DEDICATED TO AN EXPOSE OF ALL TOTALITARIAN ENEMISE OF DEMOCRACY
ALERT! dedicated Ja xut jxcfuUe jof xM MUalUanian jenemteA, Jemo&uscp Kenneth Leslie and "The' Protestant" THE Communist international got religion in 1885, and Stalinists began to sing...
...SALUTE TO SALUTE...
...doing back over1 1945 issues, other gems are discovered, perhaps by coincidence all agreeing with the current Browdei Stalinist line...
...A number of leading Protestants interested in social welfare were already sympathetic to the avowed "ideals" of the Communists...
...He also admitted vacating his commission as U. S. Army chaplain in the 396th Coast Artillery in Hawaii, where the Army records show the resignation was "without honor," a highly unusual designation for a chaplain's retirement...
...The New Leader has a copy of a letter sent out by Johannes Steel on his own letterhead, addressed to what Steel supposed to be a Jewish subscriber to Leslie's publication...
...Whether or not Leslie is a Party member does not matter much...
...I have asked Mr...
...She was then employed on The Protestant...
...The first issue of the new magazine, Salute, is out, and its editorial policy can be guessed, not only by the personnel of its staff, which includes several party-liners, but by its contents...
...In New York, sue Young Communist League club descended en masse on a Baptist Young People's Union, ming'.ed "Arise Ye Prisoners of Starvation" with "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam" and renamed the BYPU the "Encel's Youth Association...
...It is a book for infantiles, a nostalgia for the womb of yesterday, a hankering for death...
...And naturally when he wss fired by Brooklyn College for being a Stalinist— Herbert protested loud and long that ha was not a Communist...
...Meanwhile, the Communists have really instructed the people in their areas in the business of local government and have grown Increasingly less doctrinaire...
...In the Stalin eulogy, he wrote: "It ia to be expected that saere and more countries on the periphery of the Soviet system will And their salvation and their security within the orbit of Soviet power...
...One group of Communists in the Iowa hinterlands dutifully marked on their ' Tuesday unit meeting agenda "consider attaining well-known revivalist to compare Marx and Christ...
...dedicated Ja xut jxcfuUe jof xM MUalUanian jenemteA, Jemo&uscp Kenneth Leslie and "The' Protestant" THE Communist international got religion in 1885, and Stalinists began to sing hymns dutifully if hypocritically in the Epworth League, the Mormon Tabernacle, and eventually the Rus»ian Orthodox Church...
...Leslie's brand of "religion" is a disguised form of Browderiim In ita crudest form, a hold-over from the daya when the CP urged "class •collaboration," and when thty wans singing, not only hymns, but "The Star-Spangled Banner...
...But' Brother Kenneth came up with a Protestant clergyman, one Ben Richardson, who now conducts the "Protestant Action Log" in the magazine...
...Richardson'• typewriter crusade against anti-Semitism apparently pays off and in a unique manner...
...Herbert becomes chief research man for the UE...
...Roosevelt asked that "lie not use her endorsement in the future...
...He became so violent that Mrs...
...He also plumped for the Communist-controlled Progressive Committee to Rebuild the American Labor Party and protested against the threatened deportation of Harry Bridges...
...Here was a religion traditionally individualistic, yet inherently liberal in many of its practical applications, albeit the materialism of Luther varied considerably from that of Marx...
...Although the hand of Earl Browder, |a his own words, was outstretched with unreciprocated cordiality to the Catho-lica...
...This faith may have come, as it did to former Ambassador Joseph Davies, in a Pullman car, or it may have come sometime during the varied Leslie career, which includes: operating a buttermilk restaurant, publishing popular songs, cultivating an apple orchard, selling stocks, and leading a dance orchestra...
...He denies that the Communists are real Communists or agents of Moscow...
...When and if it does, it will lose a lot more of its "liberal" readers...
...None of them has worked so devotedly for the cause as Kenneth Leslie, editor of TA« Protettant...
...In fact, eight of The Protettant's eleven original directors have resigned since 1939 in complete disagreement with its policy...
...He was also known as Richard Enmais in the Communist Party when he wrote the foreword for Jack Hardy's Virst American Revolution issued by International Publishers...
...After establishing The Protettant gest in Boston in 1938 and moving it to New York in 1941, Leslie joined such Communist fronts as the American League Against War and Fascism, the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties, Snd the American Youth Congress...
...This advocate of Browder's version of Protestantism, who a few years before had worn St...
...And so the boys went to work...
...We pause here to note that J. •Spencer Kennard, who wrote the latter piece, says unequivocally that the Japanese comrades taught him "by their heroic sacrifice* in the practices of what Christians teach...
...Protestants who have picked up Leslie's publication for a curious look -through rarely come back for a second portion...
...Leslie is not only hysterical In his hatred of conservative Judaism and Catholicism, but he is almost pat ho logical in his fear of anti-Stalinists, and nowhere has this maudlin anger been more manifest than ir his review of Arthur Koestler's The Yogi and the Committor...
...He also lost, as editorial advisers to The Protettant, Reinhold Niebuhr and William Ernest Hocking, two noted Protestajit liberals who refused to accept Leslie's categorical defense of Stalinism...
...He defends the right of the CP to have its own partisan army, for example, and gives the Red guerrillas most of the credit for resisting the Japanese, He blames Chiang Kai-shek (and Ambassador Hurley) for the lack of national unity...
...Throughout his .article on China, Richard Watts, Jr., similarly attacks the Kuomintang and praises the Communists...
...Skimming through its recent issues, the reader is told that MacArthur must be ousted from Japan, Chiang Kai-shek from China, and the American troops from every sector where Stalin has designs on foreign real estate...
...Originally called to protest the "lynch murders of Negroes at Freeport, L. I., and Columbia, Tenn.," the Communist Party turned it into a "mobilisation" against the "imperialist, warmongering speeches of Churchill, Byrnes, and Van-denberg...
...Comradeship Pay Dividendt Proving that a loyal Stalinist can always get a job in friendly circles, Herbert Morals bobbed up on the staff of James Matles, director of the United Electrical and Radio Workers...
...Any researcher, arnud with a Daily Worker file, can find plenty of parallels between the Communist organ and Leslie's Protestant, going back to the days of the Nazi-Soviet pact when Brother Kenneth wrote: "Russia refused to commit suicide according to the plans of British-French diplomacy by opening her front and back doors to the German and Japanese armies...
...This unwavering faithfulness to the Communist Tarty looms large in this publication and is closely connected with its "hate" attacks on religions other than Protestantism...
...During the war, Brother Kenneth Leslie penned one immortal article, "Stalin, Architect of Peace...
...Richardson, who endorsed the campaign of Israel A inter, Communist candidate for governor, was assistant pastor at the Abyssinian Baptist Church...
...the main drive of the Communists in the United States was directed toward winning influence among the Protestants...
...In short—here you have the party line on China served up for veterans consumption...
...To this superlstively written critique of totalitarianism, Leslie, in his typical aura of intellectual frustration, answered: "Koestler's book is a tract against the Incarnation...
...A year later he wrote: "During the past twenty years the USSR has dedicated itself to the proposition that what the Nazarine carpenter said was quite true . . . and has based its civilization upon the simple principles of this carpenter...
...It claims to stand for tolerance on all religious questions, but its anti-Catholicism is more rabid than that of the most illiterate KKK organ...
...Ha does not admit that the Japanese Stalinists did most of their "heroic sacrificing" in far-away Yenan and Moscow...
...The Protettant is typical of those totalitarian gazettes which are designed to foster bigotry, in the name of tolerance...
...When Harry Bridges was sued by his wife for divorce last year, she named Nancy Keinstein, a night-club performer under the name of Nancy Fenton, as "the other woman...
...To the magazine flocks a weird collection of Stalinist stooges, anti-Catholic bigots, and even a night-club dancer...
...It is a book against being bom into this world...
...Typical is this on China: "It is difficult to see that the Kuomintang has done anything convincing in the way of teaching popular self-rule or of giving up any of Its' dictatorial privileges...
...Arthur Lipson, one of our most active supporters, to call on you and I hope you will extend to him every courtesy...
...Most of the articles do not give the party line as sharply, but that is the way the boys work...
...he resigned at the request of the board of directors...
...Where or how Leslie became imbued With the crusading spirit that led him, is the December 1941 issue, to proclaim There are those who . . . thank the Russians for renewing their faith in a God they had begun to doubt" is not a matter of autobiographical record...
...The Protettant has not yet made the full turn toward the "revolutionary" line laid down by 'Moscow via Ducloe...
...The latest exploit of Leslie and Richardson was participation in a rally in Union Square, New York City, at which William Z. Foster was the msin spesker...
...Theresa religious medals and studied Catholic rituals, then launched a campaign of invective against the Church of Rome...
...It Is currently rumored that Leslie's publicstion...
...Eleanor Roosevelt's secretary wrote Leslie, saying that the First Lady had found the "Protestant more political than religious in scope," and that Mrs...
...Blumiam Over Europe" (an attack on the French Socialist leader), and "What Japanese Taught Me...
...Al.THOtJGH Leslie claims to have the support of more than 5,000 Protestant ministers and teachers of theology, few of them actively support the publication...
...One article praises the puppet Warsaw Government as "bringing true freedom to Poland.'.' Tabitha Petran, fellow-traveler on PM's staff, does a hatchet job on A. A. Berle, Jr., one of the true liberals of the State Department, for his opposition to the Stalinists in Brazil...
...A CROSS-SECTION VIEW of The Protestant's editorial policy can be gained from the titles of its December, 1946, articles, which include: "Hands Off China...
...Steel, who wss recently became a Unitarian minister, has expressed a desire to sever his editorial connections with the publication...
...Since its inception as The Protestant Digest, in 1938, the publication has attacked anti-Semitism, at the same time blasting the anti-Stalinist Jewish Labor Committee and other reputable Jewish organizations—identifying anti-Communist "red-baiting" with anti-Semitism...
...Steel who wag recently exposed here as a pro-Stalinist humbug who at one time admittedly collected funds for the Nazi Party in Germany, wrote in this letter: "I am doing my utmost to assist The Protestant in raising the funds needed to carry nut its program of work...
...The important fact is that his publication never deviates far from the Stalinist line, even to Leslie's son-Bets which bob up frequently on the tack covers...
Vol. 29 • March 1946 • No. 10
