AMERICA TODAY: WARNING AND CHALLENGE

...Only by giving the people some material stake in preserving peace can we hope to have them support pacific policies and combat bellicosity and warmongering...

...By the same token, however, everyone of us faces a supreme challenge— and on the most alluring front of all...

...In the Executive Department nearly all of the interest is centered on "getting on with the war...

...If Mr...

...Nor is there evidence of any stampede in Congress to pass the proposed Wagner Act embodying some of the more moderate suggestions of the Planning Board...

...Just so long as millions of men and women have no better prospect than impoverishment and suffering in their home countries, there will be just so many millions ready to gamble on the hope that war may at least temporarily improve their condition...

...John L, Lewis has changed little in twenty years, as a person...

...Lack Of GOP Leadership For example, John Roy Carlson's amazingly popular book, Under Cover, rests content with lambasting our peanut Fascists or charging Fascism against highly reputable publicists, while ignoring the alarming Fascist tendencies in the whole current of our wartime civilization and policies...

...But there is little evidence of realistic leadership in the Republican Party which gives promise of any capacity to deal progressively with postwar problems...

...From these circles we have had chiefly the glittering generalities of the Four Freedoms, the highly preliminary Atlantic Charter, and the slogan of Unconditional Surrender...

...One of the most disturbing items in our public psychology at present is the bitter, spontaneous, and unmitigated hatred of John L. Lewis...

...Danaher to give the Senate action some realism and to make it guarantee a constructive international program was ignominiously snowed under...

...It is usually assumed that this is simply a hatred of Mr...

...Lewis personally...

...But Harold Laski has well warned us that, if we wait until the period of postwar reaction to plan for a glorious future, there is every probability that such planning will aim mainly at a restoration of the status quo...

...If the United States is to lead in creating a finer civilization on a global scale, it must first prove its sincerity and capacity by taking stock of our domestic problems and setting our own house in order...

...Not a few Americans have professed to be alarmed about the dangers of Fascism which are alleged to exist in strong Executive leadership and the long continuance of a given Administration in power...

...indeed, they may have been consciously designed to distract attention from the greatest threats to our democracy...

...Dies and his smear squad...

...Representatives in the future world assembly from our southern states will fraternize with those chosen by the Hottentots...

...In general, then, as we survey the current scene, there is little cause for rejoicing...

...They denounce the reactionary and oppressive tendencies in the policies of those now reordering the world, yet howl without ceasing for a world government and an international police force which will crystallize and perpetuate the very policies they so roundly condemn...

...Rubin has pointed out in brilliant, if disconcerting, fashion, that even those journals and commentators who shout most loudly and constantly for a better world order behave as though they did not let their right hand know what their left hand is doing...

...We are not heeding Justice Douglas' statesmanlike admonitions...

...While the plans for the future are as numerous as the proverbial sands of the sea, there is a depressing dearth of foresight and planning among those in a position of public responsibility for the future...

...There is no evidence on Capitol Hill of any comprehensive planning for a new and better America which can show the way to the rest of the world...

...One of our main alleged objectives in fighting tnis bloody and expensive war is to defend democracy against the inroads of totalitarianism...

...Americans have a job to do here at home—a task whose magnitude and possibilities stagger the imagination, a task whose completion would go far toward strengthening our influence over the whole world and thus fortify the promise of peace...

...But Congress has persistently refused to take even such a timid step in behalf of democracy at home as the abolition of the poll tax as a qualification for voting...

...Our newspapers, the visions of our columnists, and the cocksure effusions of our radio commentators simply radiate ambitions and plans to remake and police the world after the war...

...The majority of the leading candidates seem to share their party's overwhelming desire merely to get back in and dig in, hoping that the twenties will be repeated...

...Our more starry-eyed wartime idealists have proclaimed that one of the major goals of the great conflict is to establish racial equality throughout the world...

...Either avid globaloney or a return to unprecedented isolationism could take place without any embarrassing reversal of publicly stated Congressional policy...

...Not a few have been somewhat confused about our responsibility for stopping Japanese oppression of the Chinese, while England continues to sit ever harder upon the swarthy boys in India...

...Roosevelt's thunder for the sake of political expediency and personal ambition...

...Nothing is being done or planned for the white-collar element among our "common men...

...America Today: Warning And Challenge By HARRY ELMER BARNES A REALISTIC COMMENTATOR has suggested that the men of Mars have probably ceased reading the funny papers and now secure their amusement primarily by concentrating upon American newspapers, the radiant dreams of our starry-eyed totalitarian liberal columnists, and the Congressional Record...

...Peace Begins At Home Evidence of this is to be found in the fact that Senators Ball and Nye could both apparently vote with equal enthusiasm for the Senate resolution...

...Personally Mr...

...Nor is the political temper of the country any more reassuring with reference to building a better America...

...This may very well have been necessary from a military point of view, but it surely had a corrosive influence upon our pretensions to pure and limpid idealism...

...The prospective policy of the Republicans is sufficiently smug and reactionary even to warm the heart of Walter Lippmann as he contemplates the prospect of a Republican triumph in 1944...

...Prevailing National Psychology The outlook for America, cast in the role of world savior, is scarcely any more promising and exhilarating outside of official circles...

...Harding's "normalcy" than inclined to resurrect even so feeble a gesture toward the future as the New Deal...

...That task is to make the Four Freedoms a living reality here at home—especially freedom from want and freedom from fear...

...In fighting Nazi ideals, we have ourselves eagerly taken over for popular consumption all too many of these very ideals...

...All of this has borne out the ominous predictions of many that, in the process of conquering Fascism, the latter would demoralize its conquerors and impose its ideology upon those who sought to suppress it...

...Though O. W. Willcox has shown that we could, by the most efficient methods, turn out five times as much food as we do with one-fifth of the manpower now engaged in agriculture, we still plod along with rationing and food shortages...

...Congress appears to offer little more hope or promise as an agency of Utopian effort than the Administration...

...The Administration has assigned the venerable Barney Baruch responsibility for some postwar planning, but he has not received effective Congressional support, and the program is pretty much tied up with the assumption of the continuance of the Democrats in power in Washington...

...If a large bloc of Tories in Congress has anything to do with it, this century will be indefinitely postponed...

...Have We Defended Democracy...

...One of our main objections to Fascism has been its racial arrogance and intolerance...

...Any such assumption is a dangerous illusion...

...Hull and the Moscow agreement but they have taken no steps to curb the doings of Martin Dies...

...Even the more dramatic and most publicized efforts to expose our trends toward Fascism are likely to have the opposite results...

...Congressional leaders have hailed the success of Mr...

...Utopia is not only "to be made but also regimented and rendered secure for all time against the doings of evil men and depraved nations...

...But there is surely little ground for optimism when we observe the specific character of some of the reasser-tions of Congressional independence in recent months...

...The effort of Sen...

...Yet the prevailing national psychology is one of an American Vansittartism, designed to stimulate and perpetuate arrogance, hatred, and vindictiveness...

...He wears his clothes better and pays more attention to his engaging iron grey hair...

...Indeed, Congress continues to aid and abet Mr...

...Justice Douglas, in a memorable address and an article in The Progressive, emphasized in a timely and cogent fashion the vital truth that, if we are to have a better world order, we must first see to it that we have a better social order right here at home...

...Moreover, it has done much to confuse public sentiment and to blur the objectives of our war effort...

...They have gained great satisfaction and reassurance in contending that Congress is at last "asserting itself" as a check upon the Executive...

...Lewis is really hated today because, better than any other man, he symbolizes the attitude and philosophy of aggressive labor circles...

...Temporizing palliatives and patchwork are about all that the Administration and Congress combined have been able to turn out in this field...

...Presently, when it is too late, they will be found leading the disillusionment chorus, just as they did after 1919...

...Willkie's rhetoric offers an exception, his record surely does not...

...No doubt the assertion of independence and initiative on the part of Congress could be a sign of a reawakened democracy and popular leadership...

...He is feared as the spearhead of the only realistic labor elements of the country in our day...

...The Most Challenging Front It is worth noting, as Mr...

...Lewis has only grown more benevolent and ingratiating as the years have passed...

...Ostensibly, our country is committed to a program designed to promote an era of good will, peace, brotherly love, and abundance on a planetary scale—to assure globaloney at its best...

...In 1924 and 1928, when he sought to throw the vote of the United Mine Workers to Coolidge and Hoover, he was regarded by many who now hate and despise him as a cultivated gentleman and an upstanding American patriot...

...In short, the legislative branch of the government is as yet planless about the international future...

...Carlson has been aided and abetted chiefly by groups and persons whom many regard as the most dangerous forerunners of American Fascism...

...Moreover, it is well known that Mr...

...Vice President Wallace has had much to say about the "Century of the Common Man...

...It has abolished the National Resources Planning Board, the only federal agency which had the responsibility for comprehensive and long-time planning for the postwar needs of this country...

...There is surely ample evidence to support this cynical conclusion...

...The farmers make up the other main group of "common men," but Congress has done little to solve our agricultural problems in any basic fashion...

...There is good evidence for believing that he is merely seeking to steal Mr...

...Not even Adolf Hitler provokes so automatic or copious a secretion of adrenalin into the blood stream of all too many Americans...

...Congress seems more directly headed toward Mr...

...The resolutions recently passed by the House and the Senate, in the ostensible effort to put the United States on record as an active participant in planning a new international order, have been even more vague and unrealistic than the Atlantic Charter and the Four Freedoms...

...In many sections of the country this operates as effectively to restrain democracy as the decrees of a Fascist dictator...

...It would seem that only the dynamic urges characteristic of wartime efforts can supply the essential incentive for daring and constructive planning...

...Present trends indicate the possibility of a great Republican sweep in 1944 unless Mr...

...Churchill has ordered that postwar planning must wait upon the conclusion of the war and, apparently, the Administration has acquiesced in his demand...

...As Harold Lasswell, H. N. Brailsford, and others have amply demonstrated, any hope of a peaceful world is inseparably connected with social justice and political efficiency at home...

...The Ominous Absence The ominous absence of responsible public and official support for world Utopia has been impressed upon me as a result of recent personal contact with Washington circles...

...But Congress has shown no enthusiasm or initiative in laying plans for a better America, which might serve as a living example for each country in the federated world Utopia...

...Anyhow, it is concerned with conversion rather than planning...

...There is little ground to believe that he would revive the New Deal, to say nothing of providing us with a New Deck...

...The current attitude toward him is an ominous forecast of the bitter conflicts which may lie ahead in postwar labor relations...

...Drastic anti-labor legislation has already been passed, and hardly a day goes by without the suggestion of more menacing threats to the interests of labor, which surely constitutes a large segment of the "common men" of our country...

...Roosevelt gets another of his lucky breaks, which must come to an end sooner or later...

...Yet, during wartime, race hatred and antipathies have grown and flourished here at home without precedent in our national experience...

...This dangerous trend has been forwarded by the spectacle of our official and quasi-official collaboration abroad with "good Fascists," whose aid has been needed in immediate strategic situations...

...This is all excellent, but we have to face the painful reality that the contradictions and paradoxes in the picture are more numerous and impressive than any visible assurances of immediate success in finding the end of the global rainbow...

...Indeed, Congress has, by implication, indicated its disapproval of even moderate planning, well within the capitalistic structure of society...

...Our knotty farm problem is still hitched to a regime of scarcity in production and of impoverfshment for the producer...