IT IS NOT AS LATE AS THE WAR PARTY THINKS
Hanighen, Frank C.
It Is Not As Late As The War Party Thinks By FRANK C. HANIGHEN HPHINGS AREN'T always what they seem—to the headline writers. The interventionist press, which means most of the newspapers, has...
...Folks can say things in the ballot box which they don't write to the New York Times letter column...
...At Detroit, for instance...
...But they voted against the measure when it carried two amendments permitting our ships to sail into belligerent zones and ports...
...Anne O'Hare Mc-Cormack in the New York Times ponders the stubborn opposition of the laboring class in the Middle West to war...
...Doughton was heard to mutter that he was thinking of the "spirit of Claude B. Kitchin"—the southern Congressman who was the most prominent in the anti-war fight in 1917...
...Nothing could be further from the truth...
...As for the South, we find the two outstanding labor-baiters, Martin Dies and Eugene Cox, voting for the bill...
...His circulation mounts week by week as he editorially becomes more emphatically anti-war...
...I sometimes think Henry Mencken may be right...
...No one can reasonably attribute these "no" votes to any anti-labor complex...
...In the final tally in the House, some 50 Congressmen shifted their votes from "yes" to "no...
...The interventionist press, which means most of the newspapers, has managed to give the impression that it's all over with the isolationists...
...When Congressmen from the allegedly bellicose belt talk that way and a bare majority closes ranks under the ugliest whip the Ad-i ministration has so far wielded, I hardly believe the cause is lost...
...For one thing, I could not fail to note that the press grossly misinterpreted the closeness of the vote on the neutrality revision in the House...
...Considering the oracle and her interventionist pulpit, that's a significant admission...
...I would interpret what applause there was from non-Communist elements as applause for the many jobs the defense program^ has given the workers...
...Reporters on the Hill say these men were really voting against war...
...I can only repeat the utterance of a labor leader in Pennsylvania not long ago on this subject: "No, we're all against going into the war...
...Then there's Captain Patterson, publisher of the New York Daily News, largest paper in the country...
...As a result, I have my doubts about the exultations of the Lippmanns and Thompsons...
...Even Fire-Eaters Disclaim War I can't help noticing other signs...
...Now, a close examination of these shifts reveals the fact that the majority of them occurred in the cases of Congressmen from northern industrial constituencies...
...Journalistic Obfuscation When you move north of the Mason and Dixon line, you immediately notice some more journalistic obfuscation...
...Claude Pepper, took care to wrap their vote for neutrality revision in the fine old label: "This measure is to keep us out of war...
...Moreover, the three prominent southern Congressmen who did vote against the final version of the bill—Smith of Virginia, Sumners of Texas, and Doughton of North Carolina—expressly stated that it was the danger of war, not the labor issue, which prompted their "anti" votes...
...One needn't remind a legislator that elections are coming around next year...
...To my jaundiced eyes, the accounts of the CIO ' convention read like old stories of meetings in Madison Square Garden presided over by Harry Bridges...
...Fight for Freedom rallies have lots of seats to spare...
...It is a strange and wonderful sight indeed to remark how the conservative press, after years of labeling CIO unions "Reds"—speak approvingly of the typical Moscow cheerleaders in the recent convention...
...Now, I've never shared the faith of many isolationists in the granite resolution of the people to stay out of war...
...They had voted for the arming of merchant ships...
...America First has overflow meetings...
...Members of Congress, even the fire-eater, Sen...
...A few papers like the New York Times conceded that "left-wing" elements, as they suavely put it, were active in the applause for the President's foreign policy...
...When you bribe the masses with defense business and befuddle them with propaganda over a long enough period, their opposition to war may at least bend, if not break...
...The Reader's Digest, largest magazine in the country, after many months of reprinting only interventionist articles, found it popular to reprint Freda Utley's plea for a negotiated peace...
...But in the last week, I've sorted some straws in the wind —straws which have stuck to my consciousness, not straws for which I've grabbed hopefully...
...But the defense program—God,*I hope Hitler lives 20 years...
...According to the papers, southern Congressmen swelled the vote against the bill because they were resentful about the defense strikes...
...The Captain has long been famous for his flair for popular trends and catering to them...
...He says that the average man is today accustomed to the prospect of war as he is to an incipient cold: he'll sullenly take it as some unpleasant and supernatural visitation...
Vol. 5 • December 1941 • No. 49
