THE HOME FRONT
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT •v WILLIAM t $OHH Book-Burning in New York WE are having a great hullabaloo about Thomaa Paine ami the N. Y. Board of School Superintendents. Or, to be more exact, about a...
...he has handicapped many a persecuted man seeking an asylum in the United States...
...Eisler may serve as an example of that fact that totalitarian dictatorship can be fought only by focusing the light on the terrorist machine of the Russian state party...
...Other representatives to the Economic and Social Council will also participate...
...My complaint against tht book about Paine is not that , this or that little' point is wrong, but 'that the total picture is false and misleading...
...His finger-nails always wear a mourning band...
...Ha has a good trick of making history seem real and contemporary...
...Why does a man like Howard Fast, who travels with the Communists, feel compelled to present the mass of citizens as little and common and dirty...
...It was Howard Fast himself who described the schoolmen's action as "a •form of book-burning...
...Under Stalin's direct orders, the German Communist Party facilitated more than hampered the victory of the Nazis...
...If a certain book falls below possible alternative choices and is turned down, no one has a right to accuse the school- authorities of censorship or of any other crime...
...Everyone in European Comintern circles knew that he was in the United States between 1933 and 1938...
...Rsser\atlons should be made at once...
...Conscientious fellow that i am, 1 went and read the book all over again...
...Thomas Paine, was a great man and a great, writer...
...Address all requests for tickets and additional Information, particularly about Round-Table Discussions which will also be held, to the League for Industrial Democracy, 112 East 19lh Street, New York City...
...It is the sort of thing that the average American is just naturally against...
...Myth ef the Dlssolefien »t the Comintern Now that the myth that the Comintern no longer exists has been exploded, ths mask has become worthless...
...The psychological problem remains...
...I amuse myself by picturing what would happen if Howard Fast could be transferred back to the year 1776 by some time-machine...
...They could be depended to make the glib writer retrurt a word or two...
...Here is the' man who wrote Thf CrUtis, Common Sense, The Rights of Iban...
...Drunkenness is constantly asserted in the...
...TRYGVE LIE SPEAKER AT LI.D...
...One of them murmured something about "purple passages" in Howard Fast's book...
...When France fell to the Nazis, the Communist refugees had, as always, the best information and the most complete technical help from this side of ths Atlantic...
...By this despicable trick, he has done tremendous harm to all genuine victims of Hitler tenor...
...Bryn J. Hovde, president of the New School for Social Resesrch, housing authority and former chief of the Division of Cultural Cooperation, Department of State, will preside...
...If ever he was.in Germany in the years between 1929 and 1933, it was in transit on a Comintern mission in another European country, Aa he did not participate in the fight against the Nazis, he got through the whole paroxysm undamaged...
...This was a "people's war," a war of "the common - man," a struggle of "the little people...
...I wish I had counted...
...The charges flung at the Superintendents are "censorship," "bookbanning," "book-burning...
...As a teacher I was always dragging In books from outside the curriculum and the approved lists...
...He left Germany long, before the Nazis rose to power, at the end of 1928, and took up a permanent residence in Moscow...
...There was nothing exceptional about that He mij not always have been as well-bathed as Howard Fast But dirtiness is made the chief point about him...
...A schoolboy' who reads this book willget the idea that all you nitre to do to produce a great book is to get dirty enough and drunk enough, incidentally, I may add that there is in the whole volume not a word about Thomas Paine'e style or about his philosophy...
...Eisler was put in the concentration camp at Vernet, France, in September 1939, just after Stalin's pact with Ribbentrop...
...Mr...
...Tile author keeps using the pet cliches ot presentday radicalism in relation to citizens and aoldiers of the Revolution...
...The first premise of a Socialist and democratic Germany, joining tomorrow In a federation of European peoples, is to get rid of its Moscow-controlled party and its front branches...
...There ia every reason why the boys and girl* should know about him...
...editor of a monthly newsletter *>n world Communism...
...In fighting Eisler here in the States, I hope to give some slight help to my Socialist friends in Germany, who have to do the same thing but under immeasurably more dangerous circumstances...
...No doubt he drank some alcoholic liquor...
...Lewis Gannett, literary critk of the Hsruld-Tribune remarked: "I think it is an act of mls¦education to bar such a distinguished book...
...The Paris fellow-travelers regaled each other with stories of his excellent results with the American Communist Party...
...Louis Unterraeyer testified: "To *ie the work communicates Americanism at its very best and as such I would think the schools would be glad to circulate It as widely as possible...
...But I noted that this excitement was being largely whipped up by PM and The Daily Worker...
...And I am especially sensitive about it in relation to the youngsters in schools...
...The French police knew him us a Comintern agent and interned him not ar an anti-Nail but as an agent of a country in alliance with Germany, with which France was at war, as a Stalinist organiier for Russian-German cooperation...
...The transformation of the Comintern into GPU branches was the international accompaniment to the brutal destruction in Russia of every oppositionist force, both inside the Communist Party and in other parties, to Stalin's dictatorship...
...But Eisler's case Js important for German Socialists In particular...
...Now how, one may ask, does Howard Fast know that Thomas Paine'a finger-nails were always dirty...
...But there is no word from the author to suggest that it is anything but a straight biography...
...Has there been any evidence to back up these ferioua charges...
...Lie will deal particularly with the achievements and possibilities of the United Nations and its message for labor...
...But I could not avoid this moral obligatin because of the immense danger that men of this type represent for socialists throughout the world...
...Many things have to be considered, the price, the attractiveness and the probable total effect on" the student's mind and character...
...On two counts 1 object to the general treatment of the American people as they appear iq this.book...
...Over and over again it is stated that he was dirty, filthy, wretched...
...There must be a committee of teachers or librarians who make recommendations, and then the Board of Superintendents orders purchases...
...And, furthermore, the author continually pictures the revolutionary soldiers as dopes who were practically as dirty and smelly as Thomas Paine himself...
...It pretends te tell the story of .Thomas Paina's life from beginning to end...
...If the volume never had been ordered, obviously, there would be no complaint...
...Dirt)r Ftafgf.W«ii...
...A warning liyht went on, and I said to myself that this business would warrant a little'looking into...
...Eisler did a shrewd job in utilizing the complex immigration machine and regulations to creep through to the United States...
...He did not lose either a book or a shirt in the Mai'h days of 1933, when almost every Germsn Socialist home was sacked by the Elite Guard...
...They may have made a mistake in judgment, but only experts in the matter of books for adolescents are in a position to charge them with it...
...About each volume considered they have to ask some such question as this: "Of all the books which we could buy and give shelf-room on our very limited shelves, is* this the one which would be most eagerly read and _ which would do the most good among the young people in our schools...
...It is the removal of it that has brought down the storm...
...In Tk4 Progroftivt \ Protease, , HeseeHine,went at .this book and' sit down, a' long'list of straight blunders wltb regard to facts...
...sor William Hesseltine did on Freedom Road...
...Why I Testified in Washington By Ruth Fischer Author of "Stalin and German Communism" to be published in May by Harvard University Press...
...CONFERENCE • Trygve Lie Secretary-General of the United Netions and former Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Norwegian Labor Government, will be principal speaker at the 42nd annual luncheon of the League for Industrial Democracy to be held on Saturday, March 1, 12:30 p. m., at the Hotel Commodore, New YorTt...
...I cannot describe exactly the machinery whereby the selections are made...
...Farmers—then as now— are by no means common men, and many of them are not "little...
...Howard Fast wss, apparently, not a bit curious about where tney came from or how they were developed...
...I have come up out of the reading with the conviction that the Superintendents did exactly right...
...I object, moreover, because Thomas Paine is represented as a dirty, drunken bum...
...I have always had a sneaking fondness for this man Fast Ha can write...
...The subject of the luncheon is "Planning for Peace and Freedom...
...It lacks plot—and has no other quality of'a historical novel...
...removed...
...In the case of the novel, Citizen Tom Paine, the book must have been recommended, copies were placed on library shelves, then complaints came in, the case was reconsidered and the book was...
...1 am touchy about censorship and book-banning...
...Imagime him meeting a couple of farmers from .trw Hampshire or Pennsylvania and greeting them with: "Hail, you dirty 'little common men...
...Suppose I were en a jury...
...The space allotted to the dirty finger-nails would have sufficed to give an interesting account of them...
...The price of the luncheon is $4...
...No one but an expert can tell what is true and what is imagined...
...He would lie in the gutter or in a dirty bed in a dirty room...
...same repetitious way...
...Or, to be more exact, about a recommendation of the Superintendents that Howard Fast's novel about Thomas Paine be removed from the shelves of eur school libraries...
...When the reporters approached the dignified Superintendents and asked them to explain their action, they made a blunder in public relations...
...I wonder what would happen to hiun...
...Of all the groups of the German people who bear responsibility for the breakdown of a great country and a great culture, the German Communist Party carries the largest share...
...They cannot buy all the books on the publishers' list...
...Even the conversations with Washington and Jefferson are reported as history...
...Now this, I submit, is a dangerous sort of thing to put In the hands of the young...
...So I read this volume about Thomas Paine when it first cams out I beat the brush of my memory but could call to mind nothing purple except the bloody prints which Pains is supposed to have left on the road from Philadelphia to Baltimore...
...Frederick G. Meleher, president of Publishers Weekly, added: "It (the ban) doesn't make any sense...
...Gerhart Eisler was never an anti-Nazi refugee...
...IT would be pointless to deny that it was a painful and strenuous experience to expose my brother, Gerhart Eisler, as Moscow's agent in this country...
...As punishment for his intrigue against Emit Thselmann, then leader of the German party, he was ordered to cut all connections with the German party...
...i object, in the first place, to the form in which this work is cast The publishers speak of it as a novel...
...The educational authorities who make the decisions'" about books are in a ticklish position...
...If there was anything that teachers frowned upon, I had the fixed not'on that was the sort of thing that would do the youngsters the most good...
...Whatever happened— whether the man was writing or loafing, fighting or printing—he would get drunk on gin or rum...
...I have not the time to do on Citizen Tom Paine the sort of job which Profes...
...Many unions will be represented...
...a ffsfer's Record In Moscow he entered the Comintern's service and worked first under Oaslp Pyatnitsky, who sent him to China, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and other eountrlsa...
...It Should be an idea that will inspire them with faith in democracy...
...The Schoolman'* .Lot ft Net • Happy Oee TflE Board of Education has a limited amount of money to spend on books for the libraries in the City's schools...
...As long as there is not a definite and irrevocable break between the socialistliberal camp and this type of "antiNail," we will never get a new start In my opinion, the ugliest feature of the whole affair is Bieltr's vse of his supposed anti-Nazism as his mask...
...it was the laugh of Comintern circles that Stalin had made his orders so specific that for a period Eisler was forbidden even to resd a German newspaper...
...EXCLUSIVE TO THE NEW LEADER...
...Those dirty nails come into the story dozens of times...
...But they should get an idea-of htm as he was...
...The author, the publishers and a long list of critics promptly began to shout of censorship...
Vol. 30 • February 1947 • No. 7
