NOTES IN THE NEWS
NOTES in the NEWS The Red Menace We are indebted to the Washington Post for some revealing disclosures on the scope of the Communist peril at home. The Post sent one of its top reporters, Edward...
...Racial discrimination is built into the vast complex of Federal housing programs...
...It was widely believed he would sign it just before the new session of Congress convened, but he refused...
...and do constitute realistic steps toward a disarmed world under law...
...Adlai Stevenson, it seems to us, made vastly more sense when he wrote these words as a private citizen than he did when, as United States Ambassador to the U.N., he led the successful fight against the admission of Communist China to the United Nations...
...In subsequent weeks, Prince Boun Oum reluctantly consented to resume negotiations with his fellow princes for a coalition cabinet...
...I have supported this proposal since it was made last September [1959...
...The pressure against approving the order was said to come from the bright young men in the White House who argued, successfully, that affirmative action would infuriate the Southerners in Congress and result in the loss of needed support for other phases of the Administration's program...
...The measure passed the lower house over Democratic protests that this was the "first step toward book burning...
...Achieving such cooperation and coordinated effort among even the fragmented pacifist organizations is unprecedented...
...China and Disarmament The decision of the United Nations General Assembly to refuse membership to Communist China settled that issue for another year, but it failed to resolve a problem of perhaps greater magnitude...
...In an on-the spot report, Le Monde went on to explain: "Almost every morning, the U.S...
...By setting up graded categories of "membership" (although Turn Toward Peace is not an organization in itself, and there are no "members," as such), key organizations outside the peace movement can play an active role without feeling committed to any shade of pacifist ideology...
...Sponsors of the resolution were not concerned about how the censors would find time to read the books used in the schools...
...In effect, this movement has created an opportunity for all the disparate peace organizations to relate their efforts harmoniously, and to bring them together with key groups from outside the peace movement, such as unions, professional societies, and political organizations...
...Turn Toward Peace was conceived during the height of the Berlin crisis last summer, and while its leadership recognizes the urgent necessity of dealing with this and other immediate crises, the tone of its program is not the sound of strident notes signifying an emergency campaign, but rather a steady drumming to gather together for a persistent and continued effort those who recognize the need to "turn toward peace...
...Its spokesmen seem convinced that the millions of Americans who believe in minimum wage standards, racial integration, the United Nations, and the TVA are cheating the Communist Party of its dues...
...Some of its members hold seats on the Texas State Board of Education, which is authorized to approve all textbooks used in the schools of that state...
...They want to control what goes on in the classroom, too...
...The paradox dissolves, however, when one digs into the specific laments of the raucous Right, as The Progressive has pointed out frequently...
...A new Democratic Administration will carry it out...
...Much the same executive order to outlaw racial discrimination in all phases of Federally aided housing has been on President Kennedy's desk for a long time...
...It is Evans' thesis that readers should not be misled by the many manifestations of patriotic history-writing found in the book, such as praise for George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the Constitution...
...Our instrument and our hope is the United Nations—and I see little merit in the impatience of those who would abandon the imperfect world instrument because they dislike our imperfect world...
...If Turn Toward Peace can articulate this desire and focus the attention of our political leaders upon it, there is fresh hope that our foreign policy might yet take a more constructive turn...
...Today, however, the organization is fighting for its life...
...I felt that if only things would stay this bad (and not get worse) for six months, we might be able to build a coherent and connected peace movement...
...It is clear that prudence—so dominant a characteristic of this Administration—overpowered principle...
...The goal is a quarter-million signatures...
...The only other country with a major textbook censorship problem is the Soviet Union, where de-Stalinization is making the radical Left behave as our radical Right behaves here...
...But there is no need to wait another six months...
...China and the World Community," now being drafted by ADA...
...In his State of the Union Message to Congress, the President reviewed the steps he had taken to build the nation's military strength "to deter others from aggression," and then went on to say...
...The movement has accomplished the feat of gathering under its loosely-woven tent such diverse organizations as the United Automobile Workers Union, the American Veterans Committee, the National Association of Social Workers, Americans for Democratic Action, and a score of traditional peace groups...
...One of the sponsors of the resolution objected to the "slanted" definition of McCarthy ism in Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language...
...Even the Soviet Union would fear to disarm if its Chinese ally were left free to go its belligerent way because it had been outlawed by the world community...
...f A set of major proposals, tentatively mapped out by the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the American Veterans Committee, which, according to Robert Pickus, "are not based on an optimistic view of Communist policy...
...The "Conservative Club" boom in the colleges is generously financed by wealthy adults and powerful corporations, particularly in the subsidization of publications...
...is serious about disarmament— is that no agreement would be worth the ink to sign it if the Peking government were not a party to the decision and subject to all the safeguards of inspection and enforcement...
...and the U.N...
...f A drive to produce 10,000 telegrams directed to President Kennedy protesting the resumption of atmospheric nuclear testing...
...Of course the United Nations is an imperfect instrument in an imperfect world...
...The story, in brief, is this...
...In the capital of the kingdom, Vietiane, American and Soviet representatives worked together to secure the cooperation of the three princes who represent the views of the West, the neutralists, and the Communists...
...Ambassador, M. Brown, visits General Phoumi to persuade him to accept the formula of a coalition with the Communists, which is alone capable of permitting reunification of the country and reestablishment of peace...
...This is not a textbook, as Evans admits, but America's Future sponsored the evaluation anyway, perhaps as a special bonus to patriots...
...out of the U.N...
...But the Rightists are not content with extracurricular influence...
...One of the books Evans has evaluated for America's Future, Inc., is The Pocket History of the United States, written by two of our most celebrated historians, Allan Nevins and Henry Steele Commager...
...The Soviet Union and its string of satellites have hammered at the heart of the world organization on many occasions...
...Berlin and Germany," prepared by and available through SANE and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom...
...Obviously, this is a movement which will have to struggle along without support from the Daughters of the American Revolution...
...Double-Header in Laos Some day, when the full story of our adventure in Laos is told, another generation of Americans may blush with shame over some aspects of the sorry tale...
...But what impresses us is that while Turn Toward Peace reaches toward the stars, it seems to have its roots deep in the reality of our own perilous time...
...To meet this financial crisis, the U.N...
...It would be easy to dismiss this lunacy for what it is if it were not that the crackpot Right is heavily financed, powerfully backed by corporate interests, supported by an alarming array of retired (and some' active) Army and Navy brass, and has made disturbing inroads in some quarters of the Republican and Democratic Parties...
...We want, for the moment, only to express our feeling of profound shock that the American military establishment and the CIA were free to sabotage official American policy in the tinder-box that is Laos...
...The hard core of the Dixie bloc regards concessions as surrender...
...We are not here arguing the merits of the two positions...
...force in the Gaza Strip...
...The Democratic platform endorses it...
...This is heady wine...
...But when our hero, Boun Oum, a thoroughly untrustworthy playboy prince, kicks over the traces and walks out on solemnly agreed-upon negotiations, our government and press are busy that day emphasizing the crisis elsewhere...
...There is every indication that the battle in Congress for American subscription to the bond issue will be a bitter one...
...Texans for America" is handling the campaign in Texas...
...It failed to pass the Senate...
...The movement's program promises to be no less impressive than its organization...
...It is no alien concept from the Kremlin they fear is lodged in our midst...
...Freeing the Government' But the most penetrating observation on the direction of Turn Toward Peace and the one that gives us highest hopes for its ultimate success is the concept of the proximate goal of the movement expressed by Pickus (and this is his emphasis): "It will provide a base for a peace movement capable of freeing the government for creative action...
...No one who has followed its deliberations and decisions can fail to have grievances against the organization...
...It seems inconceivable that the statesmen of the United Nations can hope to achieve a formula to end the arms race without including Communist China, which is today the world's most populous nation, presently the most aggression-minded, and potentially the most dangerous military power on earth...
...The success of the organization in Texas has helped spread its gospel of censorship through the Southwest...
...But the United Nations survived because the world could not do without it...
...A distinguished American put it this way a year ago: "It is clear that no general disarmament agreement has any value unless it includes China, and it is difficult to see how China can accept international control when it is not formally a member of international society...
...Here are some of his findings: % The "official estimate" of the FBI is that there are between 8,000 and 10,000 members of the Communist Party in the United States...
...In Wisconsin, the Right-wing forces succeeded in persuading the Republican-controlled Assembly of the legislature to approve a resolution setting up a commission to investigate and pass on textbooks...
...This represents a loss of ninety per cent since the peak membership some seventeen years ago...
...What will it avail us should the U.N...
...President Kennedy knows this, knows how decisive a force this intolerable practice is in the whole realm of racial segregation, and knows, too, that "the stroke of a Presidential pen" could end it...
...Its members will continue to vote against liberal legislation no matter how often the President kneels to their bigotry...
...out of the U.S...
...They want it called the American "War for Independence...
...For that same session of the Assembly created an eighteen-nation committee charged with developing programs and procedures for worldwide general disarmament...
...The concept came to fruition last September under the guidance of the leadership of the Committee for A Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), the American Friends Service Committee, Robert Pickus, leader of Acts for Peace, a Northern California organization, and others...
...The Kennedy Administration has proposed that this richest nation on earth subscribe to half the issue, and there is heartening evidence that President Kennedy intends to stand firm on this commitment, however uncertain he may be about others...
...Almost every week brings a story from some part of the country of a new textbook censorship drive, usually organized by the same crowd supporting the local chapter of the John Birch Society...
...But with all its faults and limitations, the United Nations has served mankind in its hour of greatest crisis as a forum for discussion and debate that provided a safety-valve against explosion on the battlefield...
...Under Fire The United Nations has been under attack almost since the day it was born more than a decade and a half ago...
...Its spokesmen are not really so afraid as they pretend of the five-thousandths of one per cent of the American people who are members of the Communist Party...
...There are a number of vital steps which could be taken now—which should have been taken during the last seven and a half years—by Presidential action . . . Let me give one example of an important and immediate contribution that could and should be made by the stroke of a Presidential pen...
...Eleven months ago the Civil Rights Commission unanimously proposed that the President issue an executive order on equal opportunity in housing...
...So far, the major visible effect of the Turn Toward Peace effort is the achievement of bringing together such a large number of diverse organizations to work jointly toward a common goal...
...and "Strengthening the United Nations," available soon from the American Association for the United Nations...
...The U.N...
...As former Federal Judge J. Waties Waring of South Carolina has pointed out, "the United States government is the greatest segregationist in housing" in the country...
...Our first organization meeting," Robert Pickus told us, "was on September 6, the day after the Soviet Union announced its intention to resume nuclear testing...
...Unless President Kennedy soon makes that "stroke of a Presidential pen," of which he spoke with such clarity and conviction as a candidate, he will have gravely impaired his Administration's record in this critical area of our national life...
...f The peak was reached in 1944, the year in which the Western Allies and Russia's Red Army were driving to crush Hitler's armies...
...Let us remember," he said, "that a great part of the solution of these problems depends upon Presidential leadership...
...It is designed to coordinate the talents and strengthen the efforts of scores of existing organizations already alerted to the urgent necessity for creating the conditions that might make peace possible...
...There seemed to be a widespread feeling of urgent need first to join forces on the basis of broad policy and general goals, and then hammer out a detailed plan...
...Cooperating organizations," which include the peace groups, SANE, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the American Veterans Committee, and others, agree to utilize their own channels and staffs to further the campaign...
...For the troubles of a world organization merely reflect the troubles of the world itself...
...Reporter Folliard, like so many others, found "a paradox" in the fact that, "as the Communist Party in this country has grown weaker, the uproar against it by Right-wing extremists has grown louder...
...Root evaluates textbooks for the Textbook Evaluation Committee of America's Future, Inc., 542 Main Street, New Rochelle, New York...
...It seems difficult to believe that the Kennedy Administration would tolerate such contumacious conduct in an area that could light the fires of world conflagration...
...Every morning, an expert of MAAG [the U.S...
...But as an institution, it should have no stronger or more faithful member than the United States...
...And if the organization is weakened, these troubles can only increase...
...committee perform a miracle by achieving agreement on disarmament if the sullen, suspicious government of the 650,000,000 people of China is kept beyond the pale...
...I urge the President to act now...
...The Texas organization, headed by J. Evetts Haley, a millionaire cattle rancher and oil man, has succeeded in getting several texts banned...
...Soaring world hopes for a peaceful solution were dashed, however, when Boun Oum and his Minister of Defense, General Phoumi Nosavan, suddenly refused to cooperate...
...It is on the verge of bankruptcy because the Soviet bloc, France, Belgium, South Africa, and several other members have refused to pay their allotted share of the expensive operation in the Congo, and fifty-one nations have fallen behind in their contributions for the maintenance of the U.N...
...The offending definition says McCarthyism is "a political attitude of the mid-Twentieth Century closely allied to know-nothingism and characterized chiefly by opposition to elements held to be subversive and by the use of tactics involving personal attacks on individuals by means of widely publicized indiscriminate allegations especially on the basis of unsubstantiated charges...
...Chairman Norman Thomas said of the movement in a recent interview: "In its confrontation of the realities of Communist policy, in its assessment of what is needed from America, in a carefully worked-through organizational framework which allows a wide variety of organizations to relate their work, in the details of local programs and organizational plans, it is the peace effort we have needed for so long...
...This attempt to appease the Southern irreconcilables is doomed to failure, like so many previous attempts in the past...
...This, he says, is simply a ruse on the part of "adroit ministers of propaganda" to insinuate themselves into the confidence of patriots so that they can later attack McCarthy, MacArthur, and Chiang Kai-shek...
...military advisory group in Laos] or the Central Intelligence Agency comes to cheer up the General and incite him to oppose any entry of Reds into the government...
...In Geneva, delegates to the Fourteen Power Conference reached provisional agreement on the reunification and neutralization of Laos...
...The President has not acted during all this time...
...An "Opinion Leaders" program headed by Emily Parker Simon of the Committee for World Development and World Disarmament, to enlist community leaders, ministers, professors, and other opinion-makers, who will be available for radio, television, and other publicity activities...
...In that year of "extraordinary tolerance for homegrown Communists," Communist Party membership rose to 80,000...
...Prudence Before Principle The Kennedy Administration's claim to considerable achievement in the field of civil rights through Executive action is documented by the record, as Marvin Weisbord demonstrated for readers of The Progressive in his January issue article, "Civil Rights on the New Frontier...
...Strange, isn't it, how they resemble each other...
...which welcome but do not require prior Soviet agreement...
...As Walter Lippmann expressed it recently: "This world is in upheaval...
...But arms alone are not enough to keep the peace—it must be kept by men...
...Turn Toward Peace A rising cause for cautious hope in recent months is the advent of a movement called Turn Toward Peace...
...We urge readers of The Progressive to write their Senators and Representatives, for this is the kind of issue that may well be resolved by the character of the mail that comes from home...
...What had happened to reverse the trend toward settlement...
...We may not always agree with every detailed action taken by every officer of the United Nations, or with every voting majority...
...The idea germinated in the Seventh National Conference on World Disarmament and World Development, held last April in Washington, D.C., and attended by representatives of forty-three national organizations...
...Le Monde of Paris, one of the most respected of European journals, cautiously called what had happened "the most amazing situation in contemporary diplomacy...
...it is such indigenous American concepts as the income tax, Social Security, public housing, aid-to-education, and public health measures which send them into paroxysms of protest...
...But when we pause to imagine what it would be like without the United Nations, we realize that Ave cannot do without it...
...So have such other colonial nations as France, Belgium, and Portugal during the past year...
...In August, 1960, fresh from his spectacular victory at the Democratic National Convention, candidate Kennedy lashed out at the Eisenhower Administration's failure to act in this very field...
...This strikes a note The Progressive has often sounded—that our leaders, of whatever political party, are lagging behind the aspirations of the vast majority of thoughtful citizens, who desire, more than anything else, to "turn toward peace," but who are given little guidance by the nation's leadership...
...Early signers include Eleanor Roosevelt, Walter Reuther, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Clarence Pickett...
...One of the aims of "Texans for America" is to do away with any mention of the American "Revolution...
...The President and his Executive establishment accomplished more reform in its first eight months than did the Eisenhower Administration in all its eight years...
...One of the "evaluators" mentioned was E. Merrill Root, an English teacher at Earl-ham College, Richmond, Indiana, who has come to the conclusion that Professor E. Merle Curti, the University of Wisconsin's famed Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, "upholds the panacea of socialism in all he writes...
...As impressive as is the emerging program of Turn Toward Peace, even the remote possibility of its achievement makes sense only in the context of its skillfully structured organization...
...If all this seems preposterous it is because censorship always follows a crazy course...
...The purchase of $100,000,000 in United Nations bonds by the United States would be an investment in peace, a trust fund for sanity...
...In our own country, the forces of the far Right have sought for years to "get the U.S...
...If sustained, this represents a high-water mark in concerted community efforts toward peace...
...Communicating organizations," which so far number a dozen or so AFL-CIO unions, ADA, the American Association for the United Nations, and similar groups, have agreed to support the Turn Toward Peace effort, to make its program known to their members, and to aid in the preparation of materials...
...Its stress is not primarily on protest and opposition, but on the creation of a climate of public opinion both here and in the Soviet world in which constructive proposals for peace might flourish...
...They assured the lawmakers that organizations are available to supply canned "evaluations" of textbooks...
...Its long-range goal is "universal agreement on a disarmed world under law, safe for free societies...
...The near-range goal of the movement is—no less—to turn the nation away from "the threat of war as a central thrust of American foreign policy" and direct it toward "alternatives which are not based on willingness to surrender either freedom or democratic values...
...As President Kennedy expressed it in his Los Angeles speech November 18, 1961: "They equate the Democratic Party with the welfare state, the welfare state with socialism, and socialism with communism...
...f Informative pamphlet kits providing an analysis of and background on four immediate crisis areas: "Nuclear Tests and Disarmament" (in preparation...
...But there is one gaping hole in the Kennedy performance—discrimination in housing...
...Another evaluator for this group is Medford Evans, formerly of the department of the social sciences, Northwestern State College, Natchitoches, Louisiana...
...Our government, with the cooperation of a pliant press, has presented it all as a struggle between good guys and bad guys...
...Senator Barry Goldwater always speaks pridefully of the growth of these clubs and M. Stanton Evans, a frequent contributor to National Review, has written a book about them called Revolt on the Campus...
...There are powerful arguments on both sides of the issue of admitting Communist China to the United Nations, but the most persuasive on either side—if the U.N...
...The dramatic decline in Communist Party membership to an all-time low serves only to raise the fever of the fervid Right...
...Perhaps the Kennedy Administration had by then reasserted its authority over its Pentagon and CIA agents in Laos, but we confess to still being alarmed over the ease with which a couple of characters representing our own military and intelligence establishments were able to scheme against official American policy in a way that could have triggered the outbreak of hostilities...
...Censorship Twins The radical Left, even in its most energetic days, never expended so much effort on influencing the young as the radical Right does today...
...A program of alternative proposals for American action is now in the discussion stage and is expected to be ready soon...
...The second formative meeting was held the day Dag Hammarskjold's death was announced...
...For a time there were hopeful signs that our struggle to achieve a negotiated settlement of the conflict in Laos might succeed, but there is now shocking evidence, ignored by the American press, that two branches of our own government were busy torpedoing the very negotiations conducted by our State Department...
...Things continued so bad that all the petty jealousies were silenced, and we had time to think through solutions...
...Concrete programs are just now beginning to emerge, but already they include: f A national roster of individuals who express a willingness to support the effort with wofk and financial support...
...He recalled that one of the leaders of the lunatic Right, Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society, goes on saying that "our danger remains almost entirely internal, from Communist influence right in our midst and treason right in our government...
...He could and should act now...
...Why...
...Assembly voted to issue $200,-000,000 iii bonds for sale to governments, national banks, and approved non-profit trusts and foundations with a twenty-live year maturity and two per cent interest...
...The Post sent one of its top reporters, Edward T. Folliard, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to determine the magnitude of the menace...
...Pickus and Sanford Gottlieb of SANE are national coordinators of the effort, and Norman Thomas is national chairman...
...This program is currently in progress in 300 communities, under the guidance of David Scott of the AFSC...
Vol. 26 • February 1962 • No. 2
