THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
. . . THE PEOPLE'S FORUM . . . Changing Soviet Line Deax Sirs: In the June 4 issue of The Progressive I noticed an advertisement that may be a hint of great changes in world politics in the next...
...The Progressive: Accept any Japanese peace terms—now...
...The Progressive: "When You Call Me A Liberal, Smile", by Fred Rodell...
...Broen (D...
...There is no democracy...
...Jack Tallby Denver, Colo...
...The New Deal could not solve it...
...Smile," that the people who clamored for war before Pearl Harbor included the directors of Chase National Bank, the overseers of Harvard, Nicholas Murray Butler, the Stock Exchange, the Yale Club, and Trinity Parish...
...No American has ever held that "war guilt" sullies the name of Robert E. Lee...
...Ralph S. Flagg Washington, D. C. * * * One Man's Dialogue Dear Sirs: One subscriber's observation of the July 23 Progressive: The Progressive: Washington chairborne strategists...
...He is a definite reactionary at heart who attempts to identify himself as anything but what he is...
...We should recognize that a campaign of misrepresentation of everything German was inaugurated years before we entered the war...
...He very likely is again...
...How about calming down and giving credit where it is due...
...Hiester complains of the weakness of the single tax...
...to improvements and conveniences made by social cooperation, or by any method or device which will increase human power of production or add to human comfort and well being...
...Similar propaganda occurred in World War I as admitted by Lord Grey in his memoirs...
...Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people...
...During our Civil War 1200 prisoners were crowded in Libby prison in 6 rooms, many dying from abusive treatment...
...It's Time To Quit Kidding Ourselves' Dear Sirs: Does Stuart Chase really believe that that "some progress" he mentions in July Common Sense is going to get up tempo enough to keep us from plunging into those "yawning pits of hell...
...Summit, Calif...
...The hideous orgy of the Negro soldiers and the living death of the white women took place under white French officers and continued for 5 days...
...The present hate campaign was also inspired by the movie interests and the refugees...
...The other day, in searching for a reference in the Congressional Record, I ran across a reprinted article by Eugene Lyons which quotes Mr...
...Stories coming from Paris of American soldiers returning with loot of private homes, consisting of everything from pictures and radios to automobiles, causes me to question our own restraint...
...No one can foretell the future...
...Private enterprise cannot save us...
...We do not always agree with your positions but we do respect your courage and honesty...
...Only professional Communists believe it could have come through the crisis and still maintain its power...
...William Bross Lloyd, Jr...
...Will Stalin retire now...
...Wheeler and others, and made on the floor of the U. S. Senate...
...The Progressive: Non-fraternization policy—terrible...
...Yes, the time has arrived when the tail and hide must come off together...
...Send A Gift "Subscription Today...
...Anyway, as a guide for our future, is not our own past experience worth more than Hitler's un-American doctrine...
...I read the whole piece aloud to my son and he was so much impressed with it that I am enclosing his subscription to The Progressive...
...We do not condemn all Californi-ans because recently at the state reform school in Whittier young boys were beaten until one of them was killed, and boys were made to sleep naked in cold cells...
...This could have been a reasonable theory in 1933 but hardly 6 years later, so it was plainly propaganda that predicted something...
...In the process natural opportunities are equalized...
...Constant apprehension of war has the same tendency, to render the head too large for the body...
...Camp Germfask has now been removed almost en masse to an even more remote location, Trinity National Forest, California...
...Justice to the starving everywhere ' demands a speedy return to normal life in devastated Europe...
...A peacetime trained military force is a concomitant of a centralized government where supreme authority is in the hands of a comparatively few individuals instead of in the hands of the great majority of the people...
...It looks now as if he might have been a pretty good prognosticator, for some of our avowed peace-loving citizens have begun to embrace one of his and Germany's most diabolical "isms"—militarism...
...The single tax provides for the collection of the rent for the expenses of governmental functions...
...For every Gold Star man avoided now, 100 will be paid then and 1 doubt if the Japs will make any mistakes the next time...
...One cannot dismiss all this within 24 hours after the guns cease, though no doubt the chairborne strategists of Madison, Wis., very easily can...
...It will be more calamitous to the democratic process of constitution al government than the war has been if all citizens loyal to the A merican heritage do not solve the unemployment problem, when our men return...
...Mrs...
...It will be a thin spread...
...Let us have more of his articles...
...Scott Nearin was a "trial balloon" then for Soviet foreign policy...
...Prisoners made what shelter they eould from the debris of the stockade that enclosed them...
...Cpl...
...But if our own past experiences, together with Hitler's doom, does not convince us of the folly of compulsory peacetime military training, then we should take a peep at the present plight of poor old France...
...Yet what other nation in this war has fought and won on more battlefronts ? We had no significant amount of fighting equipment...
...The terror is in the mind and marrow of the present generation, and nothing but generations of freedom and liberty will ever root it out...
...For myself, I have never been as anti-Russia as Mr...
...Reader: "Rather ambiguous...
...In 7 months one-third died...
...We have had no compulsory peacetime military training in the past...
...The honor is high indeed ; only once before in the history of Russia was there a generalissimo, namely Alexander Souvorov of the days of Catherine the Great...
...But peace cannot, like punishment, be imposed by force...
...Seldes of a few years back...
...T. J. Welsh Chicago, 111...
...As long ago as 1780, when the Constitutional Convention was in session, the military question was a bothersome and perplexing matter...
...As it left the frontiers, it could hear the insults which continued to be directed at it from Moscow...
...Mary L. White Los Angeles, Calif...
...Quite properly the superintendent was later hanged...
...I am not competent to testify about any of the groups mentioned except the last, but of Trinity Parish I may say that Mr...
...It means that the foul-minded Nazi leaders in this country who make splendid use of the term "reds" will have to spread it to cover the government of Great Britain...
...The general in command of the area was our own Gen...
...H. J. Shea Bronx, N. Y. No Peace By Force Dear Sirs: Sometime ago it was reported that Hitler had boasted that even if his military forces should lose the war, the principles he had taught and the policies he had put into practice would win in the end...
...It's time to quit kidding ourselves...
...All of the hard work done by Stet-tinius and his fellow statesman, Nelson Rockefeller, in Mexico City and San Francisco, in lining up all Latin America against Russia with the expectation that England would join the gang in war against Russia before the American forces were withdrawn from Europe and the east, has had a knockout blow...
...headline may mean another change in the foreign policy of the Soviet Union...
...I remember very well hearing Scott Nearing speak in Chicago's Viking Temple in the Summer of 1939 in which he surprised his audience by pooh-poohing Hitler as a world menace, but lectured on the world domination of the British Empire, its "divide and rule" and "balance of power in Europe" and all of its warlike and reactionary policies of the past centuries in his usual scholarly manner...
...This is not just idle speculating, but a plea that those who hate war and distrust the San Francisco Conference as I think most of The Progressive readers do, will not let themselves be fooled into accepting as Allies those whose sentiments on war and peace, Hitlerism and imperialism, change with "orders from Moscow...
...Pass The Progressive Along I It's American, Alert, Accurate No Witch Hunting Dear Sirs: One wonders whether the dispensers of sweetness and life, who live in the large houses of Beverly Hills and control our movies and radio, are right when they say it is our duty to educate the ignorant and wicked German people...
...A dirty trick, isn't it, to quote Mr...
...THE PEOPLE'S FORUM . . . Changing Soviet Line Deax Sirs: In the June 4 issue of The Progressive I noticed an advertisement that may be a hint of great changes in world politics in the next few months...
...Hence, it is not a tax, but a payment for what the citizen receives, or any special advantages of location he may occupy from which others are barred...
...Enjoys Meyer, Mayer Dear Sirs: I want to express my deep appreciation of the articles in your paper written by Milton Mayer and Ernest L. Meyer...
...We've been picking hairs long enough...
...During that period I did a considerable amount of preaching myself in Trinity Church, on invitation of the rector and vestry thereof, and it was and is well known what my opinion in the matter was...
...Perhaps we possess a culture lacking in Bonn and Heidelberg, but have we the self-restraint necessary to sit in judgment...
...It could be used to build up justifiable American sentiment "not to risk our boys in Europe's quarrels...
...And that it, the way private enterprise tries to do it...
...The Progressive: "A Dissenting Opinion," by Oswald G. Villard...
...All this, plus the American Communist Party dropping its Political Association role, may mean a new "anti-war" or even "anti-United Nations" line...
...The rent is not due to any one individual with a title to land, nor to individuals without a title to land, but to all in common, the public, the people...
...It was largely inspired by our present allies in their determination to hasten our entry into war...
...The trouble with people like Seldes is that their passions and their prejudices run away with them...
...Yet what other nation has produced and transported over greater distances more war supplies...
...No snail-pace progress is going to save us from a head-on crash with the Rushing Express of unemployment when we begin to cut public expenditures to "save" money to "pay the debt...
...Rodell in his July 13 article, "When You Call Me A Liberal...
...All Nazis guilty of war crimes must be puntshed, but there should be no witch hunting...
...He was writing of the period when the Soviets were fighting for their lives...
...He probably never saw the wretch who commanded the prison...
...Isolation won't solve the problem, the "absolutist" objectors must be allowed complete exemption...
...Why should we allow ourselves to become the anti-Soviet tail of the British kite...
...The Nazi-Soviet pact came only a few weeks later and there was no doubt in my mind that Scott Near-ing's attack on Great Britain was a "trial balloon" and an attempt to make popular that "strange bedfellows" arrangement which brought in its wake the invasion and divi sion of ill-fated Poland and World War II...
...Labor is raw materials but business wants a surplus of it...
...F. R. E. 13th Airborne Div...
...It will make it possible for him to obtain a place to work, to make a home for himself without paying some other individual for that privilege, or to begin a new life under a burden of debt to a merciless banker...
...Paul Mundy Washington, D. C. Undemocratic Charter Dear Sirs: Leaders who have used up dozens of columns of The Progressive attacking the power politics machinations which produced the San Francisco Charter and attacking the provisions of the Charter itself have now—when the time came for action—favored ratification...
...Many thousands of these allies, black ones from Senegal, raped 5000 helpless white women and girls in the city of Stuttgart...
...Seldes wrote in a way that should be of interest to us in view of our great Lend-Lease shipments to Russia...
...A standing military force, with an overgrown executive will not long be safe companions to liberty...
...Reader: "Of course, and like the Junkers, the Jap militarists will convince the next generation of Japs that they were never actually defeated, so let's try again...
...by Scott Nearing...
...In that convention was the eminent, accomplished and great American statesman, Madison, who thus expressed his sentiments: "In time of war great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate...
...Under the profit system (which a lot of people, not excluding S. C. keeps trying to patch and prop up) every time there is an increase in labor costs there must be (according to business tycoons) an increase in the sale price of goods and services, ad infinitum, for ever and ever...
...Give us more from the same author—he knows his pretzels...
...Or, if Russia were to start bullying Turkey, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, or Switzerland, all of which are on the Soviet list to use pressure on...
...So many letters like that from John Gabriel Soltis in the July 16 issue do the same thing...
...These 3 men linked together with a "WAR, WHAT FOR...
...We are not pleased if they use their influence to spread foreign-born hates...
...These professional peace-lovers are actually advocating compulsory peacetime military training...
...It means that the present government of England and the government of Russia will cooperate to maintain peace and prosperity throughout the world...
...Rodell is barking up the wrong tree...
...Our Allies surely lack this quality necessary to those aspiring to be the moral mentors of 70 million people...
...Seldes was, nor can I today be as pro-Russia as he is now...
...George B. Gillson Covina, Calif...
...Others dug holes in the ground for shelter...
...Comdr...
...Does calling names cover up their ignorance of Russian methods and the "purging" of all who disagree...
...Andersonville prison was more frightful...
...Reader: "Who in their right mind would hail Rodell as a liberal...
...Let those who wish welcome the half loaf, but let them tie strings around their fingers now to remind them in case of future breakdowns that the proper institutions and the proper machinery are not being tried...
...Dr...
...Two of his fellow writers, Seely and Shoaf, are noted chiefly for their sympathy with the "Russian Experiment" and their defense of all of its many conflicting policies...
...Rodell will find it not only difficult but impossible to substantiate his charge by quoting any action of Trinity Church or any utterance in its clergy demanding war or encouraging those who demanded war...
...APO 333, New York, N. Y. * * * Outspoken Dear Sirs: I should like to congratulate your entire staff for its consistently fine presentation of the news...
...He is being attacked so vigorously because he is so able...
...We are fortunate to have an intelligent, outspoken paper at a time when hysteria seems to be dictating the policy of many other formulators of opinion...
...In another book, Mr...
...The rent he will pay, he will pay to himself as a member of society...
...Reader: "Non-fraternization was the desire of the officers and men of the AEF who had seen their buddies killed by thousands and also learned of the brutalities toward our captured men...
...But there are a good many CPS assignees who feel that the only way to break the system is to refuse to be made into slave-laborers...
...And fear is one of that distinguished pair of despicable emotions, want and fear, from which we are pledged to free everybody everywhere...
...Charles Seely, both of whom are fairly prominent men...
...I know that last sounds like a Hearst "red-baiting" slogan, but how else can you describe sincere, idealistic, and even brilliant people who change their whole political viewpoint overnight every time there is a change in "the party line" at the Kremlin...
...It is much more important than the Peace Conference...
...It is not wanted...
...It is true that many CPS men are "faithful to jobs which are . . . humdrum and of no immediate importance...
...Jacob L. Devers...
...But submission is not peace...
...One Wrong Tree Dear Sirs: Permit one of your readers who enjoys The Progressive to send a small but earnest protest against an imputation, made by Mr...
...I just wonder if the wolf (USSR) which after all is definitely a variety of federation of the world is not going to replace the horse (the United Nations) ? The name Union of Soviet Socialist Republics has always been a challenge and invitation to the rest of the world to join in and the above possibility is not so far fetched...
...It might be downright foolishness to expend much on either war supplies or military training during peacetime, for progress and invention could render both obsolete...
...It cannot save us even from World War III...
...A. C. Ferm Yellow Springs, 0. Seldes And Russia Dear Sirs: Every once in a while one of your Communist subscribers urges you to "see the light" by reading writers like George Seldes...
...This may save us from a host of fanciful variations on the old theme song about "machinery doesn't matter because if the people really want peace they can have it, whatever the existing institutions...
...Anita L. Cave Stillwater, Okla...
...Purge Of Red Critics Dear Sirs: I wonder why it is that defenders of Russian Communism always spend more words "calling names" than in using arguments...
...They seem to have no conception of how to maintain peace except by use of military force...
...O. M. Thomason Willernie, Minn...
...British Election Dear Sirs: The recent change in the administration of England's Government will, I believe, prove to be of more importance in bringing about and maintaining world peace than anything that has happened in this century...
...Or will the old process of Caesarian go on to its natural climax: the imperatorship...
...It means the dawn of a new day for the common people of the world and it should mean the awakening of American workers to the dense ignorance of working, fighting, and dying in order to keep in luxury the master class whose unearned wealth runs into billions...
...In Hollywood the movie magnates are mostly foreign born...
...The water they drank was polluted...
...To hear some people talk one would think that the thirteen stripes and 48 stars of the American flag were dreamed up by some artistic forefather while dropping off to sleep, rather than representing an heroic record—worthy of study for possible modern applications—of the firm establishment of a federation of highly individual and "sovereign" states...
...I may sound like a brother to Job but I've been watching and waiting since the "cross of gold" days for the ram of plutocracy to be shorn of its matted monopoly wool and lie down in peace with the lambs of democracy...
...All villainy is not confined to any one nation...
...Will it still be a greater problem than be fore the war...
...Take a good portion of Camp Germfask (Northern Michigan) for example...
...Does he really believe that business really wants to achieve full employment — or that it can and yet remain "good" business...
...Fred V. Williams Olathe, Kan...
...My authority for this story is the statement of Sen...
...That is why they can be so passionately against and then so passionately for the self-same system...
...Bernard Bell Providence, R. I. Madison And Conscription Dear Sirs: At the present time Congress and the people are anxiously discussing "Should we have compulsory military training...
...Villard is a chronic dissenter...
...Perhaps our French allies believe that the entire German people should be crucified to punish those guilty of the horrible conditions in the concentration camps...
...I think Chamberlin is the best qualified of the critics of the Russian ideology...
...We must find a way to maintain full production, furnish employ ment, raise the standards of life throughout the nation, and sustain the American spirit, for which more than a million men gave their lives...
...told Congress the other day, they, the Wall Street bankers, are planning to add another cost-sheet so as to take more profits and keep upping prices...
...It is not the only evil in our midst, but the root from which the others have sprouted...
...More Of Chamberlin Dear Sirs: Please don't allow the very vocal party which seeks to oust William Henry Chamberlin's writings from your pages to win...
...Or perhaps the present commander* ship-in-chief is a skillfully camouflaged Caesar ism...
...We are glad that they have been privileged to come to a country that permits them to amass vast fortunes...
...Seldes at great length on the subject of Russia...
...Victor C. Svimonofp Bakersfield, Calif...
...Robert E. Lee, our greatest American general and a man of noble character, had headquarters within a few miles of Libby prison...
...Marion Miller Summit, N. J. P. S. However, it is amusing and also unfortunate that we must "sugar-coat" the information for the public...
...Only American apologists for the Soviets have ever pretended there was democracy in Russia...
...Through combinations, monopolies, holding companies, and now through "trick corporations" or "Swindle, Inc.," as Rep...
...Private ownership of natural resources is the basis upon which all methods of exploiting labor rests, and the primary cause of all economic distress among the people...
...My only criticism is for the wording of the title, though of course I understand it to be a sort of catch line...
...I am referring to the Action for Human Welfare ad with the key article "War, What For...
...It will make it possible for the G. I. who comes back from the war fighting for his country to feel that at last he has a natural right to some of it...
...National Law Of Rent Dear Sirs: In your Forum of July 15, Mr...
...The Soviet Union may find a need for such anti-war sentiments in the United States to counteract the widespread anti-Soviet feeling which could spread rapidly if Russia were to take over Manchuria and Korea against the I wishes of the U. S., the British Empire, and the Chungking regime of China...
...It needs it, but plenty...
...The means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home...
...The election means that there will not be another world war during this century...
...A "patriotic" organization called it a "cesspool of iniquity" because its non-cooperative tactics were not understood...
...But even though it has been shorn of its gold, it has been robed in bonds and eats all the hay to pay the interest, leaving not a straw for the lambs to nibble...
...I mean at this particular and brilliant culmination of his career as a statesman and a warrior...
...Yes, you soreheads do your country a great service...
...It is possible that Marshal von Rundstedt and others of the German high command never saw the horror camp of Buchenwald...
...What if things shape themselves to allow the realization of a political allegory suggested by the famous episode in the Adventures of Baron Munchausen where a wolf jumps on the tail end of a horse carrying swiftly a passenger to Russia in a sled and eats her way into the harness of the horse, thus replacing the moving power of the sled...
...The Supreme Issue Dear Sirs: The most important domestic decision facing America today is the development of a plan whereby our men when returning from the battle fields can find employment...
...Well, I for one am tired of using cricket rules on the gang of American Commies who hit below the belt all the time when their beloved Stalin is criticized...
...Having saved the whole structure of his government and its vast empire from the terrible foe, Stalin undoubtedly deserves to be singled out from a score or so of Soviet marshals...
...Seldes in his book, You Can't Print That : "Freedom has ceased to exist in Russia...
...The natural law of rent: the inevitable progressive rise in the value of land for use due to mechanical appliances which give more effectiveness to labor...
...Edwin S. Potter Arden, Del...
...He hits the nail right on the head...
...But the real surprise came when he emphasized the "Socialist" and Progressive elements and trends of Hitler's "National Socialism" in the later part of the lecture...
...The only source of the publication is a box number in the very small city of Norwalk, O., yet in addition to the writings of nationally known Scott Nearing, 2 other men named are George Shoaf of California and Lt...
...And a first-hand knowledge of the rector leads me to say positively that Mr...
...Airing CO Situation Dear Sirs: Thanks to Dorothy Hutchinson for airing the CO situation...
...The temptation is strong to point out possibilities, especially one of somewhat nightmarish kind...
...You are doing fine work for a better America...
...When so few individuals are allowed to wield such extraordinary authority they soon become so full of themselves that they are more liable to try to dominate the whole world than they are to establish and maintain world peace...
...For A Better America' Dear Sirs: The article by President Hutch-ins on the front page of the July 2 issue, is a masterpiece of clear thinking and a heartening example of moral sanity and intellectual honesty...
...S. C. Franklin Sadler, Tex...
...It will put an end to "land-hoarding" and speculation in natural resources...
...Even though there isn't much we can do about it, yet we ought to do something besides tailing up the old cow of private enterprise...
...He focuses attention on the primary problem of individual liberties...
...As a matter of fact, the parish and its rector came in for some pretty vigorous criticism for not doing so...
...True, they could, due to technology and science, reduce costs, hence prices, hence stop the seesaw (it saws only up) of wages and prices, but they don't and won't...
...More Of Beats Dear Sirs: Thanks for that fine article by Carleton Beals in the July 16 number of The Progressive, "We Are Blundering Into Failure In Germany...
...I would say rather, "Hitler's Armed Force Beaten — Hitlerism Threatens...
...Gradually the American Relief Administration withdrew from Russia...
...In all history there is probably no parallel case of such wholesale national biting of the hand which fed th.em...
...It will destroy the selling value of land, but not its value for use...
...I suspect such persons are more apt to write than people like myself because while there is no pressure group bidding me to write, there is one urging them along...
...For she too had a huge peacetime trained military force...
...Such a government always needs a military force to protect it against those who are intelligent enough to believe in the principles of self-government...
...No one knows how to do anything, only O. G. Villard...
...T. 0. Thompson Oceano, Calif...
...Can you see anything on the horizon of the coming peace to solve it...
...Indeed, it will hasten it...
...James Montgomery Washington, D. C. Wolf And Horse Dear Sirs: The recent elevation of Stalin to the exalted rank of a generalissimo is in full accord with the ambitious nature of the Georgian, eulogized and glorified by the Soviet bureaucracy continuously...
...The weakness does not lie in the basic theory of the single tax, but in the minds of those who are unable to understand it, or perceive the natural law of rent, although it is in full operation all about them...
...Eastland of Mississippi, corroborated by Sen...
...Liberals and radicals of all shades can and will welcome his statement of the underlying principles governing our nation's crisis in the wake of this second world war, however they may differ as to specific policies...
...Whether their reasons are valid or not, let us have one thing quite clear: Nearly all informed progressive opinion agrees that the Charter fails to provide really democratic machinery for the discussion and determination of world affairs...
...Can full employment be provided for all the millions who must have it for their very livelihood...
...Then comes abolition of conscription, a tough nut to crack...
...Reader: "Any different than the chairborne strategist of Madison, Wis., or Connecticut...
...Wrote Mr...
...We who are close to the problem (I am a CO wife) cannot help but feel that if we acquaint the nation with the facts of the concentration-camp slave-labor system, we are nearer a solution to the undemocratic treatment of a misunderstood minority...
...That kind of "chin music" simply doesn't add up until and unless the common sense machinery of a democratic United States of the World is established and given a fair trial...
...Okla...
...Three of the best known were born in Russia...
...The Soviet Government survived, thanks to the American people feeding its millions during the worst period of its regime...
...Of course just the existence of a military force might, by creating fear, bring about submission...
Vol. 9 • August 1945 • No. 33
