Anniversary in Crisis
Anniversary in Crisis Our Days of Decision During its score of yean. The New Leader has spanned the apace from Tea Pot Dome to TVA. It has registeiad'UliriBittoi^l reactions from the bleak...
...The fate of our world for the next generation will be settled within a period measured in months...
...American citizens must learn to function as citizens of the world...
...There simply was damn little congenial company with whom one fwld talk a common language of ideals, theory and action...
...To the Idjcal of 1923 it's well nigh Incredible...
...New York was heart-warmingly different There were so many places where a person could find intellectual stimulus and the company of fellow-radicals with whom to talk about the things nearest the heart—in the unions, the «nd School . . . and the offices of the newly-ftrahdtd New Leader...
...Its most recent one was for President Roosevelt as a symbol of the New Deal...
...I don't often get a chance to talk about these heart-warming changes...
...The price of freedom from fear and freedom from want is thinking together...
...In between came the time of wonderful nonsense, the partial eclipse of the labor movement, the Hoover period of capitalist mythology and the desperate decade of depression...
...The real capital—in the sense of real power, as everyone knew—was actually New York...
...Our National Resources Planning Board has outlined a New Deal Program for after the war...
...Unlike the aervQe $Uttt-> antonio, these men do not toe a party ligSw MV differences in their attitudes on specific CMPtt is the result of their judgment, and indftnfni varies in honest men according to their capacities and experience...
...The Socialist training of the members of its staff saved them, from being deceived either by the "prosperity" of 1929 or the deep despair Of 1932...
...Instead of crying out in a swamp of stagnant complacency, as The New Leader did in its early days, it finds itself now in a dangerous world of change where countless millions are aware of their perils and search desperately for ways to safety...
...We were never terrorized by the untried...
...The Future We Foe* During all these years The New Leader has Been fighting against exploitation and for a better life for the common -people...
...The point is that the isolated one or two progressives of 1923 have become the dozens of 1943...
...The future is very near...
...But the war pulled us ruthlessly into its ominous orbit...
...Thus far we have had only inadequate approaches to solutions...
...None with an interest in the economic and social welfare of America and his fellowmen everywhere need be lonely in Washington, any longer...
...Never was opportunity so great or danger so terrible...
...Its earliest issues chronicled the deaths, of Lenin and Woodrow Wilson...
...In common with the trade unions and all of the liberal, progressive forces of this country, they have formed an active part of the majority which has elected the President to a second and third term...
...But we were never a nation of cowards...
...Such interests form the common coin of conversation now...
...Today only a Martin Dies thinks the word oowaUst" is an epithet...
...I mean the changes in the Steele hire, their customs and their ways of thinking...
...Young Bob" LaFollette of Wisconsin, Sheridan Downey of California, William Langer of North Dakota, Jim Murray of Montana...
...Washington did not become the real capital of the nation until that wet and Windy March 4 in 1933 when Wall Street temporarily dropped the reins of power from its fear-palsied hands...
...not so bright, «* instance, as—was it Lord Northcliffe or HW Rothermere?—who said broadly and jMSUUjmbr a short while ago, "Socialists...
...If ever the lands and seas and skies are to be safe, if ever we are to be free from the threat of enemy planes and tanks and submarines, the American government must undertake a conscious, directed and cooperative role in international affairs...
...The expansion which followed the Civil War will be as nothing to the new levels which we can reach with full democratic application of modern technology...
...I go on my way...
...flh resentative Jerry Voorhis of California...
...Stop in at the Press Club or the men's bar at the Willard...
...But then, Martin al-**js was what used to be known as a "slow «ody.» He is not very bright...
...There is a heart-lift in this retrospection...
...Its most recent numbers forecast the post-war roles to be played by Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt...
...This whole gory moss" may turn out to be "futil* and pointless...
...This conflict will reach its climax in the 1944 elections...
...As Socialists and labor men and women they have lived in no ivory tower of perfectionism...
...I stop to chat with Senators, Representatives, their •ecretariu, committee chairmen, etc...
...The soldier's fears are justified...
...It has been for the New Deal because this series of experiments marked an advance in both the spirit and the technique of American government...
...A Pledge to Fighters and Workers To this challenge the editors and publishers of The Nrw Leader respond with a deep sense of responsibility...
...We .will have to determine—not whether we shall have planning—but whether planning will be for private fortunes or for the common welfare...
...To play honorably our part in world policy requires a break with the tradition of our immediate past...
...In 1923 there were in the Senate a Norris and * I<aFollette, raising their voices alone in behalf *the common people of the nation...
...This paper's first political campaign was for Robert M. LaFollette Oh a Labor Party ticket...
...In this.year of Grace, 1943, I make my way trough the Senate and House Office Building, or through the cloakrooms of the two legislative chambers...
...Now the words plan or peri$h are no empty slogan...
...That note is struck by a letter from a soldier received this week: "Give us the guns, teach us to fire them, and well do our job...
...I don't mean such things as Acts of Congress or the physical ap-eeeranceiW the city...
...The decision must come soon...
...During a mere handful of years the people of the United States have passed from almost complete faith in our inherited economic and political ways to a mood of skepticism, experiment, and drive for improvement...
...Capital Comment By JONATHAN STOUT Dssi celebrated the end of its first decade, mark-ffMjgsii ilin ii.Mnl Mail11 rainy March 4 when Franklin D. Roosevelt took his first oath M President of the United States...
...And all that is to the good...
...r Frpm Washington's viewpoint, New York •earned the green fields of a foreign shore, or Pfrhaps' an intellectual oasis in a great mental wsert All that is changed in Washington...
...With keen analysis, with admirable versatility of attack, the writers of this paper pointed out the causes of catastrophe and sketched ways toward greater security and a better world...
...Without boasting, The New Leader can gather confidence from its record and the part it has played...
...Nor is this all...
...You'll probably see the story in this space in a forthcoming issue of The New- Leader...
...And the subjects under discussion and the way they are discussed would have made a 1923 radios...
...These past 10 years have worked a difference in the nation's capita) that is almost incredible in-retrospect...
...He is an incorruptible stock of GibralUr on which the Power Trust batters itself in vain...
...It has registeiad'UliriBittoi^l reactions from the bleak disillusion following World War I to the high hope...
...There must be adventuring toward new horizons...
...Men there—in equal measure—require our help...
...Abolition of the fear of them is the only guarantee against the rise of another Hitler and the coming of another war...
...If the reactionaries .win the elections of 1944, these dreams will go to join Wilson's Fourteen Points on the junkpile of history...
...Challenged by the urgency of this crisis it lays its plans for future service...
...Our back numbers are spotted with pictures of millions of jobless men hopelessly seeking work or stagnating in breadlines...
...And things are changed on Capitol Hill...
...The converse tiosi points your correspondent on an investigation of whst promises to be a sensational situation...
...A new, greater and more terrible war has grown from the seeds of the old conflict...
...The past 20 years are even more remarkable in that sense...
...fof World War II...
...They sound likens bunch of Socialists—to 1823 ears...
...The talk is in a language which before 1988 was the technical jargon pf the economist and the radical, not the common"-speech of the man -on the street...
...But, lafs get back to the old days...
...the Mayflower or any of the leading hotels in Washington...
...If the trade unions and the vast circles of liberal citizens do their part, this humane and rational project will usher in a period of reconstruction and progress...
...And in the two lone places of the venerated Norris and the respected "Fightin' Bob" La-Follette of 1923, there are today a host of sucr cessors...
...Deep and sinister forces are at work here and abroad...
...In the midst of our desperate war effort the reactionary forces conduct a mighty propaganda against economic planning...
...And I hear ""to their lips talk couched in *ich terms as hate startled a 1923 radical...
...there's no point to a lengthy roll-call...
...Had we lived upon an isolated continent these projects would have gone on from phase to phase...
...When the dynamic of war is removed, the task will be all to do over again on another level, on a greater scale, under conditions of more desperate urgency...
...But their word ii given, not merely to the fighting men on a score of fronts in this current war...
...to be sure, do not see eye-to-eye in every particular...
...As 'or instance, such ideas as social security...
...Eventually after progressive trial and error ways might have been found, of adjusting production and distribution...
...The United States, in common with the other great nations, will face during the coming decade an opportunity whkHJ taken at the flood, may lead on to peace and plenty but which, missed, bungled, inadequately utilized, may be the prelude to such destruction and downfall as modern history has never recorded...
...These twenty years have proved that we can have full employment and full production only if we learn to plan together in the interest of all our citizens...
...Anniversary in Crisis Our Days of Decision During its score of yean...
...At that tl«e Washington was a pretty lonely and frustrating place for liberals...
...But 51 weeks in the year spent on the critical •We of the fence should atone for this one week J* celebration and a recounting of the gains of we years...
...And rnanj*, of the things that were merely his dNsms in 1928 are today the laws of the land *°d the fully-adopted ways of the people...
...It has never jettisoned liberty in a vain desire for greater speed or efficiency...
...The really big job, giving direction and purpose, belongs to people like yc4Land papers, like yours...
...Basic concepts of democracy have been challenged...
...And this time the only alternative is the certain destruction of all that we hold dear...
...Restrained by no sectarian bonds, acting, in fact, in accord with the logic of their socialist thinking, they lined up behind this new trend and vigorously supported both the domestic and foreign policies of President Roosevelt...
...Through all the turns of Fascist and Communist argument it has kept clearly before its readers the urgency of employing none but democratic means to secure progressive ends...
...Free men everywhere have united and braced themselves to meet this chaflenge...
...And if that's the way it affects you too, remember that you'll have to make, this bit of lilt last you all year...
...He is more than charm-ingly erudite...
...On this anniversary occasion we recall the veterans of World War I, selling apples on the street or, at the moment of their extremity, shot down in the nation's capital...
...There never seems *nough space for such things with constantly new battles to fight, new progress to make, etc...
...The Four Freedoms and the Atlantic Charter are as yet but bright dreams...
...From the days of the founding of the Social Democratic Federation with its emphasis on democratic socialism, this journal has been especially clear and constant in highlighting the need of keeping freedom close-knit to social and economic planning...
...But this much they have in common, they are honest servants of the people, they are sincere and able and they are honored liberals...
...blink his eyes and think the millenium had arrived...
...If the credit for this undoubtedly goes directly to the upheaval of the New Deal's is to do, ultimately the credit belongs to The New Loader's two decades, and to all the pioneers mho blazed the trail for the Roosevelt revolution...
...In . the field of international Telations we have made even less progress...
...It'a always a delight to talk with him...
...with stops at the offices of Senators Jim Mead and Bob Wagner of iJew York...
...IrirtslWtj We're all Socialists nowadays...
...These men...
...The writers and supporters of this paper, moreover, have full right to take pride in their early recognition of the historic significance of the New Deal...
...These things must not be again...
...Within these two decades Hitler has been projected from the soil of social decay...
...Under the New Deal our foreign policy has lagged far behind our efforts to meet the domestic challenge...
...It is in the sharp consciousness of this emergency that The S'ew Leader celebrates its twentieth anniversary...
...We cannot solve our problems without Europe and Asia and Africa...
...Prodigious spending for armaments put all of our people to work and gave us for the first time an economy of abundance, the abundance of death and destruction...
...We must learn new ways or he steeled to face deeper want and greater wars...
...And how those two old-timers could have used their help in 1923...
...For one *lng, the radical of 1923 ho longer is a radical & 1943...
...With this must go a new dedication of America to international cooperation...
...The battle for progress leaves no space for this kind of a column until the next anniversary...
...Today he is a liberal or a progressive...
...Between now and November 7th, 1944, the people of this country most be reached and roused...
...on the job as your correspondent here...
...Which is another way of saying .that not one of our basic problems has been solved...
...I drop in for a talk with Senator Homer Bone of Washington...
...This whole gory affair will be futile and pointless as the last war unless the powers that be have you and people like you acting as a perpetual needle pricking them every time they tend to turn this into just another war for territorial and economic aggrandizement, or just another war for the destruction of Hitler and the Japs...
...Twenty years ago Washington • was a sleepy Southern village lying below the Mason-Dixon line and drawing its character chiefly from that environment It was only technically the capital «f the United States...
Vol. 26 • April 1943 • No. 15
