The Home Front:
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn On the Death of A Great American Last week I gathered with a great company of fellow citizens to say farewell to Sol Levitas, who has been for a good many...
...But he knew the Russians and loved them with a deep love...
...And all the fervor of his revolutionary nature went into his support of American democracy through the pages of The New Leader...
...And here he settled down...
...Levitas never allowed financial difficulties to trouble his writers and editors...
...A number of distinguished men who had been close to him and had supported his work spoke to us and tried to express our sense of loss...
...This man was too varied, too gifted, too personal, too affectionate, too talented to be wrapped up in any set of words...
...Even the most conservative scholars and politicians had respect for him and were willing to give support to his project...
...They all spoke eloquently and explained as well as anyone could the peculiar qualities which made this man so special and so important...
...Nobody but dictators really like dictatorships, and as fast as people learn about democracy they will tend to adopt its ways...
...Every lively, honest and decent writer who had something interesting and important to say has had his chance...
...For Americans this man's life contains an important lesson...
...We knew that the necessary money would come from somewhere and that our regular checks would be forthcoming...
...But Mr...
...These Americans were his people...
...He saw a good deal of the rough side of life in his 66 years, but he always had time to be kind...
...THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn On the Death of A Great American Last week I gathered with a great company of fellow citizens to say farewell to Sol Levitas, who has been for a good many years one of the important persons in this country...
...We who have been born here could not possibly develop as deep and as conscious a feeling for our native land, for we have always had the advantages of America's political and social arrangements...
...But only the least important facts about Sol Levitas can be satisfactorily put into words...
...With him you had the feeling that just because there is so much rudeness and cruelty in this troubled age, he felt that he had to add what he could of sweetness and light...
...But as a non-writing editor, a man who corrals writers of every sort and party, he was supreme...
...Levitas always modestly refused to publish any articles under his own name...
...He also knew that, though nations all have their distinguishing differences, underneath they are alike...
...Levitas came here as a young man after having seen the horrors of violent revolution and the processes of a brutal Communist regime...
...In the first place, he changed it from a Socialist to a democratic, genuinely liberal paper...
...And now I sit here struggling to say what my friends had tried to express standing over the coffin...
...Second, and the most amazing part of this journalistic miracle, was the man's gift for garnering the funds which were necessary to keep our paper solvent from week to week and year to year...
...This was home...
...His feeling for this country was deeper than that of anyone else I have known...
...But when everything else is forgotten, I shall remember Sol Levitas as a dear friend and a charming gentleman...
...I cannot pretend to explain how this miracle was achieved...
...And now he is gone...
...Our ways of doing things, of settling our problems, of making our improvements were reasonable, rational, practical...
...Sol Levitas should have been given some sort of prize as a top-ranking adopted American...
...He hated Bolshevik theory and Bolshevik policies with a deep hate...
...His excuse was that his command of the English tongue was inadequate—though anyone who ever heard him make one of his inspired annual reports would instantly acknowledge that his command of the English language was magnificent...
...Every good impulse in social and political life has had the support of this paper...
...To this man most of our talk about the cold war sounded shallow and silly...
...Since 1930 he had wrought an editorial and financial miracle in the office of The New Leader...
...Down to the very end he never lost his fervor for social improvement, and he combined this with a horror for every kind of dictatorship...
...When he came to America, at a time when the dictatorship factions were at the height of their influence among the Socialists, he naturally joined the Socialist movement and threw all of his influence against the Bolsheviks and in favor of democratic socialism...
...This man, who came here from Russia as a democratic refugee and an authority on revolutionary theory, became a great success in all of the practical affairs connected with the publication of an American liberal weekly...
...That is why this man toiled night and day to keep The New Leader going: It served to promote democratic politics and social decency so essential at the present time...
...we always worked in an atmosphere of carefree security...
...And yet, when it was all finished, I had the feeling that any attempt to express our feeling of loss would have been foredoomed to failure...
...He began as a socialist...
...While still an adolescent he was thrown into a Tsarist jail for his revolutionary activities...
Vol. 44 • January 1961 • No. 3
