The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
The Home Front By WILLIAM E.BOHN A Letter to Liberals 11/r hare in and around New York th* moat talented bunrh of liberali we ever had. A good many of them 1 know. I meet I hem now and again - at...
...Roosevelt has gone back on them...
...He has never held nn army commission, to the letter is either a hoax or an attempt to pass off Chevalier as a democrat...
...So all of our talented, experienced, high-minded liberal journalists are crying to high heaven that they have been betrayed, the people have been betrayed...
...Miss Wassieievska is also Mrs...
...A similar article also appeared in fnivertal Grmfie...
...When he first arrived in this country, after the atart of the war...
...In those days we had a Richard Harding Davis or two, but the place wasn't cluttered up with foreign correspondents...
...They feel that they are crying into a v«>id...
...The Daily Newt has cut out all advertising in the black and white section of its national pre-date edition...
...It would convey the notion that I have it in for certain special ones...
...New the attacks are starting again...
...Kenneth Leslie, the editor, ii a party-liner who supported the Americsn Peace Mobilisation during the Nazi-Soviet pact He has used The I'rotettant to build a series of Communist fronts...
...We are lucky to have them...
...I could easily pick out pssssges from their columns to illustrate my points...
...The total impact of their activities is immensely to the good...
...As the Ukrainian Foreign Commissar, Kornechiuk will negotiate with the "peoples" Polish government in order to facilitate the bringing of certain Polish regions into the Ukrainian Soviet...
...With the sort af government we have that is just what a reasonable person would expect...
...This is the basil of your feeling that Roosevelt and Churchill have let you down...
...But th* Assorts* government is as much the government of big busing*} as it ever waa...
...The Soviet press agency fas* ha* also denounced Gorkin...
...Here w* have a government compounded of the radian* and conservatives mingled la the administration plus * conservative Congress...
...During some bit of chit-chat on the vagaries of publishing in this country, someone said: "Mri Heiden, I am happy that the Book-of-the-Month club took your book...
...I want these men and women to read what I am saying...
...So the tables snd windows of booksellers are stocked — and off goes the gallant writer on another lecture tour...
...Hence your cries of anguish...
...Dirty Work at tkt Cross-Roods ffViNT get me wrong...
...Tho conservatives are in the saddle...
...He will negotiate not with the official government in London, but with the Union of Polish Patriots in Moscow, headed by a woman—Wanda Wassielevska...
...We are winning the war, bat unmistakable signs shew the peace will not be the sort that liberals want...
...Editorially, the New York Timet stated that Russia bad broken the Moscow sn* Teheran accords by acting unilaterally on the matter of territories...
...And the modest author, with a bemused smile on his face, recalling many trials and tribulations, responded : "My friend, now there are two persons who are happy...
...They wouldn't be the worst companions on a desert island...
...I really like the whole crowd...
...The attacks coincided with the arrival in Mexico of Jeans Hernandez, th* Spanish Communist leader...
...But most of these writers—the ones I am thinking about—and there are dozens of them—are really fine, intelligent persons...
...There has been dirty work at all the cross-roads of the world...
...We have all round us boys and girls who have chatted their way round the world...
...Kornechiuk, which makes negotiations much easier and the title to thia paragraph appropriate...
...You ran see their stuff—and good stuff—in Ik, Saturn, Tar...
...This week he wrote that many Spanish leaders had protested against the jitafs because it excluded labor and communist representatives...
...There is a fight going on between the Museum of Modern Art and the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors, a group of progressive artists...
...I wsnt them to write answers I am not mentioning any of their names—though I am strongly tempted to do so...
...That's why I am writing these paragraphs...
...The Federation broke away from the Communist-led Artists Congress, which then dissolved...
...John P. Marquand in .So Little Time did this whole crowd great injustice...
...Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, the American Congress, the State Department and a tot of other persona and organizations pay little attention...
...The Mexico City junta has the support of 80 per cent of the refugees...
...A Aght is brewing between the television forces and FM which will be dumped Into the lsp of the Federal Communications Commission...
...And their hearts are in the right place...
...Be sure to tune in next week...
...The plans that are actually being made for the pest-war era ere the sort of plans require* far the expanaion of trade and industry...
...From wastepaprr baskets and notebooks faithful publishers gather enough bright ideas to make a volume and justify an eye-stopping title...
...V * • • Prophets of Never Never Land IET us talk first about the war and the peace...
...llelene Elliot's novel, to be published this month, will be a wow, aaya Max Eastman...
...Kliena Krylenko (Mrs...
...Now and then you meet a stupid Walter Newcombe who gets by on the rumor that he calls the dictator of Ruritania by his first name...
...President Roosevelt talked beautifully in the Atlantic Charter, end Vice President Wallace takes the platform every now and then to talk right out of your hearts and mine...
...The only ones excluded are the Communists...
...nearly all of his stories are devoted to attacks on the junta recently created by Prists, Barrio, Araquistain, in Mexico City, in a move towsrdi a Free Spanish government...
...Libersl or radical writing is now vastly better informed about foreign affairs than it used to be...
...Two years ago when these men were in physical danger of attack more than 20 leading Americans signed a statement to President Avila Camacho asking protection...
...Some of them can even sing...
...A Not* to PM TPHE Mexican correspondent of PM quite obviously is a Stalinist...
...titoroti m»4 Art If ON RAD H El DEN, the noted writer snd author of ^ the best-selling book Dor Futhrtr, wss in The New Leader office this week to say hello to the staff...
...Your whole attitude is based on false assumpVtnsa...
...Acrion Socialiata (Havana) reports that General Miaja has recognized the Prieto junta snd with other military men has formed a "military association loyal to the Republic...
...Patterson is sacrificing ads for circulation, but making up the money by increasing the price to 10 cents a copy...
...Commie Notes Don't miss Fred Woltman's comprehensive expose of Th* Protettmnt which ran in the World-Telegram the early part of this week...
...I meet I hem now and again - at parties, luncheons, dinners or maybe in a restaurant or just strolling down the street...
...An anonymous attack on the three men was printed in Tiempe, accusing the three socialist* of sabotage, of propagsnda against the United Nations and ef organizing n strike of railroad workers...
...But this foiled...
...Gorkin, Serge and Pivert replied to both attacks...
...In Groat Britain they have a Conservative governs...
...The world is running against them...
...I think they wilt have a better chance to win if they pay a little attention to » hat I am going to say...
...The recent Hollywood films on Russia have been completely non political...
...The only answer the Federation got from the Museum was an invitation to attend a banquet—which the Federation scorned as a cheap bribe...
...The Roosevelt administration is going the wrong way...
...The official labor organization I'GT supports the juste while the syndicalist CNT, traditionally against political action, has given it support...
...But I had better not do it...
...They have one great advantage over some of those I u»ed to know For the most part they are gay, cheerful, humanly attractive...
...ALEXANDER KORNECHIUK, the Soviet Vice-Commissar for Foreign Affairs, has just been appointed, under the Molotov plan, the Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Ukrainian Soviet (Incidentally, if this move is towsrds democracy, as the apologists claim, why weren't these new officials elected...
...from one source our stork of liberals has been very much strengthened since 1 first csme to this big town...
...But there is something strsnge about their stance toward men and things...
...Over any restaurant table or in the corner of a newspaper column they are willing to spill confidences gleaned from Mussolini or tioering or Gandhi...
...Chevalier has been a "collaborationht" and has entertained German troops...
...Inside and Out By MURRAY EVERETT Politics Mokes Strange Bedfellow...
...The New York Timet has become quite strong in its statements about Russia...
...The New Leader was the first American publication to print Heiden's articles, and when he is in New York he comes in to chst a while...
...Robert Taylor's "Song of Russia" has been billed a* "the love story of an American.'' while the picture "Three Russian Girls" has s subtitle in the ads "lifting their rifles to kill or their warm lips to kiss...
...At the present these fine, intelligent, well-intentioned writers are in a state of high exasperation...
...They are ready to hold the world up to scorn st a dozen paces if it refuses to be improved...
...Our generals—aided and abetted bv the State Department—are frankly fighting a war to beat Hitler aad Hirohito—not to establish democracy anywhere...
...You, my shining friends, think—or pretend to think-that the United States is fighting a war for democracy...
...Mexican Stalinists ia 4cfion \ NEW campaign of slander has been unlesshed in Mexico City against Julian Gorkin, Mnrcesu Pi vert and Victor Serge, prominent anti-Stalinist refugees...
...Mlscelloey U/ILLIAM L HUTCHESON of the AFL Carpenteri Union has just issued a long blast against the Nee Deal, calling for "free enterprise," "abatement of bureaucracy," "halt of paternalism," etc., etc...
...The Federation wrote an open letter to the Museum criticizing their policy toward* American art The Museum countered by writing each member of the Federation asking if be bad known the contents of the letter—an obvious attempt to split the Federation...
...Democracy in action: 300 candidates were nominated for ttven offices it the Ford Local 800 of the UAW...
...Libersl forces are split on the Lynch-Dickstein bill to bar from the mails race-incitement matter...
...I am not making fun of anyone...
...And their hooka fall from the presses fast ss any gadget* or widgets from any assembling line...
...Democratic French groups suspect a hoax in a recent letter from Captain Maurice Chevalier from a Gersjsn prison camp...
...Secretary Hull has gone back on them...
...Right now this crop of foreign eraiasaries of the press who stay at home to enlighten their less traveled fellow citizens,is the special mark of our local journalistic scene...
...The AFL, CIO, American Jewish Congress, have approved tho bill, while the Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP are opposed on the ground that it can be applied to all minority groups...
...t? also reports the expulsion of Negrin from the Socialist party for collaboration with . the Communists...
...A group of Stalinist journalists have demanded that these socialist leader* and other anti-eommuniat* be expelled from Mexico—which would mean they would be sent to Franco Spain, Vichy France or Soviet Russia...
...eu Republtc, PM, Common Seme, Tho A/cie York Pott and plenty of other dailies and weeklies...
...Since the meeting of the Cortee in Paris which deposed Negrin, the Communists have frantically sought to win some influence in the emigration...
...Eastman) will have an exhibition of her recent paintings at the Benestel Galleries in April...
...By and large they and 1 are on the same side I want them to win...
...The issue comes out in 24 bare pages...
...The talents and good intentions of our liberal writing wing are on conspicuous exhibition st every newsstand and in every bookstore...
...Its London correspondent, James B. Reston, wrote last week that Russisn ambitions in Europe encompass the whole of centrsl and eastern Europe, from Trieste in the Adriatic to Stettin In the Baltic The article bears out Jonathan Stout's statements of last week...
...Will the beautiful columnist weep her eyes out—or will she listen t* her old undo...
Vol. 27 • February 1944 • No. 7
