WAR AT ANY PRICE

...Dies, but I am saving up Rep...

...Liberties Committee has split wide open and its chairman resigned, and half the members of the Chicago Committee to Save the Jews, led by the recently appointed chairman, Prof...

...Democratic Action...

...And let me hasten to add that some of the oppressed people I have in mind are Germans, and some are Japs, and some are Indians, and some are Americans...

...If I am not mistaken, there was once a President of the United States, and a not particularly subversive one, who at one stage of his career asserted that the only hope of the world was "peace without victory...

...Since all the Congressman knows is what he reads in the papers, nobody will be surprised to learn that his expose followed hard upon the heels of alleged exposes of the same movement appearing in the New York Post, PM, Life, and Walter Winchell's Hearst syndicated column...

...Dies is against...

...As long as it is their friends whose liberties are trampled, the movement goes great...

...The Psychosis That Splits And that is why I do not join Committees and Parties and Movements, because those I have the impulse to join are all small and weak, and the next thing I would know, if I joined them, I would find myself endorsing the Smith-Connally Act or Sunkist oranges...

...Something of this sort happened to Peace lNow, and , the groin-kickers, moved right in on it...

...To all such Causes the doctrine of St...

...We must win strong friends to our cause, and then we will be strong...

...It always happens this way...

...A century ago J. S. Mill, who loved liberty for all men, spoke forebodingly of the "tyranny of the^ majority...

...Francis McMahon of the University of Chicago, have resigned from that Committee...

...So the gates are let down, and the strong friends come in, and the next thing we know we are in the situation of the lambs who invited the lions in, and this is no more practical a situation than we were in in the first place...

...But moved or unmoved, I believe I have Luce in a box in this matter of Prof...

...The important fact—and we must keep our eye on...

...But the last and biggest laugh of all is that Henry R. Luce, the owner 0%, Life, has for years been preoccupied with the problem of maintaining freedom of the press in this country...

...The truth has been discovered by the editors of t,ife, and God.help the man who dares to debate it...

...mal community left...

...The American Labor Party is now engaged in absolutely suicidal civil war, and what, by the way, ever became of the Union for...

...By and large, these people are brought together in the first place by a nebulous sentimentality...

...The Principle At Stake Let me add, too, that without knowing the recent history of the Peace Now movement, I assert its right to stand and be heard, without the handicap of having to guard its groin against the mighty knees of Winchell, et al...

...the annual toll must be terrific...

...Prof...

...And let me add, at last, that I do not see how it could possibly be subversive and have Rep...

...What really worries me is the principle, and principles are a weakness of mine...

...But when the question of defending the liberties of an enemy, such as Lizzie Dilling or Silver Charley Cough-lin, arises, then the libertarians discover that they themselves were never clear as to their purposes, and the splintering begins...

...But there are powerful people in the Government, as well as out of it, who know that it would be unconstitutional to outlaw such advocacy, so they proceed by making it synonymous with pyorrhea or halitosis, and by the time their stooges, PM, the Post, Life, and Winchell, get through with it, there is not a yellow dog in the country who will stand up for it, though it is still legal...

...Thus I see in today's paper that the Chicago Civil...

...Well, by golly, here is one yellow dog who will stand up on his hind legs and bay at the moon to the effect that peace now with all oppressed peoples and with no fascists, abroad or at home, is the only hope of the world...

...Both these lofty outfits went to pieces in one day...

...The organizing group, surveying itself in the mirror, says, "We are few and weak...

...the ball—is that there is nothing illegal about advocating peace now...

...F5ut what really worries me—really, now—is neither Rep...

...An awful lot of people have, since Voltaire's time, struck a heroic pose and quoted Voltaire's dogma: "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it...

...I know a little about all the parties to this Peace Now business, and a great deal about Rep...

...Hartmann, a lifelong Socialist, proceeded to write a letter to the editors of Life mildly resenting the kick in the groin, and the editors of Life replied, with dignity, that anybody who advocated peace now was subversive...

...Dies' Greatest Crime I hope I am not moved unconsciously in this matter by the fact that Life once found it advisable to reject an article of mine...

...Life ran a picture layout bracketing Prof...

...These Committees and Parties and Movements, including the allegedly monolithic Communist Party, which fails from time to time to hold itself together even with the cohesive power of tyranny, all splinter up into segments which go it alone for a while and then founder altogether...

...the paradox is too much for me...

...The psychbsis that splits, and eventually kills, all these nice organizations, into every one of which whole oceans of sweat and tears are poured, is, it seems to me, the consuming desire for results and the consequent neglect of principles...

...Hartmann, and I do not want to hear another peep out of Luce on the problem of freedom of the press until he is ready to practice it in Life...

...I think I know how it happened...

...The Civil Liberties people, for instance, are for Civil Liberties...

...Paul, with one letter amended, applies...

...The principle here is the protection of unpopular minorities against not merely the law but the extra-legal wolf-pack...

...It is a little discouraging to see how few people, especially among those who said it the loudest when nobody was disagreeing with them, meant what they said...

...The Post, PM, and Winchell as usual threw everything they had, and some things they hadn't, at their voiceless victim...

...Dies against it...

...I don't doubt that Peace Now, which was started by pacifists, most of them Quakers, got mixed up with some wrong people...

...Arid in this extra-legal assault upon—this lynching of—persons and groups who deviate from the PM-Winchell line of "national unity," we see a shudder-some menace to the human rights this country is fighting, so we are told, to maintain and extend...

...Dies until I feel good enough to swing on him with all four feet...

...If I have not charity," said the Apostle, "I am nothing...

...George Hartmann of Harvard, the head of Peace Now, with notorious fascists like Gerald K. Smith...

...What is especially cute about the Life trick—the bracketing is an old technique of filthy journalism— is that Life's caption on the whole business was something to the effect that this was democracy, the land of free speech, where the truth was discovered in open debate, etc...

...What concerns me here, really, is the Peace Now movement...

...These Causes have not clarity, and in the end they are nothing...

...But Life, in a sense, did the dirtiest job of all...

...MARTIN DIES, the one-man Committee against Democracy, has just exposed the Peace Now movement, and this, as always, is the time for all good men to come to the aid of anything that Rep...

...This, you will agree, is the eminently practical viewpoint...

...In other words, this is not the land of free speech, where the truth is discovered in open debate, etc...

...Dies nor the Peace Now movement...

...There- is, not, so far as I know, anything illegal about advocating peace now...

...Pacifists would naturally be expected to take that position...

...Brothers, there are bedfellows these days that would scandalize a normal community, if there were a nor...