Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
Where the News Ends By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN The Future of Europe AS the war is more and more being carried to the Axis, as the prospect of military victory draws closer, the problem of the...
...These thousands un thousands of non-union progreativea, ehus chief interest lies in permanent indeaaadsa political action, will either be sutenuussjdb frozen out of the revamped so-ceued ALP « will discover themselves total aliens withia in opportunistic, ephemeral climate...
...It would here been better fw fie Weimar Republic if it bad come kite best only after the defeat aad surrender of fin Kaiser...
...We have not devoted' nearly enough of it to the legumes that preserve snd restore soil fertility...
...We certainly do not seek to reduce Italian life to a condition of chaos and anarchy, and find ourselves without any authority with whom to deal...
...We have no fear of meaty ferae but the thought of s popular uprising rkkeei like nightmare...
...Effective help lies in the opposite direction...
...the work of that committee should be carefully studied by other unions and by government agencies striving to diminish racial frictions...
...HOW representative are the governmentsin-exile, how warm a welcome can they count on when they return to their respective countries...
...This ia a debt of elementary justice which a democratic Germany would not refuse to acknowledge...
...WANTS LETTlIS FftOtv wonu is From S. FISCHER To the Edxtor The New Leader it eat ef «• beet papers in the United ttsSn today...
...He was an excellent product of the European classical education and he interspersed his comments cn the fall of France with quotations front Homer and Cicero aad Tacitus...
...We are also glad to note that yen stress the need for more bousing and recreational facilities for...
...It is in fact frankly opposed to them...
...We can find puppet rulers most easily sarong ex-fascists or smong people who easily submitted to fascism...
...We have given over far too little .of it to protective, vitamincontaining foods...
...Our aim, in addition to increasing our own production, should be to rehabilitate and step up production in fit hoi1 lands...
...The Food Advisory Committee goes the length of suggesting that there is genuine danger of running into "downright hunger...
...The clearest hint of what is in controlling minds c&me from Winston Churchill: "It would be a grave mistake, when Italian affairs are in this flexible, fluid and formidable condition, for the rescuing powers of Britain and the United States so to set as to break down the whole structure end expronion ef the Italian state...
...And the most optimistic advocates of political and social change were disappointed in the results which were attained...
...A little over three years ago I was sitting in a restsersnt in the crowded bedlam of Bordeaux, temporary refuge of a crushed and stunned French Government...
...The repeated attempts of the Communists to grab the ALP leadership and to pervert it to their own uses need not be explained only on the ground that they required a political front after they had lost in 1939 political standing by having polled less than tab required 50,000 votes in this state...
...There maybe I can find the conditions of civilized life again...
...Especially ridiculous is our policy of encouraging southern planters to go on ruining their land by producing cotton which nobody wants...
...ftberooo aad we trust thst this recommendation will not remain merely on paper but will be implemented Without delay...
...We have long carried the comforting notion thst we can easily produce more ecrn and wheat and meat than we need, that out of our abundance we can feed Use hungry of other lands...
...There is a fear that if they eM rat up on their own feet and fight for...
...DUT when one begins to talk about administer^ ing Europe as if it were a backward African colony, then I see trouble signals flying for the future...
...The matter is of sufficiently serious nature to require and deserve more responsible treatment But what is particularly shacking is your proposal that Negroes be restricted in, or altogether denied, their constitutional right to migrate to certain cities, apparently, as your report would suggest ss punishment for their "physical limitations or cultural background...
...Your report does not reveal any sign that a more fundamental solution is to be sought for...
...Our ways ef encouraging agricultural production have been inherited from days of blissful .simplicity...
...Under the pressure of weU-financed farmer - business lobbies we adopted a policy which saddled upon us old and uneconomic ways of land-use...
...Many features of these plans were bad enough...
...Finally, your failure to recommend any labor people on the private committee to carry on educational and publicity work in various communities is a disappointment Surely philsatmepisto sad clergymen, estimable as tbsj are, are not the only tea with first-hand knowledge ef *» problem...
...The recovery of Europe must be essentially a cooperative enterprise...
...U it depinead ea then^S Communists weald long ago have eoasestoJi*, the demise of the ALP under any pretext, aaC or subterfuge...
...The salvaging of Europe, the restoration to its peoples of the possibility of...
...Basically, flie Communist leadership has baked the Ala because for years it has been the deseatesik wall across their totalitarian path over »S or around which it was impossible for to find a way...
...This fat primarily the result of the excellent race-relations work of the UAW-CTO Interracial Committee...
...Charity is far from being enough...
...We do not...
...their sua freedom, there would be that tarribto tang, disorder...
...THf FUTURE Of FOOD TPHE report of the Food Advisory Committee * to Secretary of Agriculture Claude R. Wickard opens up the whole business of staving off starvation in a way that is shaking some heavy cobwebs from official snd unofficial minds...
...Dear Mr...
...This will call for the export of seed, farm machinery and processing equipment We must completely transcend the old objective of finding markets and selling goods...
...The proposal would, in fact, oust the unaffiliated liberal elements from the party and deprive of a voice the membership in the recti neighborhood clubs...
...wfll...
...Biddle: We have reed your report to the President on the Detroit riots with keen interest...
...of course, pretend to speak for the State leadership of the party which, it is reported, is being .called upon to weigh, among other things, this proposal by Mr...
...Shooting rioters in Detroit and Mew York is certainly no solution...
...LETTERS TO THE EDITOR N.M.Minkoff Protests Negro Migratior Ban Suggestion, in Biddle Report From NATHANIEL M. MINKOFF Chairman, Committee on Discrimination, Workers Defense League To the Editor: I have tent the following letter to Attorney-General Biddle, on his report on the Detroit riots...
...But there is grave danger that our preference for orderly change will bring us to a stop this side of democracy...
...T To us, the Hillman plan spells toe drain) of the Labor Party at we have knee* sal have come to value it as an overall bene hi the liberal, New Deal and labor csnstrettae groups in this state...
...We have not always agreed with the ALP tactics and have not failed to criticize upon occasion what we ill am id lack of independence and political initiative...
...There could be no peaceful or stable Europe if the peoples of the present Axis powers snd their satellite alliefl, who actually outnumber the Europeans (exclusive of Russians) who sre fighting in the United Nations csmp, should be condemned to sn indefinite period of political subjection and economic servitude...
...It seems to me thst tat est thing lacking in The WtW J.tsssT is letters from rank snd fib workers to present thetr pearl ef view, instead of the ifijsltitlt...
...This faith in nature's plenty turns out to be nothing more than a hoary hallucination, snd the Committee punctures it with a few cogent facts...
...Where the News Ends By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN The Future of Europe AS the war is more and more being carried to the Axis, as the prospect of military victory draws closer, the problem of the future of Europe looms larger in the thoughts of every intelligent American...
...Political security and economic prosperity can only be found in^tloser forms of association, and the creation of a number of regional federations finally culminating in the dream of many great thinkers, a United States of Europe, will mark a great step toward the elimination of those tragic civil wars wkhin Europe, of which the present is the most disastrous and the one that carries the greatest threat to Europe's noble and supranational culture...
...Our inherited preconception shout this thing sre all wrong...
...Now we ask them to sit aakeh till we come to the rescue...
...Punishment of war criminals, understanding by that term individuals who have ordered bestial atrocities against civilians...
...What forces will emerge ss strongest in Yugoslavia, where enemy occupation has brought to the boiling point a witches' brew of old racial antagonisms...
...They leave out of tr-yMfr pulse beat of the nations...
...I thought of some of my anti-Fascist snd German friends, such as Professor Gsetane Salvemini and the Social Democrats Wilhelm Sollaaann and Max Brautr...
...The recovery of Europe must be first of all the work of Europeans...
...Our chief concern with she Hillman shn, should it be adopted, is not what political Lea ings the Communists might find it K, a& weight they might carry, or how teieswS admitted to any place of influence hi a, direction, they might succeed in wrecking fi should the Communist line change— the leaf knows this can happen—even with a rniukt tial campaign right upon the UrrashcM...
...The Hillman plan, ef course, fits pretty well into the picture of the CIO Political Action Committee, of which he is the chairman...
...No one can answer these questions now...
...This will involve the repeal of old laws snd parts of laws which provide high prices for anything which has been raised in the past...
...The question also srises how the Anglo-Russian alliance will work out in practice...
...It is just these honest, independent-minded fighters against fascism who will be most disillusioned sad resentful if a policy of colonialism is applied to Europe...
...When 1 told him that France was on the verge of concluding an armistice he sprang np in alarmed amazement and said: "I mast get away from here and try to catch a boat for the Belgian Congo...
...But these are dry and stodgy eav siderations...
...The irony of this outburst, the feeling that the heart of what is often known as the Dark Continent would be the last asylum of a civilized European, has remained impressed upon my memory...
...But talk to men of this type ia the toplofty, condescending tones of a Kingsbury Smith, and you would make enemies ef them in s minute...
...There sre msny questions to which the best informed and most experienced observers cannot give confident answers until the Nazi military power cracks up...
...Quite definitely, however, it seems to us, the Hillman prenatal excludes the existence cf the anstriena Labor Party eoncerved some seven years ago as a political home for Inherit**, liberals and progressives of all shades, under whose tenets it has grown to its present imposing stature...
...Strangers talked to each other quickly in those times snd I soon got into conversation with, a Belgian official who was sitting at the same table...
...field to stimulate and organize labor political interest ea a national basis for flip 1944 letHpaniHtT campaign...
...My Belgian acquaintance was more at home with classical authors than with contemporary events...
...Europe, including England, is the original source of almost all our culture, of our literature and philosophy, music snd art...
...We cannot, however, help deploring your suggestion that the President pet op sn interdepartmental committee on race relations "to coordinate information work in this field and deal with' delegations coming to Washington to see yea.'' There has been too much shunting ef problems involving minorities to already overburdened experts in race relations...
...From every point of view there is reason enough for making every attempt to maintain orderly ways of life during the days of rapid change just ahead...
...Dean Alfsnge, and polled more, than 400,000 votes, it demonstrated that ia the course of the seven years of its existence it has accumulated enough strength to travel on its own and enough political acumen to wrest material concessions...
...The disappearance of Europe, the submergence of its creative thought beneath waves of barbarism, brutalization, starvation and aimless civil war would bee catastrophe greater than the fall of the Roman Empire...
...National planning is a small and ineffective thing...
...We cannot understand why you thought it necessary to tell the President that it would bo "unwise" for him to go en- the radio to discuss the entire problem...
...It could become a precedent and provocation for the restriction of rights of other minorities...
...A proposal such as this is s clear violation not only of Supreme Court decisions upholding the right of interstate migration but also of the fundamental principle of equal rights under democracy...
...The age of the tank, the airplane and the conveyor system has made the position of the politically independent, economically selfsuffkient small state in Europe almost untenable...
...The parity program is basejLen a very simple thought...
...When the ALP, in 1942, however, boldly defied the Farley-Bennett oligarchy ia the Democratic Party and put into the field a gubernatorial candidate of its own...
...It ha> urns* been the American doctrine that no asms which will not fight for its own liberty av serves it or can long retain it - It to to st hoped that somewhere we shall men stoinu stock than the pitiful Sicilians who Vtosajfiu hands of American soldiers...
...fact we have not used our land in the best ways...
...All risked their lives to show their detestation of Mussolini and Hitler snd everything these dictators stead for...
...There is nothing sinister about out sQhasV A good argument can be rasas for lesvsg Badogiio or Petals or Hitler is his fleet tatt he suffers the disgrace of defeat The usaH free the succession state of the ehliquy st handing over the sword and sufisriag basseatien...
...We have come to the point where we, need fatternational cooperation—with each nation doing its part to help other nations get oh their feet and take care of their own needs...
...What will be the dominant moods among the peoples of Europe, spsthy or restless agitation, revolutionary experimentation or desire to get back to a past that must seem incredibly prosperous and happy after four years of war, enemy occupation and looting, desolation from the air, and blockade...
...If we sre to preserve our soil and give the nation the sort of diet it requires, we must replan land-use from the bottom up...
...But out of the facts presented comes the clear proof that what we can export to other lands will be totally inadequate to the needs of the world in the post-war era...
...A starving world must not be encouraged to look to a boundless American bread-basket...
...The Hillman plan, by the way, though presented in less distinct outlines, was fervently exploited by the "left wing" of the ALP and by the Communist press in the recent primary campaign in the attempt to wrest the party leadership from the LaborLiberal coalition...
...The Committee recommends more careful controls with "government title to food st some point in the distribution...
...The fact that they IfepeawE the Hillman plsn during the heat j j campaign, glorifying it into s 'wide hadf aad a funity" panacea knowing all the stohj that it is nothing short of s drsreaatKngeai...
...Every libertyloving citizen who takes our pledges of democracy seriously must earnestly protest against your recommendation on this head...
...For a general it is much men) s> cording to the rules to best an army and a*, ceive the submission ef s rpsponiiub snags, ment Generals Eisenhower and Montgensn can certainly move on more smoothly and etsfidently if life in Italy—and later In PresM and Germany—goes on without pshtfcsi, change until the troops are in firm poeeaaaa But we sre asking much of the Itafiaut For twenty years they have suffered oaesr Mussolini...
...We urge then n endure our bombings and every outran at the Badoglio government We do not am thai to stand up and fight for theajserrea...
...As s matter of...
...But there are a few broad principles that must be observed if there is to be any hope of a peaceful and contented Europe within the next generation...
...The sUght inconvenience occasioned by disorders ettW be a small price to pay for such leiaosni ef democratic spirit EDITORIAL COMMENT The Hillman Proposals and the A.LP THE prtpossl af Bfcffosy Hiltietn, chairman 1 of the National CIO Political Action Committee, for the "reconstitution" of the New York American Labor Party on a straight trade union "proportional representation" basis, stripped of superfluotts verbiage, amounts to a suggestion of dismantling the present MLP functional structure...
...Any scheme based cn reducing to colonial status the area between the Russian frontier and the Atlantic Ocean, with its many peoples and its old cultural heritage, will end, as it deserves to end, in disaster and confusion...
...In s wide range of subjects, ranging from public health to economics, the misfortune of one Europesn country is s misfortune for all...
...But it is not such puppets who will advance the recovery of Europe...
...We are happy to note that yeu point out that "there was no disorder within plants, where colored snd white men worked side by side, on account of efficient union discipline...
...We may be sure that on the continent ef Europe the underground forest all set at idly by until Amgot has everything snub under control Slavish quiescence es ***> part would prove that Fascism sad Naasa have reduced greet peoples to a antra asstan t y -And if these long oppressed roes sal women rise to strike blows of their epa to knock off their chains, we may htej s> greater faith in their destinies...
...Hillman...
...1 Gorapersisn political philosophy which the AFL has need for many decades and is still using with vs rying degrees of ruccots...
...But if it implies s Soviet overlcrdship in Eastern Europe, where Poles and Finns have bitter memories of Russian rule in the past, and a British hegemony in Western Europe, again one can see trouble signals flying for the future...
...What groups will come to the top in s postHitler Germany...
...I am thinking especially of two articles which appeared in recent issues of The American Mercury by Kingsbury Smith, purporting to set forth the American Government's plans for a defeated Germany and a defeated Italy...
...Attorney-General, we cannot help noting that the emphasis in your report (points 1 snd 2) on providing adequate military and police force to handle future riots indicates an unwillingness to face the real problem...
...There's s world ef hdsr mation of national aad intarsstional topics presented each east from various points ef vita Everyone who is interested is let trade union and political st*n> ment should subscribe' to Tst New Leader...
...If it is defensive in character and means that the Soviet Union and Great Britain will pool their forces as part of a larger scheme for maintaining world peace, it is all to the good...
...Restoration of looted property and equipment, as far as it esn be identified, reconstruction of areas which have been desolated by German armies with German labor and capital...
...KAft OF REVOLUTION d*\NE senses—both here and in Britain—a ^ deep fear of European revolutions...
...leading civilized lives again should be the first wsr aim of every American...
...According to the press version of this proposal, Mr...
...If other peoples are not to starve, they must be helped as rapidly as possible bo produce for themselves...
...For this purpose, one would need strong, progressive, democratic regimes in all the Europesn states after the war, whether ex-ally or ex-enemy...
...What is more necessary than an authoritative word by the President of the United States to the American people warning them against the poison of race hatred and discrimination ? When the Mayor of Shreveport La., can permit himself to say (as quoted in the November 1942 Survey Graphic): "Of.equal importance with winning the wee is the necessity for kee%ueh>.Mggsa*e out of skilled jobs,'' the policy of hushing it up is no longer tenable...
...It is taken for granted that all we have to do .is to give producers more money for turning out just whet they hove always turned out...
...This committee, as is generally known, has taken the...
...With better crops, and with the kind of crops required for a balanced national diet, we may be able to feed up to 604)00,000 persons in addition to our own population...
...If we pay "parity" prices for cotton, corn, wheat and meat, we may take for granted— whatever contracts arc signet!—that in the end we shall have more of all of them The implication is that pur traditional land-use policies have been just right...
...It seems to us that this is precisely what the situation requires him to do...
...Disorders increased military difficulties...
...fsm are to take freedom as s gift fro*) tanffj hands...
...For this feeling there is some excuse in the experiences which followed the last war...
...Of course...
...but what seemed to me utterly objectionable was the tone of haughty and overweening contempt for every individual German and Italian which pervaded the articles...
...So the whole emphasis, during what remains of the war and during the first years of the peace settlement should be on encouraging the emergence cf progressive democratic forces, especially in the now Fascist countries, not on drawing plans for the indefinite running of Europe by benevolent American Gauleiters...
...Hillman's plan is intended to pave the way for a "retarSr of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers' Union's affiliates into the fold of the ALP along with a number of other unions, many of them with a distinct Communist taint or under outright Communist control...
...This 11.....ilese, aeV mittedly, is asm- interested in any permanent labor political parties...
...But today, as the fourth year of the world's most devsststing war draws to a close, it IS Europe that, in more senses than one, is the Dark Continent That the old economic and social order on the continent has crumbled like old cities and monuments under a rain of bombs is obvious...
...But what form will the reconstruction, or rather the new construction take...
...Ito ideology, though somewhat streamlined, is the time-honored "pumshyour-frienda end re ward-year enemies...
...tern, only proves that fiiniiomemeTto eT Communists do not give s tinker's fieaS JE the future ef the Labor Party...
Vol. 26 • August 1943 • No. 34
