The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN 7 fc« hf iliioaoiro af Horror. fHAVE nover bora iaordinarily enthusiastic •boot George Santayana. Hi* cool and stand-offish stria is a bit too stylish for ma....
...Something clicked in my mind...
...Neither of these arguments stands up una* iaaaa^w^tiOuV • sv a -The real reason back ef the refusal of some of yea to mingle with Negroes at the Canteen isn't marly at romantic and dramatic as you like to think it it...
...fcoswauki a a* Set ""THE real basis of prejudice against Negroes is eeo-numie aad historical, not sexual or psychological...
...In its outward trappings the Bolivisn revolt hsd the appearance of a "Young Turk" revolt...
...CIO leaders who were known at Communists...
...The Canteen's policy toward Negroes is based on a quotation which runt as follows: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal...
...Later they voiced their support of Hillman • • • ilf laslaesi Want* Unemployment CPEAKING before the recent sessions of the Investment Bankers of America, John F. Fennelly, executive director of the Committee for Economic Develop mint ststed bluntly: "Fall employment waald be incompatible wits the free enterprise system which carries with it the right to a normal Boat of unemployed...
...Young Santayana, despite the cool arrogance that enabled him to feel superior to the thinnest blooded Boston aristocrats, was a clever boy, and hit drawings won him a place on the Lmmm—n from the very start, fee the young writer* ami artists wish whom he worked there he developed a* much warmth at hit nature could muster...
...Negro males react to you no more and no leas than whit* males...
...Murray it particularly bitter againtt Joe Curran of the NMU and Juliut Eratpak of the UE for their atand...
...After tailing about these talented boys, the author goes aa with his story: "In our last year the Lamp—* possessed a business manager whose name is known everywhere, and who is identified, perhaps more than anyone else, with the inexorable standardising current, namely William K. Hearst...
...It has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of pigment in the skin...
...Although Hartmann was not named specifically and no mention was made of the "Peace Now" movement, the Socialist NEC, without dissenting voice, passed a resolution stating that: "Socialists oppose any deal with Hitler or Hirohito...
...The Reds snd long-haired radicals only want to tear it down...
...Then one day when I was looking for something else I noticed the name of Margaret Halsey...
...His revelation, la this I sat book, Heiton* sad Places, that he got so little out of William James, it something like a confession of weakness But there are passages in this first volume of what promises to be a long and interesting biography which I read with genuine pleasure There is, far example, the page about William Randolph Hearst...
...The Russian Embassy in Mexico City, directed by Constantine Oumansky, has a staff of 260 employees...
...What worries yen more is fear of rape...
...The people who talk about 'keeping the niggers ia their place' never admit this because it doesnt shew them ia aa entirely, favorable light...
...I am sure you all know where that comes from...
...THr...
...Someone sent it in, but I can't be expected to read everything...
...Re: Dancing with Negroes at the Stage Door Canteen...
...At tone ae yea treat Negroes as sub-humant, m don't have to pay them to much...
...From : Margaret Halsey, captain of Junior Hostesses...
...Many national CIO leaders have become alarmed at the New York litoatioa aad brought pressure on Hillman to compromise...
...He was on the West Coast, and other representatives of the ship union attended...
...The impetus was a youth movement which had chafed under the weak policy of Pefteranda...
...You unconsciously, but very arrogantly, assume that no male Negro can se much as glance at you without wanting to got you with chnd...
...We turned a cold shoulder on Hearst's munificence, and continued to meet and to bring forth our labored witticisms, not without laughter, in Felton and Baldwin's room...
...Now business feeli it'i necessary to keep a level of unemployment to make the worker feel insecure about losing his job ami make him more tractable...
...When you refute It dance with Negrs torvietaara at the Canteen, yos at* neither protecting year honor nor making sure that white Isathsiasr* won't have their hornet burned dowa around their ears...
...Intelligence depends on the number and fineness of convulsions in the brain...
...With Mollce Toward Snob...
...That's the girl who wrote With Malice Toward Some, that book about the British that we all chuckled over...
...The Hitchcock-Steinbeck film "Lifeboat" received a severe drubbing from several critics for depicting-Americans adrift in a lifeboat as greedy, fumbling and weak, while showing a determined Nasi sea-captain...
...I know that tome of you on our shift are very deeply prejudiced against accepting Negroes as your social equals...
...especially the Vie Parmenne and the other French sheets, so different in prevail nt theme from our decent snd childlike fun...
...It waa taught to you when you were too young and helpless to be critical...
...Some of the revolutionary ardor of this movement, however, was channelled off by clever Axis agents...
...In the succeeding maneuverings, the liberal elements teem to have been thunted aside...
...and the conventionalized illustrations showed a giraffe-like ideal of feminine beauty, very unlike the dumpy realities, aa if a taste for elegance were struggling against mere sensuality...
...Two or three times two or three of us may have gone into that new sanctum (for we were also supplied with keys) and looked at those ttartling comic papers, most of them unintelligible and grossly colored...
...Yet hia budding powers as a newspaper owner and manager made him invaluable to the Lampoon in its financial difficulties...
...Incidentally, the Daily Worker gave PM hell tor John P. Lewis's editorial on the Prmvdm lie...
...I myself actually read some of the longer stories in the Vie Portstmne...
...there was a certain overtone there of satire and subtle humor, sometimes even of psthos, at in Guy de Maupaasant and Theophile Gautier...
...Hillman came out with a clever offer of withdrawing severs...
...He not only knew how to tocure advertisements, but he presented us with a material sanctum, carpeted, warmed by a stove, and tupplied with wooden armdhain and long tables at which all the illustrated comic papert in the world were displayed at exchanges for our little local and puerile "Lampp...
...AB yoa are doing is making it possible for employers all over the country to get Negro** to work for them tor hum money than those employer* would have to any you...
...Pe»P*» around town are commenting on the fact that it *** Lewis and not Max Lemer who wrote the editorial...
...Despite these trimmings, CIO will support FDR...
...He was little esteemed in the college...
...Such people prefer to tall back on more melodramatic arguments, usually (1) the honor at their women and) (I) the danger of Nam revolt...
...The thing is too spicy to be kept for circulation among the pretty girls who spend their evenings being nice to soldiers up on 43rd Street...
...We oppose such deals when they come under the head of 'negotiated peace' and when they are called Darlan dealt...
...Inside and Out By MURRAY EVERETT The 4LP Sit.orlo...
...There is no scientific basis for the notion that Negroes are inferior to white people...
...Bolivia Tares to fk* IJffbf *T*HIS column laat week reported that the actions of Enrique de' Loxada, noted South American liberal, were the most reliable duet to the tangled Bolivian situation...
...The gimmick is: with "full employment,'' that it t job for every one who wants one, a worker can tell kit employer to go to hell if he doesn't like working conditions snd get another job...
...b) you are being given at the Canteen a golden opportunity to come into contact with Negroes under the bett possible circumstances and find out what they are really like...
...How easily a little cool impudence can deceive mankind f Yet the enterprise of our business manager in this affair was of little use to us...
...Put on honeat labels and then make a fight for the principle...
...Yet the thing was horribly monotonous, and had been done better in La Mniton Toilier and Madtmoitelle de Manpin...
...Variety editorially proposes that the radio industry draft Walter Lias, mann as its chief editorialist . . . Jchnny Green did not attend the CIO progressive parley on Hillman aad the ALP, aa itemed here hut week...
...In thia, they took the ball away from labor for a while...
...Cclenel McCormick's Chicago Trikvne now pub h'sbes an ovoaaeea edition for the soldiers in the Pacific, pouring in its anti-labor poison...
...But then, some of the war experiences began to tell and the CED started talking about "high level* of employment", and now, in spots, about "adequate employment...
...Mfscellaay TPHE Socialist Party National Executive Committee, in session lsst week, repudisted the sctions of George Hartmann, former party candidate and now chairman of the "Peace Now" drive...
...PHIS thing has been kicking round in my basket for * weeks...
...The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN 7 fc« hf iliioaoiro af Horror...
...Selig Perlman, co-author of the History of Labor in the United State* and many other volumes on trade unionism, is writing a history of the War Labor Board in Washington...
...This column believes firmly in a free .press and we would not withhold any paper from war prisoners who want to receive it But we believe, too, in honest journalism...
...One hears a good deal of talk, in some circles, about Reds and long-haired radicals who want to tear down the Constitution...
...This week, de Lozada, who had been confidential agent of the Bolivian government, resigned sfter the ruling junta had refused to accept into the cabinet the militantly anti-Nazi party PIR and its leader Jose Antonio Arze, who fiew from exile here to Bolivia...
...The fact that his father was a millionnaire and a Senator from California gave him an independence that displeased the undergraduate mind, aad hia long cigar* were bud form in the Yard...
...This it ftp at is fly true in the Canteen, which has hardly any points af resemblance to a lonely, moonlit shrubbery...
...A scientist, given a collection of human brains pickled in alcohol, cannot tell which qpes belonged to Negroes and which to white people...
...ALP will negotiate with Sidney Mi lima n aaly if all Communists are dropped from his slate ha the forthcoming primaries...
...But tab ia where the ball ring...
...You can't be blamed for having that prejudice in the first place...
...Quite a few of you have asked me questions recently having to do with Negroes st the Stage Door Canteen, to I think I had better explain the matter in its entirety...
...That it why de Lozada resigned...
...If it had, you would all be much stupider when you are suii-lmrned...
...The revolutionary junta was a mixture of restless army officers, nationalistic and revolutionary intelligentzia and discontented and angry labor elements who hated Penersnda for the massacre of miners at the Catavi mines in 1942...
...Having stolen such a generous tlice, it it no more than fair to remark that the book is published by Srribners...
...Cheap labor...
...cio tiplosioai TTHE National Board meeting of CIO, being held late this week, may produce the first open cleavage between the Communitt faction in CIO and the Murray-Thomas progrestive bloc, over the issue of the draft labor law...
...that while yen are an eitreiaely attractive group of young women, there isn't on* single ens of you who's thai feed...
...The CED wat one of the first groups in the country to yelp for planning—business planning -to provide for full employment...
...But you certainly can be blamed for hanging on to the prejudice when: (a) you are old- enough to know better...
...The German Club was an old institution, founded by German businessmen in Mexico City, most of whom had been away from the "Fatherland" for several decades...
...Tb* real reason has nothing to do with rape, seduction, aad risings la the night The real reason can be aunuaai up in two extremely uaromantic little words...
...It is full of significance—explains a lot about the frustration of the bum which must he partial eiplaaatioo of the strange and destructive life he hat lived ever since...
...The paper barred was the "German-American," the Stalinist German-language paper in New York...
...The truth is...
...Swastikas decorated the halls, and officials of the Germany embassy were frequently found there...
...The ALP retorted, however, thst the issue was not ef a few individuals but of rejecting all Communists from the ALP...
...As women, you knew in your hearts that men of any description respond to you pretty much as you intend them to respond...
...There at aaora—jast aa smart, just as true...
...The film may be attacked by the Writer* War Board...
...The Fxcifable PM Ql'K contemporary, PM, got very indignant on San-day because "an anti-Nazi" newspaper had been barred from German prisoner war camps...
...Lombardo Toledano, speaking in Mexico's capital, declares thst the foremost example of democracy in the world it Russia and the foremost example of Trotskyism, the Nazi stste...
...A secret conference was held Isst week between Dubiasky snd Hillman...
...Today the club sat the same membership of German businessmen, but its chief activity is the sponsoring of literary teas featuring Ludwig Renn, Anna Seghers, Egon Erwin Ki*eh and other members of the Stalinist literary clique...
...There was the heading Memo to Junior Hostesses...
...The coup d'etat in La Paz won immediate and widespread popular approval...
...Of course, there are numerous visa and immigration problems to Russia to be taken care of...
...South of ffto Border A RETURNED traveler from Mexico supplied the following notes of interest: Before Mexico declared war on Germany, the German Club in Mexico City was pro-Nazi...
...arranged by Samnel Welch*k of riO, bat no compromise could be reached...
...Actually, I don't believe any of you are very deeply concerned with Negro intelligence...
...P" does its own readers only harm when it agitates them about a "democratic'' paper being banned...
...It it only s mimeographed sheet and looks pretty much like all the hand-outs in the world...
...CIO'* Political Action Committee will hold a national convention this year prior to the Democratic and Republican conventions, in order to present a series of plsnks to the parties...
...The people who deny Negroes democratic equality actually are tearing it down...
Vol. 27 • January 1944 • No. 5
