Dear Editor

...Texarkana, Tex...

...When I subscribed to THE NEW LEADER last year, it was because someone told me you people were interested in fighting Communism, and not by namby-pamby methods...

...When I was in Malaya, Indian and Chinese labor leaders told me that the civil war came after the British authorities took legal measures to break the back of Chinese Communist control of the labor movement...

...The Europeans realize this only too well...

...He says in effect that these require the climate of a liberal social system for their fullest development and utilization...

...Is this "the ethics of controversy...

...HUGH MEDFORD Doubts Automation Will Make Basic Change in Soviet System To the extent the prospects continue to look dim that the Soviet system will be overthrown by internal revolution or defeated in a cold war, it becomes great temptation to look for signs that the regime will of itself evolve toward democracy and liberalism...

...If anything has differed from State Department policy, it has been the AFL program on foreign affairs outlined by Meany before the Legion and at the AFL convention in Los Angeles...

...DEAR EDITOR Disillusioned Republican Finds Some Comfort in Back Number In looking over your September 21, 1953 issue, one cannot help but feel that Washington has certainly had a "big sleep," and that it is just as true a headline today as it was then...

...He bases his optimism on certain technological developments—automation, operations research and the extensive use of electronic computers—in which the U.S...

...Washington, D. C. E. F. HELMS Asks Clarification of Origins Of Civil War in Malaya I have just read the first of Vernon Bartlett's articles on "The Battle for Malaya" [THE NEW LEADER, August 16...

...New York City ARNOLN BEICHMAN 'New Leaders' of '20s and '30s Meet With Reader's Approval A few months ago, I went into the basement labyrinths of the huge University of Minnesota library and located copies of THE NEW LEADER going back into the '20s and '30s...

...And if any one group can be said to have pressed our Government to do something about Soviet forced labor, it has been the American trade-union movement...

...Boston JAMES PARNELL In your symposium on "Alternatives to the H-Bomb," Lewis A. Coser writes [THE NEW LEADER, September 20]: "If the American labor movement had the courage, in the interest of its own survival, to break with its present endorsement of State Department foreign policy and instead develop its own independent plan of action, this could lead in a comparatively short period of time to new types of horizontal social alignments in the world, to alignments which would cut through the present frozen vertical national blocs...

...Los Angeles CHARLES MALLARD 'Alternatives to the H-Bomb' Sets Off Chain Reactions I just wish to tell you how much I enjoy the new series, "Alternatives to the H-Bomb," especially Hans Thirring's fine article [THE NEW LEADER, August 30...

...And the lies and innuendos that have been perpetrated for cheap politics in the name of "security" or what-have-you should make any Christian blanch...

...Endorsing State Department policy is not regarded by American labor as any kind of an answer...

...MacArthur in July 1948 moved to smash the Communist hold on Japanese labor, but I believe it was the British who moved first...

...The resemblance to the rhetoric of that other "anti-Communist" who talks about "Senator Half-bright" and "the All-slop brothers" is saddening to an old New Leader reader...

...Accused day in and day out for nine years of willingness to unleash atomic war, the Pentagon has begun to believe it...

...If any one thing can be slated with certainty about the American labor movement today, it is that it docs not endorse State Department foreign policy...

...itself is leading the way...

...The various books and periodicals I have read dealing with Malaya simply say that the Chinese Communists took to the hills "during June of 1948...

...Geoffrey Ashe's article on Soviet industry in THE NEW LEADER of August 9 is an example of this sort of wishful thinking...

...If this is true, it should be known, for it would indicate that the British were the first to move against Communist aggression in Asia after the war...

...As you point out, such situations must be averted by clear diplomacy from the outset, and the fiasco in Indo-China showed how little chance there is of the present crew ever doing just that...

...Take a simple issue like recognition of Franco Spain, which the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations have supported as far as UN and other international bodies are concerned...

...As a lifelong Republican, I did not dream it was possible that this political party could assault America in the way it has...

...Consciously or unconsciously, its "massive retaliation" and other schemes are coming more and more to resemble Soviet caricatures...

...Evil must be destroyed—that is what all you intellectuals fail to realize...

...Within the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the AFL, the CIO and the Mine Workers have established "horizontal social alignments in the world" with other trade-union movements...

...What I think you are saying—and I heartily agree—is that the present Washington leadership, civilian and military, is fully capable of plunging us into World War III in a show of "this is the last straw" so-called "moral" indignation...

...But it seems more likely that these innovations, at least initially, can worsen the situation of the Soviet working class because they will tend to widen the gap between the privileged groups in production (managers, engineers, technicians and Stakhanovites) on the one hand and the rank-and-file workers on the other...

...John L. Lewis has in the pages of the United Mine Workers Journal criticized Administration foreign and military policy...

...That experience raised my estimation of the NL more than ever, since you come through that period with a cleaner, clearer record of opposing totalitarianism and abstract ideational systems than any other publication whose past I looked into...

...Let us not forget that the Soviet system has continually demonstrated an amazing capacity to pervert almost any development which has possibilities for social betterment...

...American labor has uncompromisingly opposed this policy...

...Minneapolis JAMES C. WHITE...

...I think what has happened is that Washington has become hypnotized by Soviet propaganda...

...For a long time to come, the Communist bosses will find need for "hewers of wood and drawers of water" to fill the slave camps and colonize the remote areas...

...He makes passing reference to the aggressive plan of the Communists, hut, as in all other British-authorized articles on Malaya, one remains in mystery as to how the present civil war in the colony developed...

...Paris A. E. LYNCH Questions Chamberlin's Taste In Mendes-France Discussion Although I have been following William Henry Chamberlin's writings since his isolationist days and then some, I was shocked by his reference [THE NEW LEADER, September 20] to the Premier of France as "Mendes-Moscow...

...Even if one agrees with Chamberlin's views (and these there is no point discussing, since his Germanophilia is obvious to all), his taste is, to say the least, questionable...

...If any one group can be said to have compelled our Government to recognize the vast significance of the East German uprising last June, it was American labor—through a cable to President Eisenhower signed by Meany and Reuther while they were attending the ICFTU congress in Stockholm...

...As a convert from the Republicans, I can only say that your prediction that we were undergoing a big sleep (a sleep of conscience, dismissing many good civil servants who had given selflessly of their time for years) has proven to be more than 100 per cent correct...

...American labor has a great many answers to the present dangerous international impasse...

...Automation, while it will improve the position of the labor aristocracy, will cause many of those who become technologically unemployed to be "reclassified" into the class of social pariahs...

...The reason I feel it is important to know how the civil war began is that the evidence I have seen suggests that the British authorities acted first in moving to crush the Communist conspiracy...

...I hope the series is long and continuous, and I hope to see it published in book form...

...Both Walter and Victor Reuther and Jacob Potofsky have over and over again been sharply critical of present foreign policy, both as to detail and as to substance...

...Walter Reuther and the CIO have repeatedly warned against the State Department's foreign policy as being purely "negative" rather than affirmative...

...Did not Marx say somewhat the same thing regarding industrialization in general...

...Cleveland MILTON GORDINER How long are you going to keep up that dreadful series, "Alternatives to the H-Bomb...

...George Meany in two recent addresses, one before the New York State Federation of Labor and another before the American Legion convention, was caustic about the State Department's alleged "massive retaliation" policy, which he said might well be replaced by a policy of "massive appeasement...

...Tokyo RICHARD DEVERALL Says Washington Now Believes Soviet Caricature of Itself Your editorial, "The Danger of War" [THE NEW LEADER, September 20], had to be read between the lines to be appreciated...