The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn An Excessively Brave New World ON OCTOBER 27, I commended in my column Ed Hunter's Black Book on Red China. Hunter, who will be remembered as author of...
...In a friendly note which accompanied the book, the author says: "Ed Hunter picked up his news outside China...
...After Liberation, every feature of life almost instantaneously became wonderful...
...The Chinese are a friendly people and nothing could please me more than to discover that Nearing's picture of their present state is correct...
...In advance, I think we are justified in placing greater faith in Hunter...
...Women were essentially slaves, now they are splendid, energetic citizens...
...In the case of some grades, the growth is said to have been nearly 200 per cent...
...Within the next few years Americans will be called upon to take important action with regard to Red China...
...We now feel that the Chinese young people are at least the equal of the Russians in robust, sturdy, well-developed bodies and balanced minds...
...He went to the Orient as a newspaper correspondent and as an American liberal...
...Nearing in the quiet of their seaboard retreat—rather than by the rulers of China—is a remarkable achievement...
...This attractive volume, written together with his wife and published by the Nearings's own Social Science Institute, in Harborside, Maine, is a result of their recent trip around the world...
...Graft" and "squeeze" have been abolished...
...Their chief attention is focussed on Communist lands—especially Russia and China...
...Ed, of course, is not allowed to enter China, but has spent much time gathering evidence just over the border...
...All of the young people and many of the older ones are in school...
...One lyric passage goes like this: "Until we visited China we felt that the children we had met in Soviet Russia, taken as a whole, were the healthiest and best balanced, pleasantest children we had seen anywhere...
...They are a perfect example of what is going on in the world today...
...Outside of these two countries we have never seen young people, from babies up, who radiate such hope, confidence, purpose, self-possession and cheer...
...Nearing, on the contrary, is a tough old debater in favor of Marxism...
...But this is not all...
...It is important that we should know the facts...
...Illiteracy was almost universal, but now it has practically disappeared...
...Before Liberation, everything was terrible...
...The Communists obtained complete control in 1949 and by the time the Nearings gave them the once-over everything was practically perfect...
...Theoretically, he knows that social and economic changes take place slowly, but when he gets down to work his enthusiasm quickly over-rides this lesson of history...
...Hunter, who will be remembered as author of Brain-Washing in Red China, gives a really black picture of what is going on in the Chinese world...
...From the start, then, one is justified in being suspicious of him...
...Liberation," he writes, "has the same meaning for the Chinese people that emancipation had for the Negroes of the American South...
...We gathered this Information inside China...
...As an educator, Nearing's attention is centered on schools...
...Toward the end he sums it all up in these words: "Red China's crimes against humanity, its own people as well as foreigners, are perpetrated on such a broad canvas and with such sweeping strokes that a normal person fails to grasp their enormity but is inclined to think of them as figures of speech, unrelated to reality...
...The Nearing book, judged by all rules of common sense, is an attempt to lead us astray...
...Can anyone think of any reason why American correspondents should not be allowed to travel over there and send back their reports...
...In fact, Nearing starts out by implying that capitalism is bad and Communism is good, that it is terrible for capitalism to expand and perfectly fine for Socialism or Communism to extend its boundaries...
...He had no prejudice against Socialism or Communism...
...I now have both books before me...
...We have had similar situations in the case of men of different religions or of representatives of nations at war...
...There has been also an astounding increase in the beauty and physical strength of the pupils...
...A trained economist, a former college professor, travels in a foreign land and sees exactly what he likes...
...Chinese and Russian youth are climbing fast and far...
...The testimony of escapees and abundance of Chinese documents give his book all the marks of a true and well-buttressed account...
...The miracle wrought by Dr...
...A few weeks ago, my old friend, Scott Nearing, sent me a copy of his book The Brave New World...
...What ho places before us is, truly, "a brave new world...
...and Mrs...
...Two alert and intelligent men have looked at the same set of facts and in all honesty have given completely opposite reports...
...People live together lovingly as "one big family...
...His figures give the impression that under the first Five-Year Plan (1953-1957) the number of students increased at a galloping rate...
...Perhaps the two authors are of different religions, at least, they are on different sides in the cold war...
Vol. 42 • January 1959 • No. 4
