Long Time No Song

...With no one to throw him a cue that bounds convincing, with each cue thrown having obvious disadvantages, all the ambitious song-writer can do ¦ 'all back on the reliable June-moon-spoon formula...

...There's Spain, and there's Badoglio, and Portugal and a lot of others of our friends...

...The Office of Civilian Requirements has submitted to the War Production Board a program for the output of electric ranges, as a pattern for future civilian production in'other industries, and provides that no new firms be allowed to compete with firms already in the field...

...If any persons are to be blamed, it ia the politicians, reading from Left to Right Perhaps, again, no persons at all are to blame...

...The song writers, I may say, are all a-rarin' to go with a rousing war song, and have been trying like crazy to turn out the tune that would stampede the multitude...

...ANYONE who looks into the problem at all closely must sympathize with the song writers, who can tell at the flick of an ear that something like "The Clank of the Tanks" or "The Flame of the Planes" iu»t wpj»'t do...

...Long Time No Song By Ferdinand Lundberg WHY THEY'RE SINGING "MAIRZY DOATS" INSTEAD OF "OVER THERE" tl if often remarked these daya, -the speaker looking ¦about him with the guileless wonderment of a child ta a randy forest, that tha war haa not produced a good gotif...

...find it difficult to feel unalloyed satisfaction about the boys being over there...

...How about a song called 'This Is a People's War...

...But that would hardly look good with all these war profits and high prices you read about...

...But, oh, hell, that song today would aeem like a crack at the fuel shortage...

...Two weeka ago Jonathan Stout reported in these page* from Washington that a fight was brewing between Byrnes and Nelson, with Byrnes fa oring a plan similar to the one conceived in the Department of Commerce...

...Just about the all-time low in war songs to my mind was the Naxi, "We're Sailing Against England...

...But, no...

...Two events this week tie up this trend with the - two-key far-tors abortt the poat*war economy listed - above: 1. A War Production Board Plan to ban the output by firms not in the field before the war (which would "harden" the economy into the cartel vise...

...Two Steps Toward Monopoly State By Daniel Bell "J*HE paths of reconversion will shape the American economy for the next decades —this is an obvious fact arising out of the present situation...

...Somebody, of course, might write a counterpart to "It's a Long, Long Way to Tipperary...

...Nor would "A Concentration Camp Built for Two" be too good an idea for a Nazi song...

...Well, how about a song called 'Fascism—To Hell W*\,t'* Um, might do...

...One of the reasons ventured, for example, ia that Tin Pan Alley is now closely tied up to the "name bands" of the radio and that the music of these bands is designed for dancing rather than for singing and marching...

...Attempts have been made, it is true, in Europe as well as in the United States, to produce inspiring songs...

...But if officials don't stop shouting for a song, they may, to their chagrin, get one that will really start millions singing...

...Isn't this a short war...

...But nothing along that line would have much chance to catch on now...

...Why can't we do something like 'Keep the Home Fires Burning...

...On the matter of the disposal of government wsr pUvnU, IhcNew Leader...

...AS summarized by the Wall Street Journal, this WPB reconversion plan states: 1. No firm shall be admitted to production which did not produce in 1941, or some such prewar base period...

...One difficulty about writing a war song today is that tlio lyric might parody itself in a few weeks, as many of the war slogans have come to do...

...The Germans, Russians and Italians, afflicted neither with Tin Pan Alley nor "name bands," have also, it is worth noting, produced no thrilling war song...

...Over the past year or so, this writer has been warning of certain trends emerging in the war economy that are leading towards "The Monopoly State": a tendency towards a cartelized economy re$ulting in a permanent merger betirea-i'government and butinett and the creation of a huge administrative bureaucracy...

...But they can hardly be blamed for their lack of success...

...With that part of the picture in mind, it looks more like a 50 per cent plus sort of war, and you can't make them dance in the aisles to that...

...1 think I'll call the whole thing off...

...World War II, with its multiplicity of ideological" shadings, its massive mechanization, and its clashing objectives^ simply jdoes_ not inspire mafic, which concerns itself with matters far beyond the ken of the official mind...

...The lyrics, however, might sound ungracious to officials loaded down with the cares of human destiny...

...Sure to be parodied...

...As well believe that Benny Goodman could prevent a "Marseillaise" from coming to birth if the times were pregnant with such a song...

...More than a year ago, The New Leader reported that plans had been hatched in the Department of Commerce to bar any new firms entering industries where firms were reconverting from war work...

...But all the reasons suffer, I believe, from not taking into account the obvious facts...

...What do the pundits think would happen if a sentimental old ballad like "Just Before the Battle, Mother" suddenly emerged from radios all over the country...

...But, with cities over half the world in ashes and people by the millions cowering in rains with their poor pots and pans, it would be more remm ksble if a good song had been written and hugged to the popular bosom...

...The lyrics are meaningless and foolish against the gruesome backdrop of 1944 and the buglecall tune sounds decidedly unfunny...

...Under order (I AO 2 141 reconversion is placed in the hands of WPB and its dollar a year men...

...Besides, it might *°un* anti-Administration and therefore politically controversial...

...People would ..prefer not to sing about anything with the word "long" in it...

...If they keep howling, people will begin to believe that something is wrong when, as we know, everything is really rosy...

...In effect, he was proposing thst the government give away these plants with their up-to-date machine tools—ratlin than tell them in the open market and permit new group* to enter the aviation field...

...If the politicians don't know what it's all about—or won't tell, which is just as bad—what *an an humble denizen of Tin Pan Alley be expected ta "•ske of it...

...We'd better lay off any home-front stuff, anyhow, because the home front seems U> be slightly sizzling...

...Various ingenious reason* have been assigned for the fsilure to produce a really good war song...

...It might sound satirical...

...Think what they are up against...

...Something like the following monologue must go trough, the brain of a song-writer these days: Well, we might do a aong called 'Remember Pearl Harbor.' But people wouldn't like it...

...It may be the whole world situation, which is very, very tangled...

...Significantly enough, this quota plan for resumption of civilian production was first proposed by the Big Three automobile manufacturers, who thus ¦ought to squeeze out the smaller Independents...

...From all the current talk and financial mumbojumbo revolving about demobilization plans, the Baruch-Hancock report and the George-Murray bill, two important factors must be watched...

...Home officials, and even military men, even sound <ujle cross about it...

...2. A statement by Jesse Jones, to s cloaed session of the House Appropriations Comniittee, stating that the United States must write off as a laas most of its investments in plane plants...

...WPB ran do this simply because of its control of priorities and raw materials...

...This week sSw the first open indication of that plan in action...

...There are a lot of war veterans scattered through the civilian population today...

...People are now more or less chary of long, long trails, which might wind straight into a nightmare...

...But if our song-writers are hard put to it, what about the Nazi thrushes...

...Because why were all those ships 'way • •at there like overfed sitting pigeons...

...But that, too, Would convey a bad idea...

...And the same with 'Joe Stalin, I Love You.' Take it away...

...Perhaps the sight of the havoc wrought around them and the stench of rotting human flesh has rhoked off song in their throats...

...w*>'t do...

...The human spirit, sodden by 1818, had not revived when war was upon us again in 1939...

...This war i«L.app,»ienUy oCauch .a nature that it doesn't lend itself to singing...

...trying to dance the rhumba...

...Approved lyrics might not express people's inmost feelings...

...The long, long trail of 1917-18 wound up in the breadlines and in mortgage foreclosure and eviction proceedings...

...But the attempts have been pathetic, like those of a man on the scaffold...

...Such a song might cause international complications...

...Thia proposal followed a. British plan whereby trade associations had made agreements with various Controllers (the British term for government directors) of industries to buy back unused surpluses at favorable prices, and thus be in a strengthened position after the war...

...A song titled "Lebensraum, My Lebensraum," would hardly bring the bomb-battered Germans to their feet singing...

...It would, indeed, be a miracle...

...Nor have the English...

...pKOI'I.K, peculiar beings that they are...

...World War I, which started in the carnival spirit that wars had long evoked, with flags flying, bands playing and crowda cheering, ended in mud and blood...

...For singing this once official ditty now in Geimany one is collared by the polizei and charged with high crimes...

...2. Each pre-war manufacturer ahall he granted a 1944 quota based on a uniform percentage of pre-war output—calculated, for instance aa between July 1, 1940, and June 30, 1941...

...What is there, anyhow, to sing about...

...This week, Jesse Jones took up the ball, and ia hia testimony before the House Appropriations Committee told the group that he saw little opportunity for post-war use of airplane and engine manufacturing plants in which the Government has invested 82,700,000,000...

...what are the trends towards, cartelization...

...What I mean would be perfectly illustrated if there were a movement to revive old war songs in the present-day situation...

...For these and other reasons it would seem prudent for officials all over to stop demanding a war song...

...Over There," good enough for the Age of Innocence in 1917, would not go over now...

...Or, we might do a song called 'The Four Freedoms/ But, no, that wouldn't sit too well with a lot of people *«o don't seem to be included in the fouf freedoms...

...they have carried no conviction...

...The end of the war will leave us with about 1,000,000 war contracts to be settled, $75,000,000,000 amassed in war materials and about $15,000,000,000 of United States money invested in plants and machinery, capable of producing five-fold that mount of peace-time goods...

...these are the beacons which show which way the economy is heading: 1. How will we diapoee of the governmentbuilt and government-flananced plants...

...A witless song can endanger the Third Reich...

...aga.in.xe.pocted about a year ago a speech made by Ralph Damon, then the President of Republic Aviation and an important figure in the aviation industry, before a group of aviation executives, that the government write off the expanded plane plants as it "wrote off the shells that were fired at the enemy...

...But this reason is downright ¦illy Could the system of radio "name bands" stop a contemporary "Battle Hymn of the Republic...

...2. How "fluid" will oar economy be...

...This is merely the opening gun in s csmpaign to dump the excess industrial plant capacity of the country—a capacity which can be used to keep the wartime production ef goods in a civilian economy of plenty...

...Would production spurt, as the headline writers say...

...They have now, as they did not have in 1917, some idea of what the boys must go through...

...So tangled is it that very few are able to agree about it in any detail, least of all the politicians and their kept ¦IS***-_----------,_______..........¦_,-^_ what, then, can an ambitious song-writer do in the circumstances...

...The last war had another popular song that hasn't been equalled in popularity, "There's a Long, Long Trail A-Winding Into the Land of My Dreams...