THE EDITOR RESERVES THE LAST COLUMN
The Editor Reserves . . . The Last Column SOME of the mail that reaches my desk must come pretty close to burning up the mail sacks in which it travels; it's that combustible. There are letters...
...Our position—that we strengthen the hand of the Nazi ruling clique by insisting on "Unconditional Surrender" and talking bravely of slicing Germany into impotent principalities—infuriates some of our steady customers who prefer the theory that the Germans are congenital war makers...
...Supporting Evidence Lately this expert has taxed us rather severely for not knowing that "all German soldiers from the time of Frederick are imbued with iron-like determination and fanatical zeal which make them impervious to appeals of any character, and especially appeals to the heart and the head...
...They knew the truth of Napoleon's observation that the moral is to the military as three is to one...
...It isn't difficult to understand why Ludendorff and Hindenberg were so enraged by Allied pamphlets appealing to the German troops...
...5, 1918, to "Army and Homeland," is even more significant: "The enemy conducts his campaign against our spirit by various means...
...A Point Well Taken Here's one chap, for instance, who calls me four kinds of a scoundrel for letting The Progressive convey "the fraudulent and mendacious" impression that discrimination against Negroes is confined to Southern Tories...
...Somewhere in the same state is a kindred soul—only he subscribes to "your unspeakably vile sheet just to see how far you will go in your love for the Hun...
...Elmer W. Henderson, Chicago regional director of the President's Committee on Fair Employment Practices, charged recently that some of the most flagrant forms of discrimination are practiced by labor unions, especially by some of the older craft unions in the AFL...
...He bombards our front not only with a drumfire of artillery, but also with a drumfire of printed paper...
...In nearby New York there is the patient chap whose letter we published in the People's Forum recently...
...Besides bombs which kill the body, his airmen have thrown down leaflets which are intended to kill the soul...
...There are letters like the one from a gentleman in Pennsylvania who fired a volley of unprintable language at The Progressive and myself and wound up with the gleeful announcement that he continues to subscribe only to derive the pleasure of tearing it to shreds each week...
...Shirer cites, for instance, this comment by Gen...
...We are indebted to William L. Shirer, the radio news analyst and author of Berlin Diary, who spent years in Germany, for some official evidence to refute our New England authority...
...M.H.R...
...If you weren't so anxious to cover up for cowardly labor goons, you would have the decency to expose the fact that organized labor is one of the worst offenders," my correspondent writes...
...Their great danger to us was clearly recognized...
...This comment by Field Marshal von Hindenberg, in his desperate manifesto of Sept...
...In this war, too, "it will come as a surprise," Shirer tells us, that even the so-called robots of the Nazi Army "are far from immune to our propaganda...
...There has been and is today inexcusable discrimination against Negroes in certain labor unions...
...Invariably, when we carry an article or editorial urging a new political policy and psychological campaign to break down German resistance, we get a flock of letters, ranging from the threats of the irritable lady in New York who is hounding her lawyers to hand us over to the FBI as Hitler stooges, to the New England professor who uses the finest language to express scorn and contempt for our lack "of any conception whatever of the Teuton mentality...
...Others, however, raise what might well be legitimate questions, even if they are written in uncompromisingly nasty language...
...Now, this sweet-tempered character obviously has a point, all adjectives and impugning of motives aside...
...The supreme command offered rewards for such as were handed over to us, but we could not prevent them from poisoning the hearts of our soldiers...
...he subscribes to the "mud-slinging, stab-in-the-back, smear paper" and is content to bide his time for the issues in which the Editors squirm and get hot under their collars when criticized...
...In one sector 65 of the first 100 German prisoners taken had copies of our leaflets on them, though the German command severely punishes any soldier who does not surrender them to his superior officer...
...Ludendorff on the collapse of the German Army in 1918: "The Army was drenched with enemy propaganda publications...
...Every publication, of course, gets its quota of anonymous mail, especially a magazine like The Progressive which is constantly taking sides on controversial issues—and often taking what is for the moment the unpopular side...
...Some of the anonymous letters are clearly crank criticism, and we don't pay much attention to them...
...THE one subject which never fails to bring its quota of sulphurous mail is The Progressive's recurring plea to our Government to make a generous and dramatic appeal to the people of Germany over the heads of their Nazi jailers...
Vol. 8 • May 1944 • No. 20
