THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
THE PEOPLE'S FORUM Freedom to Lie Dear Sirs: Some of your readers may be interested in hearing of the shameful manner in which at least one newspaper has distorted coverage of the charges made by...
...And once these misbeliefs take hold the emotional play of the mind will shield them from future attack...
...Frederic E. Fertig West Los Angeles, Catt, 'If Not You, Who?' Dear Sirs: I am of high-school age, which means that I shall soon be eligible for the draft...
...He has succeeded in nauseating us completely...
...Tim Wohlforth Poughkeepsie, N. Y. Lauds Davis Article Dear Sirs: Garry Davis' "My Search for Security' is the best article I have read in masly months and one of the best The Progressive has ever published...
...Mayer is a man of considerable intelligence, who is capable of writing coherently, and has in fact a considerable sense of humor and gift for expressing himself...
...Where does the guy get it...
...Ralph J. Geffen University of Wisconsin Madison, Wis...
...I like a country where no college trained flatfeet collect memoranda about us and ask judicial protection for them, where when someone makes statements about us to officials he can be held to account...
...Local action in their own backyards could be undertaken by liberals who are willing to implement their convictions...
...Nothing Progressive Dear Sirs: I find nothing progressive in The Progressive...
...He surely has hit the nail on the head...
...In either case, we wish to part company...
...George Yamanda Los Angeles, Calif...
...It is to be hoped that Garry Davis becomes a regular contributor to The Progressive...
...Jessica Milne New York, N. Y. Rope for Mayer Dear Sirs: About this guy, Milton Mayer, who writes nutty and flavorful articles for The Progressive, he's a more effective stimulant than a shot of straight whisky...
...Bernard DeVoto gave "Due Notice to the FBI" in Harper's for October 1949...
...Naturally we are disappointed in many of the channels of information currently available, and we had hoped that your magazine might be of value...
...But a series of recent self-exposures reveals FBI in its true colors...
...If not now, when...
...Helen S. Eaton Bralntree, Mass...
...Stalinism is ruthless and dynamic because it acts on the premise that the ends justify the means...
...But quickly answered: We would kill him again...
...This has been the sad history of many a sincere bigot...
...Good Variety Dear Sirs: The variety in the April issue was especially good, and we were greatly impressed with Garry Davis' "My Search for Security" and Beverley Bowie's "The Fire man of Prague...
...Let the people of the United States demand a good look behind the Iron Curtain of the FBI...
...File Dear Sirs: I have a complete file of The Progressive for 1948 and 1*949 with the exception of No...
...H. C. Batten Detroit, Mich...
...Rubin's report on his journey through Europe in the February issue, especially since I had had occasion to travel in Germany myself and wound up with similar conclusions...
...Let's give him all the rope he wants and then some more...
...De Voto said he preferred a country "where it's nobody's damned business what anybody reads, what he thinks, who he has cocktails with...
...What happened next...
...Would not an organized drive to put such instruction into every public and private school curriculum be a meaningful and fundamental attack on the intolerant practices that blight our society...
...the answer must be that if we ever expect to have a peace, we have to start sometime...
...Perjury, lying, and giving false testimony under oath are common practices of the FBI...
...Like most other people, I want to live...
...edition—the view of citizens strangely unimpressed or uncomprehending, or frightened by this spectacle, condemns us all to serfdom...
...recent testimony in court during the Coplon trials revealed these facts...
...N. Y. Teaching Tolerance Dear Sirs: It is a constant source of anguish to those who believe in racial and religious understanding and tolerance, and in the basic equality of man, that so many of the good-hearted and sincere people among our friends and acquaintances are narrow-minded bigots concerning these topics...
...However, to us the essence of liberal thought is a clear headed, practical rationalism—of which Mayer's articles are the utter negation...
...The facts should be studied in the classrooms, the correct conclusions suggested...
...Peter F. Kranz East Aurora, N. Y. Mature Mayer Dear Sirs: It was a great experience to hear your regular contributor, Milton Mayer, in New York recently...
...I will not participate in war...
...If people don't fight, there can be no war, and if the so-called practical person asks, "Even if I don't fight, who is to say that other people will stop fighting, too...
...Phillip Jessup was "linked to Communist groups...
...Orvis C. Irwin State University of Iowa Iowa City, la...
...The same newspapers which condemn striking workmen who are guilty of the least infraction of the law remain silent at the spectacle of respectable lawbreakers, apparently above the law...
...For the record and that all your readers may know I wish to quote from Herb Caen's column in the San Francisco Examiner titled "Bagh-dad-By-The-Bay: "Dept...
...Low Style' Dear Sirs: I should like to register again my dislike of Milton Mayer which grows stronger the more of him 1 read...
...1 cannot take the responsibility of participating in murder...
...Hence, my haste to subscribe to The Progressive...
...You are doing an incalculable service by carrying such material for your subscribers...
...Tolerance Dear Sirs: Tolerance is a virtue that belongs only to those who are tagged as liberals...
...While the spectacle of G-Men committing perjury and alternately defending and denying violations of the law, as exposed in the recent trials, points out the FBI for what it is—Gestapo, U.S...
...Either you like the stuff he sends to you, or else you are so completely slack and lacking in taste that you let him get away with these messes out of sheer editorial incompetence...
...He makes me sit up and listen, he makes me laugh and sometimes almost cry...
...If we had not read his recent articles in Harper's, we might have written him off as a mere imbecile, and continued to look through the rest of the magazine...
...F. E. Sasse Newbarnet Herts England FBI's Iron Curtain Dear Sirs: Wire tapping is "a dirty business," in the words of the late Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes...
...Mayer seems to feel that he can aid in the solution of the world's problems by floating coyly and cutely in his own cloudland of twisted contradictions...
...He was so human and mature, so impressive in speaking as well as in writing...
...Give Mayer more rope, and he'll hang em heads down...
...They should be taught the same way...
...H. C. Douglas Bronx...
...But his rather low style of calling a spade a shovel, at ways distasteful to me, now almost nauseates...
...We had that kind of a country only a little while back and I'm for getting it back...
...Question & Answer Dear Sirs: After reading Milton Mayer's "What Can We Do...
...I asked myself: What if we had Lincoln for President today...
...She withdrew her scholarship offer...
...Mayer's 'Inane Drivel' Dear Sirs: My subscription will not be renewed...
...The reason is the presence in your pages of Milton Mayer's inane drivel...
...Of Assorted Prejudices: There has never been a Negro instructor or student at Stanford University—a situation that various liberal groups have been working on for some time, and apparently with success...
...John L. Lang Portland, Ore...
...The widespread beliefs that the Negro is greatly different (and the ego says "inferior" thereby) from his white counterpart, that the Jew is primarily a money-grubber Intent upon world domination by his "race," are the more regrettable in that they are fostered everywhere that truth is supposed to be acquired...
...Congratulations to Milton Mayer on his "End of the Line" in the March issue...
...R. E. Smith Shreveport, La...
...A. J. Evans Cresco, la...
...The schools, those proud bastions of democratic ideals, don't actually teach that Negroes are inferior or that Indians are a lower form of humanity, but by their failure to demonstrate exactly and definitively by facts that such beliefs are fallacious, they passively endorse their validity...
...When Miss Kenyon called McCarthy a liar, and proved it, the Journal American printed her - statement on Page 22...
...Ada L. James Richland Center, Wis...
...A P'Alto group then scoured the country to find a young man who'd qualify for the grant—and at last they found him...
...Parents, steeped in their own ignorance, impart such fallacies, and the ensuing attitudes, from childhood on...
...Haste Dear Sirs: I heard Milton Mayer the other night and realize what I have missed up to now...
...Perhaps you and your readers would like to know how someone in this position looks at the world right now...
...The New York Journal American, a Hearst sheet with a large circulation, gave red streamer play to McCarthy's wild accusation that Dr...
...He is forever prating high-mindedly about the sacred-ness of the law...
...W. H. Wiser Lucknow, India Approval from England Dear Sirs: I enjoyed greatly Mr...
...Unless these facts are brought home in the classroom the chances are that the fallacies of the gutter, the club, and the family will prevail in the mind of the child...
...Free Minds Dear Sirs: I admire greatly the spirit of The Progressive and the free minds with which your contributors are permitted to report from their stations around the world...
...Charging that the FBI's "college trained flatfeet" were helping divide the country between "the hunters and the hunted," DeVoto urged his readers to refuse "to answer the FBI's questions except in open court, under oath, and before witnesses...
...Apparently the government is laying down the dictum that no law can restrain its secret policy activities—that the latter are a law unto themselves...
...Head G-Man J. Edgar Hoover has always had good press coverage...
...Both my wife and I are immensely grated ful for the practical suggestions in Mary Sheridan's "Your Money's Worth...
...10 in 1948...
...That is why...
...If not you, who...
...Because the Negro turned out to be a Catholic...
...This puts the responsibility on you, the editors of The Progressive...
...Those who are intolerant are fascists, reactionaries, stand-patters, or worse...
...R. E. Boe Pahokee, Fla...
...Both result in totalitarian tyranny...
...Jessup was in Paris at the time, but when he returned and denied the charges, with great effect, the Journal American placed the news on Page 8. The same holds true in the case of Dorothy Kenyon, the former municipal court Judge and UN commission member...
...And it was wire tapping by police that prompted Justice Louis D. Brandeis to remark: "Lying and sneaking are always bad, no matter what the ends...
...Tolerance and recognition of the right to differ are attitudes as basic to an appreciation of American democracy as knowledge of the workings of government or of the history of our wars and their causes...
...That is why I am cancelling my subscription...
...I cannot take part in anything that threatens my existence and the existence of all human beings...
...Slightly fantabulous angle: Some time ago, a wealthy woman with liberal leanings agreed to put up a scholarship for a Negro student...
...At any rate when he is "too tired any more to dream" and goes to sleep, I sincerely hope he sleeps with his mouth open...
...Just as when the subject is the causes of the Revolutionary War...
...The point is this: If segregation, and its inevitable concomitants—prejudice and discrimination—are to be ended, the educational voids which permit widespread existence of the misconceptions upon which these evils stand justified in the popular mind, must be filled...
...My wife and I consider ourselves liberals, or, if you will, progressives...
...For the wall will be cracked this October, when a Negro will join the teaching staff in the School of Education, and another Negro will enroll in the graduate school...
...This is the kind of character assassination mat goes on in our country under the institution we like to call "freedom of the press...
...They've long since dried up the juice of life, and couldn't, perchance, distinguish between jaundice and justice...
...At times he makes me mad as hell, but a half hour later I find he has said something of sober import...
...More Rope for Mayer Dear Sirs: Pay no attention to those grouches who gripe at Milton Mayer's quips...
...The Journal American gave it tremendous spread on the front page when McCarthy tried to associate her with the Communists...
...Maybe he'll hang himself, but I have a feeling he'll find a soft spot in the rope and chew himself loose...
...Perhaps if enough people felt the way I do, you might change your policy somewhat...
...The church is seldom willing to get right down to the basic issues involved and preaches only a broad "brotherhood of man" which the individual Is perfectly free to construe as a fraternity within limits—the limits set by his own "knowledge" that, after all, minority groups just aren't on the same level...
...THE PEOPLE'S FORUM Freedom to Lie Dear Sirs: Some of your readers may be interested in hearing of the shameful manner in which at least one newspaper has distorted coverage of the charges made by Wisconsin's unspeakable Senator, Joseph McCarthy...
...Likewise, to the FBI, the methods, however unlawful or unscrupulous, are justified by the ends...
...However, from the Harper's articles it becomes clear that Mr...
...Apparently it is freedom to lie, distort, and assassinate the character of patriotic Americans...
...This bit of intelligence speaks for itself...
...I would be glad to make this available to any library, organization, or subscriber who can make effective use of the file...
...Sometimes, the trouble to find out his thesis through the adolescently "cute" verbiage it is em bedded in, I agree with it...
...Evelyn Herrala Detroit, Mich...
Vol. 14 • May 1950 • No. 5
