Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
Where the News Ends By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN Of Diplomats and Other Things MR. ED. FLYNN'S withdrawal from the struggle to obtain confirmation as envoy to the South Pacific (his elaborately...
...Our production figures coupled with the testimony of the men who know prove that our voluntary system of recruitment is working extremely well...
...The power of the voters has not been enlisted...
...I once heard of a bohemian writer who, when deep in his cups, called up a wealthy old lady, announced himself as an income-tax inspector and demanded that she appear at his ofBeo to account for alleged tax defalcations...
...One hopes that the entire profession of diplomacy will he relieved of a good many of its "striped pants" features after the war...
...and here the turning ''own of Mr...
...Philadelphia...
...While our eyes are on battles and production lines sinister forces are moving in—both here and abroad—to grasp the fruits of victory and use them for evil ends...
...The Nazis have set up what would seem toj* an unbeatable world's record for losing frW* and alienating people...
...To minds like theirs, totally innocent of industrial experience, sending an army to run the factories may seem like a practical plan...
...Both developments are calculated to focus attention on the problems of organizing the diplomatic service in a democracy...
...To anyone whose information is a shade more adequate the idea is little less than fantastic...
...N*E of Canada's secluded backwaters, the mari-time province of New Brunswick, acquired a little publicity recently by providing gas masks for its inhabitants, apparently with the idea that clouds of German gas are likely to emerge at any moment...
...This Conference can mobilize millions of voters and put power behind the right ideas for peace...
...Often enough machines were stopped and men sent home for lack of steel...
...Sometimes these are debts in a very literal sense...
...Let's have more digests and lengthy quotes from Senate investigations and exposes—similar to your articles on the OPA profits study, etc...
...What the Citizen's Committee, Senator Austin and Congressman Wadsworth do not sufficiently understand is that a factory force is entirely different from an army...
...LABOR RISES TO THE CRISIS ?N the formation of the American Labor Con* ference on International Affairs we have tangible basis for hope of the sort of labor statemanship for which The New Leader has been calling...
...But all of this has occurred as in a vacuum...
...If there actually are soldiers who can fight...
...It is highly desirable that it should be considered calmly in relation to its probable effectiveness...
...Davies' book also contains some amusing "breaks," in the best tradition of Mr...
...The result is that British envoys in foreign lands maintain a more even and consistent technical level of old-fashioned diplomatic competence than our own...
...ARTHUR ROSENBERG THE death this week of Arthur Rosenberg, * distinguished German scholar and writer, and Professor of History at Brooklyn College, is a great loss to the labor and democratic cause...
...A gifted outsider may sometimes bring a breath of fresh air into the situation and cut through a good deal of protocol and red tape...
...But it feels sure that the enactment of this selective service measure would not accomplish that purpose...
...The New Leader believes emphatically in doing whatever is necessary to get every worker in the right place and to get him there in such a mood and under such conditions that he will produce the greatest possible amount of good for the war effort...
...The book is priced as low as possible, $2.00...
...The actual work-week was lengthening as fast as the supply of materials and the interest of employers allowed the stretching out...
...The New Leader extends its condolence to Dr...
...LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Minister Finds Place for 'Hate', Scores 'Weakness' From K. M. CHWOROWSKr Minister, Flatbash Unitarian Church To the Editor: In your editorial comment on "Hate as a Weapon" in the January 23 "New Leader...
...But that is not why they win...
...One of the jobs that is keeping the F.B.I, butt these days is tracking down individuals who, frosi sheer exuberant vanity, or because they are working some kind of confidence game, persist in he-personating officers...
...in the detached manner of certain "counsellors of perfection" or according to that glib theological recipe of "repentant fighting," well, I can only say that they must be either subhuman or super-divine creatures...
...It leads inevitably to a bitterly partisan discussion of the merits of the proposed measure...
...But too many of our amateur diplomats are badly disqualified by gross ignorance of the country in which they are stationed...
...Over the past several years, he contributed many important articles to The New Leader...
...but I cannot help feeling that even such an outburst, pitched in the key of ultra-violent emotion, may by its very exaggeration remind us of the sloppy sentimentality so popular these days, that romantic illusion which insists that a war can be fought with the manners of "tails and toppers...
...Shortly after the last war, he became a leading figure of the Communist Party of Germany and the Third International...
...All departments and agencies of the Federal Government shall take such action as is "necessary to effectuate the purposes of this order...
...Joseph E. Davies, scarcely covered himself himself with glory by his "intuitive" pronouncement of judgment on the victims of the bizarre treason and satotage trials, a judgment pronounced without paying the slightest visible attention to the formidable evidence pointing to fraud and inconsistency in the trials and collected by the Dewey Commission...
...A more recent amateur Ambassador to Russia, Mr...
...Out of the published averages emerges no picture of the reality...
...This sitution is unfortunate...
...However, I wonder whether something may not be said in defense of writers who, even with extreme statements of their case, do succeed in calling to the attention of their readers the fact that a war cannot be either fought or won solely by the exercise of man's socalled "higher" faculties of sweetness and light...
...Under restrictions established by the government, workers select their own jobs and their places of employment...
...Our junior diplomatic personnel is recruited by the method of competitive examinations and represents a fair cross-section of applicants...
...As a general rule the career diplomat is the safer bet when it is a matter of competently handling foreign relations, although the amateur, if he possesses genuine ability and initiative may occasionally make a good showing...
...Our ambassadors fall into two main categories: "career diplomats" who have risen by promotion from within the service and amateurs, gifted or otherwise, who owe their appointments either to records of public service, or...
...not pause to verify some very cockeyed information about the formation and make-up of the Duma...
...New Brunswick has a permanent claim to distinction...
...It is due to this fact that results have been so notably good...
...John, its principal port, you are on Duke Street or Prince William Street, if you are not on King Street or Queen Street...
...Certain persons connected with the Citizen's Committee supporting the bill and certain remarks included in the publicity in support of it naturally rouse the suspicion that it is part of a general anti-labor campaign centering in Washington...
...AN INDUSTRIAL ARMY...
...I recall only too well the situation more than twenty-five years ago, when under the impact of a blind and unreasonable Anti-Germanism, German music, German art, and even the study of the German language came so close to being numbered among the warcasualties...
...FLYNN'S withdrawal from the struggle to obtain confirmation as envoy to the South Pacific (his elaborately assumed ignorance on the subject of paving-blocks was not considered as a sufficient qualification) coincided with a report that the British diplomatic service is to be reorganized along more democratic lines in the post-war period...
...It is the most staunchly monarchical district of the Dominion...
...and Mr...
...The fifth section provides a definite defeat of the anti-labor campaigners...
...A minor prize in this ee* nection seems due to the humble Bundist in thts country who cheerfully hailed a Norwegian nUjaVt bor as "landsmann" on the day after the invasiel of Norway, apparently in the sincere belief tats be was going to make a good impression...
...Maybe our soldiers do not win because they hate the enemy...
...but I'm not so sure that one important reason for their being as-"good" as you say they are may be precisely their capacity for hating the foe...
...Long service in a diplomatic bureaucracy where the safest rule is to follow precedent may have a paralyzing effect on initiative...
...As far as possible the conditions remain normal...
...The only question concerns the best means of getting every person into the right place and managing things so that he or she will make the greatest possible contribution to the common effort...
...Schemes for world government have been drawn up and discussed...
...Therefore Representative Clarence Cannon, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, decided that for his own guidance he needs a reliable agency...
...The American Ambassador to Russia at the time of the Revolution was Mr...
...Wars simply aren't fought that way, and all the raving of theologians and all the pretty sentimental speeches of pacifists and near-pacifists aren't going to ¦ change the brutal fact that when men bomb, commando-raid, shoot and bayonet their fellowmen they simply are not acting "humanly" if they succeed in doing this without being deeply moved by hatred and detestation for those whom, as the instruments of tyranny and aggression, they are obliged to destroy or to disable...
...Regular libraries can purchase copies at a discount...
...Only 500 copies of this great Socialist classic have beer, issued, and the plates melted in compliance with government request for metal...
...For all this royalist sentiment there is a |eoi historical background...
...That sturdy democrat Mat* Twain has Huck observe, when the king and th» duke have gone on one of their not infrequow debauches: "You couldn't tell them from the real ones...
...The American and British systems in this field offer some interesting and suggestive contrasts...
...It was unfortunate that the Citizen's Committee considered it necessary to couple its declaration with a statement to the effect that other measures are under consideration dealing with such matters as wages, unionism rules and government regulations...
...His contacts, his sources of information, are drawn from to* limited and selected a circle...
...The over-time rules still stand...
...We may now look for an honest and efficient house-cleaning...
...He served in the Reichstag from 1924-1928 as a Communist deputy, but broke with the party when it became the secure puppet of Moscow with the appointment of Ernst Thaelmann as leader over the protests of the party...
...Plans have been drawn to meet the post-war crisis at home...
...Rosenberg was the author of several books in ancient history...
...As long as it gives satisfactory results there can be no adequate reason for substituting a compulsory draft system the results of which, to say the least, would be problematical...
...A leading and hardworking scholar...
...New Brunswick was the refuge of large numbers of America's Tory and-grants...
...to render such personal service in aid of the war effort as he or she may be deemed best fitted to perform...
...AH trade union agreements are to be fulfilled...
...Theoretically the new order may raise the amount of available labor power of-a region as much as 20 percent...
...he was also the author of several histories of the German republic...
...The AFofL, the CIO and the Railway Brotherhoods have combined forces...
...Consequently even an envoy who may be well qualified by experience and linguistic knowledge oftea-proves constitutionally unable to grasp the significance of everts when he is stationed in a country that is passing through a period of political and social change and upheaval...
...Flynn was a step in the right direction...
...We shall have the 48-hour week, but there will be no cut in pay...
...The first of the President's directives orders plants, factories and other places of employment to work not less than 48 hours a week under pain of not being deemed to "be making the most effective utilization of its manpower...
...Dies...
...Not that I want a peace dictated by either revenge or vindictiveness, but I have a feeling that we may need a bit more of that realism which is pot inclined to forgive so much that it gives away too much of the legitimate fruits of victory...
...Russian words are habitually misspelled...
...The public has reason, however, to place more confidence in the five men appointed from the executive departments by the President's order...
...The British A ambassador 'almost invariably bears the prefix of Sir and even junior secretaries have to be "gentlemen" in the narrow technical British ¦anil of that much used and much abused word...
...The President, the Manpower Commission and other Washington authorities take for granted that the workers will be happy to work the longer period if the opportunity is offered them...
...But whatever gain is registered will be an important addition to the country's productive power...
...Rosenberg's History of Bolshevism is one of the most penetrating studies of the rise of antidemocratic tendencies within the labor movement...
...Workers have been taught by experience that beyond a limit which varies for different industries—but which for most hovers in the neighborhood of 48 hours—a 'lengthened work-week decreases —rather thatt increases—production...
...After debating long and bitterly about the proposed removal of one employee, the House members realized that the Dies Committee information was confused, unreliable, useless...
...More little-known but important facts of economics and politics...
...This habit of passing oneself off for someone else is probably as old as the human race and leads to comical as well as sort* ous situations...
...Both among its trade union leaders and its scholars and experts the new Conference has the right sort of personnel...
...In this new organization the millions of American workers are at last united...
...We youth have a lot to learn, and we could learn some of it from The New Leader...
...He was a vigorous fighter for democratic socialism and an implacable opponent of totalitarianism, fascist and communist...
...Signs continue to mount that this war, which is being fought with the people's/ blood, sweat and treasure, is building up to a tragic let-down...
...Rosenberg's family...
...The book can be ordered directly from the Hand Book Store, 7 E. 15th St., N. Y. C. Mail orders are accepted at no extra charge...
...Two other organizations have bean set up to do what his should have been doing all the time...
...The current controversy over "to hate, or not to hate" is leading me to this conclusion among others: that I would rather see a volcanic apostle of hate at the next peace-table than too many of those starry-eyed dreamers and visionaries who are always talking about "forgiving and forgetting...
...On Saturday the President set up an inter-departmental committee of five to coordinate and facilitate actions looking to the discovery and removal of subversive persons in government services exclusive of the Army and Navy...
...I believe it to be the most worthwhile and democratic paper in America...
...but Gogol's "Revizor...
...ALL in all we would probably get along best in our foreign relations if we should create a thoroughly democratic foreign personnel, with appointment Btrictly by merit and no favors to graduates of Groton and Harvard, if we should draw our ambassadors mostly from the best men in this service, and if we should depart from this rule only in order to choose as ambassadors men or women of genuine distinction and profound knowledge of the countries to which they may be sent The political debt type of envoy should be liquidated once for all...
...It may not be necessary to become quite so volcanic about it as in the recent case of Rex Stout's blast against those who refuse to share his particular brand of hate...
...When you are In St...
...Even at this late date their decendants still have an understandable soft spot in their hearts for King George III...
...On Mondsy the House of Repre- ¦ sentatives virtually agreed,on the Betting up of a special five-man committee to give the members information that would enable them to separate undesirables from the Federal payroll...
...the total earnings of the state industries are mixed up with the profits...
...David Francis, a typical mid-western politician, whose comments on Russian revolutionary parties and politics are simply laughable for their naivete...
...The outstanding defect of the British system (and one hopes that the recent report that steps are being taken to cure it an proved true in practice) is that ambassadors and ministers, as a general rule, are drawn from much too narrow a class circle...
...There is evident here the intention to launch a general program of anti-labor legislation...
...Directive number four provides the necessary implementation...
...or "Inspector General...
...no other copies can be printed and this is the only edition of a book hitherto out of print...
...WANTS MORE EXPOSES From ^BENJAMIN KASSER To the Editor: My compliments on a good paper, a paper which has become essential...
...Within the limits set by health and production requirements the workers never had any objection to the process...
...and that open-minded, inteligent appreciation of modem political, social and economic trends, knowledge of tot history and language of foreign countries will outweigh adeptness In cookie-pushing as a qualification for advancement in the service...
...This is an important step in the direction of getting the most out of oar industrial army with the least possible sacrifice of freedom...
...The tremendous campaign carried on by certain journals, journalists and politicians against the completely theoretical 40-hour week was nothing but an unashamed effort to reduce the wages of workers...
...Rand Press Republishes Hillquit Book From MONA SHUB Manager, Rand Book Store" To the Editor: I think that readers of The New Leader will be interested in knowing that the Rand School Press has just republished Morris Hillquit's Socialism in Theory and Practice...
...Petersburg and ¦ plied with bribes and flattery is one of the finest bits of satire in Russian, or in any other language...
...His last book, Democracy and Socialism emphasized the organic connection between these two doctrines...
...PROOF OF DIES' FAILURE ""THOUGH Martin Dies has for years been * spending money and making headlines, the breakdown of his committee as a public agency was doubly attested this week in Washington...
...Against such a program trade union organizations are naturally set in advance...
...The action of the Congressional leaders must have been a bitter pill to Mr...
...In many cases employees were kept at work only 40 hours because employers sought to avoid paying the overtime rates...
...OFFICIAL 48-HOUR WEEK THE actual work-week in American industry daring the past year has been infinitely various...
...May all the gods preserve us from a return of such "Schrecklichkeit...
...A good many, far too many, of our ambassadors have been appointed not because of any particular knowledge of the Language, history or institutions of the country to which they are accredited, but because they have come across handsomely when it was a question of contributing to the campaign war chest of the party that won the last election or have otherwise made themselves politically useful...
...A lot of good thinking has been done...
...To the* utmost extent the motives of free labor still function...
...in which tht hero, by a series of accidents, is taken for the dreaded inspector from St...
...Unless something happens—something greater and more decisive than we have had up to now—the defeat of Hitler will but leave the world naked to the next rush of dictatorial oppression...
...EDITORIAL COMMENT TH...
...They win because they are good...
...But even the averages show variations running from 39 hours for leather workers to 49 for machinery workers...
...the monarch for whom their ancestors made such considerable sacrifices...
...The British trade unions are ready to play their part...
...And Mark Twain did a pretty good jO» with the two rascally impostors in "Huckleberrf Finn" who impose themselves on Huck and hsl Negro companion as a king and a duke who bs*"l come on evil days...
...This parson has neither the desire nor the business to preach the dangerous gospel of hate...
...And the Neat Brunswicker calls the health of the King with meticulous regularity and with a challenging not* that one misses in most other, parts of Canada...
...Francis...
...Professor Rosenberg was one of those whose faith in democratic processes was forged in the fires of experience with totalitarians...
...rVERY citizen who wants to win the war *"* will agree with the stated purpose of the Manpower Service Bill introduced into Congress early this week...
...In many plants the schedules for shifts impose a work-week of a special length...
...This group is technically well fitted for its task, it will be in continuous operation, and it has the right relations with F.B.I., the Civil Service Commission and the other key bureaus and departments...
...That is, concerns which do not toe the mark will get no orders, no loans, no priorities, no deferment for employees...
...MOST WORTHWHILE From JOHN LOEB (American Youth Committee) To the Editor: Allow me to congratulate you on The New Leader...
...you chide certain professional writers for their "systematic pumping up of hate" and say "that they cannot possibly be serving a practical military purpose...
...The loud leaders of the campaign against the mythical 40-hour week have no right to claim the President's proclamation of last Tuesday as a symbol of victory...
...more frequently, one fears, to the practice of paying off political debts with ambassadorial appointments...
...All of us are of the opinion that "an obligation rests upon every person...
...Beyond this limit workers naturally object to being driven, and wise employers and government administrators will agree with them in their objection...
...If this move succeeds, we shall have a situation entirely different from that which proved to be the prelude to tragedy in 1918...
...Tool-makers have long been working for all the hours that a man can stand on his feet before a machine...
...When a British Cabinet has to pay a political debt it makes a man a baronet, not an ambassador...
...This system of volunteer mobilization is being gradually modified by the President and the Manpower Commission as we go along...
...The reasons why average hours have not gone higher' have nothing to do with any law or any trade union agreements...
...This hoi just a little suggestion of sadism...
...Davies did...
...Further on you say, "naturally they (our soldiers) hate the enemy...
...If coupled with energetic campaigns for fewer accidents, better health, more satisfactory housing—for all the things that make for efficiency and against all the things that promote absenteeism—we can step np our production enormously...
...Actually, of course, the increase will be much less than this...
Vol. 26 • February 1943 • No. 7
