WHERE THE NEWS ENDS
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
Where the News Ends By William Henry Chamberlin Threatened Values ONF. of the surest lessons of our troubled time is that there is no salvation in purely mechanical institutional changes....
...The Economist" of London...
...The) mm he summed lift in jour words: annexation, expulsion, spoliation and economic enslavement...
...The introduction of a lOr1 fare would abolish both these deficits, and the profit which would become available would enable the city lo borrow the hundreds ol millions necessary to extend and rehabilitate the line...
...Il falls on a certain large group of citizens, those who iis»: the Subways...
...Let these gentlemen use their imaginations...
...But the people should not allow themselves to be stampeded...
...Gojlancz is an uncompromising champion of the moral individualism which is peihnp* the distinctive fenlure of Fiiropcnn-American civilization...
...To the people who overplay the revenge "justification...
...It is set forth . most eloquently and convincingly in a little book entitled Our Threatened Values, by Victor Collauc/., a prominent London publisher and a veteran sympathizer i*illi the labor movement...
...The instinct for pity, for instance, has gravely deteriorated, as the widespread iiulilli lence to starvation, mass enslavement and inhuman deportations of whole communities shows all too plainly...
...What those sources are is the question f before the house...
...Gollancz finds that both in Great Itiilaiu and on the continent there has been a grave decline in some i»f the most essential qualities of western civilization...
...The Subway service, he declared, is a public service rather than a private business...
...Every economic group in the city was on hand with figures and theories to hack up its contention...
...The situation is clear...
...M •"UGH of what Gollancz says on this last point is quite as applicable to the United Stales as to Great Britain...
...Its message is just as valid for America as for Great Britain or for the tormented European continent, where the intellectual and moral crisis is even more acute...
...all of which, it may be remembered, are...
...The arguments of the bankers, real estate boards and tax-payers committees make sense from their point of view...
...The city's unified Subway system shows an annual operational deficit of $ I...
...All of thrm arc supported out of the city's total income, an income derived from many and varied sources...
...But these threatened values find vigorous defenders in Gollancz, Koestler, F. A. Voigt, and others...
...Tlir present trend in Great Britain and in Europe is toward greater economic collectivism...
...It is uigenl that large sums should Ik: s|U-.u >n mif Subway System immediately...
...Once Judge levy's distinction is made, however, their own figures prove the opposite of what they intended...
...among the main counts of the Snernliet g indictment...
...Ezequiel Padilla, former Foreign Minister of Mexico, speaking at Cleveland on January 9. • • • ><*or*er Reply to tkeWallace-Zllllacut Ash "The plain truth is that a dictatorship, even if it calls itself Socialist, is, by its nature, far more of a threat lo the' peace of the world than a democracy, even if it is capitalist...
...William I. White, "Report on the Poles," in "The Header's Digest" for January...
...Such papers as the Times and such spokesmen for business as Paul Windels and Harold Riegelman see this all so clearly and so exclusively from their own point of view, that they get blue in the face with a sense of frustration when they discover that others cannot see the mailer in just the same way...
...herd millions around the map of Europe and change languages, flags, cultures arid boundaries, not because the people desire it, but because it is for the convenience of the All-Powerful Slate...
...In the slave-state a man is told where and how lo live and lo work, where and for whom to vole, when to cheer and when to boo, and when to scream loudly that his land is the freest and most democratic on all the globe...
...even if they wanted to...
...unscrupulous use of the words "Fascist" and "Communist" to discredit anyone with Whom the speaker may disagree, "freedom lo starve," "peace-loving nations...
...He speaks out strongly and-convincingly against condemnations en masse, whether of Jews ot of Germans...
...In general, we have more and more been accepting the principle that taxes should be levied on those with greatest ability to pay and should be idjusled so as to cause the least possible disturhjm e iu out economy...
...Respect for objective truth, for intellectual integrity, is on the decline...
...Jf $100,(XM),(XX) more is required for any one of these services, il is up to the citizens and the Board of Estimate to decide how that sum is to 1m- laised...
...If running the subways is like operating a steel business or a department store, the fare must be raised...
...the one the Soviet I nioii maintains around its own frontiers and around some of its satellite states...
...It it implicit in the writings of Arthur Koestlrr...
...It is most emphatically', book, that meets the need of our time...
...If it is needed for schools, it will not necessarily l»e raised from the ethols, and if it"is fojr the Subway system, it is not to be taken for granted in advance that it will be derived from that system...
...All loo often .screaming abuse, character assassination bv innuendo, are substituted for the reasoned argument which is the tirM sign of a liberal mind...
...It is difficult to speak calmly of these tin Limit of Yalta and Potsdam...
...m litem picture the Subway as it actually is, as one of the many services which the city operate* in ihe interest of its citizens...
...An Editorial— The Subway Is a Public Service THE heating* before the Board of Estimate on the problem of the Subway fare furnished a . dramatic precipitate of current social thinking...
...Goll.un / gave me a copy of the book after a conversation in his informal publishing office off Covent Garden, in llie heart of Loudon, a conversation which I found vastly stimulating and which ranged over many ot the issues discussed in the book...
...Gollancz goes out very gallantly to demolish another iron curtain which has been experienced in this country, perhaps, even mote than in Kngland...
...There is a growing conviction that any means is good to achieve a desired end...
...It is both surprising and disappointing that, so far as I know, Gotland's work is not available in an American edition...
...Unless replacements and improvements are quickly made, we run increasingly the danger of serious accidents...
...Charging a lOr fare instead of 5^ is levying ;i sort of lax...
...They (all on various groups and affect our economy in various ways...
...This is what Socialists of all schools of thought have believed in and worked for...
...A democracy is slow and uncertain in its policies, and its internal checks and balances make it quite impossible for its ruler's to plan an aggressive war...
...Communists are using all their power to create hatred against the United States in Latin America...
...Th're are quite a few iron curtains in this postwar world besides...
...I hope verv much that this eloquently yet simply written appeal to reason, to humanity, lo respect for ihe freedom of individual personality will l>« published in this country, and that it will enjoy the widest.possible -circulation on both sides of the Atlantic...
...Some of these services bring in financial returns, others do not...
...He piles up an impressive amount of evidence fioui the reports of .British correspondents, and he is simply not impressed 1>y the argument that revenge is an excuse for uny and every atrocity...
...Thoughtful sympathizers with Socialism are recognizing this truth more and more...
...He makes a good list of what he appropriately calls "idiot phrases," the...
...The money inusl be furnished—and soon—but it must be taken from sources where the collection of it will;-J* f least harm...
...he addresses the sharp question: "1* Hitler the model we want to follow '" What he says about the ill-omened Yalta and Potsdam conferences is along lines which ate lamiliar to leaders of this column...
...Thoughts Worth Remembering "And this is what w4*have come to in what will he known as th'e'age 'of the great shtvehtates...
...1 referred to one of our own making recently, the suspension almost two years alter |he end ol the fighting of almost all direct communication between Americans nmi anli-Na/i Germans...
...Hitler drove millions into bondage and now, in the making of this strange peace, we...
...It all depends on the point of view...
...This distinction raises the conflict to the level of social theory and gives meaning to the long tables of figures which were presented by the various factions...
...Under this supposition, this is the only way in which money can be raised to make the lines safe, modern and efficient...
...NUMM) and a debt service deficit of 857,0(X),0O0...
...Many other soils of 1st can lie levied hy llie City and State...
...It is axiomatic that a private business must make a profit...
...TllKRK is a pronounced intellectual tendency in western countries (K, H. Carr's recent work, The Soviet Impact on the Western World, is a subtle and persuasive example) to renounce individualism as a spent forre, in assume that because many of the accepted values of western civilization are being discarded, there must 'he something necessary and right about the process...
...Bui he says it so vigorously and so will thai I yield to the temptation to quote him: "When men recover, if they em do recover, their objectivity, Yalta and Potsdam it ill hr names of inItnny...
...Late on the evening of ihe first day of debate Matthew M. I-evy, speaking for ihe Liberal Party, placed the whole argument on the basis of a broad social view...
...This is the conspiracy of silence and of misleading understatement about the fearful cruellies which weie inflicted with complete lack of discrimination upon Germans and people^of German origin in the rastem provinces of Germany and in the Sudeten area ol < v.echoslovukia...
...Ibit unless this collectivism is associated with the liberal and humanist values of western civilization, it may become—in some countries it lias become—one of the most fearful trap- tyranny ever devised for the human race...
Vol. 30 • February 1947 • No. 7
