PEACE WILL BRING THE PAY-OFF
Barnes, Harry Elmer
Peace Will Bring The Pay-Off AMERICA UNLIMITED, by Eric Johnston. Double-day, Doran. $2.50. THE AMERICAN BEDLAM, by Harry A. Gordon. The Business Bourse. $1.50. THE PRACTICE OF IDEALISM, by...
...The best parts of this one are the introduction, which makes it clear that the most fundamental aspect of our era is that we are in a vast world revolution of which the war is only an incidental, if consistent, detail, and the recognition that peace will bring the "pay off" in the way of problems and difficulties...
...Alfred M. Bingham is really a splendid type of young 'American...
...With characteristically animated confusion—or confused animation—Mr...
...Johnston subscribes to globalon-ey, not realizing that it has been just this which has administered the coup de grace to private enterprise as he understands it...
...He had the wealth and personal presence to make a dashing playboy, but preferred to devote serious attention to public problems through progressive journalism and practical politics, having served as state senator in Connecticut...
...Nevertheless, Mr...
...It is highly appropriate that, on the paper jacket, the author is portrayed on a rostrum...
...Bingham could not write a book which is unworthy of serious concern...
...Johnston toe dances gracefully and graciously all around the subject of production and prosperity in the postwar period, but carefully avoids the really critical issues, such as using our technology to its fullest efficiency to get maximum production for the public weal and providing full employment for the masses, so that they can have security and possess purchasing power...
...seminar of right-wing inclinations...
...In reverse, Judge Gordon is rather sour in his attack on the domestic policies of the New Deal, and eminently sane and practical in his expressions on foreign policy...
...There is no doubt that Mr...
...And it resisted the bum's rush to war until its "Angel" turned on the heat for globaloney after June 22, 1941...
...Reviewed by Harry Elmer Barnes ERIC JOHNSTON'S book is brisk "pep talk" for postwar capitalism and private enterprise...
...Inevitably it has been beset by the confusion inherent in the failure to face the fact that we cannot achieve reform so long as our energy, fortune, and interest are concentrated on foreign areas and we are pursuing the very techniques most fatal to reform, enlightenment, and tolerance...
...The main trouble with this is that individualism has been unenlightened for so long that enlightenment can no longer be individualistic in the economic field...
...THE PRACTICE OF IDEALISM, by Alfred M. Bingham...
...It would make a good campaign book for the Republicans if they did not insist on attacking the Roosevelt Administration where it is strongest and feverishly supporting it where it is most pathetically weak...
...This monthly was for years perhaps the most courageous and realistic of our liberal journals...
...In other words, he dodges the fundamental problems involved in restoring and maintaining prosperity, namely, the scarcity psychosis, the deliberate restriction of output to enrich a favored few, and the dangerous rock of unemployment...
...Duell, Sloan and Pearce...
...Bingham's earlier volumes, it illustrates the confusion rather conspicuously...
...All in all, the book makes much the same impression as it would to watch Elizabeth Arden or Helena Rubenstein trying to treat a fairly well advanced cancer...
...The author of several thoughtful books on public affairs, he has been best known as co-editor of Common Sense...
...Since this book—on the nature and import of pur current world chaos and ferment— has a larger component of globaloney than any of Mr...
...Johnston gained some enthusiastic publicity a short time ago by the report that he "'talked turkey" to Uncle Joe and assured him that the United States is going to get more individualistic...
...But, even so, Common Sense made its back flip later and less obscenely than did the New Republic...
...The volume is a spirited brief for enlightened individualism...
...Johnston is a nice, clean young man with the finest intentions, and the whole book has the tone of a Y.M.C.A...
...JUDGE GORDON'S attack on the New Deal is about as unsatisfactory as most recent New Deal books...
...Stalin must have had to bite his moustache to keep from laughing out loud...
...New Dealers are usually pretty sane on domestic matters and close to idiotic on foreign policy...
Vol. 8 • August 1944 • No. 33
