Notes in the News

...The AFL-CIO exercise in jingoism was directed by AFL-CIO President George Meany, whose foreign policy guidance comes from Jay Lovestone, probably the most bitter anti-Communist in labor's top councils...

...The issue was stated succinctly, in another connection, by Senator Clifford Case, New Jersey Republican: "I think there is one area in which—above all others if I had to select one—Congressional procedures and practices should be changed, and that is in the deference that is paid to committee chairmen...

...How could we hope to attain that goal with a nation we do not recognize and barely speak to...

...After that, UAW vice president Emil Mazey remained the sole opponent of the resolution on the convention floor...

...Here, I think, is the real secret about the power, the negative power, which Congress has come to represent—the glacial unresponsiveness to the need for change...

...The Administration is prone to conceal any development that might tend to crack the frozen facade of its rigid policies toward China...

...Lovestone, who headed the American Communist movement in its Pleistocene period a third of a century ago, has inspired and abetted Meany in opposing steps to thaw out the cold war...

...We can help gradually," Mr...

...The President's proposal, which had the support not only of the State Department but of large segments of conNotes in the News servative American business, was shot down by one sentence from a single member of the House of Representatives, even before a bill was introduced in Congress...

...Furthermore, it remains a mystery to us, as it must to the State Department, what control system could be devised to monitor the simple pledge the Chinese proposed...

...In a foreign policy resolution adopted by the 2,400 delegates, the UAW first sympathized with the President over his "agonizing problem of finding a way to transfer the [Vietnam] conflict from the battlefield to the conference table...

...It voted "unstinting support" for "all measures the Administration might deem necessary to halt Communist aggression and secure a just and lasting peace" in the Far East...

...There was no opportunity for Congressional debate, no chance for the public to form and voice its views, nor for the China experts to examine and explore the pledge proposal and offer their advice...

...There is a crisis of confidence in the country over our foreign policy leadership...

...This made the total money utilized in the Birch program during the year $5,000,000...

...And even if the operation were performed today it would be a decade before the patient would be on his feet and moving forward...

...There is still too great a tendency to shrug off the Society as a collection of "kooks" and "nuts...

...But there is a grave defect in the democratic process when arbitrary Congressional rules permit a single member to bar even consideration of a major proposal submitted by the Executive branch...

...The people are far ahead of their leaders in their willingness to explore new paths to peace, to reconsider and discard outmoded positions...

...But the most alarming aspect of the whole matter is that the very existence of the Chinese offer was kept from the American people...

...Now the monolithic front of the AFL-CIO has begun to crack on the Vietnam issue...

...It then moved away from the AFL-CIO's December declaration by adding: "On the other hand, our nation must be careful to avoid taking action in the cause of resisting aggression that will increase the danger of . . . larger war...

...Johnson added, "to create a community of interest, a community of trust, and a community of effort...

...The Birch movement would be even larger and richer than it is, according to Welch, except for the fact that (as he explained in his monthly Bulletin to members) "the Society has been handicapped in its rate of growth by so much cumulative smearing, from so many different sources...

...Now, and only now, that this one has been revealed to the world by the Chinese, the Administration seems to be taking steps to reopen the possibility of a no first-use agreement with Peking—but with such sweeping conditions as virtually to nullify any type of agreement...

...Among recent examples of mounting labor dissent on foreign policy are: ? In New York City some 200 unionists voted to set up a trade union division of the Sane Nuclear Policy Committee ; SANE has been an unrelenting opponent of U.S...

...The President pointed out that "The intimate engagement of peaceful trade—over a period of time—can influence Eastern European societies to develop along paths favorable to world peace...

...There are indications that their concern has begun to work its way upward in the international unions...

...House Speaker John W. McCor-mack, with President Johnson seated nearby, told several hundred members of the International Labor Press Association at a gathering in the White House, "This country has never left the field of battle in abject surrender and we shall not do so now...

...For example, Robert J. McCloskey, State Department spokesman, complained that the Chinese have shown no interest in the disarmament discussions at Geneva...

...policy on Vietnam...

...Retreat from Vietnam, he said, would be a "mortal blow" to peoples working to achieve independence in other parts of the world...

...It should be a source of shame for the State Department that when the offer was first revealed to the world it was by Chinese Premier Chou En-lai...

...fl In addressing its recent national convention at Atlantic City, Jacob S. Potofsky, president of the 385,000-member Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, criticized attempts by "some in high office" to silence those who disagree with the government's Vietnam policies...

...Its head man, Robert Welch, has informed the membership that the Society's 1965 income "from all sources for all purposes, was $4,089,000...

...In 1961 the dean of the Yale Medical School asserted that to maintain even the then inadequate proportion of doctors—which has since worsened—would require "the establishment of at least twenty new schools of medicine during the 1960's"—which we have not established...

...divisions have appeared and have begun to widen under the stress of turbulent events in Vietnam and the growing dismay of the American public over escalation of the war...

...Except for the studies made by the ADL, we know of no surveys of the John Birch Society's proliferating activities which are comprehensive or current enough to reveal the national scope and depth of the Birch threat to the democratic process...

...But membership is increasing, and is probably well over 100,000 (Welch releases no membership figures) . There are now 350 Birch bookstores, seventy-five field coordinators working to establish new Birch chapters and strengthen present ones, a heavy flow of far right books, pamphlets, and other publications being pumped out into the country by Welch and his followers, a growing number of Birch-sponsored radio programs, and an extensive speakers' bureau operation...

...One-Mem Rule In a statesmanlike proposal President Johnson recently asked Congress to give his office discretionary authority to extend to all the nations of Eastern Europe the "most-favored-nation" tariff benefits now enjoyed by only Poland and Yugoslavia among the iron-curtain countries...

...That crisis of confidence will only worsen until the nation's leaders begin to catch up with the peaceful purpose of the people...

...How many other peace proposals—however tentative, however tiny—have been buried in the secret files of the State Department...

...The arguments in favor of the President's proposal to expand East-West —and especially East European-U.S...

...Such hypocrisy and deceit are pretty hard to swallow at any level of government, but they are intolerable when practiced by the men who literally hold the power to determine whether we shall have war or peace...

...Labor and the War Last December the national AFL-CIO convention at San Francisco went "all the way with LB J" on the Vietnam war...

...Our system provides safeguards for the minority in the Bill of Rights and in various provisions that in some cases require a two-thirds or even a three-quarters majority to effect change...

...trade—however persuasive, do not constitute the basic issue here...

...The disturbing fact that millions of dollars are poured into the Society each year points to a danger against which liberals, middle-of-the-roaders, and even conservatives can—¦ and should—make common cause...

...If this was much of a cloud to the Birch leader, there was also a golden rain falling: Welch reported the death of two "conservatives" who "will be sadly missed by the John Birch Society," and then added, almost casually, that one, D. B. Lewis of Los Angeles, "left us outright the round sum of a million dollars," and the other, Ed Scheubert of Chicago, willed the Society a sum which "may prove to be around two hundred thousand dollars...

...Yet when the Chinese made their extraordinary offer a year ago to exchange pledges with the United States that neither would be the first to use atomic weapons against the other, the State Department rejected it out of hand on the grounds that the proposal did not represent "a constructive step toward the paramount problem of controlled disarmament" and that without controls to enforce such a pledge it would be useless...

...The UAW declared, "Red China's 700 million people must be brought into the family of nations...

...In other words, the State Department turned its back on the concept of building peace "step by step," and insisted, in our relations with Communist China, on a giant leap from nothing at all to controlled disarmament, an achievement we have scarcely begun to reach among our friends...

...But the American Medical Association, with considerable support from other reactionary forces, has adamantly stuck to its antiquated notions of medical economics—in contrast to its remarkable achievements in medical science— and has successfully blocked the massive kind of Federal aid vital to the application of contemporary medical knowledge...

...A democratic society is based on majority rule...

...But they represent a trickle compared to rising need, and are "side door" forays rather than the direct confrontation that modern need demands...

...As more thoughtful unionists began to move toward open expression of discontent with foreign policy, the Administration made an obvious counter-move...

...many other bodies speak out against the Birchers spasmodically...

...The nation's whole approach to medical care is in serious need of a heavy transfusion of funds and efforts...

...A Modest Beginning The hospital insurance portion of Medicare, the Federal program for medical care of the elderly under Social Security, becomes effective July 1. As that date approached, an increasing number of Americans began to realize that it is almost a case of too little and too late...

...Millions for Birchers Probably no other nationwide extremist group in postwar America has had at its disposal the huge funds now available to the John Birch Society...

...foreign policy and the AFL-CIO endorsement of it to express their concern openly...

...importers would pay a tariff on imports from any Eastern European nation that would be no higher than that paid on the same goods bought from the "most-favored-nation" —the nation that enjoys the lowest tariff...

...The cost of modern medicine—the training of doctors, nurses, technicians, and the maintenance of hospital facilities—has risen to such astronomical heights that only the Federal government has the resources to keep pace...

...Medicare constitutes a small breakthrough on this front...

...Another reason for the AFL-CIO's monolithic front on the Vietnam resolution was that many of its officials and the heads of international unions increasingly have become part of the Establishment, particularly on foreign policy issues...

...The Society's announced goal for 1965 had been $6,000,000, and in this respect as well as in hoped-for membership growth, the organization fell short...

...Walter Reuther's UAW, in convention at Long Beach, California, split with both the Administration and the national AFL-CIO by calling for recognition of mainland China and its admission to the United Nations...

...We have steadily fallen behind even that gloomy prediction...

...I am not for it," said Representative Wilbur Mills, Arkansas Democrat, and that was all that was needed to kill the President's proposal...

...Affiliated with thirty-eight internationals, these unionists are not top leaders but it is significant that they are disenchanted enough with U.S...

...Also, our members probably spent in 1965, on newspaper advertisements and other activities, which were paid for directly without the money passing through our hands, about another million dollars...

...For Mills is the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the House, and our government is in some ways so crazily contorted that in Congress the chairman of a committee or even a subcommittee has power so arbitrary that he can refuse, acting alone, to hold hearings on a measure, prevent the committee from considering it, and even after hearings and consideration, he may carry the bill in his pocket— literally—to keep it from coming before Congress for discussion and vote...

...We believe that organized labor—no less than the rest of the public—is losing its stomach for such pablum as the war grinds tragically on...

...Welch continues to insist that his Society does not engage in politics but in "education...

...The president of the American Hospital Association stated recently that "there are budgeted [our emphasis] vacancies for at least 75,000 registered nurses and 25,000 licensed practical nurses...

...Every sign indicates that the increasingly politically-minded Society—now financed at a level exceeded only by the Democratic and Republican Parties—is involved in one way or another in many Congressional, gubernatorial, and local contests...

...In layman's language such a change simply means that U.S...

...Fifteen years ago a Presidential commission reported that "the expected supply of physicians in 1960 will fall far short of the number needed," and that for nurses, "the shortage for the country as a whole in 1960 may exceed 50,000...

...The candidates opposed by the Birchers know better...

...Medicare opens the doors for the impoverished elderly to get the medical care they have long needed, but it does not provide the additional supplies of medical doctors, nurses, and physical facilities that the Medicare program demands...

...The act is an essential first step, but only a modest beginning in providing the up-to-date medical care of all our citizens that this nation with its unparalleled resources and advanced medical knowledge is capable of providing...

...Senator Robert F. Kennedy has proposed a ten-year, $2 billion program to beef up medical building, training, and research in an effort to keep abreast of the heightened demands produced by Medicare...

...The Federal government administers a good many measures which pump millions of dollars into American medicine...

...To our knowledge, the only organization of national stature that combats the Birch Society as a matter of high priority is the B'nai Brith's Anti-Defamation League...

...But on being questioned he was obliged to acknowledge, reluctantly, that China had never been invited to participate in the conference...

...It was only at the instigation of Walter Reuther, United Automobile Workers president, that the "peace" reference was inserted in the draft of the resolution...

...This is a commendable proposal, but it must be understood for what it is: a measure designed merely to keep our heads above the rising tide of the medical needs of the elderly...

...This was against approximately $3,200,000 for 1964...