...The Deputy Regional Director and the District Priorities Manager, both loyal Seattle men, have resigned...
...they hated the drilling, the hypocritical speeches...
...Much as I dislike the sons of John Harvard, I refuse to allow the defense of our country to be turned over to them...
...Chapters of notable value are those in the latter half of the book dealing with political conflict in the camps and prisons, with the possibilities of authentication of news within the canips, with the havoc sometimes wrought ideologically by the time-lag between the event and the aicareness of the event by those incarcerated far from reliable sources of information (take, for example, individual orientation to the Russo-German Pact...
...But one could wish for further discussion of methods of effectuating such a program, of interplay between forces actually outside of the Germar, state and potentially on the march within the Reich...
...Betutev Despair and Hope...
...Nor is the reiteration: "If we are to win, not only the war, but also the peace, then a democratic Germany must emerge in the place of an aggressive Germany...
...has not bee* without Its drama and fireworks...
...They bitterly state that Northwestern men cannot be expected to run to San Francisco for orders...
...That is what was...
...This is an unemotional, almost routine account of the breakdown within Germany, the fate of the workers' movements, the pattern of day-to-day resistance...
...As an employe |tf the supply division, he set up the forms whereby farmers majeure new machinery...
...It was not an easy task, as the comments of some of the reviewers painfully prove...
...Exernted ?» ngentm of the nrr-my That kind of "truth" is on the march, and God help us if nothing can ston it...
...But on the count of racial feeling, the depth of simple, ignorant bigotry is amazing...
...An English minor poet, Cecil Roberts solemnly declares that Wordsworth was a superior poet And denounces Yeats as a snob, a poseur, a humbugging spiritualist, and the recipient of easy money from English and American admirers, "an Irish rebel in receipt of the British pension," and a writer of "wobbly rhythms and bad rhymes...
...Board and priorities and control of essential materials...
...How broad is this basis of politically uneducated self-centered resistance...
...and We managed to squeeze in a front-page story The next morning only the New York Timer carried it...
...Hone's volume fails to prove anything else, it most emphatically demonstrates that neither a partiality for admiring English ladies of title, nor the financial assistance which this wholly uncommercial genius received from various sources, in any way affected Year's independence of mind where his art and his country were concerned...
...So what...
...The War Production Board for the entire West Coast is located in the bright and inspiring California port...
...In order to get priority ratings farmers "•Wat fill in blanks declaring their need and explaining the use which the machinery will be put...
...rVlr a while (we are told) it has taken the heaTt out of...
...The record in this substantial volume admirably demonstrates the wide scope of Yeats's activities and interests...
...Now that the Soviet Embassy has officiary announced their execution 3 months ago...
...One day the Polish Ambassador, after many prodding*, went to the Kremlin to rrmke inquiries...
...Comrades and Crosses:—Not exactly like Saul on the roatd to ^* Damascus, the Commies have suddenly seen the light The Comintern has changed its line on religion, and the comrades are now crowding the pews...
...Every day the Chamber of Commerce gets many letters from persons who wish to come here for jobs...
...they hated the war which they knew was coming...
...weH-made.- «imrrfe-mhided firm* (i.e...
...the Ambassador protested...
...But we've been making «yntematic inauiries among the 7-anks on the state of mind in the camps throughout the cnuntry...
...1 Tu" rich goulash of gibberish depends mainly on the fact that Jf- Joseph Weiner was born in Russia and lives in New York, ne happens to work for the War Production Board...
...Announcement haw also beau made of the expulsio" of Maiiruente Nelkin...
...Protests to the Soviet Foreign Office were coming in from all over the world (and Wendell Wfllkie in Moscow interceded vaihry Wit* Molotoff...
...The final chapter on the Coming Revolution in Germany seems to me at once the most provocative and the least satisfying in the book...
...His romantic life and thought are here recorded as faithfuHy as his lonp...
...told him how much she lfked the mag, etc...
...Irish intellectuals, whether "native" Irish ?? Anglo-Irish, have always been rosiacvDolitan, but like true cosmopolitans they have rarely lost their nationality...
...The great roll-call of Irish names rn literature has given the country no pride in its intellectual achievements: Sean O'Faolain and Frank O'Connor remain to suffer the blight which the obscurantists have put upon the country...
...all had 'crostics and stuff...
...we are the people of Grattan: we are the people of Swift, the people of Parhell...
...But...
...Harness, the Tribune snorts, says he has been informed that there "are a multi...
...Vysftinsky sat there ooMly...
...They can't even raise a respectable fog...
...But there is war—and not just against the Japs...
...One of those strange thing* in journalistic history blossomed out this week in the New York press...
...Sidney Hook is publishing · long manifesto on left-wing" politics in the coming baue of Partisan Review...
...In the troop trains, just before lights go out...
...In their appraisal of the need for discipline, organization, patience, we see the group Jansen and Weyl describe as very close to the twenty-year-old underground of Italy...
...It goes against the grain...
...Pierre Cot and J. Alvarez Del Vayo strangely failed to show up...
...Dfa he know...
...The Los Angeles Times carries an account of the new prosperity of San Diego in which the green-eyed monster it but faintly concealed beneath a veil of patronage...
...An Irishman's detachment from England is natural, it is not a sign of hatred, and is no more unusual than the nationality of other people, which does not preclude them from liking other countries and living in them from time" to time...
...a knighthood, his lifelong preoccupation with the cultural advancement of Ireland, are the tangible proofs of his...
...By Joseph Hone...
...San Diego, by contrast, was a more poor relation...
...Hone...
...The celebration of the birth of the Virgin of Guadeloupe was given a -curious fillip wtth a Stalinist mass meeting, at which efl believers were offered leaflets (not handed, but with a plow, swwt gesture, as if holy water were being carefully sprinkled) explaining the rediscovery of Spanish tradition, and reversing the old line of Church-State separatton...
...By -tire way, HIMl...
...independence...
...Take, for example, a nice little fight between Seattle and San Francisco...
...Cagney, Muni, and Paul Robeson m r foxhole) can...
...and couldnt for the lire^*f him (and we mean rfce fife of him) understand why there should be any fane...
...Erhch has hem a Socialist and revolutionary idealst fo»- almost half a century...
...The bulletins of the different governments-in-exile also discuss the activities of the Under-grejajids of Europe, and a partial estimate of the scope, activities, and objectives of these groups may be obtained from their study...
...When the subject came up for debate Yeats said: "I think it tragic that within three years of this country gaining its independence, we should be discussing a measure which tbe minority considers grossly oppressive...
...Their contributions in proportion to the population have been enormous, and Yeats was following the tradition when he combined a definite nationalism with his cosmopolitan fame...
...so he was ushered into the office of—Andre Vyshinalry...
...The thing is intolerable...
...War production in Oregon and Washington is carried on under the supervision of this regional body...
...Harry B. Fair, the San Francisco regional director, made answer: "The WPJJ can't be all chopped up and still work efficiently...
...gt Goetoe/ Runs Again REMEMBER George Goebel...
...Congressman, this should be an all-American team...
...Let the Regional Director send up Californians and see if they can do better...
...The British periodicals, she pointed out...
...6.00...
...It's rather irksome...
...The Anglo-Irish may have come to the country under far from promising circumstances, but they have repaid their debt by giving the country a unique place on the literary map...
...Right now San Diego's food rationing is based on a population of 400,000, including a daily average of 15,000 service men...
...Plans for the movie life of Eddie Rickenbacker are going ahead...
...but was disappointed by the lack of wnat she called Mbrah.« twisters...
...the Ambassador continued, "he is a Jew...
...Hollywood Slipping /"4TIES, too, have their feuds...
...The man is a lawyer...
...and how...
...THIS line from one of Yeats' bitterest and most disillusioned poems comes naturally to mind when reading this excellent biogTaptiy: He was surely the last romanticist of his country, and he is "dead and gone," he is "with O'Leary in the gWry*,'*'*» Conclude the quotation...
...It was to have been a new life of Thomas Paine (that "nasty little atheist...
...The greatest opportunity in its way for (¦etnorrwete mass-education Is presented, and except for isolated little ventures completely muffed...
...By far the best book I have seen on the subject is "The Silent War," by Jansen and Weyl...
...These truths and partial truths have as little bearing on the life and achievement of .th* great poet as some of the preposterous lines of—which Wordsworth was guilty have on his position in English literature...
...snapped Vyshmsky (who was the Moscow Trtel prosecutor...
...guess what, a full-length p. of »n A. C. Said reviewer Horace G regory:—·*??* has produced one of the most remarkable burlesque heroes that has yet appeared in social fiction...
Vol. 26 • March 1943 • No. 10
