The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
The Home Front By william E. Bohn Conflict in Canada IRECALL sitting; on the porch of a farmhouse somewhere in the northerly part of Now Brunswick and looking out over th* landscape as I talked...
...The American Communist anti-Franco apparatus is growing slowly, but steadily...
...Though they have been here longer than the English, I cannot get it through my head that they belong...
...It is because these Canadian French have never had a fair break among English-speaking citizens that I am holding a private celebration of the appearance of Hugh MacLennan's novel...
...A little cottage was painted bright blue...
...A third, which I could, but imperfectly observe, had about it more than a dash of red...
...their impressions of the London labor conference...
...Science, power, finance, the cities, were all against God...
...9 The American Newspaper Guild's executive board, meeting recently in Washington, refused to issue a proposed statement which would have urged that Attorney General Biddle cease his deportation proceedings sgainst West Cosst longshoreman's leader Harry Bridges...
...Similar defections, and for th* stm* reasons, have occurred in the Maryland State CIO Council recently...
...It was like talking to a sedate and public-spirited New Englander...
...They were illiterate, stupid, backward, priest-ridden...
...In the Midwest, site of operation of the KKK like Gentile League, cards are being distributed which read "Keep the Jews out of business by not trading with them, and keep the Irish out of politics by not voting for them...
...My place is only an island in the midst of this pagan flood...
...It's all over.'* • * • There An Two Sides My friends in all of the provinces have naturally been the English-speaking Canadians...
...MacLennan ia a Nova Scotia boy and on the level of social thinking he has achieved a miracle...
...The government is in a dilemma over whom to chose to represent American labor...
...Soon it will be of the size pod scope of the Commies' propaganda machinery set up during the Spaniah civil war...
...But the characters, the incidents, all the life and movement and atmosphere placed there above the St I<awrenc*, ar* affected by th* maritime province* to the east and prairie provinces stretching to the west and, especially, by the disturbing and volcanic United States to the south...
...He pictures the struggle in religion, in family life, in education, in business...
...The second set the pace in the effort to place his characters in Streams of world emotion...
...And then I began to understand...
...Each pariah ia a medieval and totalitarian society radiating about the priest The soil, the people and their religion are a unity...
...Look," said the old man, "my fine, intelligent neighbors had one or two children to a family, and even the few they had moved off to town...
...Thomas Mann, Eugene O'Neil, Emil Ludwig, Information Please's FPA, and a host of other good anti-fascists who haven't bothered to examine the committee they joined...
...The drive of the story ii furnished by their struggle to gain freedom as individuals, to assert the supremacy of purely human values...
...For we think of the young French Canadians as holding back from war—not because they are pacifists—but because they are isolationists of the narrowest sort They seem to be interested only in their province...
...Says the Dilling: "Matthews told me many times that he has found my books to be factually 100 percent accurate and that he uses them daily aa thus saving reference works...
...And what wore yen doing talking to Lizzie Dilling so friendly-like in the Mural Room of Chicago'* Hotel Morrison recently...
...Caught in between the two inimical groups, he suffers from the blows of both...
...The British and Protestant Canadians are represented by Huntley McQueen, surrounded by a most unappetizing group of hypocritical Montreal capitalists, and Captain Yardley, a Nova Scotia seaman and one of the saltiest and most captivating characters I have come across in a long time...
...With full British approval the Athens Government passed a law last week which will permit even the most extreme opposition newspapers to publish criticism of the British...
...That is how the Protestant British looked to the Catholic French...
...Father Beaubien, priest of Saint-Marc-des-Erablee was as much a peasant as th* humblest of his parishioners, and like the pastors in our own mountain valleys he preached lustily against th* evils of the factory towns...
...A free press, the first in the Balkans, has been established in Greece...
...It is on this level that the author hopes for a synthesis of what is good in the antagonistic sectarians...
...These cottages, over which their owners had spilled all the colors of the paintpots, were the homes of Canadian French...
...Finally, when I turned to him, he remarked: "Yea, they are coming like a flood...
...Roy O. Woodruff of Michigan____Everybody wants to get into the act . . • E. Carlton Hayes, former Ambassador to Franco Spain, has just returned to the USA and will resume teaching at Columbia University...
...The author's hope is in the younger generation...
...The Army would like to put it* collective hand* on th* man or men who revealed to the Hearst and Me-Cormick newspapers the post-Yalta directive to all commanding officer* that Communists be permitted to obtain commission...
...Nothing can stop them...
...Off-the-Record By ROBERT CLARK FATHER DIVINE, whose flock of Negro cultists has grown despite prosperity and the war, is running one of the most active and successful Russian War Relief campaigns in the country...
...Th* National A FL and CIO h«adquart*r...
...My good friend followed my glances with somber interest...
...It was on this account that they were irresistible...
...This will go for the reelect-LaGuardia campaign...
...He write* of them with intimate and loving hate...
...He must have inherited all of the stiff Presbyterian ways which he pictures in his novel...
...We must get it through our heads that these French-speaking Canadians are not all alike...
...This novel is a part of our American literary stream...
...They have had a bad press...
...Sidney Hillman, surprisingly, was not among the group of CIO labor leaders Who reported via the British Broadcasting Co...
...The next important API, and CIO'conflict will com* when the State Department prepares for the international conference on unemployment which will be held this year...
...His name gives him away...
...If they had looked closely, they would have noticed that on the committee with them are at least 20 persons who led the fight against passage' of the lend-lease bill —snd at least one who helped to organize and supply the pickets who marched for 1,000 hours in front of the White House in protest sgainst aid to Britain...
...Memo to John T. Flynnt Marvin K. Hart, the pro-Franco propagandist who Is printing your pamphlets, la campaigning actively against the anti-Discrimination bill now before the Albany legislator...
...I enjoy hearing the quaint French...
...Th* CIO's Latin-American Committee is printing a monthly bulletin in English and Spanish for widespread distribution In South America...
...I am seeing it as a picture of two cultures in conflict Mr...
...Between the two groups stands the, cultivated, in-telligent Frenchman, Arhanaao Tajlard...
...It's publisher is the now almost defunct Veteran* of the Abraham Lincoln rigade...
...One had a roof that fairly flashed back at us in saucy green...
...Also the CIO's favorite Rep...
...Backing the Brigade's campaign this time—slthough the Brigade is opposed to the legitimate Spanish Republican leaders now in exile in Mexico—are Van Wyck Brooks, Carrie Chapman Catt, artist James Mont gromery Flagg, band leader Vincent Lopes...
...Those who spoke were R. J. Thomas of the Automobile Workers, Johnny Green of the Shipbuilders, Jim Carey, CIO secretary, and Joe Curran of the Maritime Union...
...hav* endorsed the Jewish Labor Committee which Is heeded by Adolph Held, and David...
...John M. Coffee, and the anti-CIO Rep...
...Th* Army it embaratsed by all tht publicity and tht earning uproar in Congress...
...They are always teen on or near his desk...
...On the Committee are Communist Congressman Vito Marc-antonio, and Republican Representative Alvin O'Konski, whom the Russian press recently assailed as a "fascist...
...Such items seem to stamp these habitant* as inferiors...
...on the porch of a farmhouse somewhere in the northerly part of Now Brunswick and looking out over th* landscape as I talked with th* old Scotch-Presbyterian owner...
...The left wing CIO city industrial union council, which represents less than a third of the CIO unions here, has asked all CIO members to contribute $1 for the local PAC...
...The other day I read in Le Joiir, • fine weekly published in Montreal, about priests and peasants who object to improved agricultural methods and machinery because they are supposed to be inimical to religion...
...But these people seem outlandish to me...
...Even the great Catholic churches, suggesting a world strangely different from my familiar 6ns, give me pleasure...
...For such a man to achieve such even-handed justice is a high achievement • • * 4 Confinenfof Novel DoNT let anything which I ssy scar* you away from this story...
...In this case they were doubly against all that is good, because they were controlled by an alien race with an alien language and a heathenish religion...
...This should make for a hot session when Bridges meets Murray st the next CIO executive council gathering...
...A n ti-CathohVtom I* keeping pec* with anti-Semitism...
...Living on his ancestral manorial estate, he represents the culture of 19th century Franc...
...In an effort to reach many millions after the war, all Hearst radio stations will add frequency modulation facilities to their studios...
...I like sounds and smells that are different...
...There is, of course, the basic stratum of peasants organized in the church...
...Two Solitude...
...The Hearst broadcasting chain, however, now is reduced to three outlets, in Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Milwaukee...
...Watch for Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy to go back and rqn the Philipines even before they are fully reconquered...
...Janet and Paul are both' pinioned by the hidebound inhibitions of their groups...
...In pointing our attention toward the hot chapters of history being lived under our eyes up there north of the St Lawrence, he has performed a great service to those of us on this side of the line...
...I will never sell...
...He will go on leave from the high court and will not resign...
...Color had come to New Brunswick...
...And the house, too-white, dignified, with elms protecting it from the street —suggested New Hampshire or Vermont Then I happened to notice, down the road and on the other side, a spot of gay color that seemed to be out of tune...
...In Quebec I am in a foreign city...
...He does not try to tone it down or smooth it out And as far as I can see, he is absolutely fair to both sides...
...Public opinion runs against them...
...He was a sharp snd intelligent old boy, and we had been talking about the development of the province—the schools, the government, the churches...
...My serious Presbyterian friend talked of them as the Old Testament prophets talked of the heathen...
...Instead ANG's president Milton Murray, now on the Washington staff of PM, called Bridges "a misleader and...
...MacLennan, H anything, has weighted the scales against his own crowd...
...He probably grew up among the Empire Loyalists...
...But Mr...
...Jew-hating Elisabeth Dilling, who will soon be retried on charges of attempting to spread mutiny hi the armed services, hi boasting that J. B. Matthews, Martin Dies' former braintruster, used her anti-Semitic books for research...
...It is operating out of 13 Astor Place, which rapidly has become a sort of second Communist headquarters in the city...
...If for no other reason, folks on this side of th* Una should read this story to sea what the Canadians—both French and British—think of us...
...Th* national CIO office has sent John Brophy to investigate Communist activities m the Detroit CIO Council from which soma of th* non-CP unions have withdrawn recently...
...But as soon as I am gone, they will take in this ground that has been in my family since the 18th century...
...When the financial.aristocrats of Montreal met to mourn the passing of Sir Rupert Irons, "the square head, square jaw, square mouth, square shoulders and the small biting eyes almost crowded Hitler off the front pages...
...They ware powerful, stiff, relentless...
...Because he believes in reason and science, he is forced to fight the priest Because he is a cultivated gentleman who believes in something besides making money, he is finally thrown over by the British...
...I am not concerned with the fact that the story will hold you to the end...
...The essence of a continent ia distilled into the lives of individuals...
...The author refers to Do* Passos and Hemingway...
...The first of these, preceded him in trying to picture the psychologies of our continental regions...
...Tales about opposition to the military draft add to the impression...
...With eyea now sharpened by surprise, I picked out other cottage* within our field of vision...
...And, worst of all, each couple had great litters of children...
...Latest of the CP outfits is a pews service News on Spain...
...This is the first CIO union to refuse to back Bridge...
...In Toronto I feel as much at home as in Boston...
...It is full of lively characters, of the very juice of human life...
...Someone else will give a literary review of it in The New Ltadtr...
...Politics - makes - strange - bedfellows - Dept — Th* Peter Bergson revisionist crowd has set up an American League for a Fro* Palestine...
...a wrecker of honest trade unionism...
...His tale ia evenly...
...I wouldn't give in to them...
...My boys are gone now...
...divided between French and British...
...Washington Item—Teamsters' leader Dsn Tobin said that his union, will not admit veterans who were not members of the Brotherhood before...
...MacLennan has bis own method and his own temper...
Vol. 28 • February 1945 • No. 8
