COLLIER'S AND THE COMMUNISTS

...I myself, as an American, knew better...

...Virtue triumphant...

...It sold magazines, all right, but, like all such hot flashes, not for long...

...On the surface, the object all sublime is the foreheadless American sucker's twenty cents...

...What about Collier's...

...So he went to the spiritual grounds to see...

...When I told them that democracy consisted in not suppressing such things, they said: "But a magazine like this is just what the Communists want...

...The idea was to counterfeit Russian money and drop it all over Russia...

...Now that I cut my own hair (and that not so often), I don't see Collier's any more...

...During the course of Collier's next world war, Western Europe was, unfortunately, destroyed...

...Burn that Boy Scout oath, men...

...Army...

...Ordinary American newspapermen abroad see it...

...American honor wins out...

...Frohlich goes in there, between Jefferson and Lincoln...

...And this time—in contrast with the third-world-war issue and the Steinbeck story, the Collier's special had official status around the world...

...IV There was, with the publication of this third of the Collier's specials, a great cry at the public appearance of so hideous a program...

...Bill Davidson says, "I wondered if there might be some justification"—for "remolding the human materials" this way—"on spiritual grounds...

...But it no longer had anything substantial to recommend it, and, like so many old soldierettes who do not know how to fade gracefully away, it was resorting to scandalous behavior to keep its old retinue or find a new one...

...Get that Holy Infant out of here, one of you shepherds, and make room for several clergymen so meek and so mild...

...And at one period, a generation or two ago, it ran some good muckraking...

...But these are days for peering beneath the surface...

...It will undo everything your government is trying to do...

...Up, the new school books, and lay off that Second Inaugural of Lincoln's...

...Except the Russians...

...It's just like the 'unconditional surrender' announcement which saved the Nazis by prolonging the war...

...The "non-firer," says the Collier's article, is inhibited by his whole childhood experience...

...And what about General Motors, the biggest manufacturer of American armament, which, through its advertising, contributes to the magazine's support...

...Grab that kid, Frohlich, his old lady's got him praying at bedtime...

...I spoke to several clergymen...

...German anti-Nazis came running to me, betraying their Germanic failure to understand democracy by asking why the U.S...

...2) Make a soldier feel that because he is part of a whole group that is killing, killing is all right...

...Here is, in an American magazine, a nicely spaced series of birthday and non-birthday gifts being handed the Communists on a slick silver salver...

...Frohlich, the Army's authority on "non-firing," was quoted as suggesting three ways to remove men's inhibitions against killing their fellowmen: (1) Promote mob psychology in which the individual loses his personal identity...

...You understand that in the dictatorship countries, including post-Nazi Germany, the populace assume that the press is controlled, directly or indirectly, by the government...

...How about putting a zipper on the curtain, parson...

...Its original contribution to periodical journalism had been the All-American Football selection, which other magazines now carried...

...Parents, teachers, and clergymen (immodest enough to use their names) cried out, not only to heaven, but to the whole earth...

...This magazine will do the same thing in Russia...

...What about the Army, which released its "remolding" technique through Collier's...

...They were all agreed...

...Great idea...

...The author of the article...

...All the more ground for suspicion...

...It will consolidate the Communist power in Russia and destroy the anti-Communist resistance in the satellite countries...

...Move over there, on Mr...

...And you," said the anti-Nazi Germans, "do not understand dictatorship...

...How high up into American business and military circles does this thing go...

...His parents discouraged violence in him when he was very young...

...It is worth ten divisions to Stalin and ten thousand agents to Beria...

...this was the U.S...

...This was not Collier's speaking...

...The finale was, of course, the triumph of the U.S.—beg pardon, the UN—forces everywhere and the conquest of Russia for free enterprise...

...II Sure enough, the Communists in Germany went to town with the Collier's article...

...Every backward Bantu who had ever encountered a Chris-tion missionary would hear, if the Communists could help it (and they could), of the official American technique for rubber morality and scientific depersonalization...

...Is the firm the innocent victim of the Communists, pouring their propaganda through a medium of such ancient respectability as Collier's...

...McCarthy's methods, but also with his objectives, which, I suspect, are other than anti-Communist...

...In a word, his nurture, in the family, the school, the church, and the community suppressed his desire to kill...

...The People's Courts convene on Monday...

...Or my government either...

...McCarthy would not be my first choice as an investigator...

...Does nobody in American business or the American Army know what makes Communist propaganda and what doesn't...

...My government and I," I said, "are not on close terms, but, even if we were, there would not be anything I could do...

...Now listen to what several clergymen were all agreed upon: "One of them said, 'In a life-and-death struggle, it sometimes is necessary to lift the curtain of morality and civilization from men's souls to expose the brute beneath...

...does nobody in American business or the American Army...

...Collier's went right on being thin, bloody but bloodless, incongruously floppy on the newsstands alongside its fat competitors...

...Now you're talking...

...Gosh...

...The Communists the world over would grab hold of it, of course, just as they did the first one, and carry it to every village and farm where the Americans had been trying to peddle what the Communists call the myth of democracy and Christianity...

...government did not suppress such things...

...all the better basis for a "front" operation...

...But when the crisis is over, if the curtain is old and solidly designed and substantially built, it will easily drop back into place again—to mask the brute forever.' That's the ticket, fellows...

...It drove the Germans to go on fighting and broke the back of the anti-Nazi resistance...

...Steinbeck's coming up, between Washington and Jefferson...

...M. M. Frohlich, who makes his contributions to humanity at the University of Michigan...

...The Communists will use it to convince the Russian people that the American warmakers are going to destroy their homes and enslave them...

...The American Way, or Fuhrerprinzip...

...It wasn't the first time Collier's had handed the Communists a propaganda campaign...

...And of course the Communist governments of Russia and the satellite countries saw to it that their people got a handsome summary of the "American program...

...It would return your boy to you, either in a box, with the lid dropped shut, or in a blue serge suit with the morality dropped back...

...And neither, as far as my acquaintance extends, does anybody else...

...The theme was based on the revelation—interesting in itself—that in the second world war only 25 per cent of the American soldiers in a position to fire actually did so, while in Korea scientific efforts by the American Army had raised the figure to 50 per cent...

...Unlike President Eisenhower, I disagree not only with Sen...

...The authority for the Army technique for remolding the human material was Dr...

...Any other consequences, such as a world war, would be purely coincidental...

...It was the biggest gift to Communism since—since Collier's third-world-war issue, and Collier's counterfeit money story...

...The Collier's special was intended to sell magazines at that price...

...But you never know any more...

...Rushmore, boys...

...Along with the spittoon and the barber's breath, it was the hallmark of the neighborhood barber shop on 51st Street, between Calumet and Prairie Avenues, in Chicago...

...Move over, Steinbeck, on that mountain, and take Washington and Jefferson with you...

...The voice of Collier's was the voice of American commercialism, which will sell its six-year-old granddaughter's virtue for twenty cents...

...Is it possible, I thought, that there is more here than meets the rheumy eye...

...The theme was the necessity to "remold the human material" to raise that 50 per cent...

...Now we're getting somewhere...

...Ill And then came the third Collier's special, and this one set me, if I may say so, to thinking...

...You don't understand democracy...

...Two-Gun Christ rides again...

...Are we to assume that none of these people in any of these agencies knows that Collier's is playing into the Communists' hands...

...What about Defense Secretary Wilson, who was head of GM before he became head of the Army...

...The next thing I knew somebody sent me an issue of Collier's with an article by, of all people, John Steinbeck, all about John and Frank Roosevelt and John and Hank Mor-genthau, and John's secret weapon for winning the second world war, which Roosevelt had approved and Morgenthau, the nasty old reactionary, had rejected...

...They were all, apparently, so modest that none of them insisted upon the use of his name in the article...

...But it would be nice if somebody who knows how the Communists work through non-Communist—perhaps even through ostensibly anti-Communist—agencies would lift the curtain on Collier's, and, if need be, on General Motors and the Army...

...The Army was, obviously, getting the boys too late to do the job right, and do it alone, although it had done statistical wonders in remolding the human material in Korea, lifting the curtain of morality and civilization and exposing the brute underneath, and thus reducing the deadly sin of non-killing from 75 per cent to 50 per cent...

...The voice of Collier's would be taken for the voice of America, as much so as the Voice of America itself...

...It was, even to my limited knowledge, the third in a year...

...Nor the second...

...The cover showed the UN flag flying above the ruins of Moscow...

...and in France and Italy, too...

...3) Provide the soldier with a "father-figure" for a leader, a leader all-wise, strong, and just, whose orders he will never question...

...Secret weapon...

...You never know...

...You must get in touch with your government right away...

...Maybe there's nothing there but the howling hunger for twenty cents a copy...

...As he grew older, his use of violence encountered the resistance of the culture in which he lived, of religious sanctions, and of the fear of legal reprisal...

...It set me, as I say, to thinking...

...Collier's is owned by an old and honorable firm...

...Steinbeck's story was the—again—imaginary account of the winning of the third world war (undeclared...

...This was the Voice, with a capital V, of America...

...A year or so ago, when I was working in Germany, Collier's published a whole issue devoted to an imaginary account of the next world war...