POWER REPLACES JUSTICE
Power Replaces Justice THE SPEED, in fact the almost frenzied haste with which the Roosevelt Administration is driving for establishment of the international Agency which will permit the great...
...a power bloc of big nations wielding the stick and graciously informing the lesser breeds of smaller countries of their decisions, when made and acted upon...
...Probably Howard did not desire to be too explicit...
...A power-bloc such as this would naturally use the forces at its disposal to perpetuate the subjugation of those people who live in the backward areas most convenient for exploitation...
...Hearst Takes Over A Nasty Job (From Labor, organ of the Railroad Brotherhoods) ROY HOWARD, chief of the Scripps-Howard chain of newspapers, believes in dropping a hot potato before it takes the skin off his hands...
...that is why humanity will walk blindfolded into the most suicidal war ever seen, unless it comes to its senses in time...
...It is far more important, at this late hour in the proceedings, to have the country discussing and debating the general principles of the European settlement, including the fate of a beaten Germany, than it is to be engrossed in machinery designed to enforce whatever that settlement might be...
...nor are they going to accept cheerfully the assignment of enforcing a peace settlement whose terms they do not know...
...It would be far more logical and sensible, it seems to us, if there were prompt and thorough discussion and agreement on the peace settlement itself so that the men in the armed services, and the nation generally, could know what they are being called on to enforce, and could thus make their decision, as a free people should, on the basis of all the evidence available...
...Indeed the farmer does love to produce, but it is doubtful whether he feels more strongly about it than the consumer does about consuming what he produces...
...A Sound Investment UT^HE FARMER," Howard Tolley recently JL wrote in The Progressive, "loves to produce...
...When this situation prevailed in the pre-war days, the Government took one very intelligent step toward bringing these two together...
...There seems little doubt but what Congress will turn a deaf ear to these hypocritical bleatings and reenact the Stamp Plan...
...Typical of many a comment by those who believe strongly in world organization but who recognize that power is no substitute for justice was a recent editorial in an official publication of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation of Canada...
...Our guess is, however, that Howard found that distributing Pegler's libels on labor is no longer a profitable venture...
...It will be declaimed against as "government interference and paternalism" by those who passionately champion the broad humanitarian principles of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the WPA of big business...
...THE Administration's logic seems to us thoroughly twisted...
...He announces that sometime in November he will stop peddling "Pegler's column" and that William Randolph Hearst will take over that nasty job...
...There will be opposition to it, of course...
...Said the CCF organ: "The Dumbarton Oaks Conference, which is likely to go down in history as tragically well-named, is planning for exactly the kind of world organization which has been foreshadowed by the pronouncements of Roosevelt, Churchill, et al...
...And yet it is driving ahead with all possible speed to establish an organization which will protect the rest of the world—-the "peace-loving nations"— from aggression by these beaten and disarmed Axis nations...
...But they are not likely to be impressed by an agency which was hurriedly erected while they were busy-fighting a war...
...That is why the Atlantic Charter has never been made applicable to the colonies...
...It is now proposed that Congress begin consideration of the re-adoption of this plan to cushion the impact of peace...
...This publication of the CCF, which is just as eager to promote international cooperation and organization as any of the statesmen at Dumbarton Oaks, is rightiy concerned over the prospect that the conference is largely engaged in creating a "Frankenstein monster which will destroy all hope of a decent world order for many generations to come...
...Power Replaces Justice THE SPEED, in fact the almost frenzied haste with which the Roosevelt Administration is driving for establishment of the international Agency which will permit the great powers to govern the world, is bound to have grave and far-reaching consequences...
...The combination, in the classical economic sense, should provide a mutually advantageous situation...
...We do not pretend to know what that means...
...Simplicity itself, the Food Stamp Plan performed two vital functions...
...To this observation an America watching the greatest agricultural production miracle in all history will respond with a profound "Amen...
...It supported farm prices by taking some of the so-called surplus off the farmers' hands, and it provided health-giving food, on a sensible and respectable basis, for many of the victims of what has become a more or less accepted American institution—mass unemployment...
...The truth is," we are warned, "that the vested interests within the Allied Nations do not intend to give up their privileged trading positions and rights of disposition over natural resources and cheap labor—if they can help it...
...The beneficiaries of RFC largesse themselves should recognize that such an investment in the future good health of our people and the stability of farm prices is "good business...
...It inaugurated the Food Stamp Plan...
...There are certainly no reasons why it shouldn't...
...Howard explains that "the impact" of Pegler's writings is "so great that the editorial voice of Scripps Howard could only continue audible by resort to a stridency which we do not care to employ...
...These men know first-hand the horrors of war and are at least as anxious to prevent future aggression as any of the politicians and pundits clamoring for the immediate creation of policing machinery...
...r I 'HE growing disillusionment over the current proceedings at Dumbarton Oaks should give pause to the hurry-up statesmen...
...that is why the fate of colored peoples, outnumbering the white races in their millions, has never even been considered...
...Perhaps he discovered that many workers refuse to read his papers, and that advertisers are familiar with that fact...
...But there is something about the operation of our economy which makes it do things not at all in conformity with the eternal economic laws enunciated by the classical economists...
...Millions of men in the armed services, remembering how Prohibition was put over on their fathers while they were busy fighting a war, will resent the unjustified haste with which their Government is committing them to enforcement of a still undisclosed peace settlement...
...It is pursuing, on the one hand, a policy of insisting on Unconditional Surrender, a policy of bringing Germany and Japan to their knees, beaten, exhausted, powerless to fight on...
...The war will soon be over, and it is confidently expected that the farmer will be sitting around with a granary full'of groceries and the jobless consumer will be sitting around with a stomach full of hunger pains...
...The plan can be financed for less than the interest payments on RFC loans...
Vol. 8 • September 1944 • No. 37
