Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
Where the News Ends __By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN___ This Robot Era — A View From 2000 A. D. IT is uncommonly difficult to write of the present * in terms that will be acceptable to the future,...
...With fervor my middle son has entered college, gradually moving the campus of bright youngsters into our home for daily visits...
...War is never a kid-glove affair, except in romantic novels...
...His was no blind and blanket shout of praat...
...But in a war against the enemies of all freedom, they present Labor's claims as a part of our entire national picture...
...So Labor is justified in asking for proportionate increases in wages...
...In his outburst against plans for future national well-being, the Mine Workers' chief is playing the part of the straight reactionary-In the boldest fashion he is initiating his part in anti-New Deal campaign of 1944...
...Such badges were previously forced on Jews in the former occupied zone but not in the Vichy territory...
...The fears of border states will haunt every discussion of post-war plans and aims, until an international power has been set up and international aims are made clear...
...The revision of-all naturalizations since 1870 and the cancellation of those since August 10, 1927, was suggested...
...Even more deeply than WaH Whit, man he sensed the varied spirit of this land...
...We had first the improvised and inadequate measures of 1933...
...fm, here it is black on white: "Especially f°iH| (in the fall of Kharkov) are the Social Dea*» cratic cliques and the . . . David Dubmtky crowd, who spat their hate at the Soviet seopk and the Red Army just when the fhtS'sf Kharkov was being settled...
...It might as well be Mr...
...Everyone who should speak puts his fingers to his lips and says: "We must keep quiet...
...Its proposals go far beyond considerations of social security...
...I don't think his answer to this question would lie in pronouncing a verdict of paranoia on any single people, although an era of war and violent revolution does bring into prominence an...
...In him three generations ^ army life flowered in a rarely inclusive sat sensitive spirit This man's distinguished services as interpreter of America at war againt barbsriaa are integral with his whole work as man *? as artist...
...It is everything eise but that...
...What are we doing to protect this beautiful innocence, from the predatory and egotistical gangs in our midst ?. We listen to Toscanini conducting the "Hymn of the Nations"— and the powerful emotion of love of freedom plays over us...
...Long before the vti he saw the struggle taking form...
...What has been done for the Greeks," at the initiative of their old enemies, the Turks, should have been done long ago for the French, the Norwegians, the Belgians, the Dutch...
...There is both humility and humanity in the figure of General Nogi, who brooded over the number of his soldiers whom he had sent to death at Port Arthur, wished to take his own life'in expiation and committed suicide in the classical Japanese fashion as soon as the Emperor whom he served had died...
...Sheer madness...
...But in his wild flailing out at the administration, at A.F.bfL...
...I do not.believe that one individual Russian in a hundred would have had the impulse to pack the unfortunate peasants who were called kulaks into freight cars and send them off, in many cases, to lingering death in concentration camps...
...Immediately afterward follows Father Fulton J. Shean with his mumbojumbo about economic royalists and Marxian socialism and his Coughlinite innuendo* and threats that the boys returning will want jobs—or else...
...I have looked about me in the last year and a half, and what have I seen ? ¦ My own home, so cozy and cheerful and so like many another, enclosing a happy family and surrounded by a little garden, was as though ripped apart...
...We can well visualize little...
...In a recent press conference, Pellepoix complained that there ,vere still 50 to 60 highly graded Jewish civil servants in the central French administration...
...I am, therefore ing my renewal -:fee for...
...THE FUTURE NEW DEAL THE program outlined last week by the Na-* tional Resources Planning Board is the future New Deal for which all intelligent citizens will fight...
...AH .. To the Editor: I can not overlook the tM that The New Leader doss'**' pretty good job in stirring ? conscience of America, the Aa**(' ica of Abe Lincoln and ™Jsf Whitman...
...I don't believe one Japanese in a hundred would run amok as uniformed Japanese in the mass have run amok in conquered cities...
...Hints are given that through its terms peace is to be maintained in Europe and that the United States is to be drawn into this arrangement...
...I see my young high school daughter, wide-eyed, entertaining^them— and I wonder...
...John Brown's Body was a profound hat lilting picture of our unity in variety, ? "The Devil and Daniel Webster" and in otbe> sketches which poured prolificaliy from kit pen he interpreted the soul of this country...
...Under-Secretary of State Welles has testified that this experiment has worked well, that it is relieving famine conditions without benefiting the Nazis...
...With a feeling of honest sportsmanship my oldest son left to go into the Army...
...The other is the growing prevalence of the idea that the end justifies the meansT™"^ I have lived in Russia, Germany and Japan...
...Now—according to this plan —we are to have Britain, Russia and the United States balanced against Central Europe and Japan...
...Every phase of industry and agriculture is considered with a view to increasing production and employment Part IV sketches in ways in which state and city governments can play an expanding part in these nation-wide developments...
...But no one can say with certainty when that overthrow will occur, whether another year or even two will be required...
...And what mortal who does not want te hj labeled an enemy of the Soviet people will dsN to contradict them...
...The proposal is to place the power of the federal government and all its resources at the disposal of private industry...
...Of course it is only in the overthrow of the Nazi tyranny that there is any permanent premise of safety for the Jews or of normal Hying conditions fqr the peoples of the occupied countries...
...So too, did Cad Browder his American mullah...
...Wartime economic controls are to be loosened with sufficient gradualness to protect the people against post-war inflation...
...Sleet...
...The practical experience of'-feeding the hungry in Greece has knocked in the head all the specious inhuman arguments that it was necessary to let French, Belgian, Dutch and Norwegian children starve in order to compass the defeat of Hitler...
...IT would seem that the bad example of Europe .may have infected the Orient...
...But, he said, his commission included no authority to consider the basic conditions of England's economy...
...General sabotage by the French population of the anti-Semitic laws and regulations, with Jews in Franee everywhere receiving the suuport of sympathizers, has been disclosed by Louis Daiquier de Pellepoix, French Commissioner for Jewish Affairs...
...It is a restatement in practical terms of the old American dream...
...Otherwise we will have shut our eyes to just another frightful and useless mass-murder...
...And I was brought up with a start of surprise when I recently noticed a news items to the effect that a certain group of clergymen had "with*"" d raw ? tbeftviobjections" to properly safeguarded schemes iorvfeeding children in France and other occupied democracies...
...The force oi dictatorship threatened all that he had notified in his art...
...My question is: Are we intellectuals' daring enough ? The world is moving along with increasing acceleration toward an instructive clarity as to the rights of mankind...
...nation...
...The time is ripe for the organization of the United Nations for more effective action both in war ancf in The exact nature of Anthony Eden's activities in Washington is a diplomatic and military secret...
...In certain cases joint investment and management by .government and private concerns is to be instituted...
...This set of projects is so far-reaching, so basic, that it is of the utmost'importance that all citizens should understand it-Understanding must begin with denial of all relation between the Beveridge plan and our American plan...
...So bankrupt,are the Communists, so sopsrhf morally and intellectually are the DsvMfV inskys and the Social Democrats, that 8tah*» robots, having exhausted their stock of iatp tive, are now forced to resort to mad fantasy Yes, whom the gods would destroy they fi* make mad...
...Hardly any otatr American will be so much missed, {w quality added to his lovableness and charm...
...As in a surrealist dream—the house is cut in half and clouds and the sky fill it With honest eagerness we let my husband go away to another city to work on a government project...
...The only way to get clean away from the suspicion of such machinations is to call a United Nations council and jKt up now a working organization with objectives based on the Atlantic Charter...
...Such hints will soon repel the American people...
...These are not to be sold out to monopolists at bargain rates...
...To fill the national need a group of experts have worked out the program which is erroneously called "the American Beveridge Plan...
...CT ? PH EN VINCENT BENAFaied ?", ^ soldier at his post...
...must be more stern and not afraid for our individual dignity and morale...
...Four Senators, evenly representing the two parties, hare introduced in the Senate a resolution in favor of setting up an international force "to sop-, press . .- . any further attempt at miliatry aggression by any...
...Formerly it was Britain and Prussia against France—then Britain, France and Russia against Germany...
...For the future all of these taken together are obviously of no avail...
...He stated in his introduction that he was quite conscious of the fact that this is not enough...
...eThe thirty years' period that began in the tragic year 1914 was one of more misery for more people than any' that can easily be thought of outside of the darkest of the Dark 'Ages...
...But the reports of his conferences are heavy with implications—which may or may not be justified—that he is playing the old balance-of-powet game...
...Instead of buitee, Dubinsky's secret weapon is apit...
...e is for "a bird in the hand...
...The Turks, unable to endure the frightful conditions of starvation in neighboring Greece, simply crashed the blockade and sent in food, under arrangements that precluded its use , by the Germans and Italians...
...policies and at the Resources Planning Board program, he has made himself the spearhead of dangerously reactionary forces...
...would "* not be satisfied with recording his dreary chronicle of massacres, "liquidations," executions and concentration camps...
...But in democratic countries^!so there are 1 some alarming symptoms of camnisue&s, of thp drying up of the normal impulse of compassion...
...His plan was, therefore, introduced with the distinct reservation that it would prove useless unless more fundamental measures were taken, measures which he had no authority to outline or advocate...
...What the Daily Sews and its fellow pessimists bewail is the idea of developing all of the nation's resources and lines of business with a view to the common welfare...
...THE REACTIONARY LEWIS JOHN L. LEWES is justified in asking lor a higher wages for his miners, For two years their pay has been frozen by an agreement while the cost of living has steadily mounted...
...William Green and Philip Murray, too, know that some workers need higher wage rates, that the Little Steel formula must not be turned into a chain round Labor's neck...
...For: hja there was no need to step down from aa ivorj tower* of u-pnpolitical artistry...
...they were gentlemen, even humanitarians, by'comparison with Hitler's "Elite Guards" and thejt attached murder squads...
...I pray that the beautiful enthusiasm of this war will not dry up in seeds that will refuse to flower...
...He saw and blacked in the areas of bitter selfishness and cruel conflict...
...Plans for the protection of Labor's interests after the war are so closely connected with workers' daily needs that no working man or working woman can be persuaded that they were intro- ¦ duced with evil moti ves...
...Throughout the nineteenth century, and even allowing for'the Napoleonic Wars, there was nothing ill Europe in the way of wholesale slaughter to compare with the holocaust of the two" major wars in which that continent has been involved during the last generation, with tne unspcaxaoie massacres of Jews throughout ''Eastern and ventral ? u r op e by the Nazis, with such Communist mass cruelties ' as the "liquidation of the kulaks as a class" a*d the man-made famine in Ukrainu and the North Caucasus in 1932-33...
...The root of the reactionary howls is the public declaration in favor of continuous employment of all workers at good wages in jobs for which they are fitted and for which they have been trained...
...We ¦^*· are promised a United Nations conference which may make the first moves toward actual unity of the Allied powers...
...But our instinctive understanding is so often merely naive...
...Some may be kept in operation by "new forms of joint private and governmental partnership...
...It has not happened...
...Can it be said that the United Nations have taken every possible step to rescue at least some surviving Jews from the inferno of a Gestapo-dominated Europe...
...The twenty - year Russo-British treaty is being played up...
...But the folk-base does not seem to tie up with the cultural projection, and I am afraid it is the fault of the intellectuals...
...One .point in this judgment can easily be anticipated...
...With regard to that understanding the United States government has not kept its...
...MADNESS ON THIRTEENTH STMT WHOM the goods would destroy they tot make mad...
...This flesh was seeded from no foreign 0?& But Pennsylvania a»4 Kentucky wheat, And it soaked in California rain *And five years tempered in \ew...
...This is especially true in periods of war and revolution, of swift and violent change._ It would be immensely interesting and instructive if we could now read the considered judgment of a philosophic historian of the year 2,000 on the first half of the twentieth century...
...This section deals, too, with demobilization of war plants...
...It is our duty to see this purpose through in practical and definite ways...
...The aspersions cast at the President's motives need not be taken seriously...
...The four sections of its scheme include outlines of ways to pass from war to peace and then to establish such conditions that industry and agriculture can operate continuously at a high rate of production and employment...
...4 It is not good enough...
...u ~ Now the secret is out...
...The great fault of our age is that there is a bottom to society, a mass folk-base, and an intellectual top...
...Until this is done both Russia and Britain Will be under suspicion in many American minds...
...Spangler "ulrhlfc or Colonel McCormick, or Captain...
...Within a couple of hours after this plan was released the New York Daily Sews was on the street with the screech that here we had a plot for bureaucratic control of American industry...
...Sir William Beveridge completed for England nothing more than a comprehensive social security program...
...Our Planning .Board was under no such limitations...
...He is announcing to all Tory politicians that if they control the Republican nomination they can count on his support...
...So the historian of 2,000, after describing the •tragic pass to which civilization was brought during the first half of the twentieth century, will, one hopes, have a brighter story to tell about the second half, of how the free human spirit found means to emancipate itself from the bonds of the leviathan state, of how the absolute values * of reason, justice, freedom, humanity reasserted themselves after a period when they were in almost total eclipse...
...It was either desperation or sheer mtdnes that prompted the Communist chieftains in the United States to print a front page editorial in the March 17 issue of the Defy Worker, .placing the guilt for the fall of Kharkov to the Germans upon the slsmV ders of David Dubinsky, President of ?? International Ladies Garment Workers Ustss, and the American Social Democrats...
...Some will be sold—but distributed in such a way as to work against monopoly...
...Here are set forth definite projects for keeping our industrial system going by farreaching cooperation of government agencies and private business management Public projects are to be geared so as to take in the slack in private employment...
...LETTERS TO THE EDITOR "*.........»""»------...........----------________ Fears Post-War Weariness As Jeopardizing Future From PAULA EUASOPH To the Editor: It is beginning to appear to me that the pull in the right direction during this war is little more than a wishful dream...
...Consider the indifferent, sometimes even hostile attitude which some American consuls have taken toward refugees to whom a visa was often a matter of life and death...
...Fantastic you will say...
...So pians f general welfare are to him "blueprints „r utepia...
...Meanwhile Jews are being killed and French, Belgians, Norwegians, Dutch are dying of slow starvation...
...Tbe worst that pc-~ cuVred in the nineteenth century seems very" mild and humane, compared with the supreme crimes of the' present age...
...j[ man of great and varied talents, his innat» modesty, his deep humanity gave hun % common touch...
...He shouts raucously that be and his miners must have just what' they want when they want it—no matter what...
...Here in Queens many events take place that could make intellectuals weep...
...But the sneers at long-term projects for sustaining employment and wages for the entire nation completely unmask backward-facing psychology of the Mine Workers' leader...
...French Population Sabotages Anti-Semitic Laws LONDON...
...He can make a good argument, too, against slavish adherence to the Little Steel formula...
...Aryanization" (expropriation) transactions, he said, involved 100 nilliard (billion) francs (about 82.250,000,000) and 3,500 prcm-ses in Paris which belonged to lews...
...Lewis alone among labor men speaks with the voice of a ruthless individualist, of the unreconstructed isolationist...
...One is the swollen uncontrolled power of the state...
...Rickenbacker...
...Some will be retained to continue necessary military production...
...But beneath ft all he saw the people's dream and had faith in the forces of right...
...The government is, according to this plan, to retain control of foreign .patents and see to it that they are utilized in the national interest...
...San Francisco, Calif...
...He does not, first of all, recognize in word, deed or attitude our common responsibilities toward the war effort...
...He believes in the old individualistic way, the way of some union leaders in the old, bad days, when it was possible for one little bunch of workers to get comparatively high wages by rising on the ihaet»w ef their leas fortunate brethren...
...We have become obsessed with the . vision of symbols and have neglected to look more at the earth...
...This time "we shall not be content to give each man $60 in cash and a ticket home...
...Not until we have concrete assurance that even the greatest powers will be subject to agreements mutually accepted can we expect the American people to ratify our acceptance of such obligations as the Senate resolution proposes...
...Where the News Ends __By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN___ This Robot Era — A View From 2000 A. D. IT is uncommonly difficult to write of the present * in terms that will be acceptable to the future, or to see the present in true perspective...
...Then came the somewhat better coordinated Instrumente of 1938 and after...
...This is not a picture of bureaucratic dictatorship...
...THE CONSCIENCE OF AMERICA" From JOHN J...
...endless fertility—he poured out to the natuc during his last months his vision of the democracy for which we fight...
...Dubinsky and the Social DemAsMh gave Kharkov to the Nazis...
...Dying in tbe thia oi these labors of love, he sacrificed hixnseli for his country as truly as any man who did on the field of battle...
...In poetry, in drama, in radio script—working with exhausting speed...
...How any normally humane persons, much less a minister of what is supposed to be a creed of mercy, could have ever Cherished such objections is frankly beyond my comprehension...
...and C.I.O...
...The social security provisions occupy only a part of the third section of the report...
...The N'azi-^mtrolled Paris radio reported that Pellepoix had submitted to Marshal Henri Petain ? draft of twelve laws further restricting the liberties of Jews...
...I think he would single out two distinctive features, peculiar to this period, that have made for an ever increasing toll of violence and brutality...
...After all, that samt Stalin, the Soviet Sun, the leader of pespkB, the great Thaumaturge...
...and1 even here they could cite some European precedents...
...running about and shrieking: "Have yen iMi the news...
...He knew well that insurance against every one of life's evils will be useless without a high rate of production, withopt continuous employment at good wages...
...He would eliminate all delays in divorce procedure between Jewish and non-Jewish spouses, bar Jews from marriage . to non-Jews and compel Jews throughout Fr?nce to~ wear yellow Star of David badges...
...Section I outlines ways for the gradual and orderly demobilization of men from the armed forces and from war industries...
...He would want to know why human beings raged against each other with such ferocity, why so few had it in their power to inflict so much suffering on so many...
...We see htm sowing seeds in our camps...
...The vivid stories of Guy de Maupassant do not depict tne Prussians of 1871 as very gentle conquerors...
...year...
...EDITORIAL COMMENT WORLD UNITY—NOW IS THE TIME ANTBlfONY EDEN is in Washington...
...But there is nothing of the spirit of Nogi in the horrible outrages committed by the Japanese in Nanking and -ether captured cities during the present war with Cbina4 , The "worst crimes of this cruel and bleak age fall to the account of totalitarian and militarist regimes...
...But the "Japanese fought the war' against Russia in 1904-05 pretty much according to the rules, apart from beginning without a formal declaration...
...The growing up in these countries of younger generations that are both physically impaired and psychologically unstable because of prolonged malnutrition is a black omen for the future of European civilization...
...He spat $M Kharkov fell...
...Closely associated with the fearfully'corrupting effect of a leviathan state that kills any sense of individual moral judgment is the damnable and utterly fallacious idea that the end justifies the means, whereas all historical experience demonstrates that the means usually determines the end...
...of the tacit agreement...
...The primary objective of beating the Nazis does not eliminate the humanitarian obligation to save alive as many of their victims as possible...
...We must see to it that there are jobs and that the men find the jobs and are trained for them...
...In their stupid vituperation they have far gotten that Dubinsky has organized vast meltings for Russian War Relief including ?? a huge block-long rally with Wendell Wilms as chief speaker...
...The Soviet record of •¦inhumanity is well ahead of the Tsarist, whether one takes as a measure the number of persons put to death., for political reasons or the numbers of lives sacrificed on the altar of "liquidation" of whole undesired classes...
...Lewis occupies a strong position...
...As for the "twenty thousand" people «lH> at the wink from the Kremlin, fill MllHsf Square to cheer the Stalin-Hitler Pact, » denounce President Roosevelt (or to prmP him, as the occasion demands) and to consmu the great Polish-Jewish socialists and asti-fascists as "Nazi agents," they surely «? believe that it was Dubinsky who made Hap kov fall...
...appalling number of paranoia personalities...
...But no one speaks out...
...But the heart of the whole business lies in Section II, which is entitled: "Plans for Development of an Expanding Economy...
...imaginary historian of 2,000 A.D...
...If he is not able to tell this story, then, of course, there will be no philosophic historians of 2,000 A.D., only stooges for tril umphant totalitarianism...
...This far Mr...
...I mean the beautiful enthusiasm to create a just and peaceful world for the people of this earth...
...Government agencies are te assist' private business and industry to develop old fields and to enter new ones...
...I don't believe that one German in a hundred, left to his individual feeling and conscience, would have set oar to humiliate, rob and murder his Jewish neighbors...
...Labor was to be content with a 15 per cent increase, but the cost of living was to ..be kept stationary— _ or nearly stationary—by rationing and price-fixing...
Vol. 26 • March 1943 • No. 12
