The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN La.ST week I promised to let this argument spill over from my correspondence into this column. It has shirked hie, and it will shock you. But perhaps it...
...But are we not doing this in cor prevailing attitude against the Japanese in the United States...
...But that's only petty larcency as regards Seldes's intellectual honesty...
...Before the President stepped in, the Daily Worker attacked the Chicago local Montgomery Ward, and now that the company has been returned to Avery, the Communists have renewed their attache on the locals leaders...
...My impression that after oar War between the States, when Negroes were given "rights," they made enough trouble to lead to the institution of the Ku-Klux is based on books 1 have read and on the film...
...A number of Chinese babies were wheeled past in their coaches...
...George Seldes has always made a living by peddling sensational "inside" stories...
...I may be wrong, but I suspect that monolithic, 100 per rent pec pie like this tend to stagnate...
...He can work wherever he can carry a pencil and piece of paper...
...One of a host of incidents is revealing: the Witness is Angelica Balabanoff, one of the leaders of the Italian Socialist movement and the first secretary of the Third International who later broke with Lenin...
...Most contacts would be limited to trade relations and political cooperation...
...I have been told that it is the same in the United States, notably in Hollywood...
...Randolph is on a cross-country tour for his union now and will make several more . . . John Chamberlain is in-the hospital having been stricken suddenly by appendicitis . . . Louis Waldman's autobiography Labor Lawyer will be published in the fall by Dutton . . . The New York Timet is now refusing to accept resort ads which use the word "restricted" . . . Scott Nearing is publishing a monthly bulletin called World Events...
...And if the New Deal is the issue, how does Marcantonio now explain the fact that Philip J. Dunn, who heads the old Curry faction, is the recent ally of Clarence Neal...
...It can be dene with goodwill, wisdom, patience...
...And just how Christianity or Americanism squares with the notion I haven't yet figured out...
...The first letter is from Mrs...
...But when she rei'ers to the Jews as "guests" in Germany it seems to me that she tips her hand...
...The whole business seems fraught with difficulty and ominous with trouble...
...I am against it from the start...
...In an ideal humanity reason and justice would obviate retaliation...
...Recently Mr...
...Yesterday afternoon I took a piece of work down to Washington Square...
...That ia, though my correspondent is against a second-class voting or educational citizenship, she does aeetn to favor second-class economic or social privileges...
...Perhaps I should be specific...
...Seldes...
...now he has reversed himself and works with Neal...
...So I am prejudiced...
...It would be equally important to find whence she picked up.her ideas about Jews in Europe...
...This would call for many roads across to be used by both races, but would make avoidance feasible for those who preferred it...
...The story was checked by reliable newspapermen in Washington and found to be completely untrue...
...Heisler had once written a pamphlet denouncing the Moscow trials...
...Nothing daunted, the Communist Freiheit picked up the "tip" and stated it as a "fact...
...Segregotion by Coaienf M Y remedy would be segregation by consent and the shaping of conditions so as to make consent desirable and advantageous without recourse to oppression or brute force...
...In Fart reports "rumors"—the Communists repeat them as "facts...
...I want to substitute the term eauie for both reason and justification in the foregoing...
...Seldes—came from an unimpeachable source...
...N. E., Washington 2, D. C. • • • Labor Notes—Bridget, the Scab LL ABOR circles are in an uproar over the> facts, which were carried by The New Leader last week, that Harry Bridges's union had scabbed on the Montgomery Ward strike...
...Wagner are fair-minded and want to do right by the Negro...
...As to Jews, they have, in different countries, including Germany, not conducted themselves as 'guests' should...
...Paul local of Montgomery Ward, which is organised by Bridges's anion, passed a motion to ignore the request of the Chicago local not to handle scab goods...
...Dalley and Mrs...
...Balabanoff had been a co-worker of Mussolini in his earlier syndicalist days and had some interesting material about him...
...Tbt Or/emoaiki Root* AnUMBER of persons awoke, one morning to find a new name on their headlines: Father Stanislaus Orlemanski...
...Andrews has a good legislative record but he won't play with the Marcantonio-Powell crowd, so they're greasing the skids...
...Seldes met Balabanoff in Paris and he offered to sell several of her articles in America...
...Because they occupy this special status they had better match their step, it may be all right for others to become millionaires, but not for thorn...
...This strain can result from physical antipathy based on body-emanations...
...That fact—Mr...
...I am interested in learning how she got her picture of the Ku-Klux era...
...An unknown priest had gone to visit Stalin and that was that...
...And how would you ever decide which part of our population is to be considered "guests" rather thaa plain, ordinary eitiiens...
...With our mixture we have clashes and trouble...
...Human indolence as well as human avarice will not permit any such solution...
...Another solution would be the allotting of a strip of land from coast to coast as habitation and field of operation for the race that was brought here by force and treachery by our ancestors...
...Father Orlemanski traveled to Chicago where he boarded a plane for Alaska...
...It can be prejudice baaed on experience or« tradition...
...Mitcollony Al» Philip Randolph was offered a place on the national ticket by the Socialist Party whose convention opens June 2. Randolph was interested but union , duties prevented his acceptance...
...His "inside dope" is what the Communist Party wants peddled...
...I should suggest, for instance, that the continent of Africa be given back to the black race...
...That's one privilege which a scribbler enjoys...
...John B. Thompson a« head cf the American Peace Mobilization, etc...
...Marcantonio's alliance with the Tammany-NealCostello group is getting stronger...
...That is a big order...
...For a while the Daily Worker sought to justify Marcantonio's forays into this political cesspool by reference to the distinction between New Deal and anti-New Deal Democrats...
...At any rate human deterioration will not be offset by human advance...
...Wagner acknowledges that our ancestors brought him here "by force and treachery," and she does not want him to toil in menial aervice to the whites...
...Dunn last year was in opposition to Michael Kennedy, the New Deal Congressman who headed Tammany in alliance with Neal...
...Next to me a couple of far from aristocratic Italian ancients were playing a game of checkers under the critical eyes of a large gallery...
...To revise an old Chinese saying: Polities makes strange smells...
...Dalley began by saying that she wants him to have equal economic, educational and civic rights...
...Sample item: On July 15, 1940, Seldes wrote that "every1 newspaper man in Washington knew that the closest thing to a native American fascist is Wendell Willkie...
...I would be especially lonesome without the Negroes, these people whom they call black but who—of course —are not really black...
...Here is a note for educators...
...Lincoln wanted Congress to vote a billion dollars toward sending our Negroes there...
...And Marcantonio is in with the kaboodle...
...There a Soviet plane picked him up, carried him across Siberia and to the Kremlin...
...His record goes back a long way...
...I am not the right person to discuss this...
...But what is really before the house is Mrs- Wagner's idea about voluntary segregation...
...Frank Costello, the slot-machine chief who is one of the chief backers of Clarence Neal and Bert Stand, is not concerned with national politics...
...The Birth of a Nation...
...But Tammany politics is Tammany politics...
...The Motion's Gawsts B 11 II Mrs...
...Colored children played about und|r the, loving eyes of their mothers...
...We are.all dependent upon—and limited by—such ideas of fact as we happen to pick up in a more or less helterskelter way...
...The folks there are 100 per cent white and Protestant, and they are the stupidest people I have ever had anything to do with...
...It is the section of Germany from which my ancestors migrated...
...All about there was life, color, movemnt, change...
...The Curry faction has always been the core of reaction in Tammany...
...But that's not all for Mr...
...Perhaps he was assassinated because of it...
...1 wanted to get in something Lillian Smith has said about segregation That will have to wait till next week Inside and Out By MURRAY EVERETT Oeorge Seldes Is O LkhT GeORGE SELDES, who was once expelled from Russia and vowed to "man a machine-gun if Bolshevism comes to America," but now fervently embraces the Communist line, shifting with ease from calling the war an imperialist bloodbath to calling it a crusade for democracy (circa June 22, 1941), is not often so careful with the facts he peddles in In Fact...
...They pledged "no strike*' and "national unity," despite > Avery's provocations...
...I Vote for tkm Hmmon Roc...
...But we don't go dead...
...If that distinction is ruled out, others may be...
...What goes into people's minds hss supreme importance...
...Perhaps, had he not been assassinated, his plan would have succeeded...
...There might have to be neutral ground for those of both races who are in favor of intermingling...
...But we must Uke people if they are and go on from there...
...The regrettable error of German reaction is that it visited its ire also on the innocent...
...I sat there and thought about the only place I know of where there is only one sort of people...
...To take up all the biological and historical matters broached by Mrs...
...When Balabanoff came here she found that Seldes had incorporated two articles as chapters in his book Sawdust Caetar, with a footnote saying they were based on material by Balabanoff, but completely without her permission...
...Wagner would take a book...
...In the way a racing tout sidles up to you at the track and gives you a straight tip, Seldes pretends to slip you the "hot dope" on political affairs...
...The Jews in Germany and, presumably, the Negroes hero are "gneata...
...His latest move ia an attempt to defeat incumbent Assemblyman William T. Andrews by placing in nomination fellow-traveler Charles Collins who is secretary of the party-line'Negro Labor Victory Committee...
...There were then—and there are now—people who want the Negroes to do menial service for them...
...This is how she thinks down there in the South: "We should, as much as possible, remove strain in human relations...
...The point is that persons who prefer segregation may have it, limiting themselves as well...
...she found out later that Seldes had published one of her articles in Ken, under her by-line, but with whole paragraphs rewritten to give a completely different, in fact proRussian, political slant Balabanoff vehemently protested and took the case to court...
...But perhaps it is good for us to be shocked...
...During the Chicago strike, the St...
...The alternative will prove to be strife, perhaps bloodshed...
...They have, on the contrary, striven to gain financial, economic and cultural control...
...In one of the issues of his tout sheet, he reported "rumors" that the FBI is investigating The New Leader...
...Pogroms in London in past centuries indicate similar conditions...
...As head of the league he used Father Orlemanski as a front Using pastors for fronts is an oM Communist habitRev...
...I felt right at home...
...Life is difficult enough, at present, without preventable added difficulties...
...Each race would have its own social, economic and cultural setup...
...Seldes seems to have been^ riled by the going-over he got by James Wechsler in the April 22 issue of The New Leader, and so he responded with some dirty—and needless to say lying—digs...
...Down there in the square there was too much inspiration...
...The Polish Communist leader in America, B. K. Gebert, had organized a Kosciusko League here to support the Moscow Union of Polish Patriots...
...Morcontonio Imbroglio \^IT<) Marcantonio's political machine, which is tolerated by the Underworld groups in Harlem, is seeking to extend his control of the North Manhattan area...
...The sequence of events i» this...
...There is much reason for the strong anti-Negro feeling in the southern states, just as there is much justification for the anti-Semitism that has cropped out in different countries, including England, in the course of history...
...Strange, the only "newspaperman" who said so was George Seldes...
...That's the fact on George Seldes...
...Father Orlemanski was invited to go to Russia by the Soviet Consulate...
...The Soviet Embassy requested a passport, and as a friendly power their request was granted...
...Some might favor bestowing this dubioua distinction on Jaws, others on Negroes, others on those who have arrived within the last twenty or thirty years...
...That's the Cinderella story—created out of Soviet propaganda clot1...
...The Birth of a Nation played its part in her education...
...Better: make tt feasible for Ikote who wont to, to remove themselves from strsin...
...Harry F. Ward as chairman of the League Against War and Fascism, Rev...
...during the court action Seldes wrote a letter to Balabanoff publicly admitting that he had changed the article without her permission...
...Much of it is net climatically suited to the white race...
...Charlotte Wagner, of Whitehoose, Florida...
...Subscriptions at two dollars a year may be sent to World Events, 125 Fifth St...
...This action was backed by the national Bridges office...
...This week the Daily Worker called anion attorney Frances Heisler a Trotskyite...
...Her idea—and that of a lot of other folks—seems to be that certain selected lots of humans don't really belong...
...Curry made Surrogate O'Brien Mayor and was the Hall leader during the Seabury exposes...
Vol. 27 • May 1944 • No. 21
