THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
THE PEOPLE'S FORUM Arithmetic of Politics Dear Sirs: Karl Meyer's article, "Waiting for Kennedy," in the September issue makes me wonder what Congress would have to show for itself if...
...His question, "Is there any sensible reason why the U.S...
...ETHELYN M. HARTWICH Seattle, Washington Teacher Participation Dear Sirs: One rarely sees so acute an analysis of the so-called "professional" teacher- associations as in the July article by Judith Stiehm...
...Let us end the warfare between idealisms and provide a leadership under which both emphases of the American dream may be welded into a fit instrument to lift and guide an aching world...
...It choked to death on its own propaganda...
...While the United States uses its automatic majority to prevent even debate of this question, the world will continue to doubt her sincerity and motives...
...Another U.S...
...And if we do not heed this final imperative, then even T. S. Eliot's epitaph will not survive: This is the way the world will end Not with a bang but a whimper...
...We at this college are proud of the ninetytwo professors for having the courage to go on record against this film...
...Unfortunately, the youth who comes to a purposeful life through rejection of exploitation and war finds he must also support, under the liberal banner, monolithic government, enforced paternalistic protection of the individual, and increasing regimentation in private life...
...will change its record of exploitation of Cuba...
...NOEL IVERSON, JR...
...The destruction of Warsaw and Budapest took place in the course of a bestial war against the enemy...
...food...
...If the Kennedy Administration is serious in wanting a moderate sort of "center" position and getting popular support for it, the Administration will find ithat it must support and court this liberal left or else the radical right will try to run it...
...the other cares for masses and sacrifices the dignity of the individual...
...they have always gone in for collective living...
...W. G. CARTER Toronto, Canada Nominated for Oblivion Dear Sirs: Let us hope that before the end of the year 1961 we may have the privilege of viewing a certain tombstone upon which is the following inscription: "Here lies the HUAC...
...I am not in on the discussions of the State Council, I am not being bribed by Peking gold, nor is there a commissar with a whip standing over me as I write...
...She correctly dubs them "The Millstone" around the teachers' necks...
...Thanks to your magazine, we see the side of America which more resembles its historic traditions, a side that at times seems to be inundated by the media of mass culture...
...I refer to the' AFT (American Federation of Teachers) and collective bargaining...
...WILBUR LYONS Chevy Chase, Maryland Mayer's Purpose Dear Sirs: I get much amusement about the readers' letters on the subject of Milton Mayer's articles...
...MEREDYTH B. SWISHER Visalia, Calif...
...I would be most grateful if any of your readers who may be interested in joining such a Society would kindly write to the undersigned, from whom fuller details can be obtained...
...Were they Russian hordes...
...Sometimes he does this by direct writing, but more often by irony or satire, and it seems to me he, more often than not, insinuates into his articles items the average person has failed to take into consideration...
...Penetrating Criticism Dear Sirs: In these times, when the favorite diversion of arm-chair experts outside the United States is to criticize every aspect of American life, it is gratifying to know that the most penetrating and valid criticism is coming from within its own borders, in The Progressive...
...that the people love him dearly...
...Let us dare to offer to our reawakening youth a bold and honest banner for the Sixties proclaiming that respect for human dignity demands both bread and freedom—bread to strengthen each individual to live up to the venerable American ideal of freedom to make mistakes, freedom even to fail...
...I clearly remember some fifty or sixty years ago hearing my father (who was a staunch Bryan Democrat) wrathfully state "chickens always come home to roost" and the way we liberated Cuba (and other Caribbean countries) from the cruel Spaniard only to turn them over to the even more heartless Yankee investor would cause plenty of trouble later...
...About those offshore islands, Quemoy and Matsu: any time during the last few years China could have taken them overnight, had she so desired, just as she could take Hong Kong (which is dependent on the mainland for water and food) and Macao...
...REV...
...Can the tree of war, its roots planted in a comnVdn bed of distrust and hostility, bear the fruit of peace...
...HARRY G. ENTRIKIN Minneapolis, Minnesota Eichmcmn's Role Dea"r Sirs: Marilyn LeVine indicates in the People's Forum of your September issue that the Eichmann trial distorted history, that Jews were not the only ones that were killed by the Nazis...
...JACOB J. LEIBSON Halcott Center, New York Appeasing Goldwater Dear Sirs: Readers of The Progressive probably don't need to be told, but it would be worth a great deal if America's non-Communist left could pull itself together and acquire enough influence to offset the "Goldwater right" which makes so much noise these days...
...The millstones, administrator dominated teacher associations, have blocked this, along with other, worthwhile teacher-based goals...
...MYLES HORTON, Director Highlander Folk School Monteagle, Tenn...
...And this is good...
...Warsaw and Budapest, we are told, were destroyed and their populations killed by Hitler's orders...
...Thanks for carrying on against these tremendous odds...
...People who cancel their subscriptions are only depriving themselves of stimulation, even if by irritation, or of facts they did not possess...
...foreign policy...
...They echo the words of James Russell Lowell, "True freedom is to share/ All the chains our brothers wear," and man does not live without bread...
...It onlv remains for the teachers to recognize this too...
...China has millions of acres of wasteland which will take many decades of work to put under cultivation...
...Voice of Common Sense Dear Sirs: We have been readers of The Progressive for a number of years now, and it is at the very top of all periodicals I read...
...I quite agree that Chester Bowles is the litmus paper for the Kennedy Administration...
...She doesn't take them right now because those islands are more useful to her in making the United States look ridiculous, and making U.S...
...the issue is moral, we say—and it is...
...He says anew "to thine own self be true," and ."man does not live by bread alone...
...It took the chickens a long while to get back to the hen-house but they could hardly have arrived at a more inopportune time or more embarrassing manner...
...Highlander's core program is for adults, including ministers, teachers, social workers, and grass roots leadership in rural and urban communities...
...ANN HUBBELL Ypsilanti, Michigan Too Lenient with de Gaulle Dear Sirs: Our government has been much too lenient in its dealings with French President de Gaulle...
...we stand guilty in our silence while the threat of a nuclear holocaust that will fry humanity and scorch the planet increases with every missile shot, every launching base built, every bomb tested, every plane, gun, and knife put in the hands of men who hate because they fear...
...WILLIAM S. SAMUEL Winterset, Iowa Disarmament and China Dear Sirs: The United States has not been interested in disarmament since Hiroshima...
...The Jews, on the other hand, were singled out both in Germany and elsewhere not as members of enemy states but purely on ethnic grounds...
...Security Council and ask that that body take control of the supervision of that city as a neutral...
...The acid test is American recognition of China and proposing that she take her rightful seat at the United Nations...
...DOROTHY FISCHER Peking, China Needs Library Materials Dear Sirs: We are planning to re-organize and recatalogue the Highlander Folk School Library and would like to add to our collections on sociology and race relations, especially problems of segregation in the South...
...By giving them decent, brotherly treatment for the first time in history...
...Minneapolis, Minn...
...HUGH MACCOLL Executive Secretary, Northern Section California State Federation of Teachers, AFT, AFL-CIO North Sacramento, California False Note Dear Sirs: Your June issue, "Latin America: Dynamite on Our Doorstep," was tops in most respects but I'm afraid I have to agree with the critical opinion of Edwin Halsey, in the People's Forum of the August issue, on your conclusions regarding Cuba, although please be assured I do not intend to cancel...
...Bowles turned the tide for democracy in India and he—better than any other American alive today—knows how to dramatize and humanize the intricate problems of U.S...
...Who were these Communists...
...Young Chinese, men and women, work industriously and enthusiastically all year building roads, dams, clearing wasteland, planting forests, and in other ways changing the face of China...
...The Progressive is a fine magazine, and when it arrives each month I think, "Now I can get some idea of what has been going on in the world...
...I think it is a measure of our gradual creeping back to McCarthyism that there is today such a widespread effort to condemn honorable negotiation as appeasement...
...Giovanni Costigan of the department of history, have petitioned against a grossly distorted film called Communism on the Map, which slanders our allies as Communists...
...the Russians dare not—or do we all not really care...
...When I ask my Chinese friends who are Communist Party members for advice, they tell me I can write anything I please, or not write at all, just as I choose...
...We are poor historians...
...Steel, and American Electric Power 8c Communications dictate our Western Hemisphere foreign policies...
...Would that our President would read it and consider it deeply...
...That is as long as the sugar trust, the fruit combine, the integrated oil companies, U.S...
...A few of the unbelievably many misconceptions about China include: that Chiang Kai-shek was elected president by popular vote...
...You realize I am writing as a private individual...
...This film is put out by the propaganda factory of Harding College in Searcy, Arkansas...
...I would remind Miss LeVine that the Nuremberg trials of 1945-1949 dealt with precisely these Nazi crimes against enemy states...
...The liberals could best spend their time these days by reminding the American people of why the Bowles style of diplomacy is needed today, instead of wringing their hands for fear that Bowles will be demoted...
...It is especially important for us since too many Americans in the Philippines read nothing but Time...
...I felt there was a slightly false note somewhere and he put his finger on it exactly...
...It takes advantage of people's ignorance of world history and politics...
...It even cast aspersions on the previous Administration as being Communist-dupes...
...Beliefs are often suicidal and virtue is a phantom thing—it flits from camp to camp, and no amount of virtue is shield against the deadly heat, shock, and dust of unleashed atoms...
...It could determine Administration policy—as on Red China...
...The alternative of a nuclear war is inconceivable to the people of the world, even though glibly discussed by top officials...
...It is so much easier for them to believe the lies they are fed daily...
...The conflict is ideological, we say...
...J. R. HAMMOND 39 Rugby Road West Bridgford Nottingham England Objective Interpretation Dear Sirs: The Progressive is indispensable out here for objective interpretation about developments in the United States...
...How long will we permit this arrogant egomaniac to divert American foreign policy from its rightful course...
...RUTH HERSHMAN New York, N.Y...
...He has flouted and insulted the United Nations on the subject of Tunisia and, more recently, he has blocked the way toward negotiation with the Soviets on the crisis of Berlin...
...RICHARD DEATS Manila, Philippines...
...Furthermore, we hope to build up the kind of library in race relations which will be useful to research students as well as to our own clientele...
...The State Department is continually setting up a straw man it calls "Red China" and continually vanquishing this straw man, while the real Red China goes on from victory to victory...
...ROSCOE A. FILLMORE Centreville, King's County Nova Scotia, Canada Not with a Bang Dear Sirs: We, the people of America and the people of Russia, stand helpless before history and, as we face each other, our eyes are mirrors of fear, our minds tombs of suspicion, our hearts monuments of hostility...
...Let us urge our Senators, Representatives, and President Kennedy to place the Berlin problem immediately before the U.N...
...And Eichmann was the instrument of their destruction...
...China has mineral and other resources which will keep even her tremendous population busy...
...How did the Communists win over the overwhelming majority of China's people, the peasants...
...We stand benumbed by the acceleration of events: we stand idly by and gape at the roar of rockets, at the madmen, like us, fanning the glowing embers of war...
...If President Kennedy is now interested there is an acid test...
...As we all know, a valuable opinion is based upon consideration of all the factors...
...Crusading Professors Dear Sirs: Here in Washington the professors are crusading, too...
...Another: That China was conquered by some outside influence—"conquered by the Communists...
...A solution to the Berlin crisis—a middle way— must be found...
...misconception: that China is, according to the Voice of America, about to "sweep down over the lush plains of India...
...Neither will long hold the truly idealistic among today's youth...
...If Joe Alsop and Henry Luce have their way, Bowles will go and the men with ideas will beat a hasty retreat from the State Department...
...LYNNE FAIRMAN University of Washington Daily Seattle, Washington Bread and Freedom Dear Sirs: The resurgent idealism in today's youth is caught between two camps, each offering two incompatible premises...
...PETER HACEN Ann Arbor, Michigan Misusing the Declaration Dear Sirs: When the high-minded, courageous signers of our Declaration of Independence pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor in defense of their noble purpose they little dreamed that a Vice President of the United States would one day utter the same pledge to defend a people who but recently engaged in a devastating war against us to promulgate their nefarious ideas that were the very opposite of the Declaration's high principles...
...Not only does your magazine seem to be a consistent voice of common sense in a distaught period of history, but knowing that many others listen to this voice gives me hope that some of us with like ideas are pushing along the same way...
...One respects individuals and scorns the suffering of masses...
...Before starting any new work, they have discussion meetings and know exactly what the current movement is about, what is to be done and why and how...
...Other armies, foreign or domestic, had robbed and frightfully abused the peasants...
...We accept with barely a murmur of doubt the facile—and fatal!—assumption that peace is secured by preparing for war...
...In Jerusalem, however, it was Adolf Eichmann and not Adolf Hitler or any other Nazi who was on trial, and that Eichmann was the person exclusively in charge of Jewish affairs and the extermination of Jews...
...There has never been any cult of the individual in China...
...Mayer for a number of years and I am well aware that he has just one purpose in writing and that is to make people think...
...And in the semi-hysterical condition of this country over Berlin (and other crises) the voice of the radical right could easily become far more than a mere fringe of crackpots...
...BONNIE M. CURTIS Guymon, Oklahoma H. G. Wells Society Dear Sirs: An H . G. Wells Society has recently been founded, composed of admirers of this distinguished writer and persons interested in his life and works, who are eager to encourage a wider interest in his writings and ideas...
...Can we old liberals rise above love of our cliches, prune out that which has proven false or frail, integrate the best values of both camps regardless of labels...
...Teachers' salaries are symptoms rather than causes...
...We, the generation of the Thirties, should have grown and learned in the ensuing years...
...I don't like it that no civil rights legislation has gotten underway, but I know enough arithmetic to know that there would be no minimum wage bill, no housing bill, no depressed areas bill, no aid to dependent chil-, dren, no water pollution bill, and no social security improvements if the White House had raised the red flag of civil rights in front of the Southerners...
...MRS...
...Unfortunately, the youth who comes to a purposeful life through a rejection of government insured security finds that he must also pledge, under Goldwater, to hate all who might threaten his advancement, to hold in contempt all less fortunate, and to substitute chauvinism for patriotism—reven unto the atomizing of millions...
...It was these farmers and workers who vanquished Chiang, captured his weapons, won over millions of his soldiers, and drove him from the mainland...
...This approach has been central to the efforts of the AFT since its foundation...
...I have known Mr...
...Were they creatures from Mars...
...The only way the liberals can have their way on civil rights is to get a liberal majority in Congress and that means about twenty to thirty more northern Democratic seats in 1962...
...But they, no less than we, are as virtuous as their belief in their own way of life is strong...
...FRANKLIN WALLICK Public Relations Director Allied Industrial Workers of America Milwaukee, Wisconsin Middle Way for Berlin Dear Sirs: Thank you so much for the excellent editorial in the August Progressive "Standing Firm in Berlin...
...We also hold workshops for college students and have a summer project for high school youth...
...The author states, "In order to be effective a genuine teachers' organization should be composed exclusively of class room teachers and should issue publicity and lobby on the local level with avowed self-interest, as well as carry on programs on the state and national levels based on pupil problems and interest...
...If the United States government and people would only try to find out what is really going on in China and in Chinese minds, instead of creating myths and believing those myths, it would be better for everyone on earth...
...Fact: Chiang was merely the strongest of many warlords...
...The result of the showings here and in other cities is that anyone who objects to it is called a Communist or a Communist-dupe...
...This is so much horsefeathers...
...Ninety-two professors at this school, led by Dr...
...However, two elements conspicuously absent in her otherwise excellent article were mention of existing organizations fitting her criteria for effective teachers organizations and mention of machinery necessary to solve problems presented by employment as teachers...
...Yet you certainly cannot call them slaves, any more than the members of a football team are "slaves" when they obey signals...
...Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly small...
...They realize full well how effective an allteachers organization could be...
...The "liberals" lift up the humanitarian values of compassion, brotherhood, sharing, self-sacrifice...
...We are interested in receiving from readers of your publication pertinent material, books, pamphlets or periodicals, fiction as well as documentary, from any year and for any age group...
...Again, no...
...However, none of us is perfect...
...MARGARET FORSYTHE Wynnewood, Pennsylvania Back to McCarthyism Dear Sirs: James P. Warburg's "Opportunity in Berlin" in the September issue of The Pro-, gressive and your editorial, "Standing Firm in Berlin," in the August issue, provide remarkable insights into the whole frustrating problem of Berlin that one cannot find in the hysterical outbursts of the daily press...
...And we are on the side of virtue...
...These Communists were Chinese leaders who organized the workers in the cities and the vast number of embattled farmers...
...The AFT has long recognized this, and has shown that collective bargaining offers the machinery for accomplishing this aim...
...If we want to live there is no alternative to co-existence...
...THE PEOPLE'S FORUM Arithmetic of Politics Dear Sirs: Karl Meyer's article, "Waiting for Kennedy," in the September issue makes me wonder what Congress would have to show for itself if President Kennedy came out slugging in the harum-scarum style suggested...
...the people had his rule for many bitter years and will have no more of it...
...We can have no meaningful negotiations without China, mainland China...
...The Chinese feel that they are members of a great team, the greatest team on earth...
...The Communists helped them...
...The central problem in education is how to rescue it from the noneducator, and to liberate the person most intimately involved with the process of education— the classroom teacher—to participate with full maturity in solution of our pressing problem...
...And this is good...
...officials squabble among themselves, and with their "allies," especially the British, who are forever on tenterhooks wondering when some fool American admiral is going over the brink...
...Senator Barry Goldwater lifts up the traditional values of individualism, freedom, self-reliance, nonconformity of the inner-directed...
...Our children may never live their autumn years...
...For the more appeasement offered Goldwater and Company, the more they will be encouraged to make a serious play for power...
...and that they long for his return to bring "democracy" back to the mainland...
...Let us try to take a firm hold on the remnants of our sanity before it is too late...
...or any other resourcerich country) is certainly rhetorical for no one in his right senses could give anything but a negative answer...
...View from Peking Dear Sirs: The basic trouble with United StatesChinese relations is that the American people do not try to understand what is going on in China...
...Yet we Americans do not complain...
...Those "lush plains" are already full of starvelings, begging for U.S...
Vol. 25 • October 1961 • No. 10
