A ROOM OF OUR OWN
Follette, Isabel B. La
A Room Of Our Own By Isabel B. La Follette A NEVER-FAILING marvel to me is the human be-ing's apparently infinite ability to seek out reme-lies for "what ails 'em." Be it poverty, sickness,...
...The problem is to keep the fat from getting into the fire before it is too late...
...If you go back and read the history of the Paris conference after the last war, the Papers of Col...
...That same group thought that Mussolini was all right because he "made the trains run on time," and the same crowd were for Franco in Spain, and for Hitler in his early days when they thought their protopypes in Germany would be able to use and control him...
...A magazine like The Progressive attracts people with intellectual curiosity and the desire for a better world...
...Falling For Paper Cure-Alls Many readers go still further and send us articles and tracts setting forth their own views on countless subjects...
...Unless we fight for a different kind of peace and a different kind of foreign policy, America will have1 turned her back on her great past...
...Yet it has deliberately placed in key positions in our American State Department representatives by birth and experience of the group who now as in the past are determined to use the economic and material power of the United States to bolster up the British and French empires on the one hand, and, on the other, to make us a party to enabling Russia, Britain (in particular), and France to a lesser degree, divide up Europe and Africa into "spheres of influence...
...The reason that the economic royalists support such a scheme is that they favor another gigantic WPA in the hope that it will save their type of economic system against the movement for basic change...
...While it must constantly be on the alert for new ideas, they must be measured against its own yardstick of values...
...you will find that one only need change the names and dates to believe he is reading present-day annals...
...However, as I am sure most of our readers will agree, our Editor sets forth mighty valuable fare whether or not each article is our own favorite dish...
...and perhaps the Editor's hair...
...A magazine, like an individual, must have its own set of values, its own integrity, if it is to be anything but a conglomerated, colorless hodge-podge...
...all of us seek the road to enduring peace...
...Economic Royalists And The Swag To anyone at all familiar with the history of World War I and its aftermath, there is no escaping the conclusion that we are all set for another scheme to use American men and resources to protect the swag that will come to the Great Powers out of the war...
...In cW overwhelming anxiety to do away with future wars, too many of us seem ready for the pitfall of paper cure-alls...
...it scares them into being willing to use our men and resources to prevent the realization of the ideals for which we are supposed to be fighting, by propping up the European powers that control these empires...
...Americans who see this greatest issue must do everything in their power to prevent the exploitation of America, and must work for a foreign policy which aims at cooperation not with those whose interests would undermine and destroy our ideals, but with those who adhere to the basic democratic principles...
...Doubtless the Army needed certain knowledge and abilities to be found only in an experienced resident of that territory, and determined, as any informed person knows, that the largely-Catholic Rhineland which had never taken kindly to Hitler still had some people worth salvaging...
...Good administration would leave some discretion to the men on the ground...
...I still feel as I did in pre-Pearl Harbor days and in the years before when the seeds of war were being sown in various parts of the world, that war can be avoided if enough of us have the will constantly...
...Some of you may remember Phil's articles after our trip to Europe in 1939 in which he described the new kind of treason he found in France and elsewhere—the economic royalists who would betray their country to save their personal fortunes...
...But the eagerness and sincerity with which all of us long for peace must not betray us into wishful thinking...
...An unctuous commentator blasts the Army for using Germans in administrating conquered German territory and confidently assures us that Mr...
...It is hard for us not, to be able to use all this material, but only a fat daily with unlimited funds could permit the multitude of articles sent us...
...Nobody wants war...
...But the strange and interesting anomoly is the attitude that the White House "won't accept" apparently qualified and anti-Nazi Germans for posts in their own country...
...One of the tragedies of war is the upheaval of people's emotions, with the result that too many of us lose sight of the hard-won wisdom of our own experience...
...Roosevelt won't stand for anything like that...
...And now our foreign policy is being developed along the same line...
...House and Secretary of State Lansing's memoirs, and so on...
...The idea that the teeming millions of India, Africa, and Asia might deserve a chance not only does not interest that crowd...
...Name-calling only beclouds the issue...
...So no matter what our differences of opinion as to details may be, we of The Progressive stick to our traditional belief in democracy in action as well as in word...
...Be it poverty, sickness, spir-tual yearnings, even the eternal quest for physical beauty, every human hunger seeks its gratification, and via a myriad recipes...
...This is natural and as it should.be in a country which still believes in freedom of thought and expression...
...Many of the Roosevelt-supporting liberals and progressives who were outraged at the State Department appointments exclaimed over their displeasure, but now go right ahead and support the program of this group of reactionaries...
...We cannot repeat too often that Hitler rose to power with the tacit consent of financial inter-ests in France, Britain, and even the United States.' These reactionaries opposed self-respecting relief for our own unfortunates, but sponsored the RFC when the banks and railroads began to feel the pinch...
...However, as Editor Morris Rubin put it in a recent issue, what is one reader's meat is another's poison, and the article which begets huzzahs of praise from some readers causes others to tear their own...
...Men and women *'ho in their more thoughtful moments abhor the labels of communism or even socialism for home use, whom we have all heard expatiating on the evils of anything "socialized"—medicine, mines, railroads, electricity—are falling over each other to advocate subordinating our very country itself to a super-authority...
Vol. 9 • April 1945 • No. 14
