FOLLY'S END
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
Where the News Ends Folly's End By William Henry Chamberlin ONE OF THE MOST STATESMANLIKE documents the American government has recently issued is the note announcing the end of Japanese...
...For years the nations represented in the Far Eastern Commission, a cumbersome body with representatives of all countries which took part, however nominally, in the war against Japan, have been squabbling over the bare bones of a shattered Japanese economy...
...Whoever prepared this declaration obviously possessed economic realism and political commonsense— qualities sadly lacking in the first years after the end of hostilities, when the world's worst war seemed to have produced the world's worst peace...
...And now here is the Weekly People, the incredible organ of the incredibly sectarian Socialist Labor Party, calling me "an ignorant and pretentious charlatan, a journalistic humbug, a proven falsifier of Marx," and a "specimen that is addled and miseducated by the reformist Socialist Party...
...He justly contends that a liberating revolution in Russia, assured in advance of our all-out support, furnishes the only real alternative to World War III...
...The 1948 election, of course, was one of those times...
...The words have a familiar ring: "No...
...An Editorial— Democracy Is Thrilling...
...He correctly interpreted the very costly Soviet efforts to jam the Voice of America and the testimony of a million Russian DP's in the West as prima facie evidence that the Bolshevik pyramid of fear rests on very shaky sands...
...foreign trade and shipping without Allied hindrance or control...
...This provided for dismantling and other sweeping prohibitions and restrictions on Japanese industry and shipping...
...The experience of two wars proves that reparations are impossible to collect on any large scale without injuring the world economy almost as much as that of the vanquished...
...Said he: "I consider the source...
...Fortunately, prolonged squabbling over the spoils among the prospective recipients enabled saner and wiser counselors to assert themselves in Washington...
...Japan should > be permitted to develop its peaceful industries without limitation...
...Charity begins at home, but not economy...
...Considering the Weekly People, the best unconscious funny paper I have seen since the New Masses gave up the ghost, it makes me feel fine...
...There seems little chance that Senator Flanders— a known internationalist — will finally vote against the Atlantic alliance...
...Taking the spotlighted occasion of the Atlantic Pact debate, Senator Flanders urged a full-scale psychological offensive against the Stalin regime...
...Their educational career will probably be prolonged because of a prolonged term they failed to take Into account...
...It Is a relief to learn that some labor difficulties can be eased...
...everytirne Americans show they can recognize the score—even when a lot of snow has been shovelled on the scoreboard...
...Well, two recent events seem to show that Americans are not only pretty calm, but they know their communism a lot better than most of their self-appointed enlighteners think...
...The process should be wound up promptly, uncompromisingly and in complete disregard of anticipated howls of anguish from groups here and abroad who do not realize that the war is over and an entirely new situation has arisen...
...Morris B. Chapman...
...How much less costly the postwar period would have been for the United States, how much farther Europe and East Asia would have advanced toward economic recovery and political stabilization if these simple truths had been recognized in 1945...
...The statement announcing the end of reparations is a masterpiece of cool, unanswerable logic...
...Pen Points The automitive industry's assurance that a tire good for 75,000 miles can be produced is good news for the consumer...
...It recalls the story of, thetlegendary Irishman who was kicked by a jackass...
...THE NOTE POINTS OUT that Japan's economy can be made to bear additional burdens "only by prolonging or increasing the staggering costs borne by the American taxpayer...
...For a change, he may be able to get a real run for his money...
...The young bandits who staged holdups to "work their way through college" miscalculated somewhat...
...The dramatic news...
...So was the Oregon verdict on the Dewey-Stassen debate last spring, which clearly indicated that even our conservatives were not getting hysterical about communism...
...After a heated discussion In Congress for revision of the Taft-Hartley Act, the discovery of a drug that may check morning sickness of pregnant women comes as a welcome change...
...Does this throw me into a fit of rage or depression...
...We have paid out at least two and a half billion dollars for Germany, a smaller but substantial sum for Japan...
...As the note says: "The problem facing us is not one Of limitation of Japan's peaceful industries, but of reviving those industries to provide for the people's barest wants...
...The resources at the disposal of the United States "to meet demands from ell parts of the world" are limited...
...Or perhaps he never believed that genocide should be considered an international crime...
...When the star columnist of the Daily Worker brandished his little tomahawk and let out a few shrill warwhoops of rage in my direction, I felt no impulse to commit suicide or even to brood and mope...
...Meanwhile he deserves high commendation for alerting the Amrican people to the only way to end the armed truce and permanently avert war with Russia...
...by Senator Ralph Flanders of Vermont, heretofore known as a specialist on the domestic economy...
...But I have always found abusive and vituperative "critics" good clean fun and I suspect most individuals in normal health and with a sense of humor feel the same way...
...I regarded and always shall regard attacks from such sources as the highest kind of honor...
...A similar understanding of the force that sttands behind it all was displayed-in an address...
...Since World War II the United States, in a sense, has been paying reparations to Germany and Japan to forestall the disastrous political and economic consequences of destructionist measures designed for the German and Japanese economies, with our acquiescence...
...Paying out large sums of dollars (a drain on every American's standard of living) to forestall the bad consequences of destructionist measures, is indescribably silly...
...Where the News Ends Folly's End By William Henry Chamberlin ONE OF THE MOST STATESMANLIKE documents the American government has recently issued is the note announcing the end of Japanese reparations...
...Much of this expenditure would have been unnecessary had the Germans and Japanese, subject to restraints on rearmament, been permitted to develop non-military industries...
...To the Senate...
...Edwin Pauley, the commodity speculator who was one of the most conspicuous misfits appointed to high office by President Truman, had prepared a kind of Morgenthau Plan for Japan...
...Pauley...
...After World War I the whole jerrybuilt arrangement lor payment of vast reparations by Germany to the Western powers, and Of the large war debts of these powers to the United States, collapsed before the chilly winds of economic crisis...
...But it may be that better late than never holds good in this case...
...It should be carefully read and considered a guide for American policy in Germany as well as in Japan...
...Abusive Critics Are Good Fun THE TRAGEDY OF JAMES FORRESTAL has evoked much criticism of the abuse to which public men are subjected...
...Not a bit of it...
...After applauding two speeches calling for economy, the House unanimously voted increased expenses for its members...
...What was to happen to some eighty million Japanese cooped up in beautiful but rather unporductive islands with an area less than that of California, did not occur to Mr...
...From the Court . . . where Alger Hiss was tried for perjury found eight of the twelve average citizens not only capable of extracting a hard kernel of evidence from the chaff of a rather gaudy theatrical performance, but also able to comprehend some of the titanic complexities in the mind of Whittaker Chambers—thus displaying a most intimate understanding of communist psychology...
...Some of the more ardent bush-beaters brushed this aside by saying Oregonians didn't understand communism, otherwise they'd be hysterical too...
...To- »-man suffering from fatigue and overstrain, abuse may be a dangerous irritant...
...The disclosure that avowed Communiats are holding scholarships in atomic research has aroused a storm of protest...
...Russian delay in anouncing the election results in their zone would indicate that the voters sang an anti-Soviet tune...
...A thousand times No...
...The critics contend that in matters of national defense Communists should get the red light, not the green...
Vol. 32 • July 1949 • No. 29
