Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
Where the News Ends By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN Reynolds, Stout and the Hymn of Hate THE question of hate, of whom to hate, and what, and how much, is attracting more and more public attention....
...pHEN there is Rex Stout, best known as the * author of the "Nero Wolfe" detective stories...
...There may be good reasons for building up.our forces at the expense of our Allies, but if there are such reasons, they should be openly stated...
...Russia and China have millions of men eager to fight who need equipment...
...Montgomery should, of course, have picked up an axe or some other lethal weapon and dashed the captive German's brains out...
...The reporters who questioned the doughty Captain last Sunday should have -been more merciful...
...The responsible authorities should make every effort to satisfy them that all important interests are taken into 'account and that decisions are revised as situations change...
...LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Hans Kohn Hits Raynal 'Optimsm/ Protests 'Fascism' in French Africa From HANS KOHN Professor of History, Smith College To the Editor: I admire Andre Raynal's "optimism" that under General Giraud and his extreme Rightist-semi-Fascist government "the future looks bright...
...An over-sized Army of our own would limit our supplies to Britain, Russia ahd China...
...The Governor who made that statement is the same one who proposes to cut two million dollars from the state aid to schools and thus make it impossible for .them to meet the challenge...
...but after the Armistice...
...As usually happens in war some individuals who are not in combat service have formed a chorus to preach the supreme necessity of blind indiscriminate hatred of every people with whorn we are at war...
...While the United Nations continued to pursue a holding strategy in the south-west Pacific, Australia would be primarily concerned with defence against aggression and limited offensive action...
...Abraham Lefkowitz presented the shocking facts in simple form...
...But "the utter hatefulness of Germany and the Germans...
...Raynal's article...
...For Ha blockade was maintained after Germany had laid down its arms...
...What can fairly be said is that aft* Germany became the strongest power oa tfcs continent it abused its power, just as France sad other predominant powers had abused their strength earlier...
...Stout is apparently envying the laurels of Lis-sauer, the German (and a Jew...
...The estimated surplus at the end' of the new fiscal year is more than fifty millions, and many experts agree that it is likely to top that figure by a substantial sum...
...And there is Henry MeLemore...
...DOVTNG war correspondents, sports writen turned experts on world affairs, and composers of detective stories are often not accurst* historians...
...This attitude is in line with his opinions about unions and about the nice non-union world which he pictures after the war...
...That opposition serves its country best which' criticizes totalitarian trends, reminds the officials in power that they are being watched carefully and will have to answer for maladministration and political, financial and social corruption as soon as the next .edition can be put to bed...
...In general, the legislators are merely using* popular discontent to nag the administration...
...What is Thomas Dewey driving at...
...But these men are working to keep up labor's standards for the men coming back after the war...
...Right, now the public is restless, questioning, unsatisfied about this problem of the size of our fighting forces...
...Othees, are pushing a bill against the induction of men with dependents...
...There begin to appear signs that we are approaching the limits which wisdom would prescribe...
...Which "political rivalries compromising this great enterprise" does he mean...
...That is effectual censorship...
...The Governor himself said: "The war has confronted the educational system of our state with its greatest challenge...
...But the News is right when it says that the customers can tune out what they do not like...
...On one side, the problem of the size of our Army is necessarily a matter for military experts...
...There are three downright fallacies n the unlimited Hymn of Hate against Germans, set against conscious Nazis and Nazism, school of thought that can be polished off in two or thru sentences...
...consultation of well-informed experts was held behind dosed doors...
...the south-west F»cm| none, which would be Austral*'1 front line for a long time...
...It will be the one commodity of woie* there will be no shortage when the war U over-To advocate in America blind indiscrheinijj hatred not of specific abominations of the *™5 and the Japanese militarists, but of whole P*0B*J is to prepare a very black future for the ~wa\f...
...It all began with the gagging of Father Charles E. Coughlin, who was thrown off the air because what he said offended a lot of people...
...What shameful softness...
...Also, the News openly supports Father Coughlin...
...All those outside the top authorities in the General Staff, the Manpower Commission and the key committees of Congress must take much on faith...
...There was Quentin Reynolds, for instance, taking part in a radio fcrum and pontificating in deep sepulchral tones for a war of total extermination against the"Germans.' Mr...
...But points of irritation are danger signals which should be taken into consideration...
...For their fathers, brothers and sisters back 'home it is all wrong...
...To them goes our gratitude and our hope for a better France, a France liberated not only from the Germans, but from her own Fascists too, who in June 1940,, could impose their shameful gov-° ernment upon the unhappy land...
...That is false...
...There are . now 35,000 over-large classes, and the teacher shortage is growing...
...The bill to extend the area of service of the militia, a** fore the Australian Parliasaei would permit use of medically * members of the militia*,net *M as they were now being used * front line troops in New <S|dn»a but also as front line troops...
...But it wffll» the best conceivable means of insuring that;9 victorious war will be followed by another w*> peace...
...Divisions of soldiers are useless without adequate food, arms and transportation...
...Montgomery invited him to breakfast...
...DEWEY GIVES EDUCATION THE BRUSH-OFF IF all the citizens of New York could get a picture of what Governor Dewey's budget will do to education, there would be a howl that would quickly effect a revision...
...To many qualified persons it seems that 11,500,000, in addition to the forces of the British, the Rusisans, the Chinese and our other Allies, will give the United Nations more than the required numbers...
...This week the Daily 'News, with a circulation of more than 4,000,000, editorially said in effect that it is willing to tolerate outright fascist propaganda rather than permit the New Deal to go uncriticized even in one of its most laudable efforts—the attempt to place behind bars the 33 leading Anglophobic, pro-fascist propagandists indicted in Washington recently...
...1) "The Germans got off easily after the la* War...
...In proportion to population, Forde has said, no other United Nation would exceed Australia's contribution of manpower to the common cause...
...There was general agreement, moreover, that definite...
...Mere announcements are not enough...
...C.) Times-Herald, official publications of the isolationist, anti-British blocs in and out of Congress, felt that these newspapers had a right to their editorial opinions...
...RICKENBACKER REASONING pAPTAIN EDDY RICKENBACKER has ^* been talking so long and so fast that he was sure to talk himself into a hole...
...success of Hitler...
...Anyone is entitled to work and be paid for it," he remarked in an off-hand way...
...by supreme irony) who composed the hymn of hate against England in the last war...
...The full use of school buildings, equipment and play spaces' is urgently required to fight back the increase in juvenile delinquency...
...I want to see bombers tear their towns apart, naval guns knock hell out of everything in their reach and their whole country humiliated...
...There has appeared as yet no disposition to tackle the problem as a whole and to take responsibility for reaching decisions...
...Congress has thus far done no more than nibble at the edges of the problems presented by this program...
...After all, the customers can tune out if they don't like what the man at the mike says...
...We, with our Allies, are fighting the combined forces of the Axis...
...MeLemore...
...To be effective, an army must have the right balance among the various arms, services and sources of supply...
...In the face of all this, the Governor proposes to slice the state appropriation and make bad things worse...
...The goal announced for the Army, 7,500,000, seems to have been set down arbitrarily and held to with a rigidity which takes no account of changing conditions...
...The spirit of opposition must live as long as the proponents of democracy would -perpetuate the type of freedom which has made possible the ascendancy of the New Deal and three terms of President Roosevelt...
...That is, anyone in the upper brackets...
...However, this is a minor question of personal taste...
...He is, of course, opposed to overtime pay for war workers...
...The 4,000,000 Daily News readers would do well to take that advice, remembering that this week that paper said the White House, by opposing such fascist propagandists as Coughlin and the indicted 33, was laying the "foundations for a dictatorship...
...For that reason, many persons opposed to the newspaper combine composed of the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune and the Washington (D...
...I occasionally find relaxation in a good mystery yarn, but I never found any of Rex Stout's very good...
...A few, like Senator Bankhead, indicate a concern with the main problem of the ultimate size of our armed forces...
...This will bring our fighting forces up to the goal set at the beginning, close to 11,500,000...
...Our Allies now appear vastly more powerful than they did even a year ago...
...The present set-up in Africa is not simply a "conservative" government or a "capitalistic" regime: the conservative Habsburg monarchy in which I grew up respected and guaranteed the essential liberties and maintained racial equality...
...We handled the Huns with kid gloves after World War I. That didn't work...
...Certain members object to taking more workers from the farms...
...current production facts in the two countries...
...But ordinary citizens and the legislators who represent them have a right to- deir-apd evidence that bask problems are being intelligently tackled...
...GENERAL LOUIS B. HERSHEY explained that the Manpower Commission plana to induct 4,000,000 men into the combined armed services by 1944...
...2) "The Germans since the earliest tuna have been inveterate and incurable aggressors'' From the later Middle Ages until the nineteenth ' century Germany was the punching-hag ef Europe, weak as it was through its division ints small states...
...Partly because the democratic revolution 1> Germany had not been pushed far enough, bacedW the Army remained under reactionary control, Because the nest of Junkers in East Prussia was ad broken up socially and economically, because tie big industrialists who had a vested interest * munitions profits were not brought under **0* kind of public control, partly because the worW economic crisis placed an intolerable straii * the new democratic institutions, the WeimarlS" public fell...
...But one failure in a diaV** experiment does not prove that German democracy could never succeed...
...hindrances to high production rates can best be abolished by labor-management committees , working in an atmosphere at confidence and goodwill...
...FOR LABOR-MANAGEMENT COMMITTEES THE International Labor Office is serving a useful purpose in bringing about the pooling of the manpower experience of the United States and Canada...
...His programme for repairing the ravages which the war has wrought on European civilization is simple if not convincing...
...General Montgomery has probably contributed more to the success of the United Nations cause than the verbally bellicose Mr...
...Decisions with regard to this side of the picture are matters of basic public policy, and the experts on whom the public must depend for enlightenment are industrialists, economists, statisticians, labor leaders and farm leaders...
...Others are so deeply tied in with our social structures that they cannot be left to experts of any sort...
...Lefkowitz, "can only be met by consolidation of more classes, by more uncalled-for teacher dismissals and by curtailment of recreational facilities, thus giving added impetus to juvenile delinquency...
...The News here is saying bluntly that the — administration gagged Coughlin because he waa an anti-Semitic propagandist...
...The New York Times not long ago displayed on its austere editorial page a labored argument against extra pay for overtime workers and an equally ingenious and elaborate plea in favor of unlimited incomes for executives and capitalists...
...In connection with the war effort, we are calling on the schools for all sorts of extra services...
...He has been sounding off thunderously on a theme which is admirably summed up in the concluding words of a recent letter to the New York Timet: 'The utter hatefulness of Germany and the Germans...
...Aaioes Volunteer for "Global War" Service CANBERRA, Australia.—73% of medically fit men in various Australian fighting services already had volunteered for service anywhere in the world, Army Minister Francis Forde has revealed...
...Courses are being revised, teachers must be retrained, extra equipment is required...
...Hitler's totalitarian regime follow...
...Yet no attention is paid to this change in the quarters where our induction goals are determined...
...Stout is apparently morally color-blind as to any distinction between Himmler and Niemoeller...
...After he had explained that workers should have their pay kept down, they asked about the $25,000 limitation on personal incomes...
...They steered the' man straight to his downfall...
...Since then, both sides of this picture have changed...
...At the budget hearing on February 15, Dr...
...uk woaker, the farmer, the engineer, especially da man who had lived through the trench warfar* of 1914-18, was just as averse to another war ¦ the common man in every other country...
...To induct an army out of proportion to civilian services would be to court defeat...
...Those between men who believe in liberty and equality, in the right of the people, in the non-discrimination against Jews—or the men who believe in authority, aristocratic privileges, strict control of public opinion, and racial inequality ? But this ''rivalry" is the very thing at stake in the present struggle—and though many of the French leaders in North Africa may be anti-German and very ardent French nationalists, they are opposed to everything for which we fight, which we regard as fundamental, and which, as the heritage of 1789, has endeared France, the France of Liberty and Equality, to so many of us more than any other country on the European continent...
...CHEERS FOR A FINE JOB From H. S. PICKENS To the Editor: For all I care you can put this down in your mash-letter department, but after a year of The New Leader I want to tell you people that you have many readers who read your paper from beginning to end and feel nothing but admiration for the fine job you are Ooing...
...Actually during the period ef the Weimar Republic the average German...
...3) "Every German, after the last war, iweri guttural oaths of revenge and started te pnrpett for the next war...
...Some of these are technicaL Only military experts with all the information can give the answers...
...They are patently in the field of public policy...
...i I.L.O...
...Extra pay for the men in the foxholes and swamps and deserts would, naturally, be all right...
...Poor wage-workers, obviously, may be expected to do their utmost without money incentives...
...The Governor's own statements with regard to the budget are sufficient to prove that such penny-pinching is totally unnecessary...
...That would be interesting news to (fct hundreds of thousands of German families where children died of hunger and malnutrition not osh> during the war...
...Sweden even by Russians during the Seven Years War than there were invasions of other countries kT Germans...
...During these centuries there wefj far more invasions of Germany by French...
...While surpluses mount, the schools are to be starved...
...This kind of hatred will contribute nothing to » winning of the war, for the typical soldier if** busy with his job to bother with it...
...Reynolds had never heard that any Germans were opposed to Hitler, couldn't conceive that such a thing was possible...
...Let us be grateful for the fact that there are Frenchmen who in "political rivalry" continue courageously to fight these abominations...
...EDITORIAL COMMENT f . THE DAILY NEWS AGAIN ANATION without an opposition press has a bad case of political leukemia ahd will soon find itself silencing other outlets of free thought and expression to keep the country's governors perpetually in power...
...This is poisonous and dangerous nonsense »nt full of danger for the future peace of the world It would carry me far beyond the limits of thu column to explain why the period since 1914 ksj been one of singular barbarism and bleakness k the history of Western civilization: I tried to suggest some of the answers to this gloomy aid perplexing problem in my "World's Iron Age...
...And the individual subject of a totalitarian fV has about as much chance of stopping sat deviltry upon which such a state may be beat H he would of stopping a tank by throwing his bad/ in front of it...
...The reaction of my fifteen-year-old daughter to his pronouncement was: "He sounds just like a Nazi discussing whether to kill all the Poles or only some of them...
...It is to be desired that wide currency be given to the conclusions reached by a group of men and women who had at their disposal the best possible information as to tlj...
...The announcement of any reduction—even a small one—of our ultimate armed forces would have an important psychological effect...
...as to the difference between the member of one of the SS squads that have committed horrible atrocities and the German (whose name I unfortunately forget at the moment) who escaped from the country, fought through the civil war in Spain with the Republicans and won special commendation for bravery in fighting with the American Army in New Guinea...
...Congress and the administration can reach satisfactory conclusions wfth regard to them only in the light of full public discussion...
...Let's lick them until they know that it isn't wise to pick on decent people...
...It is summed up in the revealing phrase: "Let's knock their brains out...
...Present were the top leaders of the interested government bureaus, key trade union leaders and many recognized statisticians and labor experts...
...La'st Sunday, in Philadelphia, it happened...
...Do we fear that some of these friends will be too powerful at the end of the war...
...I am one of them...
...A conference held in New York over the last week-end resulted in a moat profitable interchange of facts and opinion...
...Methods of overcoming inefficiency, waste and absenteeism were taken up in detail, and the solutions suggested are detailed and realistic...
...The ideas of men like Reynolds, Mac-Lemore and Stout are nothing but Nazism-in-reverse: the theory that Germane and Japanese an* apparently Italians also (despite the fact that Japan, and Italy were official members of th« crusade for democracy in 1914-1918) all have i brand of Cain placed on them and are acenrwe races, incapable under any circumstances of making any contribution to civilization...
...Still others object to the use of the.draft as a club to force men into war industries...
...There is the suspicion that our Army men are, for reasons of their ^>wn, underestimating the importance of Lend-Lease...
...This theory also overlooks the ruinous German inflation, largely if not enthtly a product of impossible reparation demands, whkk wiped out the savings of vast numbers of people, promoted an orgy of profiteering and specuktiM and created a sense of despair in the middle clan that was an excellent preparation for the lata...
...He went bang into the trap—like a flier going it blind in a storm straight for the side of a mountain...
...What is more important is that Mr...
...But there are crucial aspects of this problem which cannot be left to military men...
...Great capitalists must have this sort of tempting bait to get out of them the full product of their genius...
...To preach hatred in Europe is to carry coal* Newcastle...
...In other words, the men in the upper brackets need money incentive to work— not patriotism...
...Not, take notice, the utter hatefulness of the Nazi philosophy and of those who put it into practice...
...and all men who preserve, keep or excuse them...
...The government of North Africa (which has not "awakened the hopes of the world," but dashed them after the astonished world saw what could happen under American protection) has for more than three months faithfully preserved all the abominations of Vichy Fascism without altering any of its fundamental conditions...
...In a world in which the mouthings of the most blatantly ignorant make the' headlines, one can but wonder why the...
...Captain Riekenbacker blandly puts the two mutually annihilating thoughts in one paragraph and «so displays his logical nakedness to the world...
...Bright for whom...
...But he must stand very low in the columnist's estimation...
...it was the Catholic Church which ordered Coughlin from the microphones...
...The schools are already understaffed...
...The News said in effect that prosecution and the fair trial of these pro-fascists were censorship and an effort) to strike at anti-administration publishers: That is all the News could see in the Department of Justice's effort to jail anti-Semites and pro-Nazis such as Leon D'Aryan and Gerald Winrod...
...Landon...
...However extreme that opposition may be in peacetime, it loses many of its rights when in wartime its criticism champions the enemies of the nation as well as the politico-social opponents of the democracy for which so much of America's manpower will shortly be attached to the casualty lists...
...If, rightly or wrongly, large numbers of citizens get the notion that married men are being uselessly torn from their places in civilian life, we are in for trouble...
...Such a cut, in the words of Dr...
...For when one of Rommel's chief lieutenants...
...This brings the country face to face with grave problems...
...In short, let's knock their brains out this time...
...General von Thoma, was taken prisoner...
...How many men must we mobilize in order to have a clear advantage...
...At the time the first announcement was made, the British were on the defensive in Africa and the general expectation was that the Russians would be quickly defeated...
...HOW RIG AN ARMY...
...Has he an ambition to be a second Alf...
...who seems to be equally poorly cast for his original role as a sports writer and for his present function as a commentator on international affairs...
...That newspaper, considered the mouthpiece of Senator Wheeler and the group for which he in turn speaks, placed itself squarely behind the many propagandists who want to see a British and Russian defeat, by printing the following in its editorial column: "The government's sedition suit involving 33 defendants, among them several publishers of small anti-administration sheets, is an effort to get some convictions which will give the administration ' precedents for moving against larger anti-administration publishers...
...There are plenty of reasons why the public should be restless about this whole matter...
...The New Leader cannot, of course, give sympathy or support to politicians who use every sign of irritation as a basis for nagging the administration...
...Let's not let them quit the day they know they are licked...
...High production records are, in the opinion of the experts present, first of all dependent on satisfactory labor relations...
...To quote this authority on sports and international relations at more length: "There are lots of Americans who want Italy to get the works before it is allowed to make peace...
...In the .interest of national morale, we should have clear ideas of the reasons behind the announcements—or, at the very least, a conviction that there are reasons...
...where in...
...I felt a very bitter taste in my mouth in reading Mr...
Vol. 26 • February 1943 • No. 8
