The Home Front
BOHM, WILLIAM E.
The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHM Lltaratura fa Two Wars npMIS is a tiny codicil to last week's literary taaue. In * connection with the mighty effort that went into that number, I turned myself...
...The stylistic ideal, apparently, was a sort of colorless pomposity...
...Inside and Out By MURRAY EVERETT Phil Murray Expands ONE of the most significant bite of news regarding tha fatare af CIO ia that Phil Murray's United Steel Workers is preparing to absorb within tha ateel union...
...To date, virtually all of these requests have been politely parried by Kremlin officials...
...Daviea suggested that he ask Stalin for a little more cooperation...
...This diatribe gives rise to varioua pleasant thoughts...
...It has changed, has improved, has grown in liveliness...
...This was the crucial time...
...Tha upshot U that there waa much less serious discussion theu than now...
...But more serious thoughts are started by another set of volumes...
...The timid approach, the apologetic manner, auggatU that our people at home ware hopelessly provincial...
...Davies's knowledge of Russia: "Recently we have all been greatly disturbed at tha lack of cooperation our military authorities were getting from the Kremlin...
...If PM had taken more trouble, they could htv* found a book in the New York Public Library, published in 1937, by Miss Lisa Sergio, entitled from Intervention ta Empire, which is a glorification of ths Italian poison-gas venture into Ethiopia...
...And who would let you...
...The moat frequent contributor among them was Brander Matthews...
...The Greet Chang* | OOK at last week's Time* Book Review section...
...There are two aspects to the story: first, tea Aluminum Union has been weak, its jurisdirtiea ever ALCOA hariag been challenged by tha Miae, MiU and Smelter Warkers, tha United Aato Workers, and an A. F. of L. anion...
...There were books and books trying to explain the Russians, tha Japanese, the French, the British...
...Mlscalfany DAPPY O'DANIEL, junior Senator from Texas, who constantly raises a howl about labor and the need for economy, loaded all the members of his "hillbilly band" on the Taxas pay roll...
...There was a whole series of works to prove that neither one was as bad as generally painted...
...count of his experiences last year in Russia, which is now being run serially in the N. Y. Pott, has some interesting things to say about the movie Minion tt Mo*eow, and ex-Ambassador Davies himself...
...To top it off, the pamphlet material, which was prepared by an outside journalist, as used by PM carried a by-line of a PM writer...
...Practically all of them sound like baby-talk...
...When I had finished, the table and the floor were showered with the flaked debris of 26-year-old wood-pulp...
...The latest betting is that John L. Lewis will not be readmitted into the AFL, at the quarterly meetings of the Executive Council which is now in session...
...I came upon one full-page searing blast in which he banished Thorstein Veblen from the literary world...
...The articles are practically all signed, and the names are good names...
...Someone who had lived abroad would explain that the British or the French are human beings, really rather decent, quite nice—when you gat paat their funny and foreign folk-ways...
...Literary appeasement could 'hardly go further...
...I am not saying that there were no war books...
...Mr...
...There were even some good ones...
...But of the James Boys it was Henry who served as flame to draw the literary moths into a circle...
...o. • » PM and Journalistic Ethics DM had a swell coverage on the Montgomery Ward * strike, but one aspect of its hsndling of the story is open to a question of journalistic ethics...
...CIO is testing the Hatch Act in a court case presented by Pat Fagan, former Lewis lieutenant, who is now on the government payroll as a manpower advisor...
...o HrfB-Ncrftiaf iociolitm BUT I have come to any juas ping-off place...
...Daviea didn't seem to believe that we were informing him accurately as to the lack of cooperation ear officials were getting—a situation which is common knowledge fa: Moscow...
...IT'S all very well to say, 'Why don't the Germans * erack?' If you were a German how would you crack...
...Standley has beea grestly pertarbed about It...
...The N.w York Tim** reviewers maintained a cool superiority to all Marxian writers...
...a Omission From MOSCOW QUENTIN REYNOLD'S The Curtain Rieei, an sc...
...Lombardo Toleilano who was a veritable jumping jack during the opening days of the ILO sessions, has been sitting back quietly since the Izvestia blast...
...Richard Watson Gilder was a great figure...
...They practically never hit the front page...
...PM lifted enough material from the pamphlet to fill two solid pages, without any credit to the union or any source, and presented it under a headline: PM Exclusive...
...Literature was thought to be very belle—far above the sweat and tears of life...
...About Mr...
...His organisers have been going lata steel fabrication plants, each aa the Pullman-Standard Co., Into railway repair shops and varioas metal fabricating plants Murray also hopes to absorb the Mine, Mill aad Smelter Workers snd various small CIO unioas...
...I am sure that Veblen never replied to the attack which was designed to put the quietus on him for all time...
...There was constantly recurring pleasant talk about Dickens and Thackeray...
...second, Marray fears some general decline of labor organisation after the wsr aad ia seeking to build a atreng anion ia metal...
...Two members were carried on the state payroll, at between $150-3175 a month as boiler inspectors but they never did any boiler inspection...
...In * connection with the mighty effort that went into that number, I turned myself into a one-man research department and carried on an investigation In comparison with the weighty discussions printed here laat week, what I have to report will seem very light-weight...
...But two things are to be noted...
...All the rest of the issue was given over to what was considered Ana literature...
...Several of us st the preaa conference with Mr...
...Edith Wharton, Zana Grey, Gertrude Atherton, William de Morgan, Henry Van Dyke, Thomas Dixon led the delectable route...
...The introduction states: "Notwithstanding the many deficiencies in this first book of Fascist dates, I dedicate it to the memory ef all the Black Shirts who, within Italy and abroad, havt written in their blood the glorious dates of the Fat-cist era...
...Two of the old industry men have been shunted off the Board and in addition, one William Frew Long has been appointed executive assistant to the industry panel...
...Professor Roland G. Usher served ss a sort of literary Vanslttart...
...If anyone suggested that there was anything wrong with the capitalist system they handled his stuff with the fire-tongs...
...Daviea had been charming and a fine boat, bat bin lack ef knowledge regarding Rassia shocked aa all...
...The peace conference was in session...
...Twenty-five years ago—right in the middle of tha war—the front page was usually devoted to what waa thought of as belles lettre...
...They were produced by an anonymous crew of typewriter-pounding helots...
...Control over chemical workers, whom Lewis is seeking to organize into District 60, is the stumbling block...
...We all left the preaa conference pretty diacoaraged...
...Gently and with the merest dignified mention they deposited his stuff in the garbage can...
...Which recalls the standard story about the two Moscow pa pen Pravda and Ixveitia, the former meaning Truth, snd the latter meaning News...
...There is much mere that I cannot any...
...ClCa Aluminas* Workers Union...
...In the earlier daya practically all reviews were unsigned...
...I mean that they represent men and women who think...
...Ordway Tead wrote a fine book, Tha P*ople'$ Part in Pence...
...The military alliance was taken to imply the need of intellectual union...
...It got a rather indifferent review in the back pages, a short and inconspicuous recognition...
...But I had fun, and the upshot may not be aa unimportant as it seems...
...And could he swell himself up and pontificate...
...For more than a quarter century it has represented the standards of an important section of the literate public...
...Yet the 86,000,000 moviegoers in America were told that there was the first"authentic picture about Russia) and the Daily Worker assured us of this too...
...I spent my good time going through the S*v> York Tim** Book Review sections published from 1914 to 1919...
...I suppose a more conscientious searcher could have found William James somewhere in the back pages...
...The Committee for Constitutional Government, tha reactionary anti-New Deal organization dominated by Frank Gannett, is raising a fond of 1350,000 to circulate anti-New Deal leaflets throughout the country...
...The fate of the world was being settled...
...A long and serious study undertook to prove that the Japanese government could never present a danger to the United States...
...And, for another thing, books on these matters were not played np as they are now...
...Arthur Benson's volume, Eecape and Othtr Ettayt was a really delightful tidbit for discussion...
...But one little note I want to add...
...Many of them, in fact, are contributors to The New Leader...
...The difference between then and now is simply unbelievable...
...But most of the writing about foreign nations concerned our allies...
...Robert Van Gelden and Donald Adams need no boosts or bouquets...
...As the Russian citizens put, there was never any pravda in Izvoetia, or any uveitis in Prot'do...
...Time after time our War Department has cabled represents-tives in Moscow asking them to get informstion concerning captured German material...
...Take as a sample the number of March 80, 1919...
...This would have been all right, except that the picture purported to be factual, and the Rassia shown in tha film had as much relation to the Russia we ail know as Shangri-la would have te Tibet...
...On the picture: "It was a beautiful technical job...
...The number of serious discussions of the war and of post-war problems was much smaller than it is now...
...Will the Germans Crack...
...But human nature has come In and the stuffed shirt has gone out...
...Perhaps you will decide that military convenience Is a poor basis for conclusions shout things artistic and ideological...
...The alterations in form and content are significant...
...You can think your own thoughts about this...
...Labor Notes EMPLOYER representatives on the War Labor Board have been acting up lately, and behind their actions is the blundering hand of the National Asso-cistion of Manufacturers...
...The United Wholesale, Retail and Department Store Employees, which is running the strike, prepared, at great expense, a research pamphlet on Sewell Avery...
...Remember him...
...Time, even a limited time, brings Its revenges...
...He is being opposed by former Congressman Sraithwick, who served eight yean in the House...
...I selected the literary section of the Sunday Tim** for my test because 26 yesrs ago it served the same purpose as it does now—occupied precisely the same position...
...A word from him or about him thundered in Book Review section louder than all the guns on the western front...
...And no less an authority than Frank Vanderiip is quoted as writing, "American bankers have (in ths post-war period) . . . opportunity . . . brilliant beyond conception...
...The fact may serve as a* slender basis for a tentative sort of optimism No more than that...
...What I am getting at is something else...
...The only signed articles were by overwhelming literary stuffed-shirts...
...I use this foreign and rather dainty and feminine term with malice aforethought...
...But all of this is beside the point...
...Miss Sergio is entitled to consideration for having seen the error of her fascist ways, but to skip from one totalitarian line to favorable praist of another is a horse of a different color...
...But that crude and ungrammatical foreigner is still read and debated by young men everywhere—and who ever—anywhere— reads one word written by the refined, educated, academic and so sure-of-himself Brander BathewsT Maybe there is such a thing as justice, in the long run, the very long run...
...One feature of tha war writing looks pathetic now, There was, of course, plenty of anti-German stuff...
...Nat Gubbins, in the London Sunday Exprett...
...The poor foreigner was sent into outer darkness as one too illiterate and uncouth to enjoy the society of gentle readers af the Tim...
...And my mind—my astonished and practically pop-eyed min<i—was filled with a whirling mass of sttitudes and ideas that seemed more ancient than the process of printing or paper-making...
...Long, according to LaFollette Committee reports was one of the chief hatchet men for anti-labor industries in Ohio...
...o a a Mono Lisa Serfio DM last Sunday ran an article by Lisa Sergio on Prince Humbert and explained that Miss Sergio had been a broadcaster over a Rome station but that "slit broke with II Duce during the Ethiopian adventure, the period during which the Balcony Caesar showed his seamiest side...
...But then as now it was a sort of literary arbiter...
...The Ruskin Centenary was properly celebrated...
...Japan and Cxarist Russia were fighting on our side...
...Congressman Eugene E. Cox is faring stiff primary opposition in the Georgia elections which will be held September IS...
...If any novelist—especially a lady novelist or a mala novelist with ladylike qualities—penned a dainty confection it was sure to cover the entire front page...
...The Daily Worker hss a new slogan, carried on its stationary: "Tha Truth in the News...
...But the great figure, the really central, haloed and highlighted figure, was Henry James...
...But the film portrayed a Russia that none of us had ever aeon...
...Today, Mias Sergio, who comments over WQXA and is quoted often in PM and the Pott, praises the Moscow line on Badoglio...
Vol. 27 • May 1944 • No. 19
