Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR MINORITY PRESIDENT I would like to add this footnote to Adolf A. Berle's review of Truman's Year of Decision [NL, December 12]. Mr. Berle refers in his concluding sentence to the...
...it is the acknowledgment of defeat and indifference...
...There is need to look at this coin more closely...
...They tend to collapse only under strong outside pressure...
...What tangible assurance can Mr...
...From 1900 to 1925, whole- sale and consumer prices (wholesale prices alone prior to 1913) rose by 103 per cent...
...The West is begining to smile, to condone the Communist conquest of the satellite countries, they intimate, and the time is not distant when it will swallow it entirely...
...They are making a tremendous effort in their press to catch the Geneva "spirit" and explain it in their favor...
...i.e., more people voted for Dewey, Wallace, Thurmond, et al...
...A pro-Communist candidate in 1956 would do well to get even half of Hallinan's total, or one-tenth of 1 per cent of the electorate...
...Is it too much to hope that similar broadly-conceived regional programs for social development can stem the tide in Asia and the Middle East...
...Actually, the first quarter of our century was considerably more inflationary than the second quarter...
...he has great "confidence in his listener" and in the "ultimate victory of his cause...
...I remember still their original slogans: "to inform," "to educate," "to entertain...
...If so, they are poorer in "real" terms and you don't have to drag in status...
...I wouldn't blame the phenomenon under review on the inflation before examining the evidence from past inflationary periods...
...Or again, wholesale and consumer prices combined (prior to 1913, wholesale prices) rose 143 per cent from 1894- 97 to 1923-25, but only 100 per cent from 1931- 34 to 1948-50...
...If they do not destroy themselves by their own early ambition, they usually reach a very high age...
...Los Angeles Phyllis Lee Herbert PROPAGANDA Konrad Kellen's article, "U.S...
...Truman was a minority winner...
...Furthermore, the fellow-traveling periphery has been pretty well annihilated...
...A "dynamic competitive coexistence...
...If the history of the 19th and 20th century teaches us anything, it is this...
...There is some danger in exaggerating current inflationary forces compared with those of earlier periods...
...foreign policy than the novel approach to propaganda it pretends to be...
...But this leaves too many questions unanswered...
...The "as-if-liberation" policy, although not quite realistic and honest, had been so far our most potent weapon against Communism, judging from the high priority that RFE broad- casts had on the agenda in Geneva and at the Kremlin-Adenauer conference in Moscow...
...Wouldn't RFE do better to hold the line steady instead of following the zigzag of diplomacy, which is still far from having made up its mind definitely...
...That something should be done with the "pro- vocative" broadcasts of RFE, which are nothing but "war propaganda," was taken for granted...
...Good propaganda must inherently be com- posed of reality and a bit of exaggeration, a bit of hope and self-deceit, a bit of despair and rage over its own helplessness...
...Feudal absolutist states of 19th-century or more modern vintage enjoy a particular kind of longevity...
...To bring our propaganda in line with these new policies, we have to strip it of all promises, threats, manipulations and biases, Kellen claims...
...Propaganda at the Crossroads" [NL, December 5], sound- more like a broad apology for recent shifts in U.S...
...rather than a "hodgepodge of rigidity and liberation," seems to be "the policy of the day...
...compare the 1.1 million votes received by Henry Wallace in 1948 with the 132,000 obtained by "Progressive" candidate Hallinan in 1952...
...It is certainly significant that the Red peak in Western Europe was reached in 1947, for the Marshall Plan and the Stalinist rejection of it constituted the first great blow at European Communism...
...New York City Philip C. Deasy COMMUNIST DECADE Congratulations on Simon Wolin's excellent history of the Communist failure to win the battle for the minds of men ["Communism's Postwar Decade," NL, December 19...
...4. My last objection to Kellen's article is fundamentally historical: Outside reality does not seem to make much of an imprint on absolutistic or totalitarian structures...
...New York City John Zak STATUS In his review of The New American Right [NL, December 19], John P. Roche, outlining how "prosperity seems to encourage status conflicts," says, "The inflation which customarily runs with good times drives the fixed-income rentiers to the wall (or at least from two Cadillacs to one), and to arms to defend their caste privileges...
...Does the income of this group typically rise, if not fixed, at a slower rate than the price level of what they purchase...
...Kellen offer as a substitute to those who need it to continue their resistance...
...Then he recommends a much milder diet of useful, informative, stimulating, unloaded propaganda, which may bring little in return now but is certain to pay off in the long run...
...Communist party has fallen from almost 100,000 to less than 25,000, according to official estimates...
...2. Kellen does not seem concerned about how his proposed change of tone and line will be understood behind the Iron Curtain...
...Berle refers in his concluding sentence to the "substantial majority of Americans [who] thereafter elected him President...
...3. We should be more concerned than Kellen seems to be with the way the Communists are exploiting the theme of realism and coexistence during the respite we are granting them...
...From 1948 to 1955, wholesale prices have risen less than 1 per cent per annum, whereas from 1897 to 1910 they rose nearly 4 per cent per annum...
...His figures, showing a steady drop in Communist party strength almost everywhere since 1947, reflect both the Stalinist blunders and the more en- lightened democratic social policies that characterize this period...
...In 1948 Mr...
...However, the bridge that he proposes to maintain between the present and the ultimate victory, between his listener and the free world, must be made of much stronger stuff if it is to serve any purpose...
...the rest is Western illusion about the inner strength of ideas, the necessity of slow, continuous development, and the inevitability of the ultimate triumph of freedom and democracy...
...Otherwise, it is not propaganda...
...Membership in the U.S...
...than for Harry...
...Our Government was never committed to liberation, Kellen says, and he hails the summit conference for "clearing the atmosphere of lingering fantasies...
...Does the "new American Right" consist predominantly or typically of fixed-income rentiers...
...Won't this sudden relaxation and realism be interpreted as a letdown, a sign of diminishing interest or a tacit acquiescence in the status quo...
...DEAR EDITOR MINORITY PRESIDENT I would like to add this footnote to Adolf A. Berle's review of Truman's Year of Decision [NL, December 12...
...SIDNEY Koretz...
...By the way, the United States certainly should have been part of Wolin's picture...
...Kellen, too, seems to rely too much on "the natural advantages of democracy...
...Washington, D.C...
...1. I thought that Radio Free Europe has been doing exactly this since its inception...
...from 1925 to 1950, these price indexes rose by only 40 per cent...
Vol. 39 • January 1956 • No. 2
