The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM
The Home Front By William Bohn Some Soldiers Thins THIS ii a tough time All the sign* point to it* fat-tine tougher. All the dreami about a world of mutual security and international control*...
...We are fighting for more permanent and fundamental things than cigarettes...
...The writer is commenting on the 90,000 men who climbed out of the pits in England...
...The coal mines should have bean nationalised before the war...
...Do rou think that these conditions, the years of unemployment, degradation, malnutrition, and Means Tests, have embittered the craftsmen—for the miner who knows his job is a craftsman...
...The corporal dryly commends this learned obeervatUi to hopeful Tommies...
...Soldier* Look at Strikes "AND what do we see...
...These are, however, minoi issues...
...No one realises this more than the miner...
...The river Oder would be the dividing line, with the Russians getting the eastern territory including the North Sea port of Stettin...
...Well, here is a prime example: Willkie made a pro-labor speech this week to grab the union vote...
...In large sections they sound almost word for word like you...
...By MURRAY EVERETT Inside and Out Power Politics ond Llppmonn WALTER LIPPMANN, the weathervane of what im-" portent sections of American leadership are thinking, is shifting his stand on post war international cooperation...
...An editorial in the issue of March 11 echoes precisely the view expressed by The New Leader at the time of the strike of our miners...
...Now the Daily Worker is backing down on its stand towards de Gaulle...
...i Although the present conditions are unsatisfactory, the constitutions...
...Wendell WiHkle—Magician TTHE philosophers used to debate the problem of appearance and reality, whether they were a duality or a unity — Wendell Willkie in political action is an argument apparently for the latter side but really for the former—which makes him a neat philosophical puzzle in himself...
...Communication—Free World ^ COMMUNICATION from a Free World editor denies this column's statement that his magazine had "traipsed along the cryto-Stalinist line...
...Efforts are being made by the British to come to an agreement with the U. S. on the Arabian oil deal...
...Today it has abandoned that role and wields its influence over its proximate regions...
...A recent statement, attributed to the Polish Socialist Party, haa one line that sums up the whole tragi-comedy: "Where conscience raises ita voice," it says, "conservatives will silence it by an appeal to statesmanship...
...Men on strike—men whose sons are in the services, decent men who seem genuinely to believe that they are standing out for a principle that is worth while...
...But in an interview this week Earl Browder statea explicitly that they want to work with the National Association of Manufacturers, and that he supports the free enterprise, system...
...Commie Notes ¦^ITH the Communist victory in the American Ltbor Party watch for some of the neatest (and dirtiest) political juggling in years, with Vito Marcantonio cracking the whip...
...These consequences are unavoidable...
...The statement that no article has justified Communist policies is ludicrous in view of the shameless panegyric to the Moscow Free German Committee that appeared in the February Free World by Alfred Kantorowicz, s well-known German communist...
...Some people just wouldn't believe us when we said several months ago that the Communist Party was following the NAM line on labor...
...But I have vet to see one as lively and alert as this one from tke British...
...So, he said, don't condemn too soon the refusal of Washington and London to give full recognition to the Committee...
...But more important is the revelation from Algiers that "Another (French) Committee proposal was recently vetoed by Moscow...
...They are hard, cynical, sharpy.but honest...
...We see the peculiar sequence of political events in North Africa and in Italy...
...I am very happy when I get news like that...
...There is danger thst w* exaggerate the importance of them...
...We therefore look for a sign...
...Through the government elected by the people they should he administered and the men employed there paid a just and proper wage, work under just and proper conditions...
...I have seen a lot of our camp papers...
...Speaking to I'M's Harold La vine, Browder said (the interview was taken down by Browder's stenographer and released by him): "The free enterprise ayatem for America is the freedom of capital to concentrate and centralize itself...
...teol Wmr Corrs-tpoadenrs DUT my special delight is the soldiers' letter box...
...It had to dispel rumor and maintain morale...
...Willkie's meeting was chaired by a representative of Big Bill Hutcheson's Carpenters Union...
...lish people under thirty have not yet voted...
...Russia, he says, had a "universalist" foreign policy when it had the Third International...
...The editor is a 25 year-old soldier...
...Fret World has always been a strange melange, »» editors have been a motley crew of "popular-frontish liberals while its contributing editors have ranged from Sir Normn Angell, an honest and devoted libers, to the freakish Orson Welles...
...All the dreami about a world of mutual security and international control* look like just that—dreams Unleas something different happens soon, we shall have after the war a world of competing, antagoniatic powers...
...At the moment an Allied commission is working on occupation plans, but the public isn't being let in on what is going to happen...
...Nobody can possibly know how much of this is going on...
...A corporal quotes from an article by Francis W. Hirst, editor of Th* Economist : "All history and modern experience teach that a long and costly war is followed by a period of privation and unemployment and, in many countries, of famine and disease...
...Continues La vine: "I said he's got along swimmingly with the NAM...
...He asks whom the paper represents...
...He pointedly hints that it looks to him as if the paper's policy standa for "Ihe sentiments of men who have transplanted their political attitude from Britain to the Italian battlefield...
...One man writes, about what is happening to the atv-eridge report and then goes on: "Sir William Bevtriogt insists that if w* want his plan to see the light of say we must go and get it...
...In the meantime, we continue to look and listen for signs of sense...
...The committee asked the allies to drop Premier Pietro Badoglio's Government and the King of Italy at once...
...I'm not sorry when you say leading members of the NAM tslk like me...
...Eighth Army men reaum their share in securing social reform, but we must start now or we will be too lata...
...The Sunday Observer which has important diplomatic pipelines reports that plans are being made for a three-power occupation of Germany...
...That is the possibility that in the midst of this beastly war a lot of people are doing some thinking...
...Now what do the men in the Desert Air Force and the Eighth Army think about the strike...
...It can only play an important role where it ia strongest, he says...
...His appearance (promises) have to have the feeling or reality (to gather support), but just enough unreality to wits-draw in the face of real reality...
...He ststM further that "there has never appeared in Free World an article justifying Communist policies...
...Thus, we have influence in the Caribbean or in Bolivia where our proximity is our source of strength but in eastern Europe we cannot play such a role...
...We would like to be equally convinced that our leaders at home aie similarly affected...
...As a tiny half-sheet it kept going while the British Army followed the Germans across 2,000 miles of sand...
...There is no doubt," the editor ex-plaina, "that this paper has fought the soldiers' cause with some success on msny issues such ss entertainment for the troops, 'V cigarettes and, less successfully, air mail...
...Every word is loaded with all the meaning it can hold...
...pundit sharply attacks "isolationist" and "unicersalist" thinking...
...Do you think the miner wants to let us down...
...In Italy it kept the enlarged form and improved its content...
...But right now political prospects look so dark in comparison with the military outlook, that one can safely run thM risk...
...They have mighty little chance to compare notes...
...In Tripoli it expanded to its present four-page form...
...Lippmsnn who has been the leading internationalist spokesman of American industrial groups now condemn* the notion thst America can play a leading role in all sections of the globe...
...I am convinced that a large majority of the men of the fighting services are now imbued with a sense of service and the spirit of fair play...
...For Willkie is a man who wants to be President—so he has to be all things to all men or a good many things to a good many men...
...Moscow long ago gave full recognition to de Gaulle...
...This high-handed action is bound to cause friction...
...For direct evidence of Msrcsn-tonio'a dealings with Tammany, and evidence of the support his political machine has received from Fstcist and racketeer elements in East Harlem read Richsrd H. Rovere's article in the current issue of Harpers...
...There is a real division between the plans of the Consultative Assembly and the plans of, the deGaulle committee...
...In his answer the young editor explains that the sheet was born in the African desert...
...They thought we were just making propaganda...
...The direction of Lippmann's thinking ia that the world will be divided into spheres of influence, that Russia is entitled to her sphere as we are to ours...
...The Russians expressed shsrp disagreement and soon afterward recognized Badoglio's regime...
...That's fine," Browder said, "I'm awfully glsd, to hear that...
...This week it was revealed that Russia had vetoed the appointment of Gaston Palewski as diplomatic representative to Russia...
...And judging things by the signs we wonder whether we are in fact heading in the right direction...
...Britain has asked the right to supply Ibn Saud with arms also as a gesture of friendship...
...What are the interests of the soldiers...
...We think of our people working at home, of our mates fighting in the swamps, of our prisoners in Japanese hands, and we look forward to the world after the war, to our homes and our families, and conscious of the cost of it all, with memories of the past, we wish to be sure...
...These fighting kids csn write...
...we will therefore ignore them?' Or is it to say 'we believe in democracy and that t'ne men in the armed forces are worthy of it?' A citizen does not lose his political rights by putting on a uniform to fight for his country, or forego his right to be consulted about the future which a year's old Parliament is preparing for him...
...Remember—these are the words of a British soldier writing to British soldiers...
...A correspondent has grown suspicious...
...My report to the plenum (of the Communist Party) was distributed to every delegate at the economic conference of the NAM, and I am told most of them read it through...
...It had to provide news, entertainment and comment...
...Infernofionol Notts rVISSATIS PACTION with "secret diplomacy" is growing strong In Britain...
...Our comrades of the Rhondda Valley and the North of England have lived in fear of the pithead siren alt their lives...
...Do you follow...
...Now what is an Army newspaper's duty in these circumstances...
...Kantorowicz (rloiified the Junker General von Seydlitz who heads the Union of German officers and blithely told the revolting story of how Willi Bredel, a member of the executive committee of the Free German group, works alongside a former stormtrooper who was the commander of the concentration camp in which Bredel was held and tortured...
...Things which we cannot understand...
...The particular issue is the question of "what to do with Germany...
...Should it say 'these are matters the publication of which might be awkward for the Government...
...The strike is regrettable...
...m«w4 But, if one is to judge by these letters, it is pUiudsg that these fellows in the foxholes have on their mjinh...
...Last week the party's hack on foreign affairs wrote: "The Communists are disappointed with the structure of the French Committee of National Liberation...
...There ia only one basis for hope...
...system of writing to MP's ii the only way to register opinion between elections ** Here is a challenge to men in the American forest...
...He proposed a three point program including a demand for the removal of corrupt and irresponsible union leadership, the democratization of labor, ami the stepping aside of the old leaders for the new, vigorous elements...
...Its parents were "boredom and No News at All...
...If these men have views, they have a right to express them and if they are Worried they have a right to say so, and the editor of the paper has a right, indeed a duty—to five expression to and comment on their thoughts and doubts...
...The people ere scattered in armies, in factories, on the farms...
...In a column this week, the G.O.P...
...The upshot of their opinions may not appear in the form of political decisions until flee yesrs after the close of the war—or ten years—or ftfteen...
...The New Leader goes to great numbers of our seidisri...
...0* Goulle and th* Communist* T\E GAULLE'S relations with Moscow are becoming increasingly strained...
...All of this is explained in order to get across the point that this is a genuine soldier paper, that it represents nothing but the inleiesla of the fighting men...
...In the number of February 11 the editor ia put on the spot...
...Another corporal brings up the sorest point of »n "Is it not Inconsistent that the great majority ef tag...
...If our troops are printing anything anywhere near as good, I would like to see it...
...Did anyone say something about war aiuih ' shhh...
...The coal mines should be the property of the nation...
...All of this ia by way of introduction to a couple of quotations from Eighth Army News Copies of this soldier paper come to me through the alertness of my favorite war correspondent, Sergeant Robert Gladnick This journal is produced by the British Military Printing Preae somewhere in Italy...
...Now we come to the point...
Vol. 27 • April 1944 • No. 14
