THE EDITOR RESERVES THE LAST COLUMN
The Editor Reserves . . The Last Column Respectability For Cartels? THE somber warning by Jerry Voorhis, in his Page One article, that the monopoly and cartel crowds are preparing to start up in...
...Lately I have heard from a correspondent in the Asiatic theater of war who commented on my use of the Pearson quote by saying that Pearson hadn't even scratched the surface in exposing the extent to which America's men, money, and materials are being used to crush the Four Freedoms in India and club rebellious groups into submission...
...There's another phase of the whole foreign policy picture which leaves me more than slightly uneasy...
...THE somber warning by Jerry Voorhis, in his Page One article, that the monopoly and cartel crowds are preparing to start up in business at the old stand when the war ends, is amply confirmed by the recent comments of responsible British and American bankers and industrialists...
...And yet we are asked to help police Britain's empire and Russia's spheres of influence—even though we are refused an opportunity to shape the policies to be enforced...
...There, I think, lies the twin tragedy of our present course...
...They are talking, ever more boldly as Allied armies race toward Germany, of "closely-knit international economic cooperation" which will "integrate" production and distribution...
...M.H.R...
...And Pearson himself came up with a new chapter'in the sordid story last week...
...He quoted extensively from a report submitted by Ambassador William Phillips to President Roosevelt on the former's return from a survey of India...
...The consequences of this "blank-check" program of committing ourselves in advance to enforcing any settlement are doubly tragic if the policies placed in operation by our solo-minded allies turn out to be imperialistic, reactionary, and thoroughly alien to the American goals of economic opportunity for all and individual liberty for each...
...2. The gradually-growing doctrine that unemployment is an "international problem," and need not "agitate" us at home...
...3. The just emerging line that cartels have been "misunderstood," that they are actually instruments for international economic "integration...
...The Phillips' report makes it all too clear that the vast population in India regards the war as a struggle, not between'good and bad, but "fascist and imperial powers," and that we are literally letting the British get-away with murder when we acquiesce in their insistence that India is purely an Empire matter which doesn't concern us...
...But if they do, they'll be taking a giant stride down the road toward World War III, as Jerry Voorhis, certainly no isolationist, shows so convincingly in his thoughtful article in this week's issue...
...We obligate ourselves, in advance, to participate in the enforcement of any peace settlement, although in large areas we are denied any voice in the shaping of that settlement...
...I had always thought that the United States was regarded around the world as the friend of freedom, the nation which, born itself in a revolution against an imperial power, was ever ready to lend a helping hand to other peoples who hunger for their freedom and independence...
...A fortnight ago, Standard Oil of New Jersey, which engaged extensively in arrangements of "cooperation" and "integration" with Nazi trusts before Pearl Harbor, launched court action in New York to recover German patents seized by the Government on the ground that it alone is entitled to benefit from the Farben patents...
...Reversing America's Role...
...Danger Signals, All The new respectability which is being built up for international cartels is only one of several danger signals, the most insistent of which are: 1. The "cops 'n robbers" theory of peacemaking, under which the "peace-loving nations" kill off the "bad guys" and the "international outlaws" and dismember the "criminal nations," thus making it unnecessary to get at the causes of war...
...I haven't the slightest doubt that the high-powered experts in propaganda will be able to paint out the stripes on this- pussy cat before the peace is very old, and that many of our liberals, bewitched as they are with anything and everything that is plastered with stickers from abroad, will make their peace with the idea of international cartels...
...Also in New York last week, the arch-internationalist New York Times expressed strong approval of a privately-financed investigation of the value of monopoly and cartels, implying that they were not so bad as one might think...
...Ask any independent business man who was "integrated" into bankruptcy by trusts and cartels...
...Britain insists that we have no voice in Empire matters—one fourth of the earth—and Russia proceeds to unilateral determination of European questions...
...That's why, perhaps naively, I was shocked several weeks ago when Drew Pearson, the Washington columnist, reported that American money was being used in India to suppress the fight for freedom from imper~ ial domination...
Vol. 8 • August 1944 • No. 32
