Think Twice on a Labor Draft-A Warning to Austin-Wadsworth
Chamberlain, John
Think Twice on a Labor Draft-A Warning to Austin-Wadsworth Compulsory Work Would Force Reduction Slowdowns, Chamberlain Says By JOHN CHAMBERLAIN DV looking into the Washington ten leaves, one...
...Nevertheless, there is a world of difference between serving'Under compulsion in a factory and being drafted for the army...
...So Proudly We Hail, to name but one, drew tears to the eyes of the most hardened film critic...
...If government compulsion is applied to industry, every worker mast lie under the suspended penalty of a jail sentence...
...For what is the reason for conscripting labor if it is not to get production when it is wanted...
...defeat the *ne»y...
...No doubt it's hard to write a good war play, while indignation stir...
...The world's third largest city will not be pocked with areas of desolation like stone-and-steel-built London and Berlin, It will be literally gutted and 7,000,000 human beings will be homeless...
...And then I remembered a story which is being told about Lily Pons...
...That will prove quite a hardship upon all the honest citisens and eitizennesses who are now publishing books upon the subject of the Forthcoming Peace, but that can't be helped...
...True, they have n national service act is England and Canada, but in each coantry there has been little effort to apply it with any stringency...
...And always there must be a punch-line—even if what flashes into the mind as clever is unfair to the play...
...The public will go to a war play...
...But calm is not the antidote, nor is serious, thoughtful endeavor...
...Are you ready to help do it or shall we crucify democracy on the cross of hate, bigotry and reaction...
...The result must be to unchain a universal fear, which always has disintegrating effects...
...The theatre can do a great deal, a* a <P» force in a community of vigor and to*** gaze...
...The unworkability of a national service act can be proved either by recourse to history or by a straight bit of legic...
...it has no function except to...
...the others hang out the S.R.O...
...some of these are of high quality...
...ment...
...or Woof Happened to II Duce I have been told a story about Dwight Eisen-* hower and Charlie T'oletti...
...If yoa get mad at something be says, you fall to love with the way be says it . . . In these vagrant Jottings yoa have him at his boat—aa he is after dinner with goad coffee or good wine...
...That tender and sensitive pride has been suffering ever since Henry IV had to wait a couple of hours in the Canossa snow (and not even wearing his galoshes) before the Pope would let him in and would receive him...
...persuasion and inducementjLnf It...
...now it wilts with the morning papers, or sets out on the trail of Tobacco Road...
...He looks soft and smiling and friendly—bat how he can hate!—What • gleam in his eye whea he neatly lances some stuffed-shirt on the neatest of epigrams...
...On the other hand, if the worker is doing his job under compulsion, he can't be fired for bad work, for that would obviously defeat the purposes of a National Service Act...
...Under the terras of the Smith-Connolly Act, the Pennsylvania and West Virginia coal minor* have gone baclt to work...
...One after atom* Blotto...
...A razx, or a rave, and most often the razxberry: the reviewer's favorite fruit...
...I read this invitation from Common Sense to assist in the rebuilding of Toltio and Berlin and Essen and I was thinking of diverse friends and relatives whose ashes, mingled with the dust of Rotterdam and Middelburg, had been carted away to Germany to help in the reconstruction of Cologne and Elberfeld...
...An army is fused by the end for which it-is created...
...Once on a time a play could have a "moderate success...
...He will explain that this is an act of absolute necessity to the pride of the Teutonic soul...
...With the eighty pi 11 iBlm#tega...
...without brash praise, a play dies in its first fortnight...
...And when one is face to face with the enemy, it is kill or be killed...
...Just before she was to make her appearance it had begun to rain and the manager had come to her asking her to be prepared for a short wait until the shower should have stopped...
...It has been frequently lamented' that the opinions of eight men determine the...
...Meet H. W. Von Loon "LIE'S a deceptive moun-tain of a man, this Hendrik Wiliest...
...to the President, to Bernard Btttlfcto John Haheook, to Jimmy Byrnes aaipi MP-tar>' Robert Patterson for at least earns...
...Physical work in crowded training camp or high-pressure munitions factory is balanced by the stir of further crowds—but free from restraint, from discipline, from work: eager to forget and to enjoy...
...But the ttojatt» itself is living up to only one side of its muWp* function...
...A Story About Poletti...
...Bat the facto «f toman nature to a capitalist democracy auto it impassible to get good wait amlyHto "eighty per cent patriot*" by aatof em* force...
...The State Department would, of course, not allow it to be shown in South America—but the South Americans are not interested in our movies anyway and so that would really make very little difference...
...The folk of the theatre, from every Ujnd of the entertainment world, have boon dttnt* glorious job in the field of moraJa-haudtof...
...But at least we will be helping our friends...
...with some merit, it might attract its audience...
...To rebuild Tokyo, however, and Berlin, Genoa and Naples, Cologne and Essen will require real statesmanship and an application of genuine democracy...
...Now, according to my story, after Eisenhower had obtained the surrender of the Italians he had telephoned the great news to his Commander-in-Chief in the White House...
...The gallant lady was not in the least disturbed...
...Any taken...
...And if the Austin-Wadswarm hill bo-comes law, 111 bet anyone that uiudnslaia *¦ decline rather than increase...
...Oomehow or other the conversation yesterday ^ turned upon the subject of the Declaration of Independence and the fact (still not definitely known) whether the Liberty Bell bad actually been rung immediately after that momentous session or whether it had been rung a few -days later when the document (meanwhile copied to the neat) had been read to the revolutionary armies and I thought of a nice title for a movie about' that glorious event when Tyranny had been defeated and the cause of Democracy had been triumphant . . . FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLED...
...Chosen by accident of propinquity or for their breezy style, few of these critics at their best have had little seas* «f ten debar powers of the theatre...
...The others should be told to go and chase themselves on pain of being forced to crawl underneath a heavy spray of machine-gun bullets and to spend nights sleeping in an ants nest Not among our own amiable kind of little ants but among the kind that prospers in the jungles of New Guinea...
...Time, The Student Prime*, The M*m Widtc, mi—earliest of all but still filmIIUUJ —Rosalinda bring the operetta hack to ltamV way acclaim, and talt it for a profttob'n uar on the returning road...
...What is more significant is that the legitimate theatre has given itself almost entirely to fescape...
...Is the Liberty Ml Ueconstitiitlomal...
...disturbance...
...used to get one hand red per ceat m aSkst Threats and rompahtoa only aarwfiavjs-dure the natural eighty per ceedVfm'fc' sixty or*fifty, m I may be wrong about this, tort laBrtmb* so...
...And as the season gets into its stride, the types of entertainment offered assume a dear pattern...
...The prospect of such legislation fills me with horror, not because I believe anyone has the right to malinger or hnt during wartime, but simply because I am convinced that the principles of the draft, as applied to industry, will decrease ratfcfe Uian add t» production...
...and with toe «# carrying same of the ripest of these few into other fields, we are toft with a group oi writers whose major interest has boon neither the theatre nor the well-being 6f the state...
...But coal production Is lagging just when we need more coal than ever...
...In this country compulsion is not working either...
...Think Twice on a Labor Draft-A Warning to Austin-Wadsworth Compulsory Work Would Force Reduction Slowdowns, Chamberlain Says By JOHN CHAMBERLAIN DV looking into the Washington ten leaves, one can guess that within two months there will he a tremendous drjv t for the D passage ©f National Service legislation along the lines of the Austin-Wadsworth bill...
...and Jamie, Aim and Tell, Three It a Family, The Dough-Girlt —this last a farce of camp-followers up-to-date—run merrily on...
...n-spection...
...but no suggestions seem fertile to remedy this sorry state...
...And they have learned from George Jean Nathan (Westbrook Pegler has hammered the lesson home...
...Notes from a Diary By HENDRIK WILLEM VAN LOON ^Whenever the subject of Birth Control comes "up in a discussion with one of God'a Holy Men I refrain from expressing any opinions and I base my refusal upon the following sensible consideration: Since it is the women who have to bear the children, the women and they alone, should be the ones to judge whether they shall enjoy the benefits of birth-control or not It is none of the business of the men who have very little to do with this arrangement The women and...
...On what have the folk of BreaeW turned their eyes...
...they alone should therefore decide whether we shall have birth control and not we, and the men should leave the subject alone...
...Quite recently a Nottinghamshire pit,boy, Sidney Page, was sentenced to a month in jail for refusing to go down into a mine.' He was released after signing a promise to go to work as ordered, but the moment he was freed he claimed that be had pu* his signature on paper under duress...
...all its offerings must entertain...
...a Protestant Catholic, a Puritan epicure, a serious humorist, a democratic aristocrat...
...There is little sign of this in the current season...
...Pretty girls and dog* ran to meet him, bat bishops and senators and college presidents had batter have a care...
...I don't know whether the story is true and I have no possible chance of finding out, but it is a good story and it bears repeating...
...The obvious division marks off dramas of arousal from dramas of escape...
...Whore the English government does try to pot tooth tote its legislation, the results are not reassuring...
...But no good play comes easily...
...But when peace is 'going to be discussed in all seriousness it should be left entirely to the fellows who risked life and limb storming the coast of Italy and defending the steppes of the Ukraine...
...And GHukesia, ia and the Old Heidelberg of the prairie, is tto fan* and most popular of all...
...He is a scholar, antiquarian, historian, philosopher.—He knows aH of the out-of-the-way places along the road of human wandering up from Neanderthal.—Ho loves the nice things of mind and body—good food, good mask, subtle thinking clothed in right words—Sat he talks the common speech of the common ¦aa and is at home with simple straight and honest things.—He's a sort of Dutch Ftesufcwss...
...Where are the dramas tkathyJhW clash of attitudes point our ideals, look toaHj the problems of the post-war work!, dlrott anj strengthen our resolve...
...bat beyond that the theatre has always been a social barometer or a social force, indicating if not shaping the deeper concerns of the time...
...The first recourse of government may be merely to reject badly made stuff...
...fate of a play...
...The National Coal Administration reports absenteeism and indifference among the miners...
...In a factory, howevei, one is necessarily a split personality...
...A Letter, end Trereby Hangs a Tale I got a letterethe other day and it read as * follows: Dear Reader: Tokyo may soon be destroyed...
...York...
...But strangely here, what might be the expected roles of stage and screen are reversed: the proportion of . serious portrayals and gripping stories arising out of the war is greater in the motion pictures than on the stage...
...The Fallacy of Compulsion— Labor Draft Will Fail •THE answer to my analysis is...
...T*« WoHkor o.d r»e So/dier— Some Cracioi Diffe reac es IT is plausible to argue -that if men are to be drafted for the armed, forces, it is only fair to apply the same principle of compulsion to the economy-that supports the fighting fronts...
...That charming songstress has a weakness (a perfectly understandable weakness, of coarse) of snapping her cookies (as they express it in her own Marseillaisian dialect) just before a concert She knows that she can do it but the nervous tension is so terrific that she suffers a slight gastronomic (or is it gastric...
...of course, that patriots will do their war work willingly whether there is a National Service Act or m. Bat a* act k needed to get sack petals to pitch to with a wilL Compulsiea it tab for those who aren't one hundred per c*at behind the war effort...
...they are in abundance, as always, from the tender nostalgia of Grace George and James Cagney in Johnny Con\e Lately to the most recent antics of Bob Hope...
...Hence there is a generous absence from plays that receive anything but the most favorable reviews...
...The President to an outburst of sincere joy had most heartily congratulated his North African delegate upon his magnificent success and then, in a facetious mood had added: "Listen, like, while you were about it, why didn't you capture Mussolini 100?*' "We did, Boss,** that valiant warrior answered, "but Charlie Poletti...
...Why then is the theatre failing to fulfill this serious aspect of its role...
...A Now Season Broadway in Dim-Out By JOSEPH T. SHIPLEY IJERE on Broadway, in the unusual dark of "a dim-out city, soldiers on leave and civilians, resting, relax with the rise of a curtain...
...in place of understanding, and emotions are closely caught in the event Such plays, too, must compete with the shifting headlines, and the books from every front with their grim, true stories of the war's heroism and horror...
...Now* it so happened one night that she was singing somewhere out in the open for a public of a couple of million persons...
...That incident occured in the year 1077 but the Nazi's have a long memory except when it comes to their own bestialities...
...They did not return to work until the government ^promised to reconsider the case against Page...
...Anyway, 1 commend my arguah4wPRV g-rests...
...During that period he pardoned a couple of undesirable citizens who most decidedly had not deserved this act of clemency...
...The ijbsaons for working are varied: one does the job paetly to get guns to the front, partly to make a living for the wife and kids, partlyrt^ satisfy the instinct of workmanship, and partly to earn money for the stockholders, who still get their dividends even in wartime...
...It must provide entertainment...
...DARTLY the critics are to blame...
...To rebuild Warsaw and Rotterdam, Va-letta and Coventry, Stalingrad and Nanking will be difficult and costly...
...d entertaining our men in the serakn},>nt"Inspiriting workers at home...
...Their job is not to evaluate a play, but to interest their readers...
...It provides amusement rsiftfjaJIPj escape...
...These critics in the main are concerned with entertainment first and entertainment last The great part of the public, increasingly in these war times, is on the same quest...
...As the readers of The New Leader will remember this distinguished Italo-Vermontese leader once upon a time acted for a few short weeks as Governor of the sovereign state of New...
...The Nottinghamshire miners, 18,000 of thorn, promptly struck, shutting down twenty-one pits...
...They have had the ftth of writing their books and they may even have received a few royalties, and that should satisfy them...
...Broadway is ready for that eager throng which packs the open bouses...
...What makes the conditions worse is that no one (at least, no one with airing power) seems concerned with • the background and qualification* of these supreme critics, whose daily frown wipes out (the labors of a year...
...W.E.B...
...pardoned him...
...But if slowdowns, stoppages and bad work continue, the government will demand production on schedule...
...The nearest appi** of the season has been in the Potash ear Perlmutter stupidities—"demockery" for *w mocracy," not as an ironic stab, hot as • mispronunciation of a man seriously trying U> say it correctly, and that man for many ya*l the foreman of a large factory!—oath drtet can be amusing only to the most heedless, sat makes wretched anyone that knows *'hat uu theatre can do...
...By too same token, I now come out in favor of my own motion: Be it resolved that peace shall bO made only by those men who have been in actual battle and that those who never had their goto shiver in them when a ballet came wheezing their way shall not even be allowed within a thousand yards of the place where the peace negotiations are being discussed...
...It fears that the slogan of "No contract, no work" has boon changed to "no contract, no sweat,*' Writing in Collier's Magaaine, Secretary Iekes reports an elusive, tantalizing slow-down in the coal mines since last June...
...I suspect some of them have never read Nathan) that readers prefer a punch to a plug...
...Under compulsion it is jail or nothing for the inept, the slow, the incompetent, the grousing or the malcontent worker...
...A fighting army becomes an organism as a factory never does...
...It is this last item that makes the draft inapplicable to industry: one cannot compel a person to work for another man's gain and expect easy compliance...
...Bat the din development in this phase of the theatre * Dp series of old-time shows...
...It is not thai mere escape films are lacking...
...It is Ohkeh with me," she replied, "I haf already vomeet" * * * Hitler, the fape, and Galoshes of Cnnnsta I am still convinced that Hitler will take the * Pope to Germany...
...they have crowded war dramas in the past...
...there is now no yawning space at Tomorrow the World, by no means an excellent, but a deeply suggestive play...
...Thus a drama of the war like Land of Fame, far from a great play but one that enough would have liked to carry it along for a while, flops overnight...
...AMONG the escape shows, there is of course ** a large proportion of musicals, already here, and in the season's prospect Vaudeville, swinging back from cinema stage-shows to Independent life, launched forth valiantly this season in Laugh Time, which will have setorn successors seeking its success...
Vol. 26 • October 1943 • No. 41
