The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN Weekend in Washington MY two days in the gracious capital designed by Major I'Enfant leave me with two conflicting impressions. One is of the beauty, the...
...But we have not learned enough to provide sgainst It in advance...
...The men whose names the committee want and have sosm chance of getting are northern lane...
...WASHINGTON liberals are convinced that the Truman program is lost...
...Matters of national investment and consumer demand are as familiar to him as grocery bills snd bank accounts are to Sn ordinary citizen...
...Under the heading "Fields in Which Adequate Kills Are Offered" he noted 12 areas: Full Employment, Unemployment Insurance, etc Under the title "Fields in Which No Adequate Kills Have Been Offered" he had put down 21' topics...
...The principal thing absut a Congressman.-' «he said to me, "i, that he wants to he re-elected...
...character and energy of whatever citixen happens for the time to preside at Whits House press conferences...
...Perhaps Moscow is fearful that he may break down and tell the truth about Poland today ? The Vice-Premier was assailed by his colleagues in the Warsaw regime as a "Trojan horse for the reactionaries...
...Desperately I heard one young man cry: 'Truman must get in there and fight" Ha has been so shaped by our recent hero-worshiping period that ha actually thinks the fste of 140,000,000 persons depends on the actions of an agreeable gentleman who happened to be the Vice-Presidential choice of the Democratic National Convention...
...An>' then he showed me two lists which he had worked out...
...Now We'd probably get scared and do something if it reached 8,000,000...
...Walter Ulb'richt, German Communist I- defied (,'ciieinl Eisenhower's . ban on the formation of .political'blocs in the American xone and announced that their1' four-party coalition will be extended throughout the Reich...
...Now the Brooklyn I lodgers have signed up Jackie Robinson to play shortstop on their Montreal team, the first of his race to break into the big leagues as a Negro...
...Ments) illnesses have increased greatly during the war, and more and better care for them is a crying need...
...Kiernik was also attacked for his "western orientation...
...Mikolacxyk in Quebec at the Food Conference was constantly shadowed by one M. Szyssko...
...Among them were such important matters as Taxation, Disposal of Government Plants and Atomic Energy...
...Very little good will com out of this present session of Congress, Our legislators are about as effectlv* ss an amateur Are department...
...He knows exactly how we stepped up-annual production to the $200,000,000,000 * mark...
...The Norwegian Labor Party, victorious at the recent elections, has decided not to form a coalition govern-menl but to govern alone...
...The Kuo-mintang troops are supplied with American munitions and trained by Americans...
...The Communists do not support the new regime in Venesuela, now recognised by the USA, which ousted General Medina, with whom the Communists collaborated, the UmUg Worker of Oct 28 carried an article praising Medina far his reforms, damning the new President Komolu lletaio ourt as a Trotskyism They never forgive a "renegade...
...When tr*j hear from the folks back borne, the...
...To remedy thess ronditions, s People's Committee for Mental Hygiene has been organiied under the chairmanship of Ellen Phil-tine, at 673 West 227lh Street, New York 63...
...They talked...
...In the elections in Denmark on Oct...
...And this young woman dew m depend on the President to g«t taaM signatures...
...So «k, is going >nv k to the districts from whirls these 70 men get their votes...
...The Negro has had as hard a time achieving recognition Of ability in sports as in any other field...
...As an illustration of it i effectiveness he told me a neat little tale of music-master Patrillo...
...A man who was formerly deep in the business of war production said to me: "It's like reading a book about the depths to which we sank when we released the controls after the last war...
...New York State hospitals for the mentally ill rank among the best in the country...
...To a <le« f - and dumb man Washington would seem the spot farthest removed from the trophies of the time...
...I asked questions...
...And the composite picture which left upon my mind is a disturbing one...
...When 1 a9ked htm for some little spark of encouragement, some glimpse of a silver lining, Jie blurted: "Well, the only constructive thing in the picture is this wave of strikes...
...But the Dawson Investigating Committee appointed by Governor Dewey made a report that is an indictment of prevailing conditions...
...There were a few Congressmen, now and then an executive employee, here and there a trade union man...
...It coins that during the necent building service strike this leader of all the bands had to walk up 27 flights to his office...
...We know what happened then...
...The CP of Venesuela has gone through a factional fight which has left it divided...
...On the inside there is confusion, conflict, procrastination...
...One is of the beauty, the openness, the hospitality of the city...
...And the genial Harry Truman iron Independence, Mo...
...IN SUMMARY: demand the end of censorship of the press, restoration of civil liberties, a truly representative government to pro-pare the elections, the end of the dictatorship, disarmament of political organisations, an Interallied Commission to supervise the elections...
...1 leans...
...But, like a man in a bad dream, wa go right on doing tbe things that will lead to low production and unemployment...
...The Chinese civil war flared up again, as predicted here, with fighting in 11 of China's 28 provinces...
...The level of Unemployment which impels us to action is lower than it was during the thirties...
...it is similar lo the Peruvian APRA...
...The Communists accuse the Government of concentrating 800,000 troops, including Japanese, for a drive to wipe out the rival armies...
...He haa fought the Communists' hero, Toledano, boas of the Mexican and CTAL unions...
...What gives them acute pain is that the present session of Congress will close in four or five weeks and nothing at all will happen except that the compromise tax kill will be passed...
...Without higher wages there'll be no tmti'ket and we'll all go down together...
...As pie-dicted here, the Communists are raising the slogan of national unity, for which they argue that a national united front of Communists, Social Democrats, Liberal Democrats, and the Christian Democratic Union is a prerequisite...
...But I did not spend all of my 48 hours viewing vistas or drinking cocktails and tea inside the easy-swinging doors...
...Atomic Age?—The United Press reports that French troops captured an Amiamite how and an'<w factory at Mucuc, and that area is now quiet...
...Chungking spokesmen accuse Russia of supplying the rebels with arms seized from the Japanese, in violation of the recent treaty...
...will act—and quick...
...It is improbable that Prince Konoya, selected by MacArthur and Hirohito to write a new constitution, will produce a democratic document...
...In the minds of youngsters like this the security of our institutions depends on the mind...
...But I must confess that my fries* on the Potomac are right about their main point...
...Without pur pose aforethought I met people...
...That much we have learned from experience...
...They followed Roosevelt for 12 years, and now, that he la gone, they stand around like orphans of the storm and murmur that steppapa Truman is not half the man that his predecessor was...
...Before it can be forced out on the floor, some 70 mote signatures of Congressmen are needed...
...Norwegian authorities have warned that all goods made for the Cermana before the war's end should lie carefully inspected, because workers in all Scandinavian countries used to insert TNT in cans labeled "sausages," etc...
...Mahatms Branch Rickey got a lot of vituperative telegrams from prejudiced people, snd Happy Chandler of Kentucky is rather unhappy about it all...
...Gladwin Hill of the rimes reports that there is an epidemic of tuberculosis in Poland...
...It It—After All—Up to Us MUCH sounder view I got from a young woman who is out working as a member of the Committee for a Permanent FEPC...
...With millions living amid ruins, from which not all dead bodies have been removed, when winter comes the suffering will be unimaginable...
...Most" Washington liberals would be satisfied with' the passage of three or four bills dealing with basic needs—say Full -Employment, Minimum Wages, Housing, a Permanent FEPC, snd Unemployment Insurance...
...They are obviously Fascists, according to the Communist definition...
...He is running right now for the 1948 election...
...This man is an economist, and he had an enlightening experience as one uf the administrators of our wartime economy...
...It is a strange idea of the democratic process...
...Heretofore the few players of Negro blood who have broken into the big leagues wers called Indians, Cubans, or Mexicans...
...MacArthur refused Yo-» slnda's plea.for cancellation of the order of the U. S. State Department that all Japanese diplo natic representatives be recalled from neutral countries...
...Like a Nhjbtmore of the Past ?vERYONE with any brains is thinking of the same thing: how can we climb out of our troubles, step up production, reduce, avoid, abolish unemployment...
...The committee points out that 40 percent of discharged patients are returned to the hospitals...
...Uetancourt, exiled by Dictator Come/., became the leader of the Costa Rican Communist Party, but 'deserted" the ranks of the faithful and founded the moderate, so rialistic, middle-class Democratic Action Party in his native land...
...I met one chap with a bookkeeper mind, and he said to me: "That lot of bills listed in the President's message was full of holes...
...But Robinson will . lie followed by other Negro ball players into tha Bix Sixteen teams...
...Then we let it go up to 13,000,000...
...Unlets something happens to perk them up, they will still be connecting the host long after our industrial house has bets reduced to ruins...
...The inviting vistas leading to the familiar national shrines, Rock Creek Park Bglow with color in the bright October sun, the friendly faces and freely-spilled conversation inside taxkabs, along the avenues snd even in government offices it sll gives an outsider — especially a New Yorker the notion that there is something old-fashioned, something southern, something quaintly native and hearty about it...
...He will "get is there and fight" for anything which Im is sure enough (he voters want...
...When I pressed him on the point, asked if we have not made some progress during the New Deal period, he finally remarked: "Well, yes...
...He is a member and defender of the ruling oligarchy,, n reactionary, and a militarist...
...At the third stop, as he stilled his palpitating heart and fortified his lungs with fresh air, he growled: "These goilamned trade unions are going to ruin this country...
...30, preliminary figures indicate a gain for the Communists, loss of a Parliamentary majority for the Social Demo-crats...
...This man, who has never had anything lo do with unions, went on to describe the techniques of the present snti-union propaganda drive...
...We know that it will happen again...
...The strange notion that life and death hanr on the word the chap who happens for the moment to occupy the spacious, tin-shaded mansion on Pennsylvania Avenue may be called the great Washington superstition...
...The executive committee was unanimous in rejecting a Communist proposal for collaboration...
...10,000 are dying each month already...
...More than 1,000 Japanese Socialists joined the employees of the paper, Yomiuri Hocki, in demanding 'that the editor, Matsutaro Shoriki, be tried as a war criminal for collaboration with tha militarists...
...The bill, you all know, is stuck in a committee of the House...
...is exactly like i Congressman...
...But this fellow is one of the all-or-nothing boys...
...One thing nhont a lot of these liberals tied in with doings on what they call "the hill" struck me as bad...
...And that something will not happen unless we make it happen...
...On the outside the capital looked slick and bright and happy...
...See what's happening to the President's program/* • • • Will Truman Fiqh...
Vol. 28 • November 1945 • No. 44
