Shadow Over America
The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN The Balks are Far Away I WOULD like to bear what ordiaary , folks across the country are saying about the reports which Secretary Byrne* end John Koster Dullos...
...Daily Worker headline, Oct...
...And yet, if we sie to back up the position which Secretary Byrnes took in London, we have got to rare what happens to the people away off there...
...Our close Caribbean neighbor, the Dominican Republic, is saddled with one General Rafael Trujillo, whose army It armed by the USA American sugsr Interests standing behind Trupillo...
...I would Kke to be able to evesdrop wherever men end women are meeting and talking unofficially...
...but give them, at least, a chance to discuss snd a chance to vote...
...Without stopping to thinkVand without any reference to facts, people automatically say that the new citizens who came to us from northern and western Europe were fine people but that from eastern and southern Europe we got a lot of "rifraff " These people, the common notion is, were queer, unruly, unadjustable...
...If we didn't make trouble, it would be because we lacked the courage to make it...
...Jleafi...
...all right...
...David Brooks of "Bloomer Girl," Jean Darling of "Carousel," Sono Osato of "On the Town" and Luba Malina of "Marinka...
...O'Dwyer, it was said, refused to act as their lswyer and advised...
...They get into neighborhood squabbles, we imagine, and then the trouble spreads over the borders until the whole world is at war...
...If I .were making a formal argument, I could easily give you a long list of famous American businessmen, artists, writers and scientists who either came to America from Balkan countries or were the children of those who came...
...The only thing with which to counter this sort of «lien doctrine is an appeal to our traditional fsith...
...And: "Careful study of all Moscow newspapers fails to discover .-any disagreement with Foreign Commissar Molotov's position.'' • · · • You don't have to go to the Balkans or to Argentina to discover dictatorship...
...Well, in comparisor...
...Some gerne: "After thoughtful study of the foreign press and activities of the conference, Pravda comes out vigorously in support of Commissar Molotov and the Soviet position in general...
...Trujillo's latest tactic is to declare an end to dictatorship in order to discover who hit opponents are...
...That is the first point...
...Tinman's easing out ol Leo T. Crowley es administrator of the Foreign Economic Administration has been the subject of much speculation...
...President Truman and Secretary Byrnes are right in line with the original American doctrine that democracy In our sense is good anywhere In the world...
...if they vote your way...
...The second one is that we have among us a whole school of writers who systematically try to tell us that the folks over there are so different from in that they don't want 4he same sort of democracy that we like over here...
...Big ALP Vote Sought An O'Dwyer Yields to Red Baiters...
...Our power gives us responsibility which we cannot dodge...
...Turn the Other Cheek Dept...
...jon Mia zelt By ROBERT TOWNSEND...
...The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN The Balks are Far Away I WOULD like to bear what ordiaary , folks across the country are saying about the reports which Secretary Byrne* end John Koster Dullos made on the London Conference...
...The five Equity start asked Paul O'Dwyer, brother of the Democratic candidate for Mayor, to serve as their attorney in the hearing before the National Council...
...They have never had a long enough time of freedom from fear lo look about and establish any soil of mutual understanding...
...Well, if we respectable Americans who live in Kansas or Michigan had to »tan I what the Balkan peoples have stood, we , would make plenty of trouble...
...The mounting protests tkat Fay lias l>een "gagged" arc said to be worrying Lytcll, and he is quietly seeking to light a peace pipe between the two tactions...
...Ironically, it was signed by Dr...
...Along Broadway, Fay has become the focal issue of s growing anti-Stalinist fight...
...It is true that immigrants from Bulgaria or Yugoslsvis seem more alien to many than others from Englsnd or Germany or the Scandinavian countries...
...The tight started three weeks ago at a Spain "front" meeting held in the Garden with the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee as sponsors...
...Thinking in this vein, we commonly imagine that the Serbians started the «rat World War...
...them to drop the chargea against Fay...
...It is President Truman's idea that if we hsd free press all over the world, there would be less danger of war...
...Oppression has deepened their differences of language, religion and politics...
...The position of our delegates at London was that the people over there would like free speech and he* elections as much as wo do...
...First the Turka, then the Auttre-Hungerisii Kmpire, then the Germans...
...It is known that Fay's friends and advisors in and out of Equity are gathering much material on the Commy fronts and stars who take part in them to hurl at the left-wing when charges against Fay are heard Oct...
...And I am willing to wager that any American who gets the idea of what is happening and what is at stake will back them up...
...To me this sounds like a good, old-fashioned American Idea...
...Both Margo and Osato bobbed up again as they joined the "Broadway Non-Partisan Theatrical Committee" for election of Eugene P. Connolly, the ALP comrade...
...free elections, government by the popular will—it is all fine stuff But they wouldn't like it over there...
...Latest Washington Intelligence is that Crowley was opposed to liberal terms on loans to England and that the majority of the negotiators were more sympathetic to Britain's pies...
...Whet Secretary Byrnes was saying to Molotoff was something like this: We want those people over there to have at lease a chance to say what sort of life they wsnt...
...They were problem children...
...While the dictator erects innumerable buildings inscribed with slogans like "God end Trujillo" and "Trujillo Forever," the average Dominican worker receives only 40 cents a day, and Haitian workers brought in during the sugar harvest season as little as 10 cents a dsy...
...We must be willing lo use the power and prestige of this country to back up the rights of people about whom we have heard little and that little not very good...
...with the relation between Kansas City and Budapest or Bukarest, Dantzig is next-door neighbor to Paris...
...However, the boys and gals of the theatrical left are plenty worried at the growing support of Fay and the Anti-Fascist Committee this week sent a letter to all Equity members assuring them the rneeing was not Commy...
...Take the prejudice first...
...It would have been better for us if we had barred the gales against them...
...Howard Rushmdre in Hearst's Journal-American page-oned the names of the stars and Fay in an interview in the Hearst paper blasted the five Broadway -ites for "appearing in a Red rally which condemned religion...
...A free press is a feature of "democracy in our sense...
...The Stalinists snd their stooges have also been active, launching a smear campaign which included the usual comradely cannard reflecting on Fay's sincerity concerning his religion...
...World events are putting a terrific burden on the shoulders of ordinary folks...
...If the men and women who remained at home were as good as the ones who came here, there must he a lot of good stuff in the Balkans...
...Keynote speakers was Hareld J. Laski who took '"several ill-timed cracks at the Vatican...
...The radio commentaries are too frostily contrived to embody what an ordinal...
...The newspapers, it has been proved over and over agam, definitely ^0pot represent public opinion...
...They are a different breed of men...
...Crowley has returned to his job as chairman of the Standard Gas and Electric Company, which paid him ?.n.iMin a year while ho was on the Federal payroll...
...Tee recall what fun they had in Paris back in 1939 about dying for dear old Dantxig...
...Correspondents have for...
...7. • · * • Brook» Atkinson's ?. Y. Timet dis-putclies from Moscow are examples of th>- tongue-in-the-cheek journalism provoked by heavy-handed Russian censors...
...Hearsay reports and snap judgments have given us a traditional prejudice against them...
...You can see it in the conventional notions about our successive waves of immigrants...
...One of the things our delegates went to the mat about in London was whethe'r the citir.ens of Hungary, Bulgaria and Ho mani», are to have a chance at democracy...
...Instead of granting an investigation, the national council voted to hear charges against Fay filed by Margo and the other four stars on groundi of "prejuatcial" statements...
...I could give you some fine quotations from- pm-Civil War southern sieve-owners which run exactly parallel to all this...
...The other prong of our prejudice is made up of notions regsrding the political troubles which start in the Balkan regions...
...But no one can deny that they have become good citizens, that they have worked hard and that many of them have made distinguished contributions to our cultural end industrial life...
...The star of "Harvey" later demanded an investigation of their participation at a national council meeting of Eq"Uity and was booed and hissed...
...So a lot of Americans are ready to conaign them to a state of permanent political heathen - donl » ¦ * Oemocrocy i» Oar Saas» ?·* for Them And then you have ell the slick and subtle scribblers who keep saying that the people over there—and this includes the Russians—are ao different from us that they would not like our aort of democracy even If we were to lay ourselves out to give it to them...
...Among those suggested for the Nobel Peace Prize are Winston Churchill, Generalissimo Stalin, Cordell Hull, and Count Bernadette, who reported the first peace exchanges with the Germans...
...The Russia* •ort of *\Iemoc racy "—under which the people find equality by all being equally docile—suite them much better...
...Bert Lytcll, Equity president, announced the decision and a week later, with many Catholic groups wiring him indignantly demanding that Fay be heard, Lytcll lamely stated that Fay had not filed his charges "In writing...
...Their languages are understood by few among us, and their habits seem odd...
...guy would say over his beer or hie dinner...
...generations referred to the section along the lower Danube as "the powderkeg of Europe...
...There are two things which keep getting in our way when we think about, the Balkans...
...For intelligent Americans or Englishmen, of course, equal justice, free speech...
...Hundreds of letters have poured into the 48th Street Theatre from actors of sll religeons thanking him for defying the Equity comrades...
...Also appearing at the Commy rally, some of them bringing "greetings" from their casts, were Margo of "A Bell for A dano...
...It is asking a lot of people who have their own troubles and are busy making their own living...
...What are Tom, Dick and Harry—not forgetting Sally and Sue—saying about what happened in London...
...If they hsd any life in them, the only thing they could do was to make trouble by standing up for themselves...
...It is the aort of thing Which Americana have always believed in...
...The people in those parts are pictured as perpetual trouble-makers...
...Imagine a lot of little peoples who have suffered under one tyranny after another practically world without end...
...Perhaps the literature prise will go to the author of Mein Kampf, and the physics and chemistry prizes to the Inventors of I he atomic bomb...
...Edward Barsky, "front" for many Red groups since 1936...
...The Ideas of Jefferson and Lincoln are not for them...
...To a man cutting corn in Kansas er making set motions on a beltline in Detroit these lands are so far away that he may be forgiven if he has nothing mere than a mild interest in their fates...
...JK THE Commies in Actors Equity are on the defensive in what is develop-ig into a major scale battle between the rights and lefts on Broadway with Frank Fay of "Harvey" leading the anti-Stalinist faction...
Vol. 28 • October 1945 • No. 41
