Where the News Ends

...We renounced all political responsibility in that area, although we did our bit for humanity and civilization by bombing Belgrade on the Orthodox Easter, thereby imitating the brutal German air attack on the Yugoslav capital in 1941...

...There are perhaps two small redeeming features in the Churchill speech...

...How brittle and hollow does thst phrsse, the United Nationa, sound in the light of the brutality and chicanery of one ally, the Soviet Union, in its policy toward another ally, Poland...

...The bill provides for the amendment of the Budget and Accounting Act passed in 1921...

...This would include an estimate of national wealth production during the coming period and the number of persons who, according to the most careful calculations, might expect to be employed...

...Every labor body, every labor paper, every forward-looking citizen should get behind it...

...Suppose that 60,000,000 is taken as the figure representing full employment...

...The one bright spot in the whole sordid picture is the superb moral courage of the Polish Cabinet, headed by Tomast Arcisxewtki, veteran Polish Socialist and active leader of the Polish Underground...

...This is no crackpot scheme to provide wealth for the weary...

...Eton Churchill's speech of Decern her 16, with its frank endorsement of a fourth partition of Poland...

...They have looked ea at employment hat swelled from about 40,000,000 tt about 60,000,000...

...Churchill's speech and the penetrating news despatches of Cyrus Sulzberger and Raymond Daniell in the New York Times of December 17 and 18 convey a pretty clear picture of what happened at these gatherings...

...It explains the wide-open loopholes of the "Dumbarton Hoax...

...Americans have no reason to be proud of this picture...

...This is a part of the statement to be presented to Congress for action...

...The other is the brutal, almost cynicsl frankness of his language...

...As a Polish Socialist here recently said to me: "Mikolajczyk hoped that he might be able to save a hundred thousand patriots from execution by the NKVD, and half a million from deportation to Siberia...

...At Casablanca, so it seems, Churchill's price for accepting the slogan, unconditional surrender, which has, in the absence of any assurance of tolerable living conditions for a non-Nazi Germany, contributed to unnecessary prolongation of the war, was a free hand in the Balkans...

...and they are as repulsive as the fantastic figures in the old traditional witches' dance on the Bracken...

...The idea in this and other bombings of Serb cities wss to bolster the prestige of the Communist "Marshal' Tito...

...While the presentation of the situation was distinctly disingenuous in some points the use of such phrases as "the harsh, unforeseeable movement of events" and "the grim, bare bones of the Polish problem," together with the anxious, urgent plea for an early'meeting of the "Big Three," reflected the Prime Minister's conception of the distinctly gloomy internstionsl political horizon...

...How incredible Churchill's speech would have seemed on the eve of the outbreak of the present wart At that time Croat Britain was using all its influence, up to the point of signing a formal treaty of alliance, to induce Poland to fight an unequal war rather than give up Danzig and the Polish Corridor...

...The declaration of policy which serves as introduction to the formal proposals seta down in plain words what haa been accepted as a national principle tinct tht ttart of the New Deal era...

...it was Europe...

...The Government of the United States, in short, is to be revamped to make it capablt of looking after this basic feature of the national life...

...The right to work it not to remain a vague and nebuloua phrase...

...return of all Polish military units abroad to Poland...

...British moral prestige probably reached a new low level in that declaration...

...From here onward the framers of the bill say farewell to the ancient doctrine of laisses faire...

...I recently read a long, labored article of apologetics for that thin camouflage for great power domination and laid it down with the impression that the London Economist had aaid a great deal more in one critp sentence of comment This sentence seems worth quoting for its realistic penetration: "Perhapa it ia not unduly cynical to say that the machinery *an he astd only for imposing the will of the Greet Powers upon a smaller power when, by exception, thst will happen to be unanimous...

...The ugly skeletons of the Casablanca and Teheran closets have begun to parade...

...Tht Congress and the executive department* are to b* organized to take care of any deficit in the employment figures...

...It will be introduced soon after the new Congress is called to order...

...and a detailed, specific statement of American foreign policy, long overdue in any case, is now most urgently called for, unless Roosevelt is willing by default to let the impression stand that he is willing /or American blood and American treasure to be poured out in unlimited quantities to support the most sordid schemies of "territorial aggrandizement" by foreign powers...

...In the Budget Bureau and the other executive departments there is to be machinery for gathering facta and devising plans...

...Teheran now looms up as a super-Munich, where Roosevelt stood aloof with the pose of Pontius Pilate while a loyal ally, Poland, unrepresented at the meeting, was partitioned and dismembered at the insistence of Stalin, with the acquiescene of Churchill...

...It takes our production outfit as it is, financed and managed as it is now, and proposes to step up its scope, to incresse its capacity to absorb capital and labor...

...They have teen national production stepped up from less than 880,000,000, to more than $140,000,000,000...

...It was a plausible argument that, by returning to Poland, Mikolajczyk might be able to spare his people some of the worst consequences of Soviet military occupation, accompanied by puppet rule...

...All of lhia ¦* directly contrary to tKe^platform recently publicized by the National Association* of Manufacturers...

...Tht amendments provide that he shall also send to Congress "the national production and employment budget...

...Every American able to work and willing to work has tke right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries, or shops, or offices, or farms or mines ef the Nation...

...And only during times or in places where private industry fails to give full employment, is the government called upon to step in and take up the slack...

...So far all of this is just a plan...

...But it fits in precisely with the demands made at the conventions of our two great federations of labor...

...dissolution of the preposterous Lublin Committee...

...The designation of the legislative machinery to ht provided has been worked out with exemplary care t* avoid any touch of utopianism...

...But the consideration that proved decisive with the majority of the Polish Cabinet in London was that no satisfactory assurances had been received that an independent Polish Government would be created, even if the territorial sacrifice were accepted...

...What will happen to it then will depend largely on the amount of popular support...

...The Polish Government would lose in moral prestige and would gain nothing practically if it should lend an appearance of consent or agreement to Stalin'a territorial grab, unless the following conditions were clearly laid down and backed by the signatures not only of Stalin, but of Churchill and Roosevelt: Unconditional recognition of the London Cabinet as the provisional government of Poland, pending free and democratic elections...

...Now Groat Britain, through its Prime Minister, demands that Poland, mfttr suffering greater losses than any ether nation in that unequal war, should cede without plebiscite or discussion a third of ita territory to the Soviet Union, No wonder the comments on the speech, both in Con-servstive and Labor circles, were bitter and skeptical...

...Victor Raises remarked very accurately that "the ghost of the Atlantic Charter was laid today...

...Measures are to be taken to bring the number of workers up to that level...

...There is to be a joint Congressional Committee on the Budget continuously in a position to make definite proposals...

...Captain Alan Graham said: "The Polish nation is in danger of oxtinc^on at the handa of our enemy, Germany, and our ally, Russis...

...He spoke for the War Contracts subcommittee of tht Senate Military Affairs Committee, These men hav# had a rfngtide teat at the great spectacle of war production...

...Soviet military commanders in Poland to be guided by the ssme principle of noninterference in civilian politics that has been followed by General Eisenhower in France...

...One is that he did not make the impression of being very happjTnbout it...

...Arcistewski and his associates therefore preferred to take their stand on the Atlantic Charter principles and to make it just as difficult, uncomfortable and disgraceful as possible for Churchill and Roosevelt to sell their country down the river...

...Churchill's speech performed a beneficial service in dispelling an atmosphere of hypocrisy, pretense snd makebelieve, in revealing, perhapa unconsciously, what a profound moral criaia hat arisen in connection with the wsr aims of the various powers...

...placing immediately of civil affairs and relief distribution in the hands of the legitimate government...

...But it has been adopted by a subcommittee of the Senate...

...And it is carefully provided that the government investment shall be in projects which shall result in actual wealth production...

...An IdHorial— The Full Employment Act of 1945 THE best gift whieh the American people art likely to receive during thia Christmas season is the text of the bill which Senator Murray releases on December 18...

...It was not only I'oland that was partitioned...

...Under the terms of this Act the President submits to each new Congress a report on the fiscal budget of the Government...

...The dilemma that has been presented to the leaders of Poland's fight for freedom has been tragic in the extreme, and it is not surprising that a difference of opinion, reflected in the resignation of former Prime Minister Stanislaw Mikolajizky, should have developed...

...but recent developments in Greece convey the impression that Stalin may have been indulging in a not unfamiliar practice of hijacking...

...There is no place here for another WPA...

...This sordid reversion to the worst traditions of power politics offers no hope of sincere and laating peace...

...Personally, in view of Stalin's blsck record of executions, arrests and deportations in occupied Polsnd, I think they chose the wiser course...

...Churchill's "cut" was a free hand in the Mediterranean area...

...The bill, whieh is to be introduced into the new Congress, is an attempt to apply the lessons and techniques learned in war to the problems of peace...

...It is a practical plan to apply labor to materials and thus product wealth...

...What price the Atlantic Charter when we have this avowal that millions of Poles in eastern Poland and millions of Germans in solidly German areas like Esst Prussia, Lower Silesia, Brandenburg and Pomerania, are to be shifted about like cattle, without the slightest regard for their own desire...

...Considering the tremendous pressure exerted on him by the British Government, it is understandable that Mikolajczyk ahould hsve felt that this was the lesser evil, that it was worthwhile to give up a large part of Poland if the remainder could enjoy independence...

...The Labor member, Ivor Thomas, declsred that Churchill's statement contained the seeds of future war and that "the extension of Russis's frontier makes nonsense of the Atlantic Charter...

...And this miracle has been powered bjr the dynamism national planning, national demand, national investment...

...It is so devised as to by-pass most of our prejudices against government intervention in business...