SORRY, WRONG NUMBER
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
Sorry, Wrong Number By William Henry Chamberlin ACOMIC INCIDENT with a moral occurred some fifteen years ago, when Mussolini was preparing his onslaught against Ethiopia. A delegation of...
...military, militarization of the youth, close supervision of the loyalty of the citizens, in par-" ticular of the civil servants, by a police force growing more conspicuous every day...
...IT WOULD BE INTERESTING if Einstein...
...A GOOD EXAMPLE of a description that was conspicuously directed to the wrong address was Albert Einstein's recent speech on "peace in the atomic era," in which he said: "Within the country, concentration of tre-, mendous financial power in the hands of the...
...The fiist problem," Einstein suggests, "is to do away with mutual fear and distrust...
...And while we're in thle posture, tremblln...
...Farm Support THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST SUPPORT of farm prices is directed at the city wageworker...
...The farmer, in the meantime, has had no such improvement in his position...
...But if their income goes down, if they are caught in a downward spiral of poverty and discouragement, their farms will degenerate with them...
...This is to be accomplished by setting up a "supranational judicial and executive body...
...Now the very men who have shouted most raucously against the old method of price suppprt unite rabidly against this new propose...
...But, enlightenment being what it is today, the prospect its none too bright...
...Bargaining on a national scale, long-term agreements and provision for disability and old-age pensions have all tended to give the union worker some sense of having a place in the world, a future to look forward to...
...And full of paralysing fear...
...Richard Armour...
...In general, the attitude of a considerable portion of Western intellectuals toward communism has been discouraging...
...Some of them are hopeless addicts, cheating the Communist party of its dues and running rat-races with each other to see who can join the.largest number of pro-Soviet and anti-American front organizations...
...Thomas Mann, and others who like to assume a pose of Olympian neutrality in the struggle between the free world of Western civilization and the slave world of Stalinite communlsrfa would explain how they expect the Soviev Union, in the light of its consistent rule-or-rutfi...
...ON THE RUN Truman Says Maybe So When He Is Asked Whether He Plans to Run Again in 1952.— Newspaper headline...
...The loss would be a national tragedy...
...torefront of the struggle against a movement that destroys these values wherever it com quers...
...During these post-war years, the trade unions have had their eyes fixed on security...
...5hey justify or condoneintne^WWi Union every act of cruelty, tyranny and oppression that/excites strong and righteous indignation when committed anywhere else...
...As a picture of the Soviet Union this would be accurate...
...It should have been obvious that the Buchmanites were calling the wrong number...
...If the country man's income is kept up, the city man's bills cannot come down...
...There is another side to this business which city-dwellers should be able to grasp without too much strain on their gray matter...
...These men do not know that the Brannan Plan will not work...
...As Secretary Brannan showed in the article wheih we published last week, tumbling farm income has in the past always been the prelude to economic collapse...
...But Einstein used these words about the United States...
...If they have the intelligence, the interest, the means, they can gradually improve it...
...the common heritage of all the great religious faiths...
...No need for the voter to wonder...
...They paraded around the streets and besieged the League of Nations with pleas for peace...
...So far no convintion answers have turned up...
...No need for the voter to guess...
...A delegation of Buchmanites, embracing that curious combination of platitudes and banalities called "Moral Rearmament," descended on Geneva...
...But many intellectuals, even those who re* rjudiate the suggestion of outright communist sympathy, set up a double Aftndard of judgment^ contemptible morally IflWslkR^i^Lintej^ lectuatiy...
...Apart from the small but active fringe of joiners of Stalinoid organizations and signers of made-in-Moscow resolutions, there is far too much weakness, unwillingness to take a strong stand, fear of semantic terms of abuse like "redbaiter" and "hysteria...
...The Brannan Plan is a device for giving the tiller of the soil some degree of security without the waste and lou suffered under a Government purchase scheme...
...attitude, to take any loyal part in any "supranational judicial and executive body...
...For the politician's "Maybe" Can be freely translated as "Yea...
...The land is our most precious heritage...
...The lads who occupy the Kremlin May kick us swiftly la the rear...
...This is merely an arrogant extension of the Soviet practice of thwarting every UN decision of which it disapproves by the use of its veto...
...SIT POINT Gubitchev Sails for Russia With Wife and Video Set.—Newspaper headline Though many doubtless think we've erred And boon too soft and lenient...
...At the very moment Einstein was delivering this address, the Soviet Union was bringing to a full stop those "supranational" agencies which do exist, in the United Nations...
...Perhaps it can be done...
...Others are well-meaning but sadly misguided idealists who have succumbed to the dangerous illusion that there is no essential difference between an imperfect civilization and a perfect barbarism, between infringements on liberty that are occasional and denials of liberty that are complete and universal...
...A good many people in the United States today are ringing wrong numbers, addressing to Washington appeals and reproaches which should go to Moscow...
...But perhaps a vision of tough-looking members of the fascist militia administering compulsory doses of castor-oil deterred them from a demonstration which would at least have made some sense, morally and politically, however small the prospect of success...
...So columnists, editors and Republican politicians figure that they can win the members of trade unions by attacking the farmers and the Department of Agriculture...
...No one can know that until it has" been tried...
...AID AND SUCKERS Truman Says Republicans Aid Kremlin.— 'Newspaper headline...
...Republicans cause as to bond to Look nightly underneath ear beds...
...Except for laws providing for price supports, he is still subject to all the vagaries of weather and markets...
...And drastic deflation and depression are the last thing which wage-workers want...
...Or death, if more convenient...
...The League certainly desired nothing so much as the elimination of the war clouds that were hanging over East Africa...
...Professed humanitarians signing "Hooray for murder" resolutions in prsise of Soviet judicial massacre...
...He is still expected to invest his labor and his money in next year's crops without any idea as to what his reward will be...
...Indoctrination of the public by radio, press and school...
...The farmers, who raise food so that It may be eaten, are more repelled - by this sort of thing than other citizens...
...One hesitates to put it into words, but it may be—it Just may Jje— that there are persons in the United States who contemplate the thought of a depression without too much distaste...
...Charlatans in clerical robes glorifying a regime that pgr only denies and persecutes religion, but repudV a tea the ethical laws that are...
...What a repulsive spectacle it is...
...Pleas for peace addressed to the League were like beating on an open door...
...The whole nation has been horrified by the loss involved in buying and storing great quantities of potatoes, eggs, cheese, butter and other perishable products...
...Writers, artists, scientists singing the praises of a system that has ended freedom of thought and expression...
...Intimidation of people of independent political thinking...
...There is a long overdue deb> of defense of the values of the free society oX which too many American and other Wested intellectuals are heavily in default...
...Upon its maintenance and improvement depends our future...
...This was1 avowedly done in an attempt to coerce the UN into bowing to the Soviet demand that the Nationalist Government of China be expelled from that organization...
...And his remedy for the situation is as unrealistic as his gloomy picture of the State qL freedom in the United States, unaccompanied by any recognition of the vitally important point that, for every violation of civil liberties in this and other free countries, a thousand far worse ones happen in the Soviet Union and its satellites...
...It is obvious that they are against the idea of farm security in itself— any sort of security...
...The "anti-anti-Communist" attitude, to borrow a phrase from Arthur Koestler, has foufcti too many followers...
...This irresplaceahle possession is in the hands of the farmers...
...Although of course they don't Intend lb Olve aid and comfort to the Reds...
...Though aome imprisonment preferred...
...One would expect intellectuals, as the guardians of the cultural and, "spiritual values of a free society, to be in the...
...Had the Buchmanites possessed the courage of the early Christian martyrs they would have gone to Rome and bearded Mussolini in his den...
...W* may have made th* better bet By ordering eviction— If thus ho leads the Soviet To video addiction...
...This is also a question which enthusiasts for world government should ponder...
Vol. 33 • April 1950 • No. 16
