Katyn Crime to Remain Unpunished?
HONIGWELL, LOUIS
letters Katyn Crime to Remain Unpunished? From LOUIS HONIGWELL To the Editor: In March, 1943, tha Goebbels props-Kanda startled tha world by its announcement that In the Katyn Forest, near...
...San Diego...
...Field Marshal Wilton said that Russia will find the secret of the atomie bomb within five yean, and will than be the world't mott powerful nation...
...one of the best Labor and Socialist papers in the whole world, certainly the very best in the English language...
...They have been instrumental in having ceilings imposed on cotton pickers' wages in parts ef Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas (under the Economic Stabilization Act) which fix the upper limit of pay for a ten-hour day at $2 to $2.60...
...For the Soviet judge may then point out with good reason that public opinion will take the verdict as a direct accusation of the Soviet Government...
...Moscow doubtless felt that "in this way disputes may be avoided...
...They are fighting for labor and liberalism...
...A lot of nonsense and confusion about "just claims of the Soviet Union,'^about Russia's need for "friendly governments in Central and Eastern Europe," and "security tones," might be avoided by a clear understanding of how a sphere of influence should be defined .and what has happened in the past to countries within the security zone of a big power...
...My difficulty is that we are not allowed to send money just new out of the country...
...Events have made it clear that at Teheran and Yalta Stalin understood the above definitions to apply to the vast area in Central and Eastern Europe assigned to his sphere of influence...
...DALLAS To the Editor...
...Now, on the insistence of the Soviet Government, the Katyn murder has been included in the indictment of the 24 Nazi criminals...
...a laborer on a cotton plantation averages only 125 days works a year in normal times...
...London...
...We know that democracy is not safe in America so long as the agricultuial population of ths South lives in poverty too abject to permit minimum decency, poverty which furnishes fruitful soil for racial antagonisms...
...If the American Legion is going to rule or greatly influence the policies of our country, why shouldn't liberal-minded veterans join and help mold its policy...
...RUBIN KAYBUttH To the Editor: As a member of the American Legion, I have always been anxious that it be liberalized...
...IN THI FRONT RANK From FRANCIS R. GLEESON To the Editor: The other day I made a list of the newspapers, magazines and trade journals which come to my home regularly...
...Therefore the inclusion of the Katyn murder into the indictment threatens to distort the judicial proceeding and to turn the Tribunal itself into a political instrument in the hands of one of ths governments, and the verdict into a political bargain...
...National Sharteroppert Fund To the Editor: The Southern Tenant Farmers Union, with headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee, has asked for support for its campaign to win a guaranteed $626 minimum annual wage for sharecroppers, tenant farmer and wage hands in the cotton country...
...Soviet propaganda immediately retorted with a counter accusation blaming the Nasis for the slaughter...
...I would appreciate it very much if you continue to send it till we can adjir matters...
...This however will be a political decision and not justice such as the world expect* from the first International Criminal Court in history...
...SlNCE the Katyn slaughter was first blamed by the Germans on the Russians and later by the Russians on the Germans, the two governments an parties in this trial...
...The court will have to formulate its verdict in a form that will satisfy the Soviet judge...
...Somewhere in the Pacific • John S. Knight, president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, urges a Department of Science as the best way of preparing for World War III...
...Perhaps the interpretation of the terra understood by Churchill and Roosevelt was different: Poland, for example, was to be within Russia's sphere of influence as Greece is within Britain's, or South America with the sphere of the USA...
...The charge is to be tried by an ad hoc created International court...
...My check for $9 is enclosed...
...The planters are seeing to it that earnings go even lower this year...
...The report declares "the powerful inflationary forces of a wartime economy have countered our efforts to raise the minimum standard of living so that the 40 cent minimum today represents in purchasing power no more and possibly less than the 30 cent statutory minimum did in 1939...
...Now if we add to these ex-soldiers their wives, fsmilies and friends, we can readily see that they will constitute the most powerful group this country hss ever hsd...
...Central and Eastern Europe is his territory, to be eventually incorporated into the Russian Empire as "autonomous" Soviet republics as were the Baltic States...
...I, page 297): "A sphere of influence is the description of a territory exclusively reserved for future occupation en the part of a power which haa effectively occupied adjoining territory...
...What Is a Sphere of Influence...
...2. Of the 12,200,000 wage earners in manufacturing industries in the summer of 1946, 830,000 (or 8 percent) received less than 60 cents, 1,280,000 (or 10 percent) received between 60 and 60 cents, and a total of 2,880,000 (or 20 percent) received less than 66 cents an hour...
...It seems pertinent to ask: why, in 1943, did Moscow consider a proposal to submit the case to an international body enjoying general respect an unbearable offense, while in 1945 the Soviet Govern nient considers an international investigation both possible and desirable...
...Calif...
...Southern Sharecropper's Plight From fDIMRD C. LIHDthiAH f ha n man...
...We need $26,000 immediately to support the new struggle of the sharecroppers for a $625 annual wage...
...We might equalize matters in this way...
...It was alleged that the Germans were guiltless...
...Lassa Francis Lawrence Oppenheim, the foremost modem authority on international law, gave the definition (International Law, 1019 edition, Vol...
...You may be interested to know that The New Leader stood third on my list, preceded only by the Lot Angelas Daily Newt and Salurday Review of Literature...
...At the present time there are 60,000 members of the Legion who are there as members of I*bor Union Legion posts...
...Further appeasement will only confirm Stalin in his determination not to yield an inch of this sphere of influence...
...From LOUIS HONIGWELL To the Editor: In March, 1943, tha Goebbels props-Kanda startled tha world by its announcement that In the Katyn Forest, near Smolensk, several thousand bodies of slain Polish officers had been found...
...While mulling over the list, it occurred to me to number them in the order of their importance and worth to me...
...Please extend my subscription for three years...
...I was surprised to learn that I am a paid subscriber to thirty-four publications...
...The Goebbels propaganda naturally declared that the mass murder had been committed by the Red Army...
...The report quotes facta and figures showing that: 1. The wartime rise in the cost of living for low-Income groups is greater than for other groups because food and clothing prices, which represent a greater part of the low-paid workera budget, have risen more than the average of all other Items...
...8. Profits of 18 low wage Industries in 1044 were greater than the average for all leading corporations...
...But it is apparent that the old-fashioned definition as given by Oppenheim and Cobbett is the only one that Stalin will accept...
...I feel that problems should not be met by running away from them, but by meeting them...
...If the Nuremberg court clears tha Nails of the charge of the Katyn murder, it will find itself in an awkward situation...
...The survey displays minimum wage budgets showing that a minimum of from 60 to 80 cents an hour is needed now to provide a subsistence standard of living for unskilled workers, and adds that the cost of living will likely rise...
...The Soviet Government was so incensed by this suggestion to Investigate German— according to its version—atrocities that it severed diplomatic relations with the Polish Government, The Germans then carried out their own investigation under participation of experts from countries which at that time were in the German camp...
...xm Hour A. 63 page Labor Dept...
...The people in ths cotton countiy ai« deiennined that they shall not l™- driven back tu ths misery of ths 19811a wbau evicted sharacroppsr families were ramped on the sides of public highwaya and "Okies" in ancient jalopies wsro making their way west in search of work at a few cents a day in migratory labor camps...
...Now what I would like is to have all the returning veterans who are liberals or labor men join the Legion and turn it into a progressive organisation ready to fight for the interests of the veterans and of the entire country...
...This wiU have to be prevented sines grave political implications may ensue, as was the case with Poland...
...In this way disputes may be avoided and the interested powers can gradually extend their sovereignty over vast territories without ceasing into conflict with other powers...
...Practically all of them will sooner or later join the Legion...
...The National Sharecroppers Fund gives aid to organisations in the South that are democratically controlled and directed by natives of that region and which constructively tackle the evila from which the farm people of the South suffer...
...When the Reds reconquered that area, a few foreign correspondents were taken to the graves and permitted to view the decomposed victims...
...1 HAVE received a notice from The New Leader informing me that my subscription has expired...
...But the Soviet Government can be cleared in the case only If the court solves the problem of who committed the Katyn crime, and is not hampered in . pronouncing its sentence...
...In spite of this I hope you will continue to send The New Leader to me...
...THE NEW LEADER OVERSEAS From EUGENE VICTOR To the Editor: May I remark that The New Leader was the most enjoyable and informative piece of journalism overseas...
...Is there any book published here or any periodical I could send yon in exchange...
...It is a splendid paper...
...As a consequence the organisation was left in the hands of non-liberals...
...By A. I. LEDUC New Leader Correspondent in London To the Editor: There is an obnoxious fashion now to call advocates of continued appeasement optimists, and to term pessimists those who oppose further appeasement of tota-lilarians...
...Arriving one or two months late, it was quite oftan strikingly prophetic, for its prognostications were apt then to be the news of the day...
...From a Labor MP From GEO...
...I would be very sorry indeed not to get The New Leader...
...Despite its many good points, I have been forced to recognize Its major mistakes centering around reactionary attitudes...
...By including the Katyn atrocities in the list of Nazi crimes the Soviet Government tried to clear itself of suspicion...
...The low-wage industries Included tobacco products, cotton goods, clothing and apparel, shoes, lumber, furniture and wood products, telephone and telegraph, and restaurants and hotels...
...It would be better to divide political commentators into those who realistically face facts and those who, disregarding all the lessons of history, cherish illusions...
...When the soldiers have all been discharged there will be 22 million veterans (4 millions of World War I and IS millions of World War II...
...Survey Shows You Can't Live Decently on 40...
...LHERALS AND THE AMERICAN LEGION From DR...
...My point is this...
...survey, probably soon to be publisher1, is an eloquent statistical argument for the minimum wage bill (S 1840, hr 3914) which would lift the pay floor from 40 to 66 cents an hour now and to 75 cents in two years...
...Another authority, Pitt Cobbett, defined the term in his Cruet and Opinion* of International Law (1909, Vol I, page 113: "A sphere of influence indicates a region, generally inhabited by races of Inferior civilizstion, over which a State seeks, by compact with some ether State or State* that might otherwise compete with it, to secure for itself the exclusive right of making future ecfluistlon nf territory and generally also the direction and control of the Mtlve Inhabitant...
...In too many cases in the past the typical liberal ran away from what he considered a reactionary group...
...Thus we are going to witness an unprecedented procedure in which one of he parties will appear as judge in its own case, sines one of the judges sitting on the court will be a Soviet representative...
...The union reports that CO percent of the farm families in Arkansas earned less thsn $400 in cash during the war boom year of (.944...
...Paced with these contradictory reports the Polish Government in London requested the International Red Cross to investigate the case on the spot...
Vol. 28 • November 1945 • No. 44
