The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN r—Hcrlpt fo Ukmrmh IT all come* of taking life too easy. La*t week I »et out to write ¦ letter to liberals and spent co much time talking about the beautiful...
...All of the moves, big and little, made recently by the Soviet dictator are consistently aimed in that direction...
...The Russian government is s dictatorship...
...If they get the idea that our government is always wrong and the Russian government is always right, their love of this land and of its institutions may just possibly be undermined...
...It has always included the sharp eye sad the sharp tongeo...
...So are Englishmen, C*nadir ans, Chinese...
...Now pressure is being brought on the radio industry, trade magazine Variety reveals, to darken the rosy-colored hues used to picture the post-war world...
...There are things that are better in other countries...
...But most of you find ways of apologising for every move made by the Russian government...
...Because Hitler made his attack in June, 1941, we and the Russians are fighting on the same aide...
...Well, our men are dying...
...But you yowl at Secretary Hull, and you defend the Russians...
...But they never accepted it, and the American government never accepted it...
...La*t week I »et out to write ¦ letter to liberals and spent co much time talking about the beautiful morning that I never got round to moot of the things that I had in mind In the last two paragraphs I did finally broach the first of the points that I wanted to make...
...Like the CCF, the new group is for sweeping social reforms, 'Snd is anti-Communist...
...I am not fussing about this because it seems to imply ¦.Kck .°?i!**rM"m.:, lt.nisyjL.tq be sure, have a xathftt„ bad effect on some youthful readers...
...If the left-wing wins the primaries, all he has is the empty husk of the party, tagged for whst it is, an alliance with the Communists...
...Advertising plugs outlining a post-war Utopia will be stopped...
...This is assumed to be a complete defence for unlimited glorification of all tha work* of Joseph Stalin...
...T Tha tradition of Ubsrsltom is very precious and eery important...
...Writes Minor: "Columnists like other people, hsve their difficulties in storms like the present one snd tend to steer sway from the open sea of mass psychology into the easier water of individual psychology...
...There can be no difference of opinion about the matter...
...The other point which I want to mention is much more serious...
...The Detroit motor car companies shout "free enterprise" too, but they're going to rsise their prices after the wsr because they know that people will buy cars anyway and they're going to scoop the cream off the market milk...
...All that I am saying about this part of the business is that I wish the criticism were more realistic...
...My notion was, naturally, that since this is just what One would expect, there is not much point in your weeping all over your pages about having been betrayed...
...Anyone who whispers that all is not perfect over there is instantly shushed...
...Tha first, apparently, becomes a refuge from the second, when the going gets too tough...
...Imagine bow great your indignation would have been if Secretary Hull had set up an organisation Inside of France or Belgium to pull for American domination...
...Our people never accepted the task of fighting fascism as fascism...
...It was not elected for thst sort of purpose...
...It is like expecting Santa Claus to set the world right...
...And such a party is simply a political liability...
...You can't get it by crying Into your little journalistic corners...
...Some business men, even though they hsve been irked by certain aspects of wartime government supervision, feel thst this price is not too high to psy for s chsnce to escape reversion to wasteful competitive practices.' " From Business Week, February 5. 'Glossary: "Concerted Action" means cartel, pooling, monopoly, and what have you...
...Liberals ami C onssnuarsrs DUT expecting conservative governments to do radical things is no great crime...
...on January 29 on "What I Saw in Russia," Donald Nelson, chairman of the War Production Board, says: "Russia is not a competitor of America, but she can develop into an excellent source of business for America...
...As long as yea refuse to discuss every important issue openly, freely, frankly, you have as right to the proud title of KeereJ...
...But there is a certain advantage about international eclecticism...
...The bitter realities of Washington in 1|44 are what we have laid up for ourselves during the elections of the past decade...
...It comes down to this, my dear, brilliant, well m formed and well-intentioned friends...
...An opportunity to preserve the benefits of concerted action it seen in the fact that war production mechanism may not be terminated abruptly as waa NRA...
...Our trade union men have- staid mrt of politics...
...Remembrance of things tn the very near past will show what I mean...
...We kept up our campaign for years with little effect...
...In the current Saturday Evening Pott Edgar Snow states that our opportunity to sell goods to Russia when the war ends snd lendlease is no longer in force will be strictly limited...
...If Hillman loses the primary, then he is washed up as a political figure in labor...
...succession of men who astro given your group its standing...
...But we have no right to do so...
...Apparently the stinging satire of Max Last man in these pages some weeks back got under Gold's and Minor's akins, and is one of the csusea for the ludicrous and labored column, for Minor makes reference to Eastman's remarks...
...But yea, with all your advantages, ate tailing into the old, bad way...
...We sll blame Roosevelt for giving labor a raw deal...
...We are not getting it...
...But about Russia, according to tha way most of you go at tamga, there must be s consistent policy of hush-hush...
...And so with Mike Gold—he developed a neurosis and fled from the mass...
...jKilde xuui Out Inside and Out By MURRAY EVERETT PolHicol Nora* gXAVID DUBINSKY, ILGWU President, was in *^ Washington recently conferring with various persons on the ALP fight in New York...
...The situation was summed up best by one very high personage who told Dubinsky: "The way things stand, Sidney Hillman loses no matter what happens...
...that's whst it says] thst Hey wood Broun found you in, Mikeout in the open with the millions of the labor movement...
...In his question and answer column on the proposed Communist change of line, Minor writes, "Why not snswer Mike Gold's question 'As for pledging to aid capitalism stabilize itself, this is a pill fit only for a horse...
...The idea was borrowed from the French department which uses the same doggerel to demonstrate a principle of the French language...
...The person who made this analysis, carries a lot of weight in the political scene...
...Ha Ha | "OENTIMENT is growI ing among indusI triahsth and government I officials for continuing I into the...
...About everything in the world outside of Russia we are free to use our eyes snd esrs and brains...
...Writing in Collier1...
...You blame Secretary Hall and all of our diplomats and propagandists for not conducting a onehundred-percent democratic war...
...I wish we had a labor party like the one in England...
...You are surrendering the chief glory at the long...
...I don't object to your finding fault with our government...
...For the past decade, 1 psychology teachers used the- rhyme "Mairzy Doats and Goatsy Doats and Pigsy Doats as "ilustrations of the meaning of the meaningless...
...There is a curious perverseness in this predilection...
...The President does just what any politician would do in his place...
...They are reaping • what they have sown...
...We must build a party to accomplish it...
...As soon as students hear the first two words now, Dean Miller of the University lamented, "they know the whole thing and what it is all about...
...You and I tried to win them for that tank, tried to convince them that their only safety lay in accepting it...
...Prime movers in tha new party are Francis Heisler, leading labor lawyer, Leonard Lev...
...But we criticise all of their governments without making anyone's hair stand on end...
...Snow believes that Stalin wants to do the job with as little outside help as possible...
...All right...
...Wishing your country had all the good points is proof of having more, rather than less, patriotism...
...If we ever expect to gat anything better in this country, we hsve got to dig far it Wa must educate people up to it...
...of the United Wholesale and Retail CIO, Maynard Krueger of the Socialist Party, and others...
...Home-Fronf Lullaby TPH E Army is quite worried about "complacency" on the home front—an attitude which high-pressured President Roosevelt into support of national service legislation, as this column revealed...
...Take Yt>nr Pick COME people think.we are going to do a tremendous business with Russia after the wsr, some don't...
...There is no logic in it, but there is s lot of sweet innoence and engaging goodwill...
...Then came Pearl Harbor—end we were in...
...A number of choice South American dictatorships are on oui aide, but we feel under no obligation to pretend that their dictators are devoted followers of Thomas Jefferaon...
...Ability to see the good in other countries is a virtue rather than a vice...
...Which means in practice, seizing German heavy industry...
...1 wish we had developed cooperatives comparable with those in Norway and Sweden...
...This is by no means assured, but WPB moved this week to give individnsl industries' collective advice even greater weight daring the transition period than it did daring conversion of industry to war production...
...In explaining how Gold cams to make such a remark, Minor erects a tremendous system of theoreticsl psychology, consisting of elaborate differences between individual and mass psychology...
...New Jersey's American Labor League will suspend functioning for one year under an agreement reached with the CIO Political Action Committee, and permit the latter organization to direct political activities in that state...
...Anyway, somebody is fooling somebody...
...What I said was something to the effect that you liberals expect—or pretend to expect- somehing which is not in the eards...
...Mike Gold's individual conscience, says Minor, mutt be submerged in the fight of the mass Communist parties over the world, and with s fine poetical flourish, Minor continues: "As Virgil conducted Dante through Hell, let us conduct Mike on a tour through the mountains of Yugoslavia and Greece...
...Well, in the end, there is hope for Mike and Minor concludes, with tears in his eyes in addressing Gold: "You help us best to understand the world and how to change it when you are wet with the spray of thst psychology [don't ask me whst it means...
...At the same time the mine owners are pushing the Scrugham Bill in Congress which provides for Government protection of their interests through a stock-piling and reserve scheme which would keep their mines going...
...A new political party, paralleling Canada's spectacular Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, is being formed in Chicago under the name American Commonwealth Party...
...It isn't that sort of government...
...The armies—and the governments behind them—have no idea of fighting an ideological war...
...Where is the human who can swallow it...
...We have, both here and in Great Britain, comparatively conservative governments...
...But when you whitewash another government, that is a serious matter...
...It hardly pretends to be anything else...
...I Mtiaeti and Jdeofooy TPHK American Mining Congress (western division) met in convention last week and passed a resolution favoring "free enterprise...
...concerted-action* I plans used to obtain...
...The whole column only proves that Gold wants to swsllow the pill fit only for a horse in private, while Minor insists he do it in public, and shows him how...
...Variety also' reports thst the song "Mairzy Doats" is a big headache to the University of'Pennsylvania and has busted up a special psychology course...
...Indignation is far from being enough...
...A lot of us—you in your various journals and we in The New Leader—shouted our heads off about Hitler and hotly urged Americans to throw in their lot with Britain in an effort to bead him off...
...That may do real harm...
...The Russian government* is going ahead—just as are the conservative forces back of the American and British governments—mapping out an imperialistic post-war world...
...The prerequisite, of course, would be sn extension of s hands-off anti trust policy...
...Robert Minor—Horse Doctor 117 E knew Mike Gold would get into trouble for his remarks in the Daily Worker on the Communist change of line...
...Yet that is precisely what the Soviet government has done in Yugoslavia snd Poland...
...You want—and we on The New Leader want—an allout war for democracy...
...Sotting ap sacred cows has keawfe custom among taw conaervativea...
...But we ware in because we had been physically attacked...
...And this week Robert Minor administers the spanking, though in the process his own pants slip down once or twice...
...spiuuuiiavfi miu uisi 11mu11..11...
...There is equally little point in blaming President Roosevelt, Cordell Hull or somebody else...
...Me Sacred Cows.' But in always criticizing the United States and always defending Russian ways and deeds, you are not giving evidence of any such eclecticism...
...reconversion, peI riod...
...Think of all the Red Army men who are dying...
...Free Enterprise...
...and even into post| war...
...Tha glory of liberal, ism has been the assents of any such bovine beads...
Vol. 27 • February 1944 • No. 8
