The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
A Page of Features Americana The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN Our Soldiers Speak IREAD a lot of the reviews of this running record of American soldiers— their letters and diaries—from Banker...
...P*rlich-Alter Footnotes:—The Commies are so hopping sand *"* about the rousing public reaction against GPU-dirty business that the Daily Worker practically appears with purple margins...
...You cop your lead from the jacket, throw in a couple of paragraphs in which the virile heroes dismember the language more thoroughly than they do the enemy...
...that the book is concerned...
...Ami this office has had to clear it up seriously with various bureau who got the "tip" and were looking into it...
...All special ygRjsMmwn have been cancelled...
...One thing I've learned in my life is that everything every one of us does counts...
...It is a further disappointment that the most explicit statement of the author's message, after having been rattier forcibly brought bito the story, should turn out such mild and unsubstantial fare...
...At owe point an Irish representation marches in...
...Needless to say, the White emigres played an important part in all of these ghoulish crimes committed by the Japanese conquerors...
...So long as the growth of people to greater stature all around is what we want more than anything, it wilLkeep on...
...More vividly than any other American writer, Dos Passos has caught American speech...
...He is, too, the one who fives the following report about fighting Indians in Ontario: "So I got but one fare shot at one of their copper-coloured sanups, whose heels I soon made too light for his head, and would have scalped the dog, but my captain wouldn't allow it...
...It is impossible, unfortunately, to say as much for his latest work...
...However, this experiment in Lebensraum politics was not very successful...
...He's lining . up columnists and correspondents in the hope of offsetting the bad press the Kremlin white-wash has been getting...
...merely transcribed that speech...
...In the War between the States there was definite resentment tfainst the ministrations of the Christian Commission, which was the U.S.O...
...Tories, et...
...These young men were to be sent to Japan on a visiting tour to become acquainted with the country's customs...
...What followed was the conquest of Ethiopia by Italy, the conquest of Spain by Germany and Italy, and the conquest of Austria and Czechoslovakia by Germany...
...The reason which the author gives is quite ingenious, though quite humiliating for the American people...
...In their eyes, the more illiterate you are the more manly and genuine...
...The methods applied in this line of endeavor were so revolting, so beastly cruel, that one would think the author exaggerated—if all his accusations had not been borne out by the notorious Kaspe affair which at the time created a stir throughout the world...
...Fellow-traveler skullduggery is getting serious in some literary circles...
...Howard Rushmore, who broke the story ef the Daily Worker's bon mot calling Harry Bridges, "the well- . known Communist chief" has checked on the wire which came fas from Washington...
...Books and Writers Story of a Politico By NAT GLICK " "NUMBER ONE...
...Eager for quick results they immediately "nationalized," that is, established a government monopoly in three of the most profitable "industries": prostitution, gambling and the production and sale of narcotics...
...We hope it runs as a second-feature on Tuesday-Wednesday showing with a Lope Veles screecfaie...
...In World War I, there was practically no verbal evidence of religious concern...
...This was the beginning of a process . which in the course of a few years converted all of Manchuria into the socialized property of the Japanese officer caste and of their civilian bureaucratic assistants...
...I suppose DeVatora will protest that this constitutes a violation of Eire's neutrality...
...We think it's a lie...
...2.50...
...Some went to all of our wars motivated by high purposes...
...Kiuckhohn arrived in Algiers just about the time all the other correspondents were pulling into—Casablanca, to see FDR...
...It is well chosen...
...The boys tell me I am no better than an Indian when I talk about it, but I can't help it...
...The other night your correspondent ran into Walter Winchell...
...1 We hope it misses bookings...
...Ike with no" neesMrSuvjSS...
...Indeed, it is difficult to say precisely what has precipitated Tyler's reaction...
...Liveright...
...It is with that period of Manchuria's history, 1931 to 1033...
...J14 pages...
...He tells me that the alleged "typographical , error" was sent through flora Washington—it was in Adam Lapin's original copy...
...Beating Fascists for a reason—to re* establish free and democratic rights everywhere...
...Ne sihamiittr feeMfittJfr Moscow Trial records, er long rehearsals of the careers of Old Bolsheviks, etc., eta...
...New England men and Southerners habitually carried their testament*, but—if these letters and diaries are representative— religion was taken much less seriously...
...Obviously, however, Dc s Passos 'wants us to see it as a conscience pang stbBujktssj by ihe vague idealism ef a letter Tyler has received from his brother Glenn, who died ngbtfns fasdtm in Spain...
...That's the assy, we ttu«k> W#f| and independent publicity against the GPU nmp,—n«s eMgpP in the picture ought to he handled...
...A typical , Private said: "I wouldn't want to be a civilian in war or a soldier m Pence...
...The professional literary boys wasted a lot of admiration on the soldiers' bad grammar and original orthography...
...We popped the question to him after the meeting and the man apparently was Under-Secretary Sumner -Welles...
...trilogy...
...From a southern ^mp Charles Benton, a New York State voluntee?, wrote to his ¦aether: "Whoever announced that he enlisted beeauae be loved country was sure to become a target for the shafts of "dicule...
...who have invested a AW'tflW in this quam-effieiel'-mjm-gsnda gift te the fmmi Charlie Einfeld, leadiirjg Warner publicity man, flew into New York recently to do a special job an the political angles...
...If the author's aim is to expose the duplicity and totalitarian potential in this type of politician, he is taking on a task more adequately fulfilled by the newspaper exposes that appeared shortly after Huey Long's death...
...It was the curious coincidence between the occupation of Manchuria and—the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby...
...But in the early thirties it was actually in the center of world events...
...This may seem a little, strange, for by this ipjne the provision for professional religious care - was vastly issrt systematic than in our previous straggles.' One' officer took psins to record the last words of sixteen men who died...
...The book is supposed to be the autobiography of a Russian youth, Oleg Volgin, who grew up in Harbin, the largest city of Northern Manchuria and the haven of Russian White refugees...
...Ia another case (also of a well-known contributor to these pages) the author of a "dynamite" book on the Far East, out shortly, has been viciously libelled as "a Japanese agent...
...Watch for the statements after the premiere...
...Philadclphians will be pleased by a distinction credited to Charles Bardeen, a lively fife-blower from Fitchburg...
...That may be as good a way of patching up a review as any...
...Joe Curran...
...In the labor movement the "boys" are gunning for James B. Carey, CIO Secretary, whose courageous and fortright comments en the CP have received nation-wide publicity (Time magazine ran lerattnr excerpts...
...Tyler, what I'd started to write you about was not letting.them sell out too much of the oldtime United States way...
...The conquerors had more luck with their second task—that of systematically plundering the country's enormous wealth...
...They were-Mmd- atoll are— irritated at the highfalutin phrases of politicians...
...Passos here concerns himself with the threat to American democracy embodied in the fascistic "Every Man a Million-sire" movement, headed by the Southern demagogue, Chuck Crawford...
...On the back cover of his latest work, he urges the purchase of War Bonds to tell the world that "nothing can shake your faith in the future of the United States...
...After telling the tale of the capture of a British schooner without the loss of a man, Private Farnsworth continues: "Thanks be to God that so little hurt was done us when the hauls Sung like Bees Round our beds...
...What he has done is to capture the flavor of common accents and to infuse it with his own fluency and sensitivity...
...Top administrative officers of the American Newspaper Guild (CIO) have scored the Erlich-Alter executions...
...We talk frankly about the British, who are also doing some fighting—about the Exile-Governments, reaotionary as most of them are, and parts of the United Nations—about allies on the home-front (Big-business...
...One called out for bis mother...
...What's more important than beating Fascists...
...Outside the tone of indirect criticism and implicit irony, Dos Passos' style tends to flounder...
...The disillusionment and conversion of Tyler Spotswood can hardly affect the reader who knows Tyler as an ineffectual, unthinking individual moving convulsively through a world of expensive brothels and shady politics, well-soaked in alcohol, and hardly touched by a spark of idealism...
...It's- a technical case, for ten days—for sending "indiscreet" menage...
...Well, it's part of a foolish campaign of overselling Stalin to the American people—which is dangerous precisely because it beclouds and distorts war aims and democratic values of the world's free forces...
...If not enough people believe hi a way of life, it comes to an end and is gone...
...Someone in one publishing house (won't mention names now) simply "forgot" to mail out half the quota of review-copies of the new book by a prominent writer (who happens, of course, to be anti-Stalinist...
...But when Walter Lippman went to see it the ethsjC night, he walked out after the first two acts...
...He is the Kentucky primitive who conquered Canada almost single-handed and then—for some reason which he does not explain—beat a !l„gty retreat from that sparsely settled area...
...Its literary value tis nil * and its effect upon the nerves of anybody but a first grade sadist devastating...
...That was a war for democracy, and no mistake •bout it...
...The seizure of Manchuria was not merely a violation of the Kellogg Pact It was actually the beginning of World War n. It demonstrated to all "have-not" nations that the victorious Allies of World War I were unwilling and unprepared to fight for the preservation of the territorial status quo on the globe...
...Chuck is "a .thoroughly credible character, consistently developed...
...Suppose they do kill a couple of good guys here and there...
...Chatter Inside and Out By MATTHEW LOW Submission te Moscow:— Thai caption i nun it at Ihsj, |p»Mi«f *?, this column as the sero-hour far the piewskfe et^lftMpsi Davits mov>e atspreacfaes...
...Too bad, that crotchety ideas of military discipline interfered with the fine fury of the frontiersman...
...The clerk threw down a pile of pious periodicals, the American Messenger, the Christian Advocate M& dM Sunday School papers...
...I am not kicking...
...On the basis ef his past behavior, one is inclined to attribute tt simply to the fact that he has bftea double-crossed by Chuck...
...In...
...Russian affairs knows that this is an old tries, and that the GPU was enticing and trapping Russian White emigres by organising' spurious monarchist underground groups all over PjUSais (As this method worked quite veil against their enemies from the Right, it stands to reason that they are using the same trick tfainst their Leftist opponents as well...
...Frank Kiuckhohn...
...Houghton Mifflin...
...but is a mote in Lenin's V. L . . . Could there be method in the studied neglect of Max Eastman's Lot's Wife by so many of the literary reviewers...
...The author of Bushido asserts that in Manchuria many people seriously believed that the kidnapping was inspired by the Japanese...
...T^HIS is an odd book...
...fellow-traveler hatchet-man in the NMD, has "pledged" the Jim Carey won't be returned to office...
...Some men in these parts...
...The American public -was not greatly exercised over that act of aggression...
...I suppose it makes the reader hungry and thirsty to plunge deep into the promised slaughter of syntax...
...Terror, Theory and Practice By MAX NOMAD "BUSHIDO...
...Characteristically enough they started the business with a cynicism that was not even outdone by the Nazis ten years later...
...Too anti-Hamilton for the old boy...
...the War between the States, there was much less of this...
...In Jiay, 1863, an anonymous Illinois soldier wrote home: lighting *ith us is past being a novelty or a thing to talk about...
...Growing great people is what the country's for, isn't it...
...By John Dos Passos...
...That was in 1812...
...Though its telling lacked the organizational care and stylistic magic of U.S.A...
...Private Atkins concludes his tale of.this fine exploit thus: "How" great is thy mercy, O Lord, in our deliverance...
...By Alexandre Pernikoff...
...some just because the country called, and seme-r-uuite frankly—to get away from home...
...ey respected their officers if they were good and despised them ' »* ftty were bad...
...K* * * I iterati & Co.:—The Drama Critics' Circh...
...they tall me, own 30,000 acres of land for their patrimony, and many have two or three hundred Negroes to work on it as slaves...
...I would like to be in Peoria right now...
...of those days...
...In Manchukuo" the author says, "a person knows that at the slightest attempt to protest, not only he but all his family, relatives and often friends, will suffer endless and unspeakable tortures...
...Sah Eubanks and Bill Rodgers have supported Jin* Carey's stand to Phil Murray...
...Japan's capitalist class as a whole was opposed to the imperialist adventure of the officer's caste...
...Herr _ again are the restrained selectivity of word and detail, the controlled style ranging from colloquialisms to the sensuous and obliquely behavioristic prose-poetry...
...If, as some critics have felt, the book's purpose is to reaffirm the need for individual integrity, that purpose is feebly realized in the ambiguous ending...
...The Japanese peasant could not stand the rough climate of Manchuria...
...From a dissection of the functioning of American democratic capitalism, Dos F?sa$s'na* proceeded to a trenchant analysis of t*<*e who are most vigorously out to replace it, J The opening gun of this new approach was Adventures of a Young Man, a story of the political development of an idealistic young radical, who goes through the mill of American left-wing sects, only to end up with a distrust of that kind of political activity which puts party loyalty before personal integrity...
...It was with difficulty that I choked down my indignation," said the future divine...
...S.: Henry L. Mencken called it one of the thins, best books of the year...
...2.75...
...The only trouble'is that these reviews give no idea of what is in the book...
...t ¦ The extermination of the Chinese peasants was carried op under the pretext of punishing "guilty villages" which were accused of having, given shelter or food to Chinese guerrillas...
...Van Loon in his recent "Diary'"' expressed serpriw at the silence—"Where were the critics...
...But after reading all the records, the impression • you carry away is of generations of citizens fighting...
...I have a special fondness for Private Jo* Phillips, who "•fused to come when an adjutant whistled for nan...
...The military authorities smiled, and okayed his papers...
...Seen through the eyes of Tyler Spotswood, his, half-worshipping, half-petulant confidential assistant, Chuck, emerges as a shrewd and infectious politician, whose fluid gift of gab, embroidered with Biblical quotations and rustic metaphors, sounds an ominous note...
...The Anatomy of Terror...
...The Japanese were sure that the plan would work, because no one would suspect that the whole thing had been organized in Japan, and consequently the victims would be bound to swallow the bait...
...But try to feel with serious-minded Joshua Atkins, our •Id friend from Waterbury- On June 6, 1781, he confided a deep suspicion to his diary: "This day we pass General Washington's plantation, which is of large extent...
...UJ5.A...
...tellgion in War /\N May 27, 1776, young Amos Farnsworth took part in a lively W and successful raid on a couple of islands in Boston harbor...
...AH of them ended their lives with simple^shy, practical words—like: "Take my map and compass and carry «p...
...That same week the New York Poet ran three editorials, each lashing "political innocents" who have created a myth and a legend that Sumner Welles is the "shining liberal'' of-the State Department...
...The purpose of the conquerors was twofold: to exterminate as much of the rural population as possible in order to make room for Japanese settlers, and to take possession of the entire wealth of the country for the Japanese militarists...
...Thjs, by the ttray, is the lead that is furnished by the jacket blurb...
...In addition to these "legitimate" methods of robbing the population of Manchuria, the military and police authorities applied on a large scale an extreme method of—what might be called "primitive accumulation"—by kidnapping wealthy meu and forcing their families to surrender as ransom most of their cash and other valuables...
...At the Mecca Temple press-table sat a woman feverishly making notes and transcripts of everything said by the speak- . ers ancTby the reportei* and guests in the pit...
...Publicists who get excited about evidences of a return to religion at the present time will be interested to know that "after the terrible carnage of Gettysburg and its vision of sudden death, a great revival, with preaching -and singing of hymns under the summer stars," swept over the Confederate camps...
...Your Inside-and-Oater trusts that readers will let Warner Bros, and the Office of War Information in Washington knew what they think of the mess...
...Another sturdy Revolutionary veteran was thankful that in one regiment he found a few comrades with whom he could converse about "spiritual things...
...She was Dorothy Loeb of the Daily Worker (and associated services...
...I insisted that the whole liberal and independentpoTitical world will be up in arms...
...Joe Da vies wants to have us know that Stalinist totajv tarianism is just a misunderstood and much-maligned paradise of new freedoms...
...Chauncey H. Cooke, a farm boy from Wisconsin, was a militant abolitionist, but he had the same sort •f qualms about the purity of his own side as were voiced by Private Atkins three generations earlier...
...Tunes correspondent in North Africa, has been arrested by the U. S. Army...
...Corporal Samuel Stubbs is one of their favorites...
...He remembered how "one soldier remarked that th* godly ladies of New .York gave each soldier some thin soup *nd a pocket Testament, while the City of Brotherly Love supplied a square meal 'and no preaching...
...The word "Bushido" which serves as title is usually defined as meaning the traditional military spirit of Japan's nobility...
...Some of his stories which got through hinted at U. S.-British political difficulties...
...2S4 pages...
...I agreed—"th«f Red Army is beating Fascists...
...Some passages read like records of the sufferings, of those whom a cruel fate had placed under the thumb of either the Gestapo or the GPU...
...We "ere not a lot of children with minds too narrow to contemplate anything deeper than these small stories with a moral...
...It has given us freedom to grow...
...Which probably fits Barnum to a P.T...
...The manner in which he always refers to the Soviet regime, as well as certain stock adjectives of indignation typical of the Communist press, permits one to suspect where his sympathies are...
...In the vicinity of the larger cities ail villages were razed to the ground and their inhabitants either slaughtered or forced' to build new dwellings for Japanese newcomers...
...Einfeld is really working overtime to try and really "sell" the Da vies picture...
...This latter points the moral.Dos Pitosos wishes to make, hut cannot, in the story itself, for it is a burden too heavy for a character as feeble and negative as Tyler's to bear...
...Mass...
...That was in the swamps at Green Spring, near Jamestown, Va...
...Alaal That persons who pretend to stand for the rights of man-'*"d, for the liberties of society, can delight in oppression and that even of the worst kind...
...What's wrong...
...1 And that's what's wesaAkg the Warner Bros, people...
...he knows that the same thing might happen to him and his family at any time, icithout provocation...
...But there's only one thing more important...
...Number One adds little to the author's stature as a social novelist...
...Wish, every CIO reader of this column starts pitching for Carey now, . . . One editorial writer of a metropolitan daily pooh-poohed the Erlich-Alter case and never got around to writing an editorial...
...Churchill and DeGaulle...
...And we hope the picture flops...
...A Page of Features Americana The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN Our Soldiers Speak IREAD a lot of the reviews of this running record of American soldiers— their letters and diaries—from Banker Hill to Be!leau Woodl It was put together by William Matthews and Dixon n/ecter and is sold by Little, Brown and Company for $3.60...
...it was tne adjutant who was called down by the colonel...
...At any rate, in 1932 the American man-in-the-street was interested in little more than the lurid details of that kidnapping, so that the mass murder and rape committed upon a population of thirty million was dwarfed into insignificance...
...as poor imitations of democrats...
...In 1781 Josiah Atkins, of Waterbuiy, Conn., was one of 500 men under General Wayne who were caught by Cornwall is' force .of some 5,000...
...His positive politics and his artistry no logger converge, as^they did in US.ABut no matter how we judge its political purpose and effectiveness, Number One presents good prose and rich, authentic atmosphere...
...Such an achievement might be useful, but it would certainly also be dull...
...He wrote to his mother aj>rotest against the Whole business: "When you come to think that all this beautiful country along the Minnesota River was bought for 2 cents an acre and that the government still owes them this pitiful sum for it, I am sorry for them...
...Wayne saved the day by a daring stroke...
...Its content and implications are neither sufficiently important nor revealing to warrant the care that went,into its writing...
...I told him that we were distressed by his recent item that "Trotskyites and ex-America Firsters are gunning ^ for the 'Mission to Moscow' movie...
...Irascible Kluckhchn was the man who sniffed that FDR was* coming to North Africa...
...What the hell...
...Our spy at the Circus tells us that there are some real Bamum touches to the United Nations pageant...
...What we make of It is clear enough...
...Moreover, they forced every firm to give a well-paid job to a Japanese "adviser," who was of course nothing but a spy of the Japanese militarists planted right in the heart of the given business—that apparently was to be expropriated as scon as the proper moment arrived...
...I think this record does more to give body—color, smell, sound!—to this thing we call American democracy than anything else I ever happened to get hold of...
...But we've got to make more and more of the promises come true...
...Instead of retreating, he attacked, fooled the British into .thinking they faced a major force—and then, in the darkness, made his escape...
...So he demanded par-mission to go to Algiers...
...Well-r-any student of...
...Using a standardized literary convention the author claims that he merely "edited" those reminiscences, for the hero himself had apparently no chance of escaping his fate at the hands of the Japanese...
...He hinted that there was "one exception...
...If we let toe few kinds of people find space to grow in our system., nobody will believe in it any longer...
...W* think tint history will record this whole episode as one of the great deceits and props -panda hoaxes of our time...
...Yet, for all that it is worth reading...
...It's because the Davies Kremlin Set in this country insists on bathing a dictatorship, albeit an Allied one, in sweetness and light that makes Mission to Moscow almost criminal...
...A Wisconsin private, who later became a famous preacher, went to the Commission rooms to secure reading matter for his company...
...Which is another reason for punching through James Burnhamls point on another page...
...gave their annual prize to Sidney KingsleyV play about Thomas Jefferson, The Patriots...
...And then comes the Soviet representation—dressed in Greek Orthodox fashion, with s trailer of priests, monks, and prelates...
...Winchell snapped...
...The wJentity of the author "Alexandre Perni-kov" has not been disclosed by the publishers...
...the famous political corre- , sponderrt who recently quit OWI over the North African policy, was added the other week to the N'ew York Post's editorial staff, which has been working overtime hacking away at the State Department...
...it was a meaningful story that needed to be told, apd it occupies a legitimate place in Dos Passos' growth as a thinker and a writer...
...is the "speech of the people," he once wrote...
...The Idiom of Ideologies PVEBY great American war has been an ideological war, and ^* in every one of them there has been the same sort of division . »nd confusion that we have now...
...No details of plot and character wflT^be released in advance...
...WITH Number One, it has become apparent that John Dos Passos has undergone a transformation in his approach to political and social issues since the writing of his U.S.A...
...a vile, gross, dangerous lie...
...1| Oost-Script:—Edgar Ansel Mowrer...
...Or that Other passages in which the author describes an ingenious method devised by the Japanese police in Manchuria for trapping a number of Russian youth suspected of having communist sympathies...
...The Russians are heating hell out of the Nazis, aren't they...
...Just a coincidence, I am sure...
...whom we are fighting politically all the time...
...Cordell Hull & Co...
...As political analysis, the book lags so far behind the author's own political development that it leaves the reader with a frustrated sense of its pointless-ness...
...he said casually, "the Russian are winning...
...I would hot take them to camp...
...He enlisted to free the N*ekemen, but was sent for a preliminary bout against the red . fflen of Minnesota...
...Which, however, did not prevent the Japanese from occasionally applying their sadism to these worthy allies as well—including systematic extermination by sending them to the toughest spots against the Chinese guerillas...
...That's important...
...The city, of Harbin is not much in the headlines today...
...The like was hardly-aver heard of...
...In the Civil War armies, there were—now and then—arguments in camps about whether the shooting was to save the Union or to abolish slavery...
...Not one of them uttered a word abou.t God or Christ or religion...
...They did not glory in war or take naturally to •Wiaty...
...Lots of good, honest and liberal people don't quite see why we're so set against it...
...According to the plan," we read, "these suspects were to, be approached in Japan by certain underground Japanese communists (in reality of course Gendarmerie agents) and involved in a so-called communistic plot...
...When she walked out, she cracked to a comrade—"The only thing that made me happy through the evening was the fact that these two men were dead...
...A drawling Southern rabble-rouser, possessed of a superficial affability convenient for political purposes, he is self-centered, ambitious and moral...
...and after Wlthig all day go to sleep (unless duty bids us swffJmK *«»»ing *¦ have done one more good hard day's work for Uncle Sam...
...What followed reads like a nightmare—or like ar rehearsal of what the Nazis were going to do a few years later in Czechoslovakia, in Poland, Belgium, and in the Western parts of Russia...
...That kind of "truth" is on the march—and god help us if nothing can stop it...
...In ttie Revolution, our men had % clearest ideas...
...Who else of the bunch was hurt...
...If these suspicions are justified, the passages in which he describes hew the Japanese police forced innocent man utterly to debase themselves and to "confess" to all sorts of uncommitted crimes, acquire the flavor of a certain involuntary grim "honor...
...woys Civilian Soldiers THERE was, in all the wars, rowdyism and fun, poker-pkjymg .8*4 pilfering...
...This new optimism, anticipated in The Ground We Stand On, is a far cry from the shattering critique of American lift in every cage of U. S. A., that was implicit in the warning "America is t»o nations...
...The other day Mowrer made an address »l Isn' llSJ...
...And that is not all...
...John Chamberlain reviewed it in the weekday Times at a late date, but for the rest—hardly a line, Wonder why...
...But he has not...
Vol. 26 • April 1943 • No. 16
