PRELUDE IN RUMANIA
PRELUDE IN RUMANIA Mill German Workers Be Deported to Slave Labor in Russia? By Friedrich Stampfer PlT^HE new* from Rumania, that Germans are being 1 I deported to Russia to forced-labor camps,...
...Thla Is their chance to show the world how seriously they mean what they say...
...Ralph Borsodi.* I want a high brick wall built between the house* that are to be occupied by my two educational columnists, Sidney Hook and Mark Van Doren...
...The International Labor Office should also concern itself with this matter...
...Inehtded among the "Germans" deported are Rumanians •f German descent These people, the so-called "Siebenfspger Schwabaa (Swabian*)," several hundred ¦Band of thorn, have been living in Rumania for Apiaries...
...For William Bohn'a benefit, may I say that I'm not sgaiast TV A, or public works la the field of natural monopolies, *uch s* truck highway* or big dam...
...he is for "unity of purpose...
...Under certain circumstanced such forced labor battalion* might affect working conditions throughout the world...
...Who is going to "coordinate" me, or "gUlchgeschalt" me, or "totally mobilize" my energy or my bank account...
...But whose "unity" is to prevail...
...Can any prospective small business man get capital from.a political banker...
...Evan Um puppet government in Bucharest |Sa protested this procedure, according to Pertinax...
...I'm not so innocent as to believe that we're going to retreat from subsidy economics to 1 aisses fairs in my lifetime...
...That'* what the labor theory of value should tell all you Maraiat* and ex-Marxists and quasi-Marxist* and neo-Marxists...
...A Letter Jo An Editor Who Must Sometimes Think He's a Whirling Dervish ILOVE The New Leader...
...As for the bleak state of North Dakota, my grapevine informs me that a mass exodus is being planned...
...It's a strange and wonderful paper, particularly in its hospitality to free discussion from all points of the non-totalitarian compass...
...With the same degree of logic and humanity it might be demanded that all the beastly atrocities committed by the SS-troops should also be inflicted upon the Germans, regardless of individual guilt or innocence of the victims...
...It was their hope that the victory of the Allies would make an end of slavery —forever...
...Walter I* againat "government by economic pressure groups...
...but this offer, was rejected...
...Is the government going to guarantee sixty million jobs...
...Where else in America could you find such an able polemic as Max Eastman's "The Notion of Democratic Socialism" resting cheek by jowl with Walter Reuther's "Sixty Million Jobs...
...The Social Democrats in the Reichstag also protested this ,and again when the Belgian deportations started...
...I merely want to see aa end to the double-talk philosophy that sssumes the government can run a subsidy economy in a democratic fashion without the most Utsase pressure politic* imaginable...
...The boys want their guaranteed jobs in New York, whore the movies are just around the corner...
...Incidentally, I've an eighty-year-old friend who's an expert horseshoer...
...This historical reminder show* that the German trad* unionists and'Social Democrats then held the same opinion as President Roosevelt holds now — he ha* spoken repeatedly against the enslavement of conquered nations...
...Of course I demand a free hand editorially for my program, which is to knock the government all I damn well please...
...The German Communists have always maintained that they are fighting for the liberation of the German workers...
...You say none of my proposals is economic ? Sir, in a democracy, who's to be the judge of that ? I've consulted the stars about it, and I know that I'm going to succeed...
...The whole civilized* world unanimously condamns this crime...
...There are several agencies authorised to speak decisively on the subject There is above all the American Government whose chief executive ha* come out emphatically against the enslavement of the German people...
...It must be obvious that a so-called unilateral solution of this problem ia totally lapraaaailila The problem of penal battalions might be considered for the far* pose of repairing damanges...
...that Is shown by their behavior toward foreign workers whom they have treated as comrades with equal rights whenever possible, and as fellow-sufferers...
...The workers of Germany have been unable to protest against Hitler's barbarian compulsory deportations because they have themselves become slaves...
...I want to situate it in a Florida or a California or a Hawaiian town, where the weather's nice the year 'round...
...And I want the government to stake me to a ship, so that I may be able to get woodpulp from Murmansk, as part payment on that six billion we're going to lend to Russia...
...And that presupposes argument, lobbying, cultivation of the "gimmes," and all the other things that Walter Reuther, Stuart Chase, at at, dislike...
...There will be, of course, those who will say that if "the Germans" are forced to repair the damage to devastated countries it would be merely an act of justice, for "the Germans" have enslaved others...
...Well, you might say that the majority of voters is to decide...
...Since these metssti had no effect, both Social Democratic factions (a the Reichstag, on May 16, 1917, voted against the budget Through their efforts the matter was brought up in the proper Reichstag Committee, where they ¦Hasted upon the acceptance of a resolution calling for the return of Belgian laborers to their homes in northern Prance, and also upon the complete wage equality of Polish and Lithuanian workers with German work-, ers, as well as their return to their countries after the aspiration of their contracts...
...Who's Mr...
...By Friedrich Stampfer PlT^HE new* from Rumania, that Germans are being 1 I deported to Russia to forced-labor camps, as re? ported in the New York Timet, is alarming...
...The trade unions, too, have urgent reasons to interest themselves in this problem...
...r hnwhsi tola...
...Another friend, Pluto K. Neptune, is an inventor who has a rocket which he thinks can reach the moon...
...Joe Stalin does it by letting the Politburo give the ultimate directives of the Five Year Plan...
...uisi upvivii ui uic gunig luniciu vii uemuviKi.lv lainmuBin iui...
...Okay, but the majority vote is onlWdecldrd after the pressure groups have wrangled It out in a political fight...
...This raises sharply the question—what is to be the fit* of other peoples of German descent in areas conapered by the Red Army, and of male civilians within Germany itself, particularly the part occupied by the lussians...
...This time, different results might ho achieved...
...If Joe Doske* I* to have his farm why can't I have my newspaper...
...But to hard human beings and make them work in a strange land under imposed condition*—that cannot be don* without returning to the moral level of the African slave-hunter...
...But their sentiments have not changed...
...He has a prospectus that looks dandy to me, and ho need* some government money to get along...
...If tt'a going to interfere in the economic process it can only do it by taking the energy, the labor power, of ens Individual and giving it to another...
...All such problems can be discussed and arranged by orderly procedure...
...Government by Itself possesses no energy, no labor power...
...If these are the conditions of the future, I'm applying 'right now to Henry Wallace for capital to start a newspaper...
...Ia a democracy "unity of purpose" Is only achieved as a resultant of forces...
...And didn't the British Government, through Churchill, only recently ask the German* to surrender, with the pledge that they could expect "Christian*' and humane treatment...
...If you don't like pressure politics, you've got to go back to a tsoa-aubaldy society, or forward to an economy that*¦ run by priests or technocrats...
...Who is going to tell me what's desirable...
...ill every one of his economic proposals...
...My Idea of "unity" is neither Henry Wallace's nor Jesse Jones's...
...The Incas of Peru did away with the untidy device of pressure group argument by turning over the allocation of subsidies to a priestcraft...
...For Walter Reuther tell* me, at least inferentlally, that I'm thinking in terms of pressure groups getting the jobs and capital they want on their own terms...
...But if we're going to have subsidies we're twins...
...If you don't have pressure group* yeu must turn to the alternative, which is arbitrary decision by an arbitrary power...
...or the organised furnish* lag of labor for reconstruction work, with results that could be compatible wits the demands of justice and humanity* After the first world" war,' for example, • the organised German building workers offered to arrange the sending of workers to Prance...
...Ain't I a pressure group of one...
...A bungalow for Ben Stolberg, my labor editor, with a mechanized kitchen designed by Mrs...
...He's never given hostages to the fellow-travelers, and he was a patriot long before Pearl Harbor...
...When, st the beginning of the first world war, Russian seasonal workers in German coal mines'were forcibly retained, the executive committee ef the German Trade Unions, the so-called "Generalkommission," immediately protested...
...Wallace to tell me I'm not...
...But what's The New Leader itsejf going to do sbout settling the argument ? In the trade union field there's no one thst ran touch Walter Reuther for integrity...
...The president of the A. P. of L, William Green, has also energetically protested against the infamous plan of Professor Varga, of Moscow, to deport ten million German workers to Russia for a period of ten years for forced labor...
...The deportation of civilians for compulsory labor b an infringement of the rules of warfare which was first perpetrated by the German Empire in World . War I, and to a far greater degree, by the Nasi Goveminent...
...Am I being silly ? Maybe I am...
...That's it, unity of purpose...
...The Pope and several neutral sovereigns intervened in the same spirit, aad the deportations finally ceased...
...But me oeeuu ut ctunuiim...
...He wants some RFC dough to start up a chain of blacksmith shops...
...I demand the best in the way of equipment, and I want a good housing project for my ataff...
...which marches in a completely opposite direction from that taken by Max...
...Nor am I against relief in times of depression...
...Since I'm a part-time agriculturalist, I expect to get some good RFC loan capital to start a lichee-nut ranch near my Florida (or California) home...
...to have pressure group*, and political favoritism, and an endless war between the have-nots and the haves...
Vol. 28 • February 1945 • No. 7
