Father and Son Debate New Leader Policy
LETTERS Father and Son Debate New Leader Policy Walter Warshow Derides Socialists To the Editor: NoT quite t year ago, my father, when chairman of your Board of Directors, made me a present of...
...Most of them seem due to the same lack of judgment as you are experiencing today...
...We believe that the Junkers, the Nazi party leaders, the induatrialists must pay for the war crimes...
...You see, I want to return to Germany after the war and play a political role...
...Your love of humanity is too great...
...We believe that once the reactionaries are weeded out and a democratic climate flourishes, there is hope for a democratic Germany—if the Reich is not to be a pawn in the power politics of Russia...
...BasICALLY, the issues you raise come down to the fundamental moral problem of our times, the question of means to •nds...
...One German Communist apologist sang hymns to this national aonity whereby a former concentration camp prisoner sat next to a man who ruled the prison where he had been tortured...
...But if a Poland, that for generations, deprived its minorities of every civil liberty, to say nothing of economic freedom, is put on display, you cheer...
...They ¦tressed Blul end Macht against peace and cooperation...
...The Allied authorities in Italy should also utilize the Italian co-ops in the distribution of relief...
...Then surely your harahest words should be reserved for Russia, which has created a Free Germany Committee composed of Generals, Junkers and S.S...
...The weak sisters do not stand up/' This worship of power is a malignant lure which causes men to worship Moloch snd abandon their principles of right and wrong...
...That would he even more flattering...
...The Japanese soldiers fight with a fierceness thst amazes everybody by their suicidal qualities...
...I firmly believe that any attenjoi to restore th* House of Savoy to virginity is an inault to th* American boys who ara giving their lif* for the cause of democracy...
...You should know better...
...He wanted me to become interested, no doubt, in the many fine causes you have espoused...
...Your "raison d'etre" or excuse need only be that they fought the Communist...
...Must the Poles be enslaved by the Russians, their leadera chosen for them, demon at ic elements forced into exile or Siberia, because Russia is the more powerful...
...Whatever strategy they have evolved with our President and Churchill to accomplish that end, or even some of their own angles, such as the partitioning of Poland and Germany, possibly of Finland, may be perfect pragmatism...
...I find that your work itself carries within it the poison that will destroy it—You carry on in this present day the deaire for a better world, with a myopic twisted remembrance of the past...
...My training could never permit that extreme...
...From the first year thst I voted for my father for Judge of the Supreme Court under the aegis of the Socialist Party, I believed in the rights and dignity of man for better working conditions and political and economic freedom...
...On the contrary, we still believe that basically— although this conception is denied by the powers that be—this war is an international civil war, drawing its linea between peoples rather than countries...
...Arcizewski, the present Premier, lived and worked underground in Poland during the Nazi occupation and came out only last July, when he was named President-Designate of Poland...
...It wat publithed in Mvonfi" of May 18, 1844...
...And in Germany, in Italy and in Vichy France the workers were the major sufferers...
...Should we admire that man, or rather should we pity him for living a life Of hypocrisy and facing it every day...
...Relief for Italy Through Italian Co-ops From WALTER TOSCANINI to MARTIN M. FERBER I ENCLOSE a copy of the open letter to Ait...
...Since when have we fought for a world where the bully ahall rule the small...
...And since when haa that sort of world been judged right...
...The League might get the Co, operative Alliance, an international organization, to urge other cooperatives, such as those in Switzerland and Sweden, to aid in th* reconstruction of the Italiuav co-ops, and to send them the goods so badly needed...
...For all of their idealism, they have not been able to accomodate it to the world in which they lived...
...Sustain his energy...
...All social acts are judged by the test of who gains...
...The Ramsey McDonalds of England and possibly the Morrisons, Leon Blum in France, the Weimar Republic in Germany, have not been able to compete with the stronger elements in their countries, which ultimately brought disaster to their countries...
...I think the analogy la as true in politics...
...Believe me, I would do more than read your stories, I would like to ihare your enterprise...
...You counterpose Russia and Poland...
...You say The New Leader colors everything with qui gagne...
...Fortunately or unfortunately, as the case may be, we are living in a dynamic world...
...Bless his good plana and help his constant effort to make Italy more and more worthy of her title of a great nation...
...The cynicism is extended to your laat paragraph where you say, perhaps uneasily, thst your remarks could be anawered "deftly...
...We believe that the German people, as people, are neither more nor less brutal than peoples over the world...
...We should remember that the Polish resistance, organized by Socialists and peasants when the reactionary elements had fled, was throttled by joint German-Russian participation...
...We simply say that your power is a blind cyclops that will tear down the world — unless tempered with justice...
...you even love your enemies...
...This is the reason for my protest...
...It it significant that thi* appeal from an Italian cooperative federation was ignored, while one from the fascist Queen, was given wide publicity by American Relief for Italy, a member of the National War Fund...
...We play no rhetorical tricks...
...Many French industrialists preferred Hitler to leon Blum...
...The Russians shot Erlich snd Alter, the great leadera of the Jewish Socialist masses of Poland...
...English Tories and American bankers helped rearm Germany...
...What of The New Leader's stand towards Germany...
...Spheres of influence only produce armed truces, never peace...
...the British say no, and they clash...
...There seems to be some devious implication there that escapes me...
...i ..j...
...In that event Macht will have been strengthened and truth trampled...
...I firmly believe that th* goods that are given by the American people, or paid with their money, must go into the hands of the real Italian people...
...Fanatical Nazis fight with a determination against the Allies...
...Your statement about support of Socialist groups which are fascist or degenerate in disguise is base snd reckless...
...But when the Communists use the same contempt for democracy but prettify it With the chimera of a classless society, you fall dupe to their plans...
...But I have been impressed very often with their single minded desire to build in Russia a nation that might someday rival our own economy...
...You, Walter, condemn the Germans as a whole...
...Kwapinski was impriaoned by the Cxar and in Poland waa elected by the workers of Lodz as Mayor...
...i of The New Leader: "I am sorry, I cannot write for your paper...
...The Utter to which Walter Toscanini refer* i* tigned by Sergio Axzollini, secttary of the Federation of the Cooperative* of Puglia...
...Nor do we believe that the Germans alone are brutal...
...If I were to write for.a paper that carries antiSoviet views, I could not do that...
...The weak sisters do not stand up...
...I have also been impressed with their single minded determination to defeat the German Nation, I say advisedly, German Nation, so that they may never again bring our sons and daughters into another World War...
...But one cannot make whole moral judgments on that score...
...Sincerely yours, Walter Warshow...
...The Germane shot Niedelskowtkl, the heroic Socialist lesder of Warssw who erected the barricades...
...The Poland we support is not the Poland of Pilsudskl and the landed gentry...
...Unfortunately your paper itself has discouraged me...
...Y< ii K statement that the partitioning of countries "may be perfect pragmatism" is belied by the headlines of today...
...I would indeed be flattered, if you published this letter, in spite of its unflattering remarks about your work...
...Let me say that I have always carried these causes very high on my banners...
...Perhaps you could answer it as deftly as you create other world psnaceas...
...Fortunately, I am too young to have lived through all the disappointments of the Socialist Party although most of them seem to have happened in my lifetime...
...If fist* the good* moat needed in Bari: thread, ihoei, naile, earpenter tool*, loap...
...men...
...My association with people of that ilk has for the most pert dissuaded me, even if I could ever approach their fanatical trust iii their ideas...
...The men who lead the London government are veteran revolutionaries...
...I can relate the story of a man, a German Social Democrat and author, who told the editors ..i tfc...
...You talk of the single-minded determination of the Russians...
...Yoo cannot take a child, kick him, beat him, toughen him and then expect an upright and fine man...
...If Russia gsins, there, must be reservationa...
...The monarchy in Italy preferred Mussolini to a democratic regime...
...You seem to fall for the sob stories of every group that has labeled itself Socialist and Social Democrats, notwithatending the fact that many of these have only boon the disguise for fascist and degenerate groups...
...Russia demands a road to the Aegean across Macedonia and Thrace...
...The Nazis used it to whip up their own youth against the rest of the world...
...You* innocence seems then to be almost as shameful as theirs...
...Poland was the first to be invaded and the first despoiled...
...Or, must Italy put up with a King because England supports monarchy...
...We do not believe that Fascism is a peculisrly Germsn phenomenon...
...This word power is ah opiate that captures your mind...
...It may be a velvet glove, but the same cold iron fist is within...
...You are still gullible enough to believe that the German people are innocents, drunken, deluded innocents who do not know the taste of the blood they have been drinking...
...The letter speaks for itself and I forwarded this letter to the American Relief for Italy As far as I know, no attention was paid to this letter, but in October the American Relief for Italy sent out a release...
...Adolph Warshow Poses Moral Test Dear Walter: I FIND in your letter a strange compound of muddled untruths and a moral callousness which is disturbing to me, a man who has given nearly Ttfty years of his life to a fight for what I believe to be truth and decency...
...Rusaia and England have sought to divide the continents into spheres of influence, only to clash where the lines are drawn...
...The key to your letter is the statement "fortunately or unfortunately . we are living in a dynamic world...
...I am also afraid that food and goods will be used aa a weapon to curb th* resistance of th* Italian people to th* House of Savoy...
...From MARTIN M FERBER I SUGGEST that perhaps the Cooperative League of America might help the Italian cooperatives, through the Freedom Fund created by the cooperstive movement at its centennial meeting this year...
...The exponents of power have always used these terms derisively against democratic thinkers...
...Prolong his precious life and save him from all treachery and danger in order that our motherland may enjoy peace and prosperity in the protected and perfect order...
...We believe that you cannot use means, cruelty, dictatorship, terrorism and power politics, and build from these instruments a decent and democratic society...
...A deiperate appeal i* made for relief of wideipread luffering...
...You believe, you say, in punishing war criminals, but not the German people...
...LETTERS Father and Son Debate New Leader Policy Walter Warshow Derides Socialists To the Editor: NoT quite t year ago, my father, when chairman of your Board of Directors, made me a present of a subscription to your paper...
...And what of the peoples who live under those spheres' Hasn't it been a cardinal principle of democratic policy that peoples shall have the right of self-determination...
...Possibly your perfect faith develops too much of perfect trust, the trust of the "good" German, the heroic Pole and th*-"democratic" Italian...
...That is our fight...
...What does that prove...
...Enlighten kis mind...
...Such wild and unsubstantiated charges can carry no weight in sober discussion...
...Your every viewpoint is colored with the phrase "qui gagne...
...You, Walter, recoil from that because of the end* they profess...
...After seeing this release, I sent a letter to Miss Elsa Maxwell protesting against this attempt to give unworthy publicity in thia country to the Queen The King and Queen of Italy were fascists, and the Queen in 1935 wrote a special prayer for Mussolini which I translate for your enlightenment: "Almighty God, we are praying to you in behalf of 111 Duce, who rules us...
...Russia may support fascist and monarchist elements as she does in Bulgaria and Rumania, drown a revolution in blood as she did in Bulgaria, incite civil war as she did in Greece, trample a helpless people as she did in Finland, usurp the legal and moral rights of a government as she did in Poland, overthrow a government which denied her demands aa she did in Iran—and still claim the support of progressive-minded peoples in the world...
...That man was more frank than many other men and women who have done the same thing...
...if sn exploiter sweats his help ten hours a day at low wages, we protest...
...Elena di Savoia...
...Tosraniui that was published some months ago in an Italian Socialist newspaper...
...Perhapa in years to come he may rationalise it and through the coarse psychological process that people undergo, become tough and pitiless in hia attitude towards people who still hold to their ideals...
...Throughout your letter runs the strain of "weak" and "gullible" and similar adjectives...
...I have not become sn exponent or an apologist for Communism in this country or even in Russia...
Vol. 28 • January 1945 • No. 1
