Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
Where the News Ends By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN Impressions of a CO Camp THE initials CO can hare two very different meanings, in Selective Service terminology They may stand for Commanding...
...Stokta wildest wells is a risky --^ItMsjj now it is essential to maintain the flow...
...Were they prisoners...
...Bishop's practices is to stand up e very morning at breakfast and read a bit of wisdom...
...Groups, institutions, iliusitiaanti that have gone on for years dcing whatever is the regular thing far them to do suddenly find themselves on the spot The habitual words and motions no longer fill the bill...
...Yon burl epithets at these men...
...A small sum offered as a form of h> surance would cover the extra risk ef ants hazards—while the price boost would pun t burden of something like VbO.OOOfiKM ss the shoulders of consumers...
...Catodt is turning against the decidedly eonssrvauvt administration of "Liberal" Prime Mrateer MacKensie King...
...London Economist June 19, 1943...
...Yet the problem to which he calls attention by his unconventional methods is genuine...
...I have been a pleased sai happy reader of The loader for tha past several utesriaa, sal admire the sane, tolllhjiial policy of your paper and the lug* type of writers yen featers...
...Yet there lp nothing really miraculous in this economic process...
...The ultimate ¦access of hat war effort my depend oa how it is handled...
...bam) straight oil producing companies would to she to double their profits after taxes...
...His enlightened trade policies won him wide ac-elafan, during times of peace...
...One of these acquired the name of the Lyceum...
...CO's receive no pay, although they are doing compulsory work, which, according to the Selective Service Law, is of national importance...
...It is also significant that the possession of large private savings is being explicitly encouraged...
...Workers must work...
...and the camps for this service were placed in charge of a committee representing the three leading pacifist religious groups—the Friends (Quakers), the Mennonites and the Brethren...
...Crider's analysis...
...They knew that the Fascists had come to power through the traitorous Savoy king...
...Italy was the first country invaded by the Nazis...
...But a more liberal and imaginative use of these young men, some of whom are distinctly above the average in personal idealism as well as in education, would be beneficial all around...
...The direction aj their political activity, however, appears set at all to* run derailed with what we witnessed here in the U.S.A...
...State, county and district officials deserve a good deal of credit for the consistent and energetic fight which they have made...
...u...
...Oath...
...The first was picturesquely and a little extravagantly voiced by the camp "character," Corbett Bishop...
...The gentlemen nations with a meaningless gesture, objected politely to the Ethiopian affair but kept on selling war goods to the aggressors and reaping huge profits for themselves, just as we sold war materials to Japai while we collected rags to dress the Chinese children...
...Probably these figures point to a very advanced stage of inflation in private trade in the countryside...
...11/EST CAMPTON is one of the Quaker camps, " although only about a quarter of the" 150 men stationed there are members of the Society of Friends...
...Every war that Italy has fought since 1898 has bean imposed on the Italian people...
...Now, with the hope of liberation near at hand, should they retard it by resisting onr military occupation ? "SAME...
...For several months past the Soviet press has carried lists of acknowledgments for donations contributed by individual collective farmers to the various defence and Red Army funds...
...On August 6 Arthur Krock came through with a column explaining Mr...
...Ths cost of their camp maintenance is thirty dollars a month...
...Luigi Antonini, Alex Rose snd a number of others...
...He is a bearded man in the late thirties, and he has created headaches for more than one camp director by twice going on prolonged hunger strikes...
...Just as the Army and Navy deal wish enemy physical forces, so the State Department must deal with enemy ideas...
...And the most strisjaf stw development is the emergence of the nrmJffm Commonwealth Federation, with a fnaatosb Socialist program, as « great and meieM party...
...They show that profits of the oefasn rations are now the "highest in years," "It fa startling-but true," their statement adds, "fen...
...His selection is extremely catholic, ranging from the writings of Tolstoy, Emerson and Thoreau to much less distinguished comment on local inconveniences of camp life...
...These features, as well as ss»-eral others, and your usual gesd-humored reports on Coununohs hi-jinks make for very fine, rted-ing indeed...
...Hundreds of thousands of workers were corralled and sent to Germany to work...
...Work projects ate set by Government officials of the Forestry oi Soil Conservation services...
...Since the status of the conscientious objector is legal, there would seem to be no good reason why he should not receive an Army private's pay...
...And we flooded the American market with cheap Japanese trash...
...Perhaps the step forward in commonsense and humanity, by comparison with the last war, is all that could have been hoped for at the present time...
...The "Liberals" are going down Ha Commonwealth Federation, representing toner and the farmers, will carry on the caste* against the Conservatives...
...EDITORIAL COMMENT STATIC IN THS STATf DfPARThtf HT T"HIS war puts a strain on every phase of * out life...
...It is a good thing that this Communist stuff is so bad...
...Daniel de Luce does not seem to comprehend that type of courage, generous sacrifice and "csne^eto^^ human aspirations and hopes for a higher plane of living...
...In long, involved, confused and confusing paragraphs the names are dragged in and smeared over with slander...
...Selective Service authorities maintain a general supervision of the camps and toy down compulsory regulations si to working time and the number of days which may be spent on furlough...
...editor of the Buffalo Courier-Exposes .quoted Daniel de Luce, AP . cocrespondent, as follows: :-••¦<) "The Sicilian campaign proved these things: "The Italian army fights no more bravely or skillfully at home than it did abroad...
...Here we have a double ste3gg Workers toil for wages Capitalists podnsj for profits...
...There has been much interest in getting out of the camps en to "detached service projects," such as hospital work, and there is an almost universal desire to go abroad for relief work in war and in peace...
...The second started as a protest against absence of pay...
...The various- governments dealt with the tragic paghaccio as an equal...
...proahtsm It is fortunate that we have is this east | group of labor representatives who hasp sjjsgi a study of the problem and given a repajt h the public The Labor Policy Comndfeg ej the OPA has protested against the preAtnj increase in the price of oil and has gitatep elusive information to show ihat it is nml sary...
...Those who nave not been forced to read the slanderous pages , oi The Daily Worker can have no idea how low the human animal can descend...
...Yob pick out a few personalities...
...How could the Italian people who were blighted with the black plague of fascist slavery before any other nation feel enthusiastically about any war not their own...
...at Spanish fighters against Patches...
...From now oa C»nii1st politics will, apparently, follow ths Britaa pattern...
...The whole exposition points:to the need of presidential intervention...
...The narrow and biased eiander of the Italian people which is implied in the above statements, will be accepted ss truth only by individuals who do not know or who wish to ignore the following factors: Three-fourths of the Italian people have been made to suffer misery, oppression, assassinations, disruption of civil, economic, and social institutions...
...You cannot of course, furnish proof, You never try to...
...The Italians were knocked into submission, made dizzy with vacuous fascist dialectic hunger, brass buttons, and false patriotism fed to them by one newspaper, with many titles, all over the nation...
...They surrendered or preferred to die, shot by Fascist herd drivers...
...It is on this basis that they bandjhemselves together on the.one side or The Army and Navy have general staffs...
...On June 20th, there was a football match between Finland and Denmark in Copenhagen...
...No one could be in the camp very long without becoming acutely aware of tee existence of Bishop...
...the producers are granted in* adfled ptojem their entire product, they will atpmve to risk capital in such ventures Inaahgevj argued, they well over-pump the...
...CANADIAN POLITICAL PROGRESS TPHOUGH our Canadian neighbors art ia ths ~ war up to their necks, there has toss to adojurnment of politics screes our nortaert border...
...Then Gandhi went on his hunger strike in India, and Bishop promptly linked up his protest with Gandhi's, set a three-week time-limit to his fast and addressed letters about it to a considerable number of distinguished individuals, including Gandhi himself, King George of England, Winston Churchill, Stalin, Hitler and Hirohito...
...LEVEL-HEAOEV poucffs From FLORENCE neuwtttb To the Editor...
...While these work camps are an obvious improvement over the futile brutality which was employed against conscientious objectors in the last war, it cannot be said that they furnish all the answers to the difficult problem of how to deal with the pacifist minority in an era of total war...
...During the past two weeks the rumors have taken on new forms...
...July 24, 1943, the...
...The Nazi-controlled radio was broadcasting it as well ss the singing by the fifty thousand spectators...
...Sometimes these donations have amounted to several hundred thousand roubles...
...ii •«T WISHES From ROSE ASCH To the Editor: May I take advantage ef «*• opportunity to extend to yea fit best wishes snd te express an hope that you will cue Unas t» grow and prosper...
...Hostages...
...You pretend that the proof was given .somewhere else at another time...
...It is a World war with more than thirty nations on our side...
...It should be made " up of top-fiight men loyal to oath other and loyal to the democratic ideals far which we fight The New Lender te eonrinced of high quality of many of the men now serving to ' this department But the time has now come when stostetMhtg drastic must be done...
...Some were sent tc camps, forcibly inducted into service and brutally manhandled, in a way unpleasantly suggestive ol Nazi concentration camps...
...The astounding thing is that these outsiders should be able, year after year, to repeat their throat and force the ALP to spend time and energy defending itself...
...Certainly nothing like it .has ever been seen anywhere ia the whole history of American politics...
...The Danish national song had been sung, and the Swedish, when the crowd spontaneously departed from the program and burst into the forbidden Norwegian national anthem...
...It looks ss if the immortal kulak'—liquidated thirteen years ago —has been miraculously resurrected...
...Aff the while, the unfortunate people under the regime of murder, starred, submitted or died...
...Ever since 1934 some sort of private farming and some private trade in agricultural products have existed in Rossis within the framework of the collective agricultural system...
...In nil of the aid wars one country would defeat another country, impose conditions of peace, sign up a new batch of treaties, and come home to start the cycle - over again...
...They know all the right words and motions...
...It is not supposed to make sense —either to them or the readers...
...On the basis of rumors we had books, pamphlets and magazine articles galore...
...If there is insufficient drilling of waeett wells, this is a matter whieh can be takes tart of without granting a large increase ht Us price of oil flowing from already opened ssna...
...Rj.lv .-.ST...
...No normal human being is likely to be misled by it OILING UP inflation IN the oil-price issue we have a clear demon-* stration of an impcrtant cleavage in policy...
...At present, an unfair burden is thrown on the CO's and their families and op the peace churches...
...The lice had been produced in laboratories with a view of avoiding any possibility of typhus infection, so the experiment was more uncomfortable than dangerous...
...if the decision goes against them, the anti-strike pledge still holds...
...The disaffection in certain quarters is supposed to have reached such s state that two assistants "referred to the Secretary by use of an odious epithet"' This situation naturally results in a lack of "integration in our foreign policy abroad...
...Anyone who is not forced to read this sort of tripe for professional reasons must be bored stiff...
...The fellows who write for The Daily Worker know that they are lies...
...There was an smwting...
...The latest evidence comes from tha ptevaoi of Ontario...
...There are no bugles, no line-ups, no parades, no snapping to attention...
...Wall Street diplomats, supposedly representing our government and paid by our taxes, returned home drunk with admiration for the marvel of a lender that Divine Providence had sent WsshbtOTT*Chikto^sjrf others who were interested in parade and profits for the boys oa Wall Street wrote biographies praising the megalomaniac to the high heavens...
...Bat this is no ordinsry war...
...I also found Mr...
...Alternative service ol civilian character was provided...
...In'this particular—as in many ethos —the Canadians are nearer to us than to tat folks in the mother country...
...Marshal Stalin's letters to the donors have more than a hint of the old 'Enricbessez vous...
...L "The donors have been almost exclusively peasants and they can ht the main have derived such Urge savings only from private trade...
...Many * of the more earnest and sincere CO's feel that they are being deliberately isolated and given boondogling work, that they are not allowed to render the human service, at home and abroad, that would fit in with their philosophy...
...The first one was to protest against the denial of what he considered sufficient time to dose up a book shop which he owned...
...After all" (as a British aviator is supposed to have said, and as any believer in individual liberty might have said) "the right to be n-conscientious objector is one of the rights for which we are fighting...
...There are already millionaires in the Soviet Union...
...But they are proceeding according to Hitler's formula...
...New Hampshire, where about 150 ol these nonconformists are stationed...
...Secretary Hull is among the most respected of our public men...
...They repeat ad nauseum...
...Down in Washington the War, Navy and Agriculture rhpattiumui pnMsd thlgjUWfan up suddenly by their boot-steeps and have seen turning te a surprisingly good job...
...elected 84...
...As wo go to press the returns are not all in...
...In this case the charges were that these men are against Soviet Russia, that they fail to support the Commander-in-chief, that they are obstructing the war effort These charges are all plain lies...
...Fascist puppets requisitioned all has rente and turned them over to the Nasto...
...Undersecretary Welles was reported to be at odds with Secretary Hull...
...Editor's Note:—Barefoot Peasant Boys Make Good.] , UNITY...
...How much we get of what we are fighting for will depend upon how effectively it represents us...
...Capitalists, lerishu, I ekes is saying, will lay off the minute tha do not get what they wsnt in tha nay ej profits...
...While the President is trying desperately a hold the cost-of-living line, Secretary lektl tries to open the doors wide to in nation...
...There the provincial etoensfigaJla held on August 3. The "Liberal" 9mmW-almost wiped out The newly-named Jto gressive Conservative Party had sf t| W candidates returned to the provincial tarlt-ment and the C.C.F...
...About seventy-five per cent of the CO's were college and university students and graduates, and there was a striking amount of intellectual activity, with study courses in almost every subject from foreign languages and techniques of non-violence to mechanics—a subject of special practical value for the men who hope to go abroad for war and post-war relief work...
...THE civilian control of the CO camps is severely limited in certain spheres...
...Every day the same old stuff...
...The majoritj are in the camps which are occupied with forestrj and soil conservation projects...
...Here is a legitimate place for government subsidies...
...COMMUNIST SMCAR CAMPAIGN THAT the members of the American Labor *• Party shtahi win a victory over the Communists who wanted to take them over is not surprising...
...On August 4 John H. Crider outlined the entire situation in a Washington story printed on the front page of The Time...
...These governments knew that the reaction of the monarchy and the fascist regime was turning back the dock of civilization and progress four centuries...
...The hopelessness and sickness of heart which'weighed down the Italian workers, compelled to don a fascist military uniform, made it impossible for them to murder enthusiastically the people of other countries whom the Stupid and bloody Fascists had singled out for them just to please Schicklegruber...
...I feel as he does that the Gsitfd Nations ought to find ¦caw sat of this well-trained arts...
...It is evident, however, that the regular party organisation has majorities in the Bronx and Brooklyn and so remains ia control of the state organisation...
...Slaves...
...For example, in Kazakhstan, the chairman of the Karl Marx Collective Farm subscribed his own and his family's savings of 1,036,000 roubles to the War Loan...
...West Campton is pleasantly located on the site of s remodeled CCC camp in the foothills of the White Mountains and the main work consists of forestry and road building and clearing...
...The workers, in the meantime, are expected to remain at work...
...ainuna opened flush areas...
...As the War and Navy departments come to the end of their great tasks, it is the State Department which must more and more take over vital functions...
...The only Italians now fighting in Sicily are those who are afraid to die by the hand of their earn tsintorp saTWs 11 and the Nazis...
...An increasing number are on so-called detached service projects working on farms, serving as attendants in menta hospitals, offering themselves ss "human guinea' pigs" for experiments that may help to savr, lives and relieve suffering...
...Incidentally, a CO camp is one of the few places in the United States where a Negro can be confident of being treated on a basis of social equality...
...You accuse them of crimes which they never committed...
...Others were being fed oa low protein and vitamin-deficiency diets, with a. view to finding out minimum food requirements in famine-ravaged countries after the war...
...In this ease it was Professor George S. Counts, David Dubinsky...
...For alt the exigencies of such a conflict the trained diplomats in Mr...
...e • *T*HE other grievance is of % subtler kind...
...last year...
...People Opposed War from ANGELO CORDARO President, Buffalo chapter, Mazzini Society To the Editor: y On Saturday...
...But the campaign which has been made against them has been of a character so low-down that there are hardly any adequate words to describe it To find parallels would have to go to the Germany of Hitter or the Italy Of Mussolini...
...Everyone who knows anything about these men knows that they are lies...
...New York Millionaires in the Soviet Union —Alexander Werth, in the London Times, June 13, 1943...
...The handling of the convinced pacifist in this war marks a long step forward in humanity and common sense, ht comparison with the practice follpwed in World War I. At that time the objector had only the alternative of going to jail or entering military service...
...Foreign diplomats, he said, get different answers from different secretaries...
...When a -plan is adopted it is carried out wrth punetirk-us loyalty...
...War weariness and discouragement run through virtually all classes ef the Italian nation...
...Such a change in personnel would not satisfy the legitimate demands of the public...
...He proposes a bocat of im barrel in the price of the.r product ffi this increase is provided, be says, ~*<|gjB firntya toss of recoverable reserves asaAsgfS wasteful forcing of such flush sas^lfjP still pass wss, and shortly thereafter an 38 scarcity of sufficient amounts ef even tefiE ably low-cost crude oils...
...Now consider the embarassing position in which Oil Administrator I ekes places the capitalists who run the nation's great oil goes parties...
...This is no small or negligible matter...
...contrast between this "camp," where one found many books but no rifles hi the dormitories, and Harvard University, where everyone now see raj to be hi uniform, from a group of chaplains was are training with crosses as their distinetivt emblem to young naval cadets who are toarning the elements of navigation...
...Bsitwt article about Spain extrssasiy informative, moving and siassrt...
...Wages are not sacred...
...LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Raps Calumny on "Cowardice" of Italian Soldiers...
...They form plans of campaign...
...What he is saying h, tha they will go on strike...
...Where the News Ends By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN Impressions of a CO Camp THE initials CO can hare two very different meanings, in Selective Service terminology They may stand for Commanding OnTwer-^-er 101 conscientious objector...
...It has long been evident that there is no such unity in the key department presided over by Secretary Hull...
...He is not a psychological type well suited to collective effort, in or out of uniform...
...Certainly not free workers...
...Some of the campers have also volunteered for various medical experiments...
...Some elements in this foreign policy are tied in with winning the war and securing a decent and durable peace...
...It is their ideal of a better home, where many of their relatives have found refuge from reactionary end barbarous regimes in their misgoverned homeland...
...Because of the civilian control of the camp, there wss a complete absence of military atmosphere...
...The local post office unfeelingly returned many of those epistles as unmailable...
...Those who possess independent means pay this sum...
...if the 35-cent increase were allowed...
...Columns of it The writers get so messed up in their minds that nothing makes sense...
...The method is simplicity itself...
...And since its publication there has come n ronton from Washington that Sumner Welles is to'be kicked upstairs and given a roving commission in connection with post-war planning...
...It is with the second branc of CO that I am concerned in this week's column I recently spent a couple of days in West Campton...
...Another of Mr...
...The Economist has, on several occasions, pointed out that wartime decentralisation of food supplies in Russia is likely to favor the development ef private trade in agricultural products, and the list of donations published by the Soviet press seems to bear out this assumption...
...in these war years time and money could be spent to better advantage...
...Direct charges have been made and remedial action seems to be on the program...
...Probably a wise administration of selective service would never have drafted Bishop at all...
...and a recent donation bv a Kiro-hiz farmer ammmtMt t« mnr» tk»r «m million mukiu "The generous donor was honored by a personal letter of thanks from Marshal Stalin...
...America, to them, is not a foreign nation...
...There are representatives of almost every religions denomination, including one earnest group of Jehovah's Witnesses and several Negroes, of whom one is a follower of Father Divine, while others come from evangelical churches...
...This time s much more decent and sensible arrangement was made at the time when military conscription went into effect' The right of conscientious objection to participation in war when sustained by religious training and experience, was recognised...
...TVie scale of this private trade has been difficult to assess since official statistics ignored it "Similarly, the published Russian statistics give no figures about the different income groups in Russia, probably because there is no wish to destroy the official notion of Russia as a classless society...
...Ths* U, g this representative and central prevtoet fin Commonwealth Federation it now one ef uu two great political organizsricmsNltesent by-elections in the western provinces show fin same tendency there...
...Honest Harold Is accusing the eg asseM stratort of low-grade rstrirtissa...
...Hull's degaiUnaul would have been well fitted...
...Churchill was all honey and even George Bernard Shaw applauded, after he had accepted a vacation cabin in the Alps...
...V...
...One found two principal grievances among the CO's...
...The Nazis at once cut off the broadcast...
...The size of the donation raises, of course, the question of the size of private incomes in Russia...
...Even so, the size of the sums is somewhat surprising...
...It is on the basis of ideas that men fight or stop fighting...
...No Italian soldier with an ounce of brain will shoot against our army of liberators...
...the majority are supported by the peace churches...
...But ever since he explosively ended his sad conversations with Messrs Kurusu and Nomura his department has been under attack If this were an ordinary war, be and bis deportment could doubtless have come through it with honor...
...it consisted of living for a long time in clothing infested with lice, in order to teat the efficiency of various preventive powders...
...if a group ef miners or ship-builders want higher wages, the War Labor Board considers the request and hands down a decision...
...It is an ideological war about the deepest faith and hope of humanity...
...Workers are expected to show their devotion by sticking to their jobs—come high wages or low...
...There an some forty or fifty camps (the number varies as some are closed and new ones are opened] throughout the country and the number of CO'i is between six snd seven thousand...
...la must represent us in dealing with conquered nations and with conflicts among our allies...
...He reported to detail on signs of disunity...
...He speaks of conflicting personalities, of neglect of administration, of departmental overlapping and of failure to back up the department's envoys in foreign lands...
...The July 31st some was ef a* -ceptional interest in that the fat of Mussolini was the star attest tion...
Vol. 26 • August 1943 • No. 33
