The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
A Page of Features Americana Books and Writters Chatter The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN Hopes aid Horoscopes ??? crowd making money while the war shines is made up of astrologers. A world...
...The British public-opinion experts mention the fact that gazers are "mainly women...
...Agar's book is an unusual blend of economic and political realism and of an ethical sermon...
...There you have it The war will end in 1948...
...he cried...
...Mackinder warned the English then, and his warning is as important today as it was then: "No doubt it may De urged that German mentality will be altered by German defeat...
...Not one of the well-paid eooth-eayers suggested that the United States might invade North Africa...
...they couldn't possibly be worse—a Steinbeck novel, a dictionary and atlas, a simple book on economic America, Walt Whitman's Leaves of G'-nss...
...He had just completed before his death a comprehensive History of Bigotry in the United States, which will shortly be published...
...Thus they missed the great opportunity of a definite and lasting settlement with Germany, and the victory of 1918 was of no avail...
...It refers, you see...
...We are now doing it in war...
...Either the person of Hitler will be removed by his own promise to retire, or the army will oust him...
...He was taken en a long, tortuous trip through Moscow suburbs, daring which the driver got lost twice...
...Their No...
...It may give some comfort to know that in England things are as bad or worse...
...Mackinder saw from the beginning the danger, that Germany would be able in a short time to regain more thafi enough strength to upset any treaty which would not enforce a lasting settlement Mackinder wished to warn his countrymen...
...Philters and potions may be bought far mere money...
...It was never more than a dream, and even not a good dream...
...Our new year journals —all excepting The New Leader — flowered out with forecasts...
...And by the way, the OWI has ffred those notorious Almanac Singers who somehow sneaked into the radio section...
...The notable, thing about the business is that horns have been pulled in, sails have been trimmed, voices have been toned down...
...And I cannot find in my poor mind any words that seem justly to characterize the man...
...Look Magazine gives us again its two-page spread including seventeen predictions...
...year of fighting has boHed our wisdom down to that...
...Most recently, it has successfully provided short term institutes for the ILGWU, UAW, UTWA and other union...
...However, the School at first grew ep as an educational opportunity provided /er workers rather than by them...
...It will he an all-star affair, and is to be called The Common Man...
...My observation af the age and girth of women seekers after this heavenly literature explains quite a lot For example, I leaf through the pages of Your Future, and find that the advertisements have lees to do with the houses of the zodiac than with lonely hearts...
...It never appeared...
...fne Forgotten Man:—The news item about the Russian patriarchy *¦ raising funds for a Red Army tank-column prompts us en the curious story about Sergius...
...yet principles have a dynamic power of their own...
...What he has written, is a realistic book in the best sense of the word, a book to make us see reality in a true perspective...
...Soneita, Arizona . Charles A. Beard...
...Maekinder's book appeared in 1919, but the English speaking peoples did not heed its warning then...
...And like the victories of war, the even harder victories of peace can be won only in boldness and the hard way...
...Critics have all but burned it in little literary bonfires...
...We Were rudely shaken out of the dream of the economic man...
...I regret that here in the far country I cannot write the article for you...
...Our star-gazers speak to as in assured staccato over the air or write under faith-inspiring by-lines in our favorite papers...
...Beard follows.] December 23, 1942 The death of Gustavus Myers was a blow to me...
...But not understanding the reality of the menace, the Americans turned away from what seemed after all a useless victory...
...The root of the trouble has been our confusion between means and ends, our tendency to put economics first and to overlook the ends of life...
...I lack what scholars call "the data...
...He faces ¦without flinching the question which we all face every time we go to a party...
...f ? tttoe more than a year ago "Major" George Fielding Eliot wrote m Look Magazine—not in an astrological Journal—and he said: "Unless Japan backs down, it is war...
...Browder's Victory and After...
...The book is timely because of the current attempts being made to salvage the...
...Western civilization can defend itself against German Kultur only by a realistic idealism...
...to a secret radio detector and ranging device...
...No," came Picasso's reply, "you did...
...But there is evidence of earth-bound materialism in ads which point to success by way of removing poundage...
...A world which will pay Urge sums for the prophesies of a pulp writer like "Major" George Fielding Eliot ? in a mood for star-gazing...
...Comm...
...On Gustavus Myers —By Charles A. Beard [When Gustavus Myers died at the age of 70 on December 7, 1942, the editors of The New Leader asked Charles A. Beard, dean of American historians, for a statement on the passing of a great and colorful thinker...
...The New York frmes printed the very same picture in August of last year...
...Walter Winchell is now in Sao Paulo, Brazil with Brazilian information experts...
...Otto's youngest brothers, is being hailed as "a magnificent beast gests...
...for if there had not been a menace, why had they fought...
...Cracks Wilson: "What a wonderful is liquorary quiddicism...
...Army and Navy Signal Corps have spent thousands of dollars publicizing enlistment possibilities in their "*** Schools...
...At this very time, a press interview with the fifteen Soviet students who've just arrived at Colombia University revealed that Reynold's caviar-and-vodka stuff is actively disliked by Russians...
...Raymond Clapper foretold a token bombing for our East Coast •nd a spring blitz for England with gas...
...of coarse...
...The New Moeses will shortly smear Alfred Kaan'» On Native Ground* tor his craek about "Pound m the arms of Mu—ahm" and "Barbusse m the arms ef Stalin " Kazan's wMtary-praassd book...
...And they turned to believing that they could have peace by the simple determination that there should be no more war...
...The public asked for foolishness, and it got it...
...For eighteen dollars you get his selected 18 titles all ready to sad...
...In the past, the organized farmers and the organized businessmen have been able to secure educational assistance...
...Charms and charm are for sale...
...Henry Holt Co...
...So in the circumstances, silence is bast...
...Mackinder points out that German Kultur, the "ways and means philosophy," has been dangerous because "it recognizes both realities, geographical and economic, and thinks only in terms of them...
...Picture Poet, a London ilustrated magazine, reports that the newspaper astrologer in some Sunday newspapers wields far wider influence than the leading article...
...It seems quite likely that Gabriel Heatter and other well-known prophets have learned not a little of their technique from the starry journals...
...He pointed out that it is not dead wealth, not the pride of gold and comfort, but productive power and the marshalling of resources which now counts...
...It is won in anguish and terror and in disregard of all market calculatioas, or it is lost in the councils of the counting room...
...They are mainly women of a certain—or uncertain—age and of considerable girth...
...2.50...
...And there was also Granville Vaa Arven and his League of American Vipers, but that is another snory...
...The future of the labor movement aad in tare of a virile, expanding democratic society depends upon the continuation and extension of the workers' education movement...
...Instanuy the entire population of the place made at me with evil intent...
...Dy Book or by Crook:—One way or another, the comrades in the NMU . are determined to get the line across to the boys, wherever they are...
...Anything asm turn up in the Times-Herald...
...Doubtless he would have it this way...
...The case for Labor receiving similar educational aid is a strone one...
...Realpolitik in the good sense is ethics applied to reality, with a firm grasp of reality and of principles...
...He will do his P»rt to make the words come true—eo no one has a right to criticize his over-confidence...
...At the moment, it eon-tinues on a year-to-year basis as a Sommer School run by the University...
...Are we really so much above the devotees of Your Future or American Astrology...
...The experiment suffered from the triumph of Governor Heil and the School failed to secure an appropriation from the legislature to continue its extended field work...
...One more slip like that by Comrade Curran and he may find himself sailing the high seas again...
...Latest little transmission strategy is Joe...
...My own mass observation gives powerful support to the London authorities...
...Reynold's Only the Stars Are Neutral...
...It includes a watery novel by fellow-traveler F. C. Weiskopf, a history by fellow-traveler Leo Huberman...
...Wisconsin State Federation of Labor, Henry Obi and his present successor, Herman Seide, have continued their support for workers' education...
...The editors sum the whole thing np in these words: 1943 will be iWlcilt The fighting—and the working, the sacrificing, the tax-»¦ymawhave just begun...
...Hollywood writers are preparing "a post-war era film" baaed on Henry Wallace's famous "people's war" address...
...But, you see, he andemtimds hedging as well as any "expert...
...The answer depends on the Uranian cycle...
...The Manifesto of the 100 never appeared...
...It is an idle dream to assume that these capacities automatically evolve in the rough-an<Utumble course of "industrial conflict...
...Marshals, generals, and veteran soldiers may come of battle, but social statesmen and supporting citizens emerge in an environment which encourages the gathering and sifting of facts, out of which may come reflection and critical analysis and, eventually, perhaps the drawing up of blueprints for and the building of better human relations...
...He wished them to understand that they, Great Britain in 1914 and the United States in 1917, had entered the war in self-defense...
...Inside and Ot By MATTHEW LOW Newa Unfit to Print:—That pretty fame of million-dollar publishers, t» called "freedom of the press," has, of course, aothiag to do with the everyday editorial practices of lisiWiig IL g- newspapers...
...The remaining titles are somewhat better...
...He walked through the hall and there—in a dim, shabby ten-by-ten room — be found Sergius, Metropolitan of Moscow, Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, the mightiest religious figure in ?? the land...
...The FDR statement on the Hapsburg affair will quiet the controversy down, hut «M-line conservative propaganda mills are keeping up their pro-Otto political warfare...
...Plain matter ef fact is that they were ail shortly to be drafted...
...Suddenly the diplomatic staff attending him was switched, with apparent third-stringers coming in to sub for the big-wigs...
...ttJK...
...Raymond Gram Swing, also in ate December, 1941, issue of Look, suavely remarked that the following developments would unroll during the year 1942: "Germany will offer peace decked in terms appealing to Britain pride, American idealism and Europe's pitiful need for recovery...
...The letter of Mr...
...Last evening I carried through what the scientists call a project down on Eighth Street...
...He was finally deposited on a lonely, far-off road, in front of an old, broken-down house...
...We have learned that even the most wealthy nation can not buy victory...
...As the years went on, be turned out a whole series of valuable volumes which established his reputation as 'the grand old socialist' among American historians...
...Halford J. Mackinder...
...Under this head does not come, the resounding boast of Admiral Halsey...
...In the WPB there is a division called the "Radio ·*· Division...
...Henderson, at coarse, resigned a month ago...
...Huge signs advertise the echo*-!, and industrial publications refer to the manufacture of the secret instrument frequently, . . . The only American office authorized to censor newspapers tolls as use of the Word is no infringement of the Censorship Code, but, dear Reader, the bright, light secret will have to hold for a while...
...Little Brou-n ? Co...
...In the first world war Great Britain and America were saved by exceptional circumstances "from the results of an average refusal to foresee and prepare...
...The enlistment of Felix, Karl, and Rudolph...
...Daniel Bell said in his New Leader column on December 12: "Mass Observation, an experiment directed by Tom Harrison, reported after extensive observation that no less than two-thirds of the adult population takes some interest in astrological prediction...
...But it is good, and at present even the one thing that is needed, to be told that we have to put first things first...
...After insisting that an organized labor movement is fundamentally essential to a fully democratic society because it curbs autocracy in industry, he says: "But the stupendous...
...Imagine figuring.that out away back in December...
...Principles must refer to geographic and economic realities, to human and technical necessity, otherwise they are Utopian and impossible of realization...
...That is about all there is of prophetic optimism...
...He has devoted the greatest portion of his life to work in this field and advocates that, because workers' education is of concern not only to workers bat to every citizen "who pins his faith on democracy," it should be financed from taxation...
...Such a perspective can be gained only by recourse to principles...
...Mars, she telle a breathless world, transits the 7th house and moves to oppose radix Mars—and therefore: "The most prominent indications from this chart are that the enemy will be extremely active against this country both in open combat and insidious ways...
...His warnings could as well have been addressed to the Americans...
...If it's war, Japan will be swiftly and decisively defeated...
...Workers Service Program and to draft plans for a Labor Extension Service as an operating division ef the U. S. Department of Labor...
...Who would have believed then that in twenty years the same would happen...
...Every intelligent person must agree with Schwarztrauber'S emphasis upon the importance of workers' education...
...f • * * Where Angels Fear DUT we insist on crystal-gazing, and what we will pay for we get...
...Footnote: also included was Quer.tir...
...Myers will always be remembered for his spectacular study of The History of the Great American Fortunes (1910) which had wide and deep influences on our scholarship and our national politics...
...We, the western nations, have incurred such tremendous sacrifices in this conflict that we can not afford to trust to anything that may happen at Berlin...
...The social idealism expressed by Victor Berger and the other...
...The Advertising Council, central committee of the ad moguls, got wind of it and started to prepare a formal reply to the challenge...
...For these reasons, in defense of their existence, the two democratic and non-military nations had entered the war...
...I can do better than that...
...Lippmann hinted at stories of blindness and conservatism which ought to make many a post-war best-seller...
...Naturally, in the progressive atmosphere of Wisconsin and with professors such as John R. Commons and Selig Pehnan available, it was natural for Labor to look to the University for help...
...But it is Grant Lewis in Your Future who gets down to the serious, business of putting us hep to things to come...
...And as Agar rightly points out, "the contemplation of principles can never be popular...
...It was quashed by a pair of Advertising Council executives who personally made the rounds of the editorial offices...
...A TIME FOE GREATNESS...
...Chief targets are "liberarv ebmcs Carl von Doorman, Herbert S. Goren, Gorma» ?. Mamma," and "Book-of-the-Munch Onb readers" of the poetry of Edwin Arlington Cemetery, John Brown's Benny by 8taw...
...A recent scientific report, widely discussed in newspapers throughout the country, referred to H. At least two advertisements in national magazines described the instrument (although "electronics" was substituted for the fearful Word...
...Idealism without regard for reality is suicidal illusionism, realism without ideals is dehumanizing...
...Only Lahor, PM, and The New Leader carried the the economists' statement . . . The reporters covering advertising knocked out their cosy for the New York papers...
...is "a tedious tissue of aoaiua slurs...
...Did you do this...
...They look into the future and forecast: "With people slightly blooey about war «nd inflation, every day of the month or the year is highly favorable for investments in human idiocy...
...The jnafcers of horoscopes are far from going into eclipse...
...Herbert Agar...
...Predicting for this month of January she says, for example: "Europe may he a hot-bed of riots, carnage and destruction as Germany attempts to shackle all workers for uee against the United -Nations...
...America is richer for hie having been here, for his span of years...
...His indefatigable industry was a shining example to sluggards...
...What I found will surprise no one...
...The active phase will end, "with or -without war...
...Prophesies of Yester-Year IT gives one a pleasantly superior feeling to make fun of other ¦ folks' foolishness...
...Yet many Americans were taught to see in the war of 1917 an "idealistic" crusade in which they carried lofty ideals to the more benighted and selfish allies...
...William Shirer thinks "Germany will begin to crack...
...Nobody (except for an interpreter) bothered to come out of the car...
...G. F. Eliot, fervently praying that no one will dig up test year's wild words, contents himself with the "complete expulsion of the Axis from Africa," "advances in the Pacific," and "military collapse of Italy...
...John T. Whitaker, of the Chicago Daily NeiOi, proclaimed: "Within a month of mid-March, Hitler will invade Spain, Portugal and North Africa...
...So the believers in planetary conjunctions end occultations become very conscious of possible 'attractions which may be exerted upon dollars in the public's pone...
...In Moscow he was particularly interested in the status of "freedom of religion," and asked to see the leading church spokesman in the U.S.S.R...
...When Uranus trmsits Gemini, then things happen...
...If Germany had won the war on the European continent, she would have established her sea power on a scale, comparable to her land power, and would have exercised a pressure against which Great Britain would have bean powerless...
...Joe Devies' Mission to Moecmc, Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China (which plugged the Kremlin ??* in the Orient), fellow-travelers Kahn and Sayer's SaboUtge, another fellow-traveler novel (by Vladimir Posner), George Seldes' latest potboiler The Facts Are, Richard Wright's book an the Negroes, an NMU account of a trip to Russia—and...
...tVastrington Nates:—Waiter Lippmann's blast this week against " brass-battery in U. S. submarine warfare may start something moving...
...They pointed out: that ads are now 21 pVr cant over the 1986-3» level, that anti-inflationary measures are being undermined, that restricted materials are being wasted...
...What fastiddily...
...The stars are supposed to tell a lady when and how to be eowjessful in love...
...But—the Saturday Evening Post s year ago rem a long article on it...
...They form the Kremlin Set's four-man Tin Pan Alley...
...Brody...
...Donald Nelson, Joe Byrnes an<f" Leon Henderson...
...He is a fighting man who goes in with his guns roaring, and if he comes out with a roaring challenge to the future, that is all right with me...
...American Astrology appears to be the Harpers or the Atlantic Monthly of the cult...
...Several weeks ago, 100 economists, educators and business experts sent an Open Letter to Henry Mergenthau...
...Tomorrow's News BUT what I was seeking when I paled before the weight of female opinion in the bright emporium on Eighth Street was a sample of astrological prophesy about the end of the war...
...thus placed upon the labor movement cannot be fulfilled unless its leadership shews views and statesmanship and its rank and file a capacity for a unified support not only of immediate but of long-range socially constructive program...
...When the war ended with the defeat of Germany, a defeat made possible by years of heroic struggle of the French and Russians and the endurance of the British, the Americans did not understand that they had gained the essential goal of the war, security against an overwhelming menace and thereby the opportunity of building in freedom more.secure foundations against coming wars...
...School for Workers By MARK STARR WORKERS' EDUCATION^, A WISCONSIN 14 EXPERIMENT (University of Wisconsin Press, 11.00) gives Ernest E. Sebwarstrauber, director of the School for Workers since 1937, a valuable opportunity to make a necessary evaluation of this state-wide experiment in financing workers' education by public funds...
...But it is a vulcaao over which we have some control, if we learn what blows the roof off the vulcano, and what tends to keep the roof m place," and if we have the courage to epsty our knowledge...
...The world is not the prosaic market place of the interplay of economic interests...
...simply doesn't read the newspapers at all, and prints ?? kinds of tips handed to him on crumpled hits of paper...
...A review of last year's flashes into the future would give as all a dash of medicinal modesty...
...301 pp...
...It teaches us to understand the realities of the situation, but it warns against any "Realpolitik" which does not see anything else but the realities of power and space...
...Readers and writers are chuekling over Edmund Wilson's parody of literary life in his new book, Note-Book of Night...
...This year most of them shy away from dates...
...It is a pleasure in which we should indulge with restraint...
...It should now be widely read...
...The two do not always perfectly blend...
...In a glittering emporium of current publications I was so incautious as to make some slighting and supercilous remarks about the stars as guides and prophets...
...Elizabeth and Sex by Lytton Scratchy, and The Bridge of San Luie Bromfiesi...
...He would be a sanguine man, however, who would trust the future peace of the world to change m the mentality of any nation...
...Gustavus Myers, and his werk...
...The question, of course, is: "How long will the war bet...
...Tie Mystery of the Word:—A word is being killed down there in Washington...
...Principles bring not comfort, but obligations and hard choices...
...So production of starry magazines is one of the great war industries...
...This book has one special appeal to readers of The New Leader...
...The western nations are now showing great and surprising moral resources and military strength in the war, will they show similar qualities in the time of peace...
...Danton Walker inside-tipped this week that Leon Henderson was going to resign...
...Literati & Co.:—When a Gestapo agent recently raided PaMa Picasso's home is Paris, he discovered the original of the celebrated Picasso painting of a Nazi massacre in Poland The Gestapo agent turned on him in rage...
...Lt...
...The world is not like a well-run dry-goods store...
...1 song is about the labor movement—only one of the men, however, belongs to the musicians' union...
...That bnr-motiey advertising is dangerously anti-social is not, apparently, news that's fit to print...
...He increased our knowledge of ourselves...
...Its reissue in 1942 is to be warmly welcomed...
...Pierre Van Paassen does venture the opinion that "just beTore or after the winter of 1943-4 Hitler's home front will crumble...
...A German dominated Europe which controlled also England would have been the greatest threat to the United States...
...In the next sentence he adds that "Nippon will sue for peace within six months •iter Hitler has thrown up the sponge...
...On the home front he went to town this-wise: "Most isolationist representatives up for reelection will be defeated...
...All of which is another way of stating that what is needed today m the labor movement is access to every educational facility which it can advantageously use...
...This spirit of realistic idealism inspires Herbert Agar's new book...
...socialists was in large part the basis for the progressive character of Wisconsin trade unionism...
...The OWI ha* been asked by the chiefs of staff to suppress it on sight Army and Navy officers nearly throw a fit at its mere mention...
...The relation of a lady's wieght to her height is, apparently, more important than the position of Venus with regard » Mats...
...we must be secure in any case...
...Warnings, New and Old By HANS KOHN DEMOCRATIC IDEALS AND REALITY...
...Last year the wise-guys had the war won in a walk...
...The claim is that Curran combed thousands of volumes to make his "perfect sea-going selection...
...What un reproach able stonrmards and eryteria...
...In fact the chastened wiseacres seem pretty well agreed that just about what goes on now will continue to go on for a long time...
...219 pp...
...They sharply condemned "the ? rat whelming waste involved in the continuation of the full peace-time volume of advertising...
...I wanted to see how the students of transits stack up alongside some of the head-hee hangers of press and radio...
...it is more like a vulcano...
...Erskiee Caldwell's new novel of the Russian fighting, AU Night Leng, has been taking the worst roasting of any book by a leading writer jn years...
...AT the beginning of 1919, when the nations were sitting down to the task of peace making, en English geographer tried to recall to them the realities of strategic geography and of political history and to dispel the mist of easy fflnsionism which was especially strong in the non-militaristic, democratic nations...
...Its active phase, with or ¦without war, may be expected to end between March 29 and August 30, 1948, on which latter date Uranus leaves Gemini...
...Agar's book is a moving and challenging plea to us bo be equal to the task...
...Isidor Schneider will amy...
...but Walker, like so many of the gossipers...
...special "new model ships' library in a sea-chest...
...Metropolitan of Moscow, which we were told recently by a prominent American...
...The officers of the...
...Buried in the communique, however, was the fact that the ship was assisted by the planes of the carrier she was escorting...
...He speaks of "complete, absolute defeat for the Axis powers" before the end of this year...
...On page 55 of the current number Deborah Lewis writes under the slogan, "We Print It Before It Happens...
...If we do that, we shall not only reduce the German people to its proper position in the world, a great enough position for any single people, but we shall also have created the conditions precedent to a League of Nations...
...A technical magazine recently had to kill ? story and cover-picture after printing because of the Word...
...I had somehow come to regard him as a fixed institution, not subject to the vicissitudes of mortals, but now he has slipped away on the journey we must all take...
...One daily actually had the anti-advertising statement set up m type...
...shaping reality according to moral purpose...
...The big-battleship boys in the Navy, after the going-over they've been getting, are keeping their eyes open Report on the action of October 28, in which a Washington-class ship withstood three attacks by 84 Jap drve bombers and torpedo planes, was purposely melodramatic and sensationalized...
...I am grateful for his labors and am sorry that he has gone away...
Vol. 26 • January 1943 • No. 2
