The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN Brown October Meditation ISHOULD be in an optimistic mood today. My garden ia justifying all that tho poets hare written about the bounteous autumn...
...To own a pair of oxen and * wooden plow ia a sign of great wealth...
...Listen to this: "Soldiers can rarely pass judgment on events or en a country...
...N*W Commie front aa Spain TrllS column predicted recently that Spain would be tbe new concentration point of Communist activity...
...ThIS ia a fine letter to .open on a fine autumn day...
...October was never more golden than it was over this last weekend...
...We share the bountiea of our generous earth...
...To add to the poverty of the land, from which the utmost productivity is gotten by means of terracing and constant care, there is the parasitic Latifundia, which demands its half from the overworked land and peasantry...
...Th* leader in thia field is th* Reader'e Digest, which started in 1M8 with a British edition...
...Inside and Out By MURRAY EVERETT Out of rh* Past.* Ocpnnff and fbn Comntanisfs The t •¦greasMHial mveatigatta* this week kato the anti-labor...
...The earth is generous, but we are not...
...The second largest in th* field is the Crowell pub* lications (publishers of Colliers) which stsrted a magssine Victor* for the OWL There are English, Frenck, Italian, Spanish, Portugese and Arabic editions, with four or five Balkan additions planned...
...He served in Russia, where he was wounded in the battle of the Don...
...After twenty years of Fascism and this war, Russia doesn't want an inch of Italy...
...The* Communist line is that we are the ones responsible for the bad economic situation here...
...Rags gathered in town ar* sewn together ia a aort of crazyquilt fashion and odd clothes are made of them...
...The Fascist state was an industry in itself...
...His nsme is Joseph P. Kamp and he works behind an organization called the Constitutional Educational League...
...Too many American and Canadian soldiers try to compare Italian farma with those of our Midwest—when, at bast, the comparison should be made with the worst tenant-farm areas of Arkansas or Mississippi...
...The Constitutions...
...Far clothes, Signore Giuseppi spins wool by hand...
...Or a fat, brown walnut cornea plumping down...
...You forget everything that is tough and hard and demanding...
...What activity does exist seems to be that of atate employees...
...His latest pamphlet is one called Vote CIO and Get a Soviet America...
...How the average Italian farmer ekes out a living on tha tiny plot of ground he owns or rants is a marvel...
...My garden ia justifying all that tho poets hare written about the bounteous autumn season...
...Although Negrin in a number of statements in London denounced this Supreme Junta as a fake, made up of Communist .supporters, he is under pressure to reunite with the Communists...
...In Rome alone the arrival of the Allies put 14,000 doormen (portieri) out of work...
...Our cleverness, our hardnesa, our tight conservatism are just the sort of prelude which has led to all th* other calamities which mankind has •offered...
...The very countryside cries out of poverty...
...Humanity is too hard smitten...
...There is no description given of this Catholic political movement, but the entire anti-fascist emigration has denounced rapprochements with clericals who were Franco supporters...
...Most of them lack any commodity industry...
...accepted a fall-page advertises*eat from Frank Gannett'* Committee for ( •Mutational Government, Masting the New Deal...
...And the men sit at Dumbarton Oaks and bargain...
...he promoted a variety of undertakings, until he started The Protectant and made common cause Vith the Communists...
...Perseaally I thiah th* beat way to car* this ¦adds* eras* for Cess maoism ka Italy will ha t* ltd th* Italia* CP...
...The front is cleverly designed with a large sprinkling of ecclesiastical figures...
...The war may end tomorrow, bat the Italia* people will have to pat ap with its effect* far years to cease...
...Previously their job of doorman or hall caretaker was just a front for their more lucrative employment by the Secret Police as informers...
...Negrin will arrive soon in Mexico City to...
...We have new act up a great organisation to place this aort of help on • systematic beats...
...But all this is not good enough...
...There is little left to do but gather the fruits of the final efforts of rows of plants which we hi ve guarded and tended during trie long, hot summer drought...
...Leslie was a free-lance adventurer who was forced out oj bis church by congregation preasure...
...But the show is given away by such veteran "front" names as Louis Adamic, S. L. M. Barlow, Albert Kahn, the editor of the defunct The Hour, .which reflected the party-line, Kenneth Leslie, Johannes Steel and the Hollywood playwright Donald Ogden Stewart...
...But I cannot escape the conviction that we are all lacking in courage, in imagination, in pity...
...take over th* government...
...Since then the portieri supplement their meager wages by acting as informers to soldiers in search of ladies of easy virtue...
...For some time he waa on the editorial board of The Auakener, a native pro-fascist magazine, along with Lawrence Dennis...
...As one of the three great powers, we Americana are partly res possible far what hi do** about Italy...
...The environment ia all set for a aort of James Whitcomb Riley mood...
...I bsvt a«re a pessimistic letter from England for which I tack tho apace...
...The Gin. nett Committee Jpo refuses to divulge it* sources...
...The investment of sweat and labor is now almost forgotten, but the income continues to mount...
...Your mind grows soft and silly, complacent and appeasing You begin to think that there ia enough in the world for everyone, and so on and so on...
...reports asked...
...From early morning to th* lata hours of the night Giuseppi and his family ar* out in tha field—not much larger than an average American garden—hoeing, weeding or plowing, all by hand...
...A news bulletin put out by this American Committee for Spanish Freedom hails the "Supreme Junta of National Unity" as "leading the underground fight...
...We cannot now t% easily stop the qualms of conscience...
...In the meantime, insects hum lastly in the slanting sunshine...
...Kamp has a hearty contempt for democracy...
...The world Deeds something else, something different...
...Victory, a slick technicolor job, is going into a million circulation...
...Now and then an apple falls and roll* temptingly near...
...I tried to convince him that the natural resources of Italy ar* sueh that by no stretch of the imagination could Mussolini have built a Dnieprestroy or a Magnitogorsk...
...The head of the new front is an innocent, Bishop Lewis C. Hartman of th* Methodist Church of Boston...
...The Hearat and McFadden publication all had foreign editiona before the war, mainly in England, but now intend to expand into Europe...
...and denounced its policies...
...A Latin American edition was started in 18*0, • Portugese edition for Brazil in 1942, a Swedish ediUon in 1943 and an Arabic edition for tbe Middle East that same year, The total foreign circulation reaches over two million...
...Only the peasants, the hard-w*rkmg aon* of tbe soil, are toiling away as in ages past...
...Soviet' policy is to let the Anglo-Americans hang on to it...
...What was he doing...
...The Italian upper and middle rlaaa, what there ia left of the ••per eruat, far oa a wild buck-market spree...
...This announcement led to a break between the Communists and Juan Negrin, the former premier of Loyalist Spain, for Negrin regarded himself as the legs...
...A number of the magazine got started this way when the government suggested they publish foreign editions which would reflect "the American way...
...I don't know," Walker replied, "I don't know if he was ever in Waterbury in his life, but if I were to .ask that question publicly and shake my head mysteriously some god-damn fools will surely believe he was there and up to no good.' And that's what Kamp tries to, do, except that his efforts are directed along s ***** sinister line: to constantly employ the names of Jsws and insinuate some dark plot similar to the forged Protocols of Zion...
...The secretary is Allah Chase, an author who has been built-up by the party-line press...
...All the generous emotions born in my fruitful garden give me no clue to a solution of the problems presented...
...America* Press Circlet Globe AMERICAN,publishing, now a. big business.venture, is going in for foreign circulation in a big way...
...Educational League was cited by the Washington Grand Jury which indicted the 29 pro-fascists as one of the publications used by fascists in their propaganda...
...I aoaht tf an italiaa government will be ante to keep itself in power without outside support...
...And than is, moat of all, Poland...
...This newest Communist'drive is being speeded up because of fears regarding the strength of th* democratic Junta formed in Mexico City by Indalecio Prieto - and Diego Martinez Barrio, the heads of the Spanish . Socialist and Left Republican parties...
...Whoever takea over the reins of government in Italy will have to tackle tbe agrarian problem if he wants to get at the root of the Italian dilemma...
...Our honored tradition wtssnavar there is trouble anywhere in tht world—is to s*nd food...
...open conversations with Spanish leaders there...
...In Southern Italy milk cattle are unknown...
...In such a mood I cam* back to my deak and found a letter from the Home Front's Italian correapondent, Sergeant Robert Cladnick...
...On the sponsors committee are a number of "innocents" and non-Communists, including L. M. Birkhead, Van Wyck Brooks and Lawrence Fernsworth...
...pro-Dewey activities *f Frank Gannett s Omsaittee for C**»Ut*ti*aal Government started an old brain rea veto ilea working...
...While in Rome, I rented a room in the home of a wounded Italian officer who was formerly a Fascist but is today just as devoted a Communist...
...The weeds seem to have grown tired of growing...
...a number of tbe bigger periodical houses sre planning foreign subsidiaries which will blanket the globe...
...His reason for being a 'Communist is that he sees no difference between" Communism and Fascism so far as discipline, party ¦hierarchy and method of government are concerned...
...tot Hillman, /or there is no H in the Russian alphabet Various persona, such aa Paul Blanshard and David J. Saposs, who are anti-Communist, are tagged as Communist, ' , A large part of Kamp's information obviously coast , from the Dies Committee, information which the Committee itself is af raid to use because of its doubtful authenticity, but that stuff ia grist for Kamp's mill . , Kamp's pamphlets are distributed in the thousands, However, he has refused to inform a Congressioasl, Committee where his money is coming from...
...The first telltale signs were the announcement* regarding the formation "underground" in Madrid of a "Supreme Junta of National Unity...
...Maybe northern Italy ia different, but southern and central Italian cities seem to be parasitic growths...
...Jo* Samp—Smear Artitt ThERE is a man who wants to start pogrom* in America, and Americans had better learn his nsme and understand the game he is playing...
...Actually, it was organized through the mailing lists of Tho Protectant, the Communistfront magazine edited by Kenneth Leslie...
...They ar* also worried about tha defection of Jesus Hernandez, the former Communist minister in the Loyalist government : who resigned from the CP...
...In these autumn days, all that Bobby finds plenty of is trouble...
...successor to the Republican regime...
...Time haa If foreign edition* ia the field but these are all in English aiming at soldier circulation-over the world...
...The target of the pamphlet it Sidney Hillman, who throughout the 64 pages is called, "alias Schmuel Gilman, Schmuel, of course, is Jewi*1} for Sidney, while Gilman is the Russian spelling...
...Kamp is a slick and clever writer for, he, h»i mastered the art of the indirect lie and the innuendo, an art long practiced by the propagandists of fascism...
...Communism in Italy, ia growing, but what a shock it's going to be to th* Italians...
...Jimmy Walker once told reporters: "Ask my opponent what he was doing in Waterbury on the night of January 25, 1931...
...Now comes an American front which bears tbe name American Committee for Spanish Freedom...
...Ruasia is represented an an angel...
...aWy, wsmld thai be a Joke...
...Thetb * hardly a part of tha globe from Ireland to JaptM*** * which we have not in the hour of need sent wheat and meat and milk...
...The only distinction which he can find ia that whereas in Russia Communism built huge factories, in Italy Fascism ran the trains on time for foreign tourists and built stadiums and tourist hotels...
...All I see ia.a mad scramble a* everyone's part to keep body •ad seal together...
...And we must aval with at least a d*s*n Italyt...
...The staple diet is pasta (spaghetti, macaroni), to which a variety of vegetables is added, thus avoiding some of the worse effects of U. 8. tenant-farm diseases of malnutrition, such aa pellagra...
...Yet not a single ounce of food m"* grrived in Italy from Russia, though every Italian city eat* (little, 111 admit) Canadian and American wheat, . . ,sy...
...Rammaghsg thiwagh •ease *M clippings, up we cam* smiling wMh the c*nfirmatiea of that vagne remkadar: In October, 1»4», the XMfff Worker, the* ka its iaola tioakst, anti-Rooaevelt phaa...
...We are told (hat they reached M per cent agreement, and all of tht columnists explain that we should be thankful...
...A grandmother's spinning-wheel is an invention so modern that it is beyond the means of th* poverty atricken peasant...
...Th* first one to refuse power wMld be Tegttati (Breott...
...Th* teak of reconstruction here will be immense...
...It also described conversations with "two leaders of the Catholic political movement," and a joint statement issued by them...
...Yet in the case of Italy, a soldier whose eyes are not shut by an excess of vino rsn look around, providing he haa been hare long enough, and aee that this land of tourists, Mussolini's New Roman Empire, ia a land of extreme poverty...
...Dsily we harvest dividends of beans, tomatoes, squashes, beets, egg plants, peppers...
Vol. 27 • October 1944 • No. 41
