Van Loon's Diary-From Tsar to Stalin, a View from the Year 2043
Loom, Hendrick Willem Van
Van Loon's Diary—From Tsar to Stalin, a View from the Year 2043 By Hendrick Willem Van Loom THIS moment I wrote the /sBsis&g in my Lhary. Suppose Omt •*#<•/«.• mil gfjf gromdeonS should have...
...government Gouverneur Morris...
...To answer them-r-always politely and with consideration _the philosopher brings the wisdom distilled from a lifetime of scholarship...
...And there is only one upstairs for a victorious war-president of the United States t^aj is at the head of a World Federation to establish peace ^ ^ mm...
...Like the authots ef the original Ted- . era list," Beard does net approve of all the cons tits tion or of all the practices which have grown np under it...
...Jie Asp little tone for being out of atop and to he keep* assay from the Victory Parade to celsbnaU the return af our venerable Secretary of SUte from kit tiring but triumphant voyage te taw ffristrnt...
...America having nothing to lose in the old world remained completely indifferent to this unfortunate outcome of tbe great struggle until some seventy-five years afterwards when the whole of the Pacific fell like a ripe fruit into the hands of the Slavs...
...White railroad workers, too...
...But equally significant is the emission of army officers from the convention's roster...
...That it doubtl*** what sap gretU-great-grand*en wiU write in...
...Washington, Hamilton, Mifflin and Charles Pinckney had held commissions during the Revolution, but Knox, and Gates, and the Society of the Cincinnati were absent...
...Lnlike them far they coald only hope they had built an endariag structure—Beard has "confidence ia the tenacity af a riles sat sn...
...In America where the fear of Communism had so completely blinded the people that they had* never bothered to find out what actually made the modern Russians click, this aspect of the Slavic problem had never been sufficiently appreciated...
...Ho could read and write but he rarely indulged in the painful hixury of putting his thoughts to paper...
...y JAMES ftOtTT *f*HE night before the Fair Employment Prac* tioes Committee (FEPC) held its much-postponed railroad hearings rn Washington, Negro trade unionists held a rally to organise a movement for a permanent FEPC...
...One of the high moments of the* hearings was reached when Charles M. Bruse Jr...
...1943...
...Then the author passes in review tbe clauses of the constitution's preamble, and discusses the power ef tbe president, the congress, and tbe courts...
...Commentators have kmg pointed oat that the eld left wing of the Patriot party in the Revolution was set represented st Philadelphia...
...The Federalist, and Beard's two books on our Constitution and American traditions, can serve as a guide in seeking the , middle road between the ul t ra -reactionaries and the ultra-revolutionaries...
...They already had a small open window towards the North but that was of no earthly good to them as the port of Archangel was f rosea up for the greater part of each year...
...Now, if never before, the American system needs critical analysis...
...Tom Jefferson...
...The constitution they drafted sought a middle road between these dangerous paths...
...then what wowQ MW apt to writs at the end of this century emmeeru ing our great diplomatic victory i* Moscow w October •/ the year mf Grace 1943...
...For his neighbors, he evaluates the benefits of the federal system, describes the functions of political parties, surveys the "economic underwriting of the constitution, and mows the weeds in the garden of foreign affairs with the keen scythe of sarttry...
...Joseph Stalin in his resplendent Marshall's uniform was no longer the colorless revolutionary leader he had been during his first forty years...
...The constitutional convention was actuated u much by a desire to head off tke null- tariata as to protect the member's interests against the radicals...
...Officially the allwhite railroad unions were equally diffident...
...Said the white man: "Now, Bd has fieen firing with me for 21 years...
...The black man was told he was through...
...For information of this description of Beard as highwayman, consult Nicholas Murray Butler or William Howard Taft) Young Beard discovered that the Founding Fathers were shippers, merchants, sad speculators in land and public securities...
...And that was one aspect of the ease that was completely overlooked by most American...
...Five-sixth* of them, it appeared, were financially interested in the outcome of their work at Philadelphia...
...And so it was once more proven that all other things being equal it will always be the party which knows its history best that will be victorious withm the realm of diplomatic negotiation -while the party which has failed to learn the lessons which the Goddess Clio has put at his disposal will suffer defeat...
...3.00) is no disquisition on the ultimate verities...
...How to preserve the idea of constitutional processes and keep it anchored firmly in the minds and affect...
...The truth is that tbe whole constitution—the entire new government which the Founding Fathers constructed—was a compromise between two sets of fears...
...To a certain extent this was true...
...Of course it is easy to understand all this at the present moment, s hundred years after the event...
...The method may be the manner of Socrates, bat the substance is the stuff of Hamilton and - Madison...
...And yet it would not endanger democracy . in America, aa a fourth term for him and his iafiatod oaVisjdom woald...
...Next day at the hearings the same man and other Negro railroad workers, speaking with almost equpl intensity, spelled out, chapter by chapter, tbe unhappy chronicle of the thirtyists, aided by the carriers and tbe presumptively impartial agencies of government, against their colored brothers—a war disastrous alike for the Negroes and for the labor movement's life-anddeath need of inter-racial solidarity...
...The nation will not want to demote it* leader in the hour of victory— ' that seems certain—but the nation needs a change of government...
...two members of tbe National Mediation Board...
...Then, almost as sn afterthought "I am ready to die this morning...
...The little that the strangest of us can do may seem small, bnt surely the unresting spirit of Americans will endlessly strive to carry on tbe values in their heritage, to improve upon thetn...
...Viking Press...
...Both protested...
...a white engineer, told how he came to lose his seniority rights on the Georgia Central...
...the year 2043...
...No other theme of national policy," Beard told his neighbors at the beginning of their weekly visits, "is so important to us as constitutionalism—the civilian way of living together in the Republic, the way of preserving our liberties and the decencies of social intercourse against the frensies of the despotic and violent temper...
...Their compromises—and there were compromises, to he sure—were over the best political means to achieve their economic objectives...
...The conceit of picturing his neighbors gathered in intimate conversation about his fireside discussing the nature of the American government enables Beard to avoid both the usual dreary trappings of scholarship and the partial presentation of polemics...
...We, too, need such cheeks and" balances In the Constitution of the United Nations, as the Founding Fathers pat into the Constitution of the Fnited States...
...They wanted open windows towards the East and 'the West and the South...
...Q.: What was the occasion of that...
...Fortunately, the analysis needed has come from the pen of America's ablest scholar...
...But he can't...
...The Founding Fathers had talked little history and less philosophy in the convention, but these three advocates of the constitution dipped deep into the well of history to draw up precedent and argument for the new government To contemporaries and to posterity their essays have become the authoritative exposition of the founders' intentions...
...It la one of those dilemmas which are usually solved by kicking a man upstairs...
...Historians of tbe constitutional convention long told a dramatic story of the Standing Fathers wrestling mightily with one ^pother over the terms of the' constitution...
...A few people at the moment when this happened raised a feeble voice of warning bat they were denounced as bad patriots and they were no more listened to than Vansittart, the British permanent under-seeretary of State, had been listened to during the infamous days ef Prime Minister Chamberlain...
...The so-called Farewell Message of Peter the Great had of course long been exposed as a fake...
...0yer .and over, writers on the constitution told the story of large states lined up against small, of Southern States against Northern, of agricultural interests opposing commercial, w"fth painstaking seal these writers searched dp* sketchy record to emerge with lists of compromises—the "great" or "Connecticut'' compromise over representation, the "three-fifths" compromise over counting slaves, the compromise on commerce and navigation, the compromises over the election of the president, the powers of the Senate, the very clauses of the nasi draft And, frequently, to cap the-whole atrncture of patchwork, these imaginative commentators, with an enthusiasm rivaling that of ¦ sports broadcaster, added the bill of rights as the final compromise of the whole breathtaking bout As a symbol of the significance of compromise in American life, the picture af the - embattled Fathers behind the stone walk of Phils del phis haa it use...
...played creditable and muring roles in This drama...
...For Russia...
...So that it wasn't the lack of civilized attitude* among tbe rank and file railroad workers, white and black, that was st fault...
...It too Will be a compromise between conflicting national economic interests sad between fears ef toe much democracy—with 1 its revolutionary implications — and too great centralisation of power...
...The Allies of the West could never hope to destroy the armies of the Nasi Fuehrer unless they could depend upon continued help from Russia...
...They were considered a great personal triumph for the venerable statesman Mr...
...Palestine had at last a chance to become a truly Jewish nation for the Russians being completely indifferent to any kind of religious sentiments (in spite of America's hopeful attitude about their conversion) was perfectly willing to appeal to tbe Zionist ambitions of the Jews if by such a policy they could gain the goodwill of the leading Jews in every part of the world...
...A.: Yes, sir...
...Nor did the carriers fail wholly to meet' this test When tostifCaattaaed so Page Seven) Constitution THE creators of our * Constitution were not philosophers but business men, landlords, and speculators...
...He was tall, awkward, seemingly so stage-struck that for a moment his hearers feared he might take refuge from his embarrassment by clowning...
...U^prWMot •epresasfed CUKTOYtNG the situation, Charles A. Beard, in The Republic, concludes "that there were three parties to the [constitutional] struggle...
...ODAY however we realise what that widely publicized Moscow conference was to mean to the subsequent development of the world at large...
...This craft kyalty held firm, even despite the bitterness felt by the Negroes when they ww their sens, experienced in semi-skilled railroad labor, refused jobs as switchmen, green white beys being employed instead...
...If, today, there \s less fear of democracy, there is more real and substantial fear of an American dictatorship...
...In contrast, the carriers were there in force...
...They were agreed upon the necessity for a stronger government than the old Articles of Confederation, >hd they Were agreed on the economic ends which that government should serve...
...They were concerned with the practical financial effects of government on their own interests...
...The dream however of some day achieving this goal remained very much alive within the hearts and minds of all true Russian patriots and it mattered little whether they called themselves Tsarists or Bolshevists...
...Speaking for the most part through Mr...
...To depreciate and neglect the exercise of these powers is as great a folly as to overestimate and overstrain them...
...Gatei, and Greene were all familiar withsebsines to use the-army in a coup d'etat...
...For the American public schools and newspapers had trained the American people for a century and a half in a method of what we might call an s-historical way of thinking, and they were blissfully unaware of what had actually happened...
...And this mixture of clashing attitudes msy have-made the American pubBe band to the actual results of that Moscow conference which they hailed aa a great triumph bat which to reality was aa Igassaia ions defeat for the Wast bscaaae it falllled the age old dream of Peter the Great—a Russia that with free access to all the nanfree sing sess of oar globe...
...Beard and the Constitution The New Federalist •y WILUAM I. HiSSiniHi Professor of History, University of Wisconsin CINFLICT and compromise are the foundation Btones of the American way of life...
...Q.: Did there come a day when you were displaced from your position a* a mainline engineer...
...A.: Well, I was asked to roll (displace) a senior colored fireman and I refused to do it...
...They told how pressure mounted like the curve on a fever chart during -every period of economic depression and consequent diaemployrhent...
...Aad intemstionaiists with a zest for a notice force te coerce the world might well give consideration to the fears af military dictatorship which troubled the Founding Fethers...
...I have worked 33 years sod JMvet had an argument with s white man...
...The constitution reflected their apprehensions, »nd was filled with checks against the leveling spirit PaF fesV7aiTnir*r is the other dsnger confronting the Founding Fathers...
...He had become the Russian nationalist who was st last to give body and substance to the dream which had inspired Peter the Great in hi* struggles against the Swedes and the Turks...
...Towards the West their victorious campaigns against the Swedish madman who wasted his glorious territorial heritage to vent his spite upon his personal enemy, the King of Poland, had carried them to the Baltic, but the Baltic was too far removed from the real center of the world's activities to be of value...
...The dynamic force in American historical development haa been the ever continuing conflict between opposing groups.claaaea, interests and areas...
...or.* of succeeding generations—that is the task of the present aad future, a task of civilization, supreme over all others...
...Q.: Is there any reason why other white engineers on that division so far as you know ere not present at this- hearing to testify T A.: Well, they would be here, but tbey don't want to stick> their neck* out...
...Peddlers of panaceas are offering quack remedies, and confirmed pessimists are convinced that the American ship will be wrecked upon the rocks of either Communism or Fascism...
...As a statement of fact the picture had two defects: it wasn't true, and it missed the point...
...The Caasrifafiea And a Middle toad MORE than three decades ago a young upstart named Charles Beard, ignoring the traditional story, pushed his inquiries into the nature of the Philadelphia convention beyond Madison's notes...
...That will give an idea of the religious intensity, the moral power, that brought about the triumphant conclusion of the railroad hearings, a victory confirmed by the President last week when he said that "shall" means ."must," as used in the Executive Order that reads: "There shall be no discrimination hi the employment of any person in war industries or in government by reason of race, color, or national origin...
...p Perhaps it should have been a comfort to the Negroes to have it explained that it wasn't the all-white brotherhoods or the carriers or the government who had given thorn The pooai^pt just our civilisation...
...But the National Mediation Boaxd too had signed that agreement, so what did you expect the carriers to do about it...
...The convention was made up of civilians with civilian interests, and the constitution they adopted threw careful safeguards about the military power...
...He had developed into the direct descendant of the Tsars whom he had foaght s»1 bitterly and so brilliantly during the first half of his career...
...Charles A. Beard, who has studied the American experience deeper and better than , any other man, has written s new "Federalist...
...Alexander Hamilton thought the people a great beast, Elbridge Gerry believed the evils af the day flowed from an "excess of democracy," and gouty Gouverneur Morris grew apoplectic in contemplating the rabble...
...Tea Problems of I7M i» 1941 A HUNDRED and fifty-five years after the *^ campaign to adopt the constitution finds the nation confronted with a chaos somewhat comparable to that of 1788...
...While the venerable Secretary of State Who had no first-hand knowledge of either Europe or its history fell into the trap that had been set for him on the shores of the Moskwa river...
...The American people weH knew that they needed Russia in their tght on Nazism and eventually in their war against Japan...
...As for the East, there they helped themselves in such a magnificent manner that soon a few of their Koasaeks had actually trotted all the way down to the shores of the Pacific Ocean...
...This has special interest for as today...
...He must know it is the next great task of mankind...
...A hundred years later after the power of the Turk had been destroyed the jealousy of the other European nations still kept Russia a landlocked empire with no direct access to either the Atlantic or the Pacific...
...Thev therefore found themselves in the uncomfortable oosi'km nf a man who is saved from drowning by his worst enemy He wants to be saved bat he wifthes to God that Ms savior had been somebody else...
...Tbey treat yon just like a white man...
...DRUCE was in fact the only white railroad " worker who "stuck hi* neck out" during the course of the hearings...
...Cornell Hull...
...Had the movement Jor forming a new Constitution by peaceful processes failed, there js no doubt in my mind that the men of the sword weald havt jnade a desperate effort to set up a dictatorship by arms...
...Sidney Alderman, counsel for the Southern Railroad, they said they were sorry...
...Those who ¦niarabj wtsb to establish justice, inaunt taanoxulity, paspaote fat* general welfare, and secure the slsnsitsgs eg liberty might take a lesson from the Founding Fat hers and seek n "civilian" way for nationa to live tegmmar...
...The men at Philadelphia were-alike afraid of democratic excess sad of military dictatorship...
...Throughout the revolutionary and the Confederation periods, many men wanted a strong national government whose coercive authority would test upon the array...
...Bat like them, he hoHsvrs it the aale alternative te sheas or dictatorship...
...Once on the shores of the Malayan seas, the Dutch colonies too would fall an easy prey to Russian propaganda which invariably directed itself to the very source of popular discontent and was therefore bound to be successful...
...But compromise solutions are fundamental in the American way of life, and the alternattvae are an aiaaons today as they ware fat 1788...
...They were afraid of excessive democracy end of excessive centralisation of power...
...Obviously, at this point they were expected to remember the moras (customs to you, brother) of the StWftC a* quietly home, and take it out in prayer...
...They »ere first and last and all the time Russian patriots with a fierce lore for their Slavic soil and with tremendous aspirations for the future glory of the Slavic people...
...Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, each of whom respected civilisn control and refused the opportunities te seise power, ant tbe exemplars of the spirit...
...1941, crashed like a runaway locomotive...
...earn a f ahh, ami nn s«d sn scfaetershlp, that ' civilisation fat the Catted States . . »ill canting* far long centuries to come.*' And, in conclusion, as he ends his fireside seminar with tbe American people, be voices portunities in which we can work ion the good, the true, the useful, and the beautiful...
...Generals Knox, Schuyler, McDougall...
...Finland too eras to be partly annexed and Russia was to *»4p herself to such parts ef Poland as suited her fancy and her interests...
...Yes, trained Negro firemen and switchmen were being kicked out of their jobs in the nriddle of the war...
...T'je rail.Wa," explained Mr...
...Carefully, Beard seta about to review the American experience in constitutionalism...
...Compromise— Th» American Way TRUE it is that Charles A. Beard, advocating * the readoption of the constitution and s return to constitutionalism, offers only s compromise solution...
...The most important literary product of the campaign was the Federalist Papers, a series of 85 essays by Hamilton, Jay, Madison...
...f>en from the meager notes of Madison," once etete A. C. McLaughlin, "we can see something af the excitement, the feeling only half sappressed, the grim determination of those trying ?a...
...Sues came within reach of the Russian armies and navies and air flotillas...
...For ua to belittle or fail to use our intellectual and moral powers for this work is to belie the best in our natures...
...In the light of this revelation, the theory that the convention was saved only through • long' series of compromises collapsed...
...In My Opinion •?*HE true solution of the Fourth Term problem is for Roosevelt to become the first president of s world state...
...The Constitution was a compromise between conflicting economic interests as well as between these fears...
...Mi* great-greatgrandfather might write in an identical vein in the pear 1943 did he feet at liberty to de so...
...The small nations of tbe Bal'ir remained - part of the great Slavic empire...
...And finally the unexpected strength of the Turks in the South has kept them away from the waters of the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean...
...At Moscow the Allies, America and England had obtained the definite promise of continued Russian cooperation for which they hoped...
...They made no appearance, and offered no testimony, being represented only by an observer...
...Suddenly he straightened, power poured through him, and when he spoke, his voice rang like a bell...
...A Negro locomotive fireman took the platform...
...This," he said, "is my moment to speak for freedom...
...the facts were as stated...
...Peter had never been •a very literary kind of prson...
...Iti the September number of the P*Utical Science Quarterly, Professor Merrill Jensen discusses "The Idee of a National Government during the American Revolution...
...The Founding Fathers had no intention of leaving Philadelphia without a Constitution...
...England really lost all the final aims for which it had entered the war...
...The unifying force which haa kept these contending el Jments from flying at each other's throat* ar fly*W off in all directions has been the deep-seated willingness of the Americans M prefer compromise to combat...
...In — that respect the Moscow conference was undoubtedly a great step forward...
...It is net right to take him off this job because you pat a Pissei engine on it" Another Negro fireman testified "Sometime* you get those crews who cant toil iiliSliass*3pu are white or Negro...
...Education . . . Prcblem* calling for the highest statenaanship . . . can be solved only by civilisation . . . Sorry...
...He has it nf his power to found such s state...
...Tea Vision of Peter fee Greet VTET, he might weH have suspected some such trap for Russia's program, for the future of the Slavic race had been known for more than three hundred years...
...the story of the Founders' fear of democracy is familiar enough...
...It was said, that from that moment on a genuine and general cooperation between the Allies would become more than the possibility it had been during the first years of the war and that Hitler was now doomed to defeat...
...te create new arts and sciences af living, to sustain and make better the Republic...
...Moreover, again and again, in one form or another, someone is constantly raising the question whether a constitution framed for a comparatively simple rural society is fitted for the complexities of an industrial nation...
...I left the thing go right then," testified Russell...
...He shows Hamilton regarding the array as an Essential cement to the Union," and proposing » conjunction of the public creditors and the •rmy officers to strengthen tie...
...During that conference this extremely shrewd Georgian peasant played hi* card" so cleverly that he won every point on the oW Slavic program of expansion...
...Joseph Stalin's help...
...And 'historians, from the very beginning had doubted the authenticity of that so-called "Last Will and Testament of the Great Piotr" in which the Tzar was supposed to have laid down the future aspirations of the nation he.,.had just founded...
...They, and white experts summoned by the FEPC's counsel told how even after Pearl Harbor had accented the .need for skilled ; railroad workers, the brotherhoods had Intensified the purge by forcing through the infamous Southeastern Carrier's Conference agreement—a contract witnessed and signed ia...
...No peace settlement, end nothing else he cares about, "ran be made secure without it Such a move would.satisfy both his ambition and his legitimate wish to finish the job he began...
...But then it was too late to do anything about it except to make the best of a very bad bargain...
...Bat neither Beard nor the earlier commentators presented the whole story of compromise sad the constitution...
...But even without this spurious document all the world knew what the Russian people hoped to obtain for themselves...
...accustomed to centuries of slaughter, was much less careful about its manpower than were these nations of the West where the respect for the rights of the individual had made the average general very careful about the number of his soldiers that he exposed to death or mutilation...
...Suppose Omt •*#<•/«.• mil gfjf gromdeonS should have inherited my lore of historical speculations...
...H- went home to my bedroom and got on my knees and began to pray to Aimignty God to guard my actions, and I thanks Him who have me here this morning to testify in behalf 'of~the Negro men...
...They told how even before the last war the all-white Brotherhoods, by means of strikes and threatened walkouts, had forced a number of the railroads to agree to restrict colored workers as to their percentage on the rolls, their runs, and their jobs...
...Into the mouths of bis imaginary neighbors, Beard puts the commentaries and the queries of the critics, the confused, and the reactionaries...
...with the accident rate rising, and the shortage <f skilled railroad workers so acute that the employment of war prisoners had been seriously suggested...
...Ala>!¦»¦»., a good lawyer sad a cultured gentleman* ''are not operated is a vacuum or ia a tseseetical Utopia, bat must adapt their opsrstisas*wa*i employment practices to the social solutions of racial quest), n* as worked out by the piaasujllag mores and legsl systems of the states they serve...
...Although he has borrowed title and form from Plato, his "The Republic: Conversations on Fundamentals" (New York...
...1*HIS, rather than the sporadic uuUweeJta of violence during depression periods in the deep south, represented the prevailing too* and texture of black-white relationships in railroad employment These were the warm humanities, the civilized decencies into Which that outrageous Southeastern Conference agieement of February...
...A white engineer and a Negro fireman sprung out of their cab at tbe end of a run...
...Persia was left to the mercies of the Slavs...
...Symbolic of the part that compromise Wfm played in American history is the hoary tradition that the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 was saved only throoirh dompromise...
...how in 1929 and again in 1931, Negro, firemen were literally shot oct of their cabs, fifteen being killed and twenty-nine wounded in this way...
...Finally Russia being extremely well-informed about the growing state of unrest in India now became the neighbor of the Indian peninsula and Moscow realized that it would be only a matter of time before the subtle Bolshevik propaganda would be able to organize such a widespread state of unrest among the hundreds af millions of natives that no British army would any longer be able to keep them in check...
...We are about to attempt to draft some sort af "constitution" of a world federation...
...And after due contemplation / turned out the fallowing imaginary chapter from his History of the Last Hundred years as published in the year 2043: WHEN the result* of the Moscow conference of October 1948 became known in .America they were greeted with general enthusiasm...
...Besides the radicals and the conservatives Acre was aa influential group en the extreme right, of the conservative*—a group that was ripe and ready for | resort to the sword...
...the carriers had signed that Southeastern conference agreement which wrote finis to the Negroe's hope that somehow a few of them might cling to jobs that members of their race had held for a hundred years...
...But the Allies were obliged to pay a terrific price for Mr...
...Armed with the lethal weapon of scholarship, he sneaked up behind the fifty-five members of the convention, and held them up while he rifled their pockets...
...Once the constitution was drafted, its proponents set about to convince the country it should be adopted...
...A Negro switchman, R. H. Russell, described tbe run-around given him when he tried to get railroad employment for his two sops, ia the end the white trainmaster told him flatly that "the less yon have to say about this luring of niggers the better off yow will be...
...First of all he *t"»«e*"'ed in making the Atlantic Charter a dead letter...
...In the south direct access to the Mediterranean wa« obtained...
...Pat Henry, Sam Adams, and Tom Paine were not there—and the commentators, borrowing Henry's phrase, have "smelled a rat" in the circumstance...
...A Story of What Jim-Crowism Mean...
Vol. 26 • November 1943 • No. 47
