TWO ARGUMENTS FOR THE 'BLANK CHECK'
Lonigan, Edna
Two Arguments For The Blank Check' TELL THE FOLKS BACK HOME, by James M. Mead. D. Appleton-Century Company. $3. OUR HERITAGE, by Sol Bloom. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $5. Reviewed by Edna...
...The generations before us have done their duty...
...Neither Congress nor the President nor the courts can suspend the Bill of Rights, even on account of war...
...If Bloom is now devoting the same talents to dramatic presentation of the Administration's more obscure foreign policies, that puts responsibility for judgment upon the individual citizen, where it belongs...
...Bloom's book is addressed to the Jews, the Masons, the DAR, teachers of history and civics, whose names are still on the mailing lists of the Sesquicentennial Commission, and to people who take titles seriously...
...The political comments seem as objective as the travelogue, but that is only seeming...
...THE book does injustice to Sol Bloom because he was not an historical scholar, but he was a man of will and emotion, an organizer who did a most important job as a cultural "distributor," by promoting thousands of local celebrations between 1932 and 1937 of the birth of George Washington and the origins of the Constitution...
...Upon each generation falls the duty of safeguarding the great treasure, the precious jewel of liberty...
...Mead speaks of the "difficulties" of Lend-Lease accounting, because the Army did a great deal of construction in Iceland which was not charged to that country...
...We must do ours if our children are to be free...
...JAMES M. MEAD, New York Democrat, left Presque Isle, Maine, the "Grand Central of the Airways," on July 26, travelled over the Government-owned air network to Europe, Africa, India, China, and Australia, and was home again on Sept...
...That is as if a corporation president told his board of directors that he did not charge his customers for some unsold goods, but did not explain where the goods legally were left...
...These two strategies turn the work of Congress—men earnestly trying to preserve the constitutional separation between the legislative power of the purse and the executive power of arre6t into an extrahazardous occupation...
...On Page 280, Mead gives a capsule statement of the end-product of the blank-check policy...
...but that is the best gelatine for the culture of propaganda...
...There is a genuine interest in people, and a certain roundness of outline of each episode not easy to obtain with only one or two days in each country...
...The two books have in common the fact that they are both part of the Administration's propaganda...
...What better preparation could we have asked for this crisis than intensive promotion, in nearly every school and patriotic association in the country, of fresh interest in our Bill of Rights and our Constitution, or of our first President who could have started an hereditary aristocracy and did not ? Bloom was reminding the nation, "In times of stress many attempts have been made by officers of the Government to violate the rights of individuals...
...The statements on controversial issues are too neatly spaced, too clearly made by experts in the art of suppressing the controversial premise, of giving full play to the facts that no one questions...
...These attempts have been made by Congress, Presidents, courts, and states...
...There are also pictures of Rep...
...Bloom's speeches about George Washington when he was Director of the Bicentennial Commission, his speeches for the Sesquicentennial of the Constitution, documents in connection with Lend-Lease and UNRRA from his work as Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, a biography of Bloom by Ira E. Bennett, letters, and newspaper articles, a total of 662 pages...
...The work of the Administration's public relations experts in building up the reputations of members of Congress who sign the blank checks is to be bracketed with the work of the Administration's CIO- Hillman Committee, whose task is to end the careers of men who will not sign what they do not see...
...In all these cases the Bill of Rights was invoked to protect the individual...
...The principal mater--ial in both cases is original and bears all the earmarks of the individual interests and genuine hard work of the two men...
...Sol Bloom's Our Heritage contains New York's Democratic Rep...
...They are arguments for the "blank check" in foreign policy and in domestic spending...
...Mead's book is addressed to the families of soldiers, to Catholics, the Irish, the Railway Brotherhoods, the AFL, and the Poles...
...He gives a lively account of what he saw and heard...
...The United Nations are to lend credit and engineers to backward nations (thus substituting state imperialism for the private variety) and "an international agency will distribute the commodities of the world," thus putting the work of farmers, industrial producers, and professional men under an international executive, unencumbered by any legislative restraints...
...THE books are part of the campaign to substitute dramatic appeals to masses of citizens in place of cold and critical analysis by Congress...
...The parts are put together a little too neatly about the theme of political piety...
...Interspersed with this chatty information, at evenly spaced intervals, are comments on how well Lend-Lease has been managed, how farsighted the Administration is, and how unfortunate it is that Americans must have a Presidential election in the midst of war...
...Reviewed by Edna Lonigan SEN...
...Bloom with the King and Queen of England, the King of Greece, the King of Yugoslavia, Prime Ministers, and Cabinet members...
...What was won by our fathers we must hold...
Vol. 8 • July 1944 • No. 28
