The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
A Page of Features Americana Books and Writters Chatter The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN Look Out for Flash Gordon »»«HE following letter comes from John B. Harding, a worker in I a Westcoast...
...Up over the Owen Stanley Range the boys went, and then one day when a Jap nest had to be taken young Margosian swam a stream at the head of his men— •nd he never was seen again...
...been filled by Leon Henderson...
...Joseph Freeman has just published a new novel none too easy with the totsKtarians, and when his autobiography was published a few years back...
...By the way, Wendell Willkie...
...He awoke deeply depressed and wrote: "With a decision of life and death approaching, I am more perturbed over the possibility that if I lose ?? very soon be replaced by another...
...Likewise unnoted are fhe Junkers, the aristocracy, and the more recent role of the military over and against the party strategy...
...That is why they have not only kept him so long as head of the party, but have now made him Premier and CommandeT-in-Chief...
...Current tax payments topped 5 million dollars...
...Williams deals with utter contempt with the role played by Stalin's opponents...
...a tribute to the Mikhailovrtch guerrilla fighters . . . Among the judges of the Government's CCD poster contest are Eddie Rickenbackei—and Rockwell Kent . . . Mrs...
...Willkie had appealed for Erlich and Alter ia Moscow...
...He is a famous divine of one of the greatest Christian churches, but his blatant salesmanship was something to make any Christian squirm...
...It is much, much too late for that sort of thing.Faith, Lies and History By USTON M, OAK THE RUSSIANS: The Land, the People, and Wkf The* Fifht...
...Here comes to my desk the diary of Second Lieutenant Margos D. Margosian...
...Six ranking Lbndon theaters have refused to show Orson Welles' The Mag...
...3 was that the liberal and labor storm which ha* been raised o?er the callous announcement Of the Erlich-AIter executions by Soviet Russia has made Maxim LitvinofFs position in D.C...
...And there are wonderful stories about him...
...Floyd ? a straight-shooter...
...it was felt he could have made at least passing reference to Allied aid...
...Thjs...
...By the way, too, the Daily Worker attacked our handling of'the case arid got off a few cracks like "Nazi agents" and "Wnfte Guard traitors" about Raphael Abramovioli...
...A Page of Features Americana Books and Writters Chatter The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN Look Out for Flash Gordon »»«HE following letter comes from John B. Harding, a worker in I a Westcoast airplane factory: "For sfac days in the week I read our delightful local papers — myriad movie columns and familiar comic page figures, Flash Gordon, Superman and Pegler...
...The authors, professors of geography, endeavor to prove that German geopolitics derive directly from power doctrines that originated early rn the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, arid that the contemporary German geopoliticians are only writing the last chapter in the book of eternal German aggression...
...and anyway, there is no unemployment as in capitalist lands...
...He seeks, not the truth, but effective polemics...
...He calls it Humanism...
...2.50...
...that "Might is at once the supreme right, and the .dispute as to what is right is decided by the arbitrament of war" (as expounded by Heinrich von Treitschke) ; that war should be waged writhout moral scruples...
...But the thought that burned deepest in his mind during his last hours was of a different sort...
...That $?5,000...
...And even in this respect, we m\ss references to such forerunners of geopolitics as Paul Rohbach and Friederieh Naumann, who lent intellectual class to Kaiser's Drang nach Osten dream...
...Hall meeting that evening, and they're trying to work a squeeze-play...
...But thfe point of this is that in Isaac Don Levcne's new biography, an old error is corrected...
...Every age has had its new statements of faith...
...How is the general of the hot-air service...
...It seems I am wal-?^??^ '0W'n8 disinterestedly and languidly in th<> ""<????>^> . wealth supposedly so common among all > defense workers...
...Then again we are bound to follow the well-established principles of wishful thinking of the American academicians and start, on the conclusion of World War II, proving again to ourselves and to others that no nation can be so immoral as to think that it can hope for the enslavement of the world . . . and so on, using the theme songs of our post-war pacifists ami isolationists...
...The pen is mightier than the hoard . . . Cissie Patterson's Times Herald suit against Walter Wincheil will be in court next week...
...He was worried about his girl...
...Learned professors throughout the country, supported in their convictions by special, grants of "internationally-minded" and pacifist organizations, saw to it that the growing generation was well versed in the various ramifications of this ideology...
...He calls the book Humanizing Biblical Re-Uyion...
...After all, think of the pathetic president of the company...
...History is on Stalin's side...
...Now that Dies has got his money to continue his committee, you won't hear a peep out of him for a long time...
...Hence I marvel at hie abiding faith, at his ability to rationalize, to swallow Machiavellian hypoerisy, to salve his conscience with the hope that someday Russia will rlrove toward democratic socialism, to conveniently forget such facts as the mass-starvation of 1930-1932...
...Here ? one for our time...
...It is the sheer, unadulterated propaganda of a party-line fellow-traveler...
...I find it hard to think of-hlm as a fool or a gconndrel...
...Its treatment of the philosophical roots of German aggressiveness peteTs out after brief references to Kant, Hegel and Fichte, ignoring Oswald Spengler (whose relation to Haushofer's geopoliticians has been especially well demonstrated by Hans W. Weigert's Generals and Geographer* (recently published) and the pace-makers of Nazism, such as Feder...
...Previewers say that the movie which was made from John Steinbeck's Th* Moon Is Dom will, rank with the year's top films...
...will be pitching against one of the solident old-rme outfits in the country...
...job as CIO economist has, intimates say...
...I really worry about these popular heroes...
...German sources are extensively used and much graphic material from German books is presented...
...All I can do is to cry to the critics in abject repentance: ? didn't know...
...Rosenberg and others...
...Beigberler...
...after months of pressure, finally shot {be works in a letter to Wm...
...in fact, the "bibliography of w-orks cited" (pp...
...He can't have dancing girls and cuba libres when, each Friday, workers take not only wages due them out*of his pocket—BUT OVERTIME AS WELL...
...For workers to strike would be to strike against themselves...
...Ia his very last entry, on Nov...
...Soso Dugashveli's pseudonym, Stalin, means steel, and ruthless coercion is to him a Bolshevik duty, performed unflinchingly even though the victim is an old* and "beloved" comrade...
...Can he possibly believe their "confessions...
...with hunting scenes...
...IWilliam Floyd Speaks Up HAVE got a lot of support in my protest against the preachers...
...that "in the relations between spates the right of the stronger may be said to be moral...
...It is to show up the fellows who keep telling us what soldiers think...
...They started 20 years ago with four editors...
...2 was that Elmer...
...As editor of SOVIET RUSSIA TODAY, long ago, I printed his stuft, exactly- the same staff as fills this volume...
...n the Sky:—Billy Mitchell saw the handwriting in the blue, * and plugged for Air power until the Army broke him...
...239 pages...
...Obviously I have been asleep during those hours from twelve-thirty to five A. M. when I have been working overtime...
...The House Haushofer Built By JOSEPH S. ROUCEK GERM AX STRATEGY OF WORLD CO.V-Ql'EST...
...As a scbolarly product, the work is useful as a survey of the various predecessors and exponents of geopoiities...
...He does not regard the Bible as divinely inspired, and he has no faith in Jehovah...
...But the study has also its serious defect...
...The thing to do is to look such a brother coldly in the eye and ask innocently: "My friend, just how do you know wh#t a million men think—or five million or seven million...
...who will argue Wm...
...Wirythe purges...
...just a little shaky...
...Williams doesn't mention the fact that an unemployed American worker has a higher standard of living than the average unskilled worker or peasant in Russia...
...Time is growing short, and ? Ddce doesn't want to ride a railroad train out of the Rome the way he "marched" ». . . . No...
...The Commie leadership of the...
...The next to the last thing he wrote went like this: "Damn this aar and all the forces that have brought it on, and mined our /fset even before the shooting began...
...Williams paints a picture of 189 races held together by sweet reasonableness, 190,000,000 people united without a dissenting voice except for "fascist agents," all unanimously and'voluntarily supporting Stalin and his vast bureaucracy simply because they are infallible leaders, arid all motivated by the socialist ideal to do heroic deeds...
...After the war...
...He was, as is well-known, a melodramatic fellow-, the slashing, dashing officer type...
...he was one of those who made me a socialist in 1914...
...Well, what did this boy put down ht words...
...Lirvinoff...
...Remember when a slip like that was Hitler-White Guard-Trotzkyite-made-dog treachery to the working class...
...I suppose what makes ? really hurt is that someone I· know, have been intimate with, might become her next mate...
...his trip is unofficial, and his talk With1 the President was virtually an accident (his visit to the White House, following European protocol, was routine, but FDR happened to have a free morrient...
...His final triumphant answer to all criticism—which, he implies, comes only from reactionaries — is that Stalin's greatness is proved by the victories of the Red Army...
...William Floyd sends me »1 entire book...
...Whittlesey's book completes the circle of this incredible tale of ideological sommersaults by confirming what had been quite ably expounded by Cheradame (and others noted above) during World War I, namely: that Germany's fantastic plans for world conquest go back to the beginnings of its history...
...In response to my former remarks Mr...
...have been mixed, but reviewer Horace Gregory, who is one of the best, called the book "one of the most impressive performances in years" and quite worthy of I'.S.A...
...Funny—it spoiled an illusion of ours, because all the time—even before the Hero »pok«r—we had been under the impression that we were already working shoulder to shoulder with those boys...
...if the Constitution is not yet fully realized in life, well, neither do all Americans fully enjoy the liberties guaranteed in oiy Bill of Rights...
...What is it about aviators...
...One "»»nifesto of it, signed by John Dewey and a lot of other philosophers and clergymen, gets down pretty close to the bones of human living and striving...
...Incidentally, the work is bound to be a forerunner of other scholarly studies which will rehash Whittlesey's thesis and thus "prove" to the academic profession "quite conclusively" — and thus therefore to the rest of the world—that Nazi . Germany is guilty of everything that is evD in this world today...
...The Revolution and the Civil War were won by Stalin with advice from Lenin with a little help from Kalinin arid Voroshilov and the few- Bolsheviks still in good party standing: Trotsky arid Bukharin and other purged Bolsneviks were only a hindrance—like the Mensheviks and Social Revohioonist.« they Were secretly sympathetic to the white guards and imperialists and often in their way...
...The Kremlin is none too happy about talking too much, and he may be recalled (or...
...Joseph Freeman lunched with Ivy Low Litvinoff this week...
...nifieent Amersons on the ground that it's—"too adult...
...Praising national unity in Russia, the' author ignores the initial advantage that any militarized totalitarian nation possesses after years ot preparation for war, over a democratic powef—such As the immediate and total mobilization of it %reswirces without the delays and blunfiers iriciaWt to trie democratic procedure...
...according to a practical man like ? j^JEjSS^T w the Hero that I am unconcerned with a ''-·¦'???^^ brother I have in the Navy and a brother ^ 305...
...Labor Mom Hot Absentees "*pHEN to confuse us more the newspapers daily beg us to please * go to work and stop sitting at home with the cuba libre and all these dancing girls...
...Yes, there is poverty in Russia, but that is because her imperialist enemies forced her to build a gigantic army...
...One day Mitchell reported to the courtroom...
...Honestly I didn't — until you pointed it out.' I ignorantly argued that 'absentees,' for instance, were not from among labor's regular ranks, that they were from the hundreds and thousands of people new to that side of the fence—women, patriotic but -erratic—boys, preferring overalls to fun—temporary war workers come to help in their country's need but unconcerned about Labor with the big L. It is strange how I have noticed that those who are concerned are those never absent...
...Stalin enjoys popularity and prestige because "for fifteen years, in the eyes of the people, he has been right...
...Here *rs a fair sampling of Williams' casuistry: Is there democracy in the U.S.S.R...
...Has Russia a one-party, totalitarian dictatorship...
...1 was that Italy is really—apart fro* all the loose talk—close to a deal that will take Her out of the Axis, out of .the war, and out of an impending invasion...
...any day now is going to shake np his Office of War Information...
...And we actually believed this—since we "proved" the impossibility of such "impossible" reasoning to ourselves—that we proved this point to the rest of the world...
...Can he believe his statement that purging tens of thousands of them helped prepare for successful resistance to the Nazi hordes...
...Only permanent fixtures will be the typewriters and desk lamps...
...I worked for myself at eharraing and irregular hours...
...There is no need for more than one party, for parties are merely expressions of class interests, and the Soviets have abolished classes...
...It has been widely held that Geneial Douglas Mac Arthur (an old boyhood friend of MitcheO'si helped "break" hrm in the court-martial...
...Farrar and Riueliart...
...Such flagrant distortions of history (all right, call them lies) are the life-blood of the Communist Party, without which the Faith could not be maintained...
...Arid Williams, who quotes this in justification of his own faith, is as much swayed by facts as a' fanatical Mohammedan might be in a religious dispute...
...Don't ask me here to tell you what Humanism is...
...Old maids, it is reported, were seen dancing in the street . . . The reporters with Mme...
...we ask you, who can fill the Garden, without plans and advance publicity...
...Pueblos His/tano...
...WAcrf One Soldier Thought (HOPE you will not tire of my hobby...
...reputed pro-Ally member of the Spanish General Staff...
...Then, comrhg^unscathed .through their -adventures, they return to lead us all along the right path—even us airplane workers.' "You see, J,work in one of the nation's leading airplane plants...
...It seems that I just will not werk more than forty hours a week...
...I take space to write about Mr...
...By the way...
...The boys carry dictionaries into the press conferences . . . Time, Inc...
...Books after books went on "proving" that nobody could be so im-morSl—and this, of course, included the Germans —as to believe: that the state is an end in itself...
...And so on ad naiiseaum...
...25, he recorded that he had had a nightmare, a friend of his, V, had taken her from him...
...But after the -thirties we began to suspect that our special brand of "wishful thinking" failed to stop a sudden "explosion" along the tracks of the South Manchuria Railway...
...in the typical American way...
...Some of them are about sex, some about -Woney, and not_a few have to do with the devil...
...He provides every easy answer, all too familiar to all who ever wasted time arguing with a devotee...
...So he evades mention of the evils, although he emphasizes the evils of democratic capitalism plenty...
...No...
...Mitchell issued his violently insubordinate blast against the "incompetency, criminal negligence and almost treasonable administration of national defense by the War and Nitvy departments...
...phc Wild West Again:—What is all this we hear about a William * James and a Henry James" The real and timely James for our times would seem to be—Jesse (and Frank) James . . . for out on the plains of Texas and New Mexico cattle rustlers are riding again...
...have in the Army...
...The last section of the book gives you an outline of it...
...we went to the other extreme...
...IJtfashington Notes:—Whatever the reaction here to the Standley " statement in Moscow, it is well-known that official Washington was disappointed and a little anxious about the tone of Stalin's Red Army Day speech...
...Spahn...
...And Superman doesn't seem to need an airplane to get round in the skies...
...whatever that means...
...The purges were directed against bureaucrats as well as spies and saboteurs...
...The death of the Times man means an almost certain Army ruling prohibiting correspondents from further bombing flights...
...THE outstanding contribution of Stalin to the * science of statecraft," Williams writes, is his policy of "cohesion without coercion...
...He never will be missed...
...that "small states have no place among nations of ripened culture;** and that there was moral justification for the "organization of Europe under German leadership...
...Thirty thousand of us over there listened to a Hero speak over our public address system...
...After Pearl Harbor we reluctantly concluded that —maybe—the ideology of reasonableness of international relations had not worked out...
...He once had a dinner jacket made from a chintz printer...
...this, for the author, is ample justification for the terror which massacred tens of thousands of Stalin opponents...
...as our faeor-ite wag put h), given "the Maxim silencer...
...Next trip went to Robert Post—whose plane never came back...
...In a greasy, chesty tone he recommended his doctrine abouf the way Gabriel Heatter glorifies Kreml as a means of winning the war...
...He jotted down his entries on a transport carrying sis outfit from Australia to New Guinea...
...By Deru-cnt Whittlesey, with the collaboration of Charles C. Colby and Richard Hnrtshome...
...Fine...
...No other publication in this field can boast of such a variety and selection of this weapon of Haushoferism...
...shooted Mitchell cheerily, "and how is the admiral of tbe obsolete battleships today...
...Williams has a little trick common to all Soviet propagandists: he says "not by its negative aspects can one explain ?? evaluate the Soviet Unietf...
...Tf President Roosevelt could immediately shoot all his opponents and1 critics, including isolationists, reactionaries, Stalinists, Trotskyists, Socialists, critical liberals, and Free Frenchmen who don't like the Periwitdri-uiraud deal in North Africa, doubtless the President could then wage war mere effectively, we would- have national unity, no Quislings—and no democracy...
...A reporter is supposed to have examined the se-cretely marked ballots of the nine generals who sat rn judgment, and it is now revealed that MacArthur's ballot was marked for— acquittal...
...had been planning for the trip abroad (and a trip through Nazi territory to see 'her family m Bucharest...
...That's rather more than I counted on, but I have fad the thing through—and not without edification...
...The scholarly, honest "bourgeois" historian seeks conscientiously to sift fact, from fiction, and to give credit where credit is dee, even if he hates the character and ideas of some historic figure...
...But he is a deeply religious man, and he has a faith...
...Those intoxicated by a dream, se!f-identified with an illusion, and impregnated by dogma, are immune to logic...
...The Hero newly risen from the briney Pacific on a wave ofjthe future has held the mirror of truth before me...
...Inside and Out By MATTHEW LOW *|4xE raatbfc ef maasis droned heavily through the office Ulis * week...
...Western Union will absorb Postal Telegraph now that the Senate has voted the necessary enabling legislation, and that will probably touch off a bitter row · between the CIO*s American Communications Association and the , AFL's Commercial Telegraphers Union...
...But I want to Put down the statement of it sounds to me honest and good...
...Cardenas happens to be one of the most beautiful and chic, women in the Capital...
...I heard one Pontificating last Sunday over the radio...
...it worked itself up into a fury and called Rascoe...
...It just happens that the liberal, progressive Union for Democratic Action has a Tow...
...ALBERT RHYS WILLIAMS has had long experience ia-the U9AA\ and he knows Russian materials, and Bolshevik theory and practice...
...The Daily Worker socked back at the World Tele-gram's Barton Rascoe for kibitzing all the Soviet dramas...
...1" the fall of 1925...
...This would not mean that .they become the.usual troublesome industrialist purely and simply...
...But still, they are fliers and I worry about them...
...book, contributes not one single item to the understanding of the Soviets...
...No, these heroes have a way of staying heroes either by devoting time to sec that America is First or by falling into a Pacific Ocean...
...I got net up, you may recall, because some gentlemen of the cloth seem to take for granted that the only comfort a soldier can find is that offered by.their own particular form of faith...
...203...
...to be published weekly, is being organized ¦» . . ( % f ? I iterati:—The reviews on the new John Do» Passos novel, Number One...
...and news chiefs are becoming more unwilling on their own part to take the risk . . Stocks went up twenty points this week in marriage-bureaus ,and lonely-hearts clubs...
...He knew, person-• ally, many of the leading Bolsheviks WBo mad&tfre Resolution of October 1917 anrl WAo were executed as agents of Hitler...
...She's asking $100,000 libel · . · This respectability of the Commies is cramping their polemical style...
...The Soviet Constitution guarantees it...
...Floyd because he is no mere »keptic, not by any stretch of the imagination a cynic...
...Then, again, our higher institutions of learning will propound all kinds of myths based on wishful thinking...
...Everybody* got an ear out for news on Spain, but the optimists are goiny overboard...
...Said he, he would like to see a few of the boys from the foxholes brougnV back and put to work in our midst —then, perhaps we workers would really work...
...Green...
...j * fommie Roundup:—Plans have been suddenly made for a Madison Square Garden Meeting on March 31...
...1) Ambassador Cardenas is not leaving for Madrid on that trip which would* have assumed mjijor importance: "consultation" with Franco was postponed this week...
...Yes, bureaucracy is an evil (inherited from Tsarism), but Stalin is its worst foe...
...has reported a 1942 net profit of three million dollars...
...Bricker's men ire pleading with correspondents to cut it out...
...Anthony Eden says that Russia is a country without a Quisling...
...v Albert Rhys ttMiami, ftbreomrt, Brace...
...Southwestern ranchers blame it on the meat shortage ifld say special measures are necessary to cope with the trucking of stolen steer to black markets . . So once again the Texas Rangers of western-story fame are mobilizing to meet the crisis...
...Schneiderman's Communist ease before the Supreme Court next week, has less heart in it now than formerly...
...But I will be damned if I will miss ? single day—for two reasons: that I am interested in Labor and that I am interested in seeing that America wins the war...
...was the answer...
...Of course, Flash can do more than just drive a rocket ship...
...Just read the second half of the introductory paragrapb of this review, close your eyes and you will probably hear the echoes of Hitler, Goebbels, Haushofer, and other modern Nazi prophets...
...Hence, the work is not an all-round treatment of what the topic of the book implies, but rather an excellent analysis of the major portion of German geopolitical doctrines...
...Beirut, Manila, and Pearl Harbor, we became suspicious that— maybe—our post-war enthusiasm over the un-workability of the "awful truth of politics" was possibly too much rooted in wishful thinking...
...Fm sorry...
...As the Webbs have said, dictatorship is a misnomer, for all the people own all the means of production and share in management and in products...
...A criminal libel suit is brewing...
...The decisions of the party are arrived at through discussion and persuasion, and are accepted because the party is always correct and has won tremendous prestige...
...But he saw clearly the nature of the evils that caused the war: "With so many millions «f brave men dead through resistance to the Fascist terror, should I, such a small part of the whole scheme^ begrudge my services, iven if it be required I make the absolute sacrifice...
...Moscow ran full-page repudiations of its "vicious, romantic distortions" . . . Now that Spain is inching back into importance, a new newspaper front...
...Everyone of them will swear }o you—and will say it over a national hook-up or write it in a syndicated article—that all of the millions in the United States Army think whatever nonsensical propaganda he is interested in putting over...
...In all your years of church-going you never heard your pastor refer to them...
...The reproduction of various geopolitical maps must be also commended...
...and that's a political note...
...When the sparks from the embers of the Peitaying barracks spread to Addis Ababa, to Barcelona and Madrid, and then set ablaze books in Berlin, workers' apartments in Vienna, churches in Prague, slums in Warsaw, and shops in Rotterdam, and reached London, Belgrade, Oslo, Odessa...
...2.00...
...Albert Rhys Williams' latest book—which is very like his first—might well serve as a catechism for Communists...
...Every time "the candidate from Ohio"' is mentioned1, the reports bring up old Warren Harding...
...2) Too much importance is being attached to the U. S. visit of Col...
...I have known him for flufee decades...
...rVURING the First World War the Americans were so intense on proving the war-guilt of Germany that such book as Andre Cheradame's The Pan-German Plot Unmasked: Berlin's Formidable Peace-Trap of the "Drawn-War" (1917), Bernhardi's Germany and the Next War (1913), F. Nietsche's The Will to Power (1913), and others, were read as avidly as the detective stories are gulped down by a consideration portion of our citizenry today...
...So he swam the stream where the Japs were waiting, and that was all there was of life for him...
...Everybody sleeps during those hours...
...we are told, getting a liberal education...
...Well, you can imagine how perfectly awful I feel now that my real self has been presented to me by the critics...
...I, myself, have never^done work of this nature before...
...He quotes no end of passages from the Bible that will sound «hange to you...
...271-285) is probably the best available one in this field today...
...I am concerned lest, after their active youth has, passed they settle down to being presidents of airlines or airplane factories...
...They believe in the infinite possibilities of the l^raan race...
...of all things, "ear aspiring Huneker...
...and particulavly about the opera boufTe court-martial which ended his career...
...I must have been dreaming...
...Who, but . . . The Commies are continuing their smear campaign against the forthcoming movie, Chetniks...
...The true Bolshevik despises this bourgeois W**k-ness...
...Chiang Kai-Shek are...
...Bullish effect has been traced to a headline in the Thnes—"Hershey Predicts End of Single Men...
...No preacher of a particular church has any right to stick out his chest and pretend that his wayof salvation is the only one...
...Governor John Bricker's piess agents have a tough-time of it...
...Joint participants will be the Free World Association and the Join Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee...
...We imagined we heard a cry for planes from those foxholes some time back,-so we dreamed up a sort of teamwork, imagined that we were supplying _ . their aerial umbrella.- But my imagination ·"" ? % · / if must have been playing tricks, for it >m ^^^^^B^lW seems...
...Some months back, when the Army first allowed newspaper men on bombing trips over Germany, Ray Daniell tossed a coin with James Macdonald in London for the N. Y. Times seat in the plane...
...Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen...
...Entering the door, whom should he btrmp into bat one of his Naval opponents...
Vol. 26 • March 1943 • No. 11
