THE HOME FRONT
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN History Does Not Always Repeat THIS' morning I heard my first robin. Those rich, bubbling note* came to m« while I w»* looking; over the perennial bed. At...
...British confidence in traditional patterns is shaken at last...
...We have the notion that everything passes...
...seemed U> be sound...
...He cites the hysterical anti-Communist propaganda «f the reactionary press...
...But Harry Truman really is one...
...He has just returned from serving his time over in...
...Last night I wag talking to my nephew Dick...
...In fact his admissions are rather damning: he lists Russian policy toward Iran, unilateral action in Germany and Austria, the wrecking' tactics of .Communist Parties everywhere, the obstructionism of Molotov and Gromyko, the fact that Russian leaders ars badly informed because they turn thejr embassies into fortresses, the irritating propaganda emanating from Moscow, refusal of Russia to join UNESCO,.refusal to exchange students, professors and intellectuals generally, the iron curtain and ttMtfSftlPi the isolation of Russians from contact with foreigners, the police Stat* in Russia, Moscow's rejection of the I.ilienthalHaiurh plan for atomic control...
...People, fioin |,.«ts to prostil •. '(iiiver befoie us a* they ¦how the inner workings <>t tlmi consciousness...
...Russia demands security, and so Soviet expansion is reasonable, argues Laski...
...There ran be arrest internment, and exile without trial...
...The Democrats may manage things for a time in Washington, but it is taken for granted, as night follow* day, that the Republicans will return...
...the "war capitalists" threaten Russian security...
...He ends with this significant sentence: "And the men in the Kremlin need have no anxiety about the future of bourgeois civilization—it has long passed the point at which it was possible to save it...
...Part of it* impressiveness results from the unimpressive quality of the language, the occasion and the...
...Stress on Fascist and Nasi philosophies waa • necessary part of the war propaganda...
...It may come to war...
...Roosevelt would have put It into more resounding terms...
...We were fighting symbols...
...speaker...
...This rhythm of nature—hot, cold, hot, cold—is the very basis of human psychology in thia temperate tone...
...The enemies mentioned are "totalitarian regimes," "Coercion and intimidation...
...That was all there waa to it...
...But Laaki reminds us that the Vatican is anti-Communist, that Churchill favors a Western Bloc and a United States of Europe which would he a rorden tanitaire...
...From now on each of us is a responsible citizen of a 11 on bled world...
...hence the policies of the . Kremlin are justified...
...Tee, fee Tim* Has Come 1 HAVE a notion that when President Truman made that address to Congress last Wednesday the bell tolled for optimistic and self-satisfied America...
...But that thought is no comfort, for meantime Laski and Wallace and their ilk are doing their best to make war and revolution inevitable...
...The tnliqMe*i*q flow *a M« Head The rise of Hitler troubled the pleaeant day-dreama of many of us...
...The Civil War era may be regarded as • break, but it disturbed the traditional pattern for only one section of the country and for a minority of our people...
...Trends - By LISTON M. OAK Harold Laski: Father of Myths littje hear of Russian 'obstruc\\ tion,' of Russian 'permeation,' of Russian 'strategic imperialism,' and of perhaps half a dozen kindred evils...
...Without such apologists, the world might understand Bolshevism for what it is—¦ as much of a menace today as Fascism was yesterday...
...Like men en a desert plain, they are forced to rebuild from the bottom...
...If you have not read it, look it up...
...It is called a navel, hut It is not that...
...After all, our civllftaffor...
...The President's initiative has the advantage of taking us in before another ivarl Harbor lands en our head...
...Stiff and stoic men on the tight little island are, like the French, the Germans, the Poles, up against the tough realities of existence...
...In curing the ills of our present society, let's not kill the patient...
...He continues: devastated Russia does not want war (which is true...
...The Soviet Union supports Tito, but Britain supports Salazar, and the USA dominates Japan...
...We took for granted that when the symbols were removed the realities would also vanish...
...Including your "social democracy in the economic realm," Mr...
...But he points to American am* gance in our "immature" period...
...Laski says nothing about the Eastern Bloc...
...Even while the bomas crashed on London, Englishmen put out the flames, buried their dead and tool) for granted that the old British system of things would go on indefinitely...
...We were talking about hia experience* away off there and how happy he should he to have his army days behind hint...
...Such intellectual epigones are also despised by the Communists, and will be among the first to be liquidated if the revolution ever sweeps "bourgeois civilization" from Britain and America...
...Our land was stll) unravaged, still ieady to produce all the makings of comfort...
...It could, at least, produce tanks and planes and (hips...
...Rut it took the sharp concussion of Pearl Harbor to rouae the majority of Americana...
...For Harold Laski, as for Henry Wallace, I have nothing but contempt...
...flirt, whatever the form it takes, will be longer and mere important in its results than any others in which we have participated...
...He asks far com* promise, neglecting to mention that Ihul fii> all the real compromises lur.c btefl made by Britain and the United States...
...New York City SARAH VOLOVICK...
...Truman aays that we must help people to be free, and the nimble Max scents a declaration of war on Moscow...
...The birds return as they have done each spring for thousands of years, and the plants push their way up into the the light in response to the ancient law...
...I agree, but it is el.vious that Harold has not go) ths glimmering of an understanding of Rus« sian Bolshevism...
...Europe is a continent where men, stripped naked of pretences and the comfortable faith in routine, face the fates bare-handed...
...When It* spoke as he did, it waa proof that many ol the American people had made up their minds to take a stand with regard to the conflict which divides the world...
...I —we had won...
...In the face of this situation the President of the United States said: "I believe that it must Ur the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures...
...Europe had gone haywire and we were forced to send troops over there to straighten things out...
...We are now directing our course into the central current of world affairs...
...This hardly sounds like a clarion call to battle...
...The secret police remain an impfiium itt impart*, reaching long fingers into the control of every aspect of national life...
...His answer is: "We are not in the shadow of death...
...For America...
...Laaki admits: "No writ of haheas corpus is honored (in Russia...
...One extreme turns into the other—-with pleasant periods of compromise in between...
...Yon will hear similar remarks from a let of tha boys home from the war...
...After we have won the war against Fascism and Nazism, more of tha world is enslaved than before the war began...
...It Is a shattering thing to experience...
...Her loss is deeply felt by all Social Democrats and a wide circle of friends, Sarah Volovick has been an active worker in the Bronx Socialist movement since 1908, a leader in the Socialist Party Women's section in the campaign for Women's suffrage in 1917, a pioneer in the cooperative movement, worked for The New Leader in her neighborhood and active up to a few hours before her death...
...As spring follows winter, a period of good will follow si time of evil...
...Thus Laski equates the imperialism of all big powers...
...It failed to happen...
...Harry Truman's call is not for the destructionf of any foreign monarch or state...
...Korea: Next fall he will enter college...
...At the end of the war, which in<¦vital.lv ended with a victory for our aide, we were again pretty well foilified with self-satisfaction—all except the dead, of course...
...Nearly all of them are wholly mythological...
...Laski...
...What other is there'.' "Proletarian civilization" which as Laski admits denies all human rights...
...I am very much concerned with the future of what Laski so contemptuously calls "bourgeois civilization...
...Youth cornea like spring and old age like winter...
...thia crazy world, the basic arrangement* have not been altered...
...for nearly 25 years the other powers, great and small, intervened in Russia to aid and abet civil war there" (which is not true...
...We had spent money by the hundreds of billions, but—by...
...Never again can a conscientious American citizen be a simple, satisfied, naive and serene denizen of a wide and prosperous Ruritania...
...I have just been reading, a bit late, Victor Serge's book, The Lmg...
...Here is a people really fiat Their faith in themselves, their system of ideas, the framework of their society is torn apart...
...With incredible naivete Laski suggests that the Russians admit that their ? vsU-m has no political democracy and cannot have under present conditions, bat "has achieved a remarkable social democracy," in the realm of economic life...
...The USA demands bases in the Pacific, therefore Rnssia advances similar demands...
...Nothing, however much we may dislike it, is permanent...
...But I have a feeling that what could not be accomplished by rocket* ia being brought about by tha bitter experience of this winter with freezing cold and low production of all the thing* which make life possible...
...Harry Truman ia a common little man who happens to be I'm- nleHt of the United States...
...The first World War hardly produced a ripple on the calm surface «>f our assumptions...
...In the end it proved its soundness by producing that miracle of scientific and industrial cooperation, the atombomb...
...The implication is, of course, that the rider* in Moscow are against freedom, that they are so desperately against it that wc most fight them with atombomb...
...When we foughfthe First World War we teak for granted that when we had beaten the Kaiser everything would be OK...
...It gives a erosf-section of bleeding mid Uwtlderod France during the days of annihilation...
...We had shown the world...
...Nor does Harold like the Politburo's purge of artists and intellectuals, nor Soviet propaganda which is not "rooted in truth," nor the absence of debate in the Supreme Soviet, nor Russian arrogance...
...We are lining up in a worldwide it rug* gle the end of which no man can see...
...a man be imprisoned or executed without even his wife knowing the offense with which he is charged...
...But they seemed to have few advocates here, and as our great war machine began to roll a good many of us felt reassured...
...II* fails to list a few other "indefensible" actions, such as the annexation of 27U.OOO square milea of territory and the imposition upon Poland, Yugoslavia and other countries of a police state, and the fact that Russia has blocked the making of a decent peace with any nation...
...Stalin has "insight," an did Litvinov...
...At juit about the same moment my ears announced the return of the birds and my cyea attested that the daffodils and hyacinth* were well up out of the ground and on their way to break the dull scheme of winter with flashes of spring...
...He cites no evidences of this remarkable claim, because there aren't sny...
...the grain of truth in them is usually explicable in historical terms, and if these were understood, in agreement could be reached at least as easily with Russia as with any other great power...
...We are rather at the focal point .. . where nothing is left but intelligence and energy...
...Britain, France and the USA intervened half-heartedly in 1018-1919...
...It has been continuous from the time of our colonial beginnings—and we are able to persuade ourselves that each new good period has been a little bigger and better than the last...
...Branch in the Amalgamated Mouses in the Bronx, died last Sunday...
...Dear Harold blames Molotov for Mess cow's diplomatic blunders, which deepen distrust...
...It is a call to struggle against an idea, a system...
...Henry A. Wallace and the soculled liberal writers talk a lot about the common man...
...Was it Molotov then who ousteit'LitvihoV and- Maisk./ Is Molotov now sdie big bossf" • " ' Laiflfl has "profdund confidence that there'eun be full reliance on the purposes of Uu.ssia once we convince its leaden that we are as eager as they are to make its international security effective . . ." Substitute the words "Nazi Germany" for "Russia" and you will have the measure of Laski's understanding...
...Laaki makes the familiar appeal far "understanding...
...DEAD Sarah Volovick, organizer of the S.D.F...
...No matter what action we take now, ia the end we cannot sidestep it...
...Lerner make* them out—that i* something which we shall discover i* due time...
...We are called upon to use ear power in favor of "free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees ot Individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression...
...Thus Harold J. Laski, in The S'olion (March 1), begins his apology for Soviet aggression...
...Up to recently even England stood outside the circle where destruction has reduced men to first principles...
...The American optimism which Europeans find so superficial and so objeetionable is based on the faith that thia chain of evil and good will continue forever...
...They do not expect everything t0 ge on forever as it always has...
...Russia is immature and backward, and so w* must understand and forgive such little errors as Laski lists...
...For the moat part, Americans still think that everything will go on forever just about as it is...
...There are more men being starved and beaten down in concentration camps and more little countries robbed of their independence...
...This northern region is again turning its face to the sun...
...Of course, like all such pseudo-liberal apologists for Communiat totalitarianism, Laski admits that some Russian acta are indefensible...
...He has the insolence to state that while*"the form of democracy" were not observed in Poland, "its reality" was safeguarded...
...I can respect the forthright Communist...
...But the con...
...During the Second World War the idea was that when we had beaten Hitler and Hirohito "the peace-loving nations" would fix everything up in a satisfactory way...
...This struggle cannot be localized...
...Whether they are as irreconcilable Mr...
...Dick took it all very calmly and finally pulled us up by remarking: "Don't go so fast In about five years I'll be bsck there again—or in some other place just like it...
...After the neighborly job had been attended to we could go peacefully on our way, with prosperity following depression, but, on the whole continuing to grow richer...
...Malraux, at the very bottom of the pit of suffering, waa facing the question: is Europe dead...
...But our objectives have been stated in terms that include China, Italy, France, Poland, Austria, etc., etc It is amusing to see editorial writers like Max Lerner jump to the conclusion that this means atombomb war...
...It atarts in Greece...
...On January 18 we published an address by Andre Malraux...
...Prosperity shines upon us for a while;—to be followed, inevitably, by depression...
Vol. 30 • March 1947 • No. 12
