Where the News Ends

CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY

WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin A Farewell to Alfred Kohlberg IN THE DEATH OF Alfred Kohlberg the American anti-Communist movement has lost a stouthearted fighter and many...

...California-born Alfred Kohlberg was a little man with an egg-shaped head and a disarmingly mild manner...
...I like to think of Alfred Kohlberg, the crusader with a sense of humor, taking out his battered typewriter and starting to write, somewhere in outer space: "Remember, Satan belongs to 23 Communist fronts...
...Former Kolyma prisoners, such as Vladimir Petrov and Eleanor Lipper, gave detailed accounts of inhuman exploitation, chronic malnutrition, brutal beatings, shootings without trial, all in a desolate climate...
...Like a true old soldier, Kohlberg never stopped fighting...
...A crowd of hundreds gathered at a banquet to do him honor, and there was a stream of messages from many who have been in the forefront of the struggle against Communism in the Orient: Generalissimo and Mme...
...Although Judge David N. Edelstein recently ruled that the IPR should have its tax-exempt status as a "non-profit educational and research group" restored, the verdict of informed public opinion on that organization's record in the '30s and '40s is very different...
...The editor of Pacific Affairs, Owen Lattimore, who at various times also held such responsible positions as adviser to Chiang Kai-shek (surely the most inappropriate of many inappropriate wartime appointments), director of Pacific operations for the Office of War Information and consultant to the State Department, gave repeated evidence of pro-Soviet bias...
...An active and generous supporter of war relief for China in its struggle against Japan...
...Neither Petrov nor Lipper report such vegetables on the prisoners' menu...
...I am surprised that some naive head of institution did not take him up, although he gave fair warning that he could offer no big endowment—only, perhaps, "a lobby...
...A business connection with China led Kohlberg to a keen interest in its civilization and culture, and to sympathize with the original American-inspired ideals of Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Nationalist, or Kuomintang, party...
...No one who takes the time to look up and read the summary of this investigation can escape two conclusions...
...Once he demolished some silly propaganda about Red China by pointing to the discrepancy between the number of trees allegedly planted and the area involved...
...Perhaps the most striking was Lattimore's account, in the National Geographic magazine of December 1944, of a visit to the Kolyma gold mines, one of the most horrible centers of slave labor in Siberia...
...But nothing in Lattimore's gushing description of his visit would give the impression that anyone was there against his will...
...Kohlberg became convinced that the Institute of Pacific Relations, of which he had been a sponsor, had been infiltrated by Communist sympathizers to such a degree that it was stabbing Nationalist China in the back...
...On his trusty mimeograph machine (the principal weapon of the mythical "China Lobby"), he must have prepared more letters in many copies than almost any known human being, letters packed with good sense and controversial values...
...Thanks very largely to Alfred Kohlberg's one-man fight against bland, apathetic sponsors and a combination of Communist sympathizers, fellow travelers and innocents in the Institute, the Senate Internal Security Committee undertook an investigation that was a model of thoroughness and accuracy...
...Chiang Kai-shek, Syngman Rhee, General Albert Wedemeyer, General Douglas MacArthur and many others...
...WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin A Farewell to Alfred Kohlberg IN THE DEATH OF Alfred Kohlberg the American anti-Communist movement has lost a stouthearted fighter and many individual Americans have lost a friend of notable warmth, charm and humor...
...But woe to the unwary pro-Communist or fellow traveler who attracted his notice...
...First, there was gross, blatant and persistent pro-Communist bias in the conduct of its leading organ, Pacific Affairs...
...For example, the Soviet Union, in a period which Khrushchev himself has called a savage paranoid tyranny, is repeatedly equated with "democracy," and the notorious Great Purges are described as "the discovery of the conspiracies...
...He labelled Dalstroi, the slave-labor organization, "a combination Hudson's Bay Company and TVA," and waxed lyrical over greenhouses "growing tomatoes, cucumbers and even melons, to make sure the hardy miners got enough vitamins...
...I last saw Kohlberg when, on his 73rd birthday, he received appropriate tribute for long and dedicated service to his chosen cause...
...For there was a tenacious bulldog quality about Kohlberg's bite and there were few, if any, cases when those with whom he became involved in controversy did not want to call a halt before he did...
...Kohlberg's classic communication, in my opinion, mailed to a number of university presidents, was a speech compounded of the most extravagant statements by well-known individuals about "terror" against free thinkers in America, which he offered to deliver gratis as a commencement address...

Vol. 43 • April 1960 • No. 17


 
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