The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN The Secret of the Prairies LIFE on the Canadian prairies is far from fiat The , moat respectable persons and periodicals on this aide of the line are* getting...
...Members of the dissolved British .Union of Fascists have reorganized into a ' new group called "The League of Exserviceraen and Women...
...Now they are calling Joseph Scott, attorney of the girl who sued the actor, a Christisn Front leader...
...Hamilton Fish, friend of German Nazi leaders and Jap agents, is preparing to distribute 1,000,000 copies of his iaola'lonist farewell Congressional speech...
...It goes all out for "social advance...
...Communist CIO leaders of local transport and municipal workers unions are assailing their friend Mayor LaGuardia in their union papers to satisfy their restless and under-paid members...
...2S) coast to coast broadcast The CIO, on Sat., Jan...
...They wore called into conference by a committee which started its work in Winnipeg, Manitoba...
...Chief of Staff George C. Marshall went to sll the trouble of talking to them for an hour...
...The U.S...
...A much larger proportion voted for such training as part of a combination program...
...Citrine seldom has differed with the Cabinet . . . and it would be surprising if he returned Without a favorable report on Churchill's policy in Athens...
...Out of this get-together came the Prairie School for Social Advance...
...It sets its face resolutely toward the new society which will be worthier of man's dignity...
...The courses of study are to be built about issues rather than subjects...
...For me the setting up of a socialist government in Saskatchewan has all the interest ef a mystery thriller...
...CIO leader Philip Murray will not attend...
...11, the National Educational Association published the results of a poll of 1,300 school superintendents...
...They will include consideration of economic aa well as human relations...
...There is something about th* air out there...
...Instead he has named the anti-Communist Martin C. Kyne, of Sam Wolchok's retail employees union, at hia representative...
...They want to figure out the nature of our discs** and aft*h/a g**J cure...
...I take my information from an article by Sid Simpson in the December number of the Canadian Kailway Emphyre* Monthly...
...Lizzie Dil ling's anti-Jewish pamphlet, "The Octopus," is being fold at Smith's rallies...
...The avowedly pro-Communist camera expert Joris Ivens has just been appointed Film Commissioner for the Netherlands East Indies Government...
...J. B. Matthews, for years Martin Dies' special $7 .aoo-a-year brain truster and political adviser, is looking for a new spot...
...The idea was to bring together the farmers, industrial workers and auch professional workers" ss scientists, doctor*, teachers, artists, writers...
...Election day is May 8. The Communists are expected to back Hague...
...The New York Times is shifting ?. I Matthews from Italy to London...
...There are signs that th* British labor people are not as enthusiastic over the conference as they were recently...
...This is what distinguishes those Canadian regions from similar areas on our side of the line...
...The ideal seems to have been set by the British Workers Education Association rather than by our New York schools...
...Ail of this is just the sort of thinking which we hare a right to expert of our professional educators...
...I still g* about asking: Who dunnit and how...
...But the plans drawn up were not old...
...Their idea, i. to prepare yowns'neofi* for the tough lift that lief ahead, educate them to prsservt panes or to fight If they have to...
...Gerald L. K. Smith's weakened America First Party is becoming increasingly anti-Semitic in an effort to gain new support...
...Early m January the Association of American Colleges expressed itself as being sceptical of military training as a means toward building a peaceful world...
...Defeatists breathe a few gulps of it, expand their chests and shout: "Now bring on that future...
...Incidentally, the Dies' files have been turned over to the new group, which now has the endorsement of the American Legion...
...Hart, the new Un-American Activities committee chairman...
...Sidney Hillman ia going in place of Frank Rosenblum...
...Also, Murray ia keeping at home the CIO left wingers' bright boy, Lee Pressman, who was to sparkplug the CIO delegation...
...Politics—The Jersey City Affairs Committee ia putting a slate into the field against Mayor Frank Hague and his ticket...
...We bare here in New York the Rand School ef Social Science and the New School of Social Research...
...Important editorial posts are being created for many former New York Time* foreign correspondents...
...Perhaps he or someone else will Uli me Just what he meant...
...Discussion is out of order...
...27, wili present a play depicting what the electric and radio industry offers American workers...
...But there was silence when Harry Frater, head of the Order of Railway Conductors, announced that he, too, could not attend...
...But a* the squabble goes into a naw phase I must confess that I am getting a bit warm on the teachers' side...
...At the center rise a few handsome structures, including the hotel in which this conference met...
...This new school is to be as wide as these very wide provinces...
...Only 22 percent favored military training by itself...
...He took for granted that the men with epaulets are right...
...Wherever there is a group of interested persons, the institution will have machinery to take them in...
...Presidents and teachers of some of our smaller educational institutions said what seemed to me very sensible things about military routine as a part of education...
...I once mentioned here that up there on the prairies I met a good many men, farmers, clergymen, teachers, who had good minds and wide information...
...The embattled comrades who rushed to the defense of their angel Charlie Chaplin haven't missed a trick...
...Well do I recall the assured hopefulness of the men snd women...
...A good many of them— but not all—ahad come out from England and were under Labor Party influence...
...A man with a deep understanding lpf social and economic affairs might live in a small village or on a ranch far from the nearest town...
...The professors are nice old ninnies...
...No such session was held...
...It is to be an expanding, penetrating, omnipresent school...
...comrades made quite a fuss when some railroad leaden announced that they would go to the London labor conference...
...And the AFL leaders involved are considering action against those responsible for the story...
...Social Science of Sosbafooa TrY to imagine that conference of farmers, trade unionists and intellectuals in the beautiful town of Saskatoon...
...That's what the editor had to say...
...One of the top broadcasting agencies is reported to have offered him S3,500 a week for a stint similar to the recent one of Sumner Welles...
...He ia on his way to the Pacific to make a war-report picture on the Dutch Army, Navy and Air Forces, * * * John L. Spivak, who writes for the Daily Worker, no longer is editor of the Hotel and Club Employe** newspaper...
...But this prairie institution is not content with science er with research...
...foreign policy and Dumbarton Oaks...
...Sir Walter Citrine, England's top labor leader —who is as British as Trafalgar Square—is going to Greoct at Prime Minister Churchill's invitation to survey the labor situation there...
...They were necessarily isolated...
...And even after that they had the nerve to ex-press opinions of their own...
...Carey McWilliams, author of...
...Pr*»/*t and Military Trainlnq The feud between the editors snd educators has been a long one...
...Thst sounds like old stuff...
...Particular attention is to be paid to plans for collective land settlement...
...There is no truth in the report that Matthew Woll met with other Af*L leaders and decided to take John L. Lewis back just so that he could lead the Federation's new wage drive...
...He has not even bothered to contact Rep...
...OIL Mte-Record By JtOBFAT CL4JW 1 ALL is not going smoothly for the sponsors of the big international labor conference scheduled to L open in London on Feb...
...If Henry Wallace is not confirmed ss Secretary of Commerce he has a commercial radio program waiting for him...
...Pieces of answers come through now and then...
...You may recall that the young naval esses* whose letter I printed some weeks ago mentioned the feet that the schools out there in the Northwest have played a part in bringing about the recent change...
...Last Monday morning the Washington Timei-Herald came np with an editorial in the'best, old fashioned make-a-nose-at-tear her style...
...I would draw your attention to the dynamic quality of the name...
...When I think of the success of the CCF, I remember all the conversations I have had with such lonely intellectuals...
...The State Dept., under the direction of Ass't Secretsry of Stats MacLehh, hat launched a aeriee of radio programs to explain U.S...
...The Communists havs begun to us* Theodors Dreiser again on their front committees...
...On Jan...
...Factories in the Field" and a contributor to Science and Society and the New Masses, is The Nation's latest contributing editor...
...This new phase is, of course, tied in with th* debet* on compulsory military service...
...It contains only s few thousands of people, but it is spread out along the characteristically wide western streets so that it looks larger than it ia...
...The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN The Secret of the Prairies LIFE on the Canadian prairies is far from fiat The , moat respectable persons and periodicals on this aide of the line are* getting excited about what is happening up there in those middle provinces...
...This new School for Social Advance seems to be ari attempt to lessen their isolation, to organize, mobilize them, use their collective brains for effective political action...
...Rsdio—The World Telegram and the Journal American failed in their campaign to force the Blue Network to fire William Gailmore, a news commentator...
...Harlem's new Congressman, Adam Clayton Powell, is making personal appearance at Communist Front rallies in company with Commie AFL and CIO leaders...
...They want to have public discussion of it...
...In the meantime, far too lato, I am being informed of an educational conference which took place last summer at Saskatoon, Saskatchewan...
...Educators do not believe in nostrums...
...Arthur Derounian, alias John Roy Carlson, is reported to be working on a new under-cover book dealing with the southern crackpots...
...You can easily see what this adds up to...
...Vice President Harry Truman, Eric Johnston and Farmera Union leader Jim Fatten will be featured en the AFL's Sunday (Jan...
...The agenda reminded me of many an educational institute which I have attended here in New York...
...So I hope you will not be bored...
...To them this is serious business...
...I delivered an address in thia very structure once upon s time...
...In auch an atmosphere there met a group of men and women...
...Both of them are lively institutions and from both of them have come good men and good ideas...
...Since no such wide program ha* been thought out, these men are of the opinion that the whole matter should be held open while we do some constructive thinking...
...They are all right in their classrooms, "but when they branch out into auch fields aa statecraft and and international politics" —well, it's just funny...
...I should be s good msn to arbitrate this fight, for I have served on both sides...
...Why does a fellow who sits before s typewriter snd see his stuff in print every day come to think thst he knows more about education than an educator...
...Prof...
...Their general opinion was that if we are to have such service it should be keyed in with other sorts of training aimed at all-round citizenship...
...If bits of evidence are alluring but never quite conclusive, that is in the tradition of mystery...
...That settles it...
...There will be study snd research aa well aa teaching on trade unions, co-operatives, land ownership and use...
...Now sea what happens...
...The network said it had no evidence that Gailmore wat a communist and that while it ordinarily would not retain a commentator with a criminal record, Gailmore had sufficiently rehabilitated himself to stay on...
...Simpson lays emphasis on the fact that the organization is to be "without the partisan domination of any political party or particular creed...
...Leo Krzycki, one-time national leader of the Socialist Party and now president of the American Polish Labor Council, has endorsed the Communist-Lublin Polish government...
...In the words of one of its leaders, Watson Thomson, "It will work to unite and to release the creative energy of th* progressive people of the West...
...It's s nice problem...
Vol. 28 • January 1945 • No. 4
