THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
. . . the people 's forum . . . The Amlin Plan Dear Sirs: Conscription? Yep, I'm for it. Amlin has backslidden. It's a sort of neo-Communist flip-flop—except, of course, that I am only an amateur...
...Louis, Mo...
...Is that fair...
...The Progressive gives both sides to debatable things...
...22, that he has the facts telling us about the genesis of World War II, but that so-and-so are lined up against the publication of the facts...
...These three monopolies must be fushed if ever America is to gain its place in the sun...
...I have always admired your work in unravelling the causes of World War I. If you are loaded up with information concerning World War II, let us have it...
...We must enact a uniform Federal retirement act that will retire all senior citizens from industry at the age of 60 on an adequate pension of from $60 to $100 a month, this plan to be financed by a gross income tax of 3 per cent "pay as you go" on all gross incomes over $100 a month...
...I am only 13, but I wish you would print my letter...
...Although such an imprimatur of an admittedly useless atrocity was publicized throughout the British Empire and the United States, not an official voice was raised denouncing it in either Church or State...
...let us further suppose that all the coal, oil, iron ore, and steel plants had fallen into Hitler's itching hands...
...As one of the leading hotels in the world's third largest city, it lacks much in comparison with the first and second grade hotels in Chicago, Minneapolis, or Omaha...
...And wherever there is distortion of the truth by paid expressers of opinion, suppression of the truth by paying publishers of opinion, there is betrayal of the highest hopes of a war-wounded humanity, the hopes for a just and lasting peace, and there is selling cut of the kingdom of God...
...A paid administrator certainly has a better perspective on the problem than you or I.") R. H. Crum Middletown, Conn...
...Here would be a choice draftee and a worthy yeoman on one of those $100,000,000 tubs far out at sea where it Would be bypassed by tomorrow's weapons...
...If they acquit the German atrocity perpetrators, they will have handed down a decision which will be a legal bulwark of defense for future atrocity perpetrators...
...Unless we get rid of the internationalist gangsters in our internationalist Congress and get men with America first in their hearts, this nation is washed up as a world power...
...many threw themselves down on the ground...
...They are making every one of the assumptions that have been repudiated by those persons considered wisest in all the great civilizations of recorded history...
...democracy, and Mr...
...In this pamphlet, a reply to Hayek's The Road To Serfdom, the writer weeps over the "very frustrating situation" the voter faces in our democracy when he tries to decide whether to vote for the continuance in office of a President: "He has to make a balance of all the things he knows about that the President has done...
...Thus the Nazis were assured by their most bitter opponent in the democratic camp, just before they invaded Poland, that the commitment of any useless atrocity is justifiable if it satisfies "Honor," according to the, standards of the perpetrators...
...As an instance of exploitation, it is probably the only place in the world where the population is compelled to work several days a year, without any pay whatsoever, for their government in the tobacco fields and rice fields for the benefit of the bourgeois crowd in Holland...
...Meantime the villagers glowered helplessly in the neighboring foothills in the knowledge that they, their wives and their little ones would shortly die of thirst, hunger, or exposure in its most terrible form...
...Assertions and insinuations are no substitute for enlightenment...
...Jobs are not a cause but an effect of consumer demand for goods and services backed up by a sustained mass purchasing power...
...Or has it ended, Dr...
...Lawrence Stahl Bellevue, Ky...
...Barnes...
...The Tories through their War Minister replied that there was good profit in the business, and that if the British didn't get it the Americans and the French would and the British boys would be killed anyway...
...Every rational person on earth knows that France was crushed and Britain driven into the sea...
...Penned up in a narrow space, considerably smaller than Trafalgar Square, with hardly any exits, and packed together so that one bullet would drive through three or four bodies, the people ran madly this way and the other...
...For example: 1. That production of material goods is more important than the production of healthy, normal people and sound human relations...
...And peace, like charity, begins at home, Peace, because its spirit is that of malice toward none, charity for all, finds no home in the heart fearful for its soft comfort and hard power...
...1, in which he advises me to learn about socialist planning, is to quote Democracy Is Not Doomed, by the Socialist Judah Drob (August, 1945...
...Land would be leased for private use and building sites as now, but the land rent would be paid into the public treasury to take the place of taxes, which for normal times could all be abolished...
...First, make it clear (if this is at all possible) to high Army and Navy officialdom (perhaps excepting Gen...
...Boys are still being called to go into service, radio pro grams are still giving off hate for Germany and Japan, nothing is turning out to be that wonderful world which we were promised if we won the-war...
...Meanwhile Britain devoted her entire attention to keeping her lifeline open and fighting off the Hitler U-boats...
...My Texas-born chiv-alr...
...He does not...
...It looks like Dr...
...The people that made it seem proud of their work but I think they should be given a trial such as we gave the high enemy officials...
...Leslie E. Aller Takilma, Ore...
...Suppose that the Soviet Union had been defeated within the six weeks time limit given them by British and American military wiseacres who were determined to have the Soviet fiasco all over with, and finished in apple-pie order so that Hitler could turn his attention to applying the finishing polish to the rest of prostrate Europe at his leisure...
...Because of enterprise, saving, and investing by the capitalist, our standard of living is above that of primitive man, but because of monopoly of our most valuable land and natural resources by the landholder we have our exploitation of labor and undue centralization of wealth, poverty, and crime and dead civilizations in history and current dying civilizations...
...That the feeling is intense is shown by the population's attitude to prefer the brutal Japs to the Dutch enslavers...
...The Red Army, of course...
...William J. Busse Wantagh, N. Y. * * * Land Monopoly Dear Sirs: Labor strikes are still in fashion It is too bad labor does not see the difference between capital and land...
...They'll doubtless choose the latter...
...No sir, such creatures must stay back here with the rest of us and be obliterated...
...nor yet for the White Bellies who announce Charters and then scrap them, and stir up the Yellow Bellies to the kill...
...Norris Dear Sirs: In the Forum of October 22 Rev...
...Er, I mean flop...
...He added, "General Dyer may have done wrong, but at any rate he has his rights and I do not see how in the face of such virtual condonation, as set out on page 20 of this able document, it would have been possible or would have been considered right to take disciplinary action against him...
...Men should be encouraged when they do a good job...
...In commenting on the episode, he admitted that he did not see what good purpose was served by such devastation, but he excused it casually on the ground that at least it satisfied British "Honor...
...In the long run the land monopolist alone will keep the buying power of income down through exploitive land rent and cost of raw materials hidden in everything we buy...
...Will any red baiter deny that such a condition would not have made it plenty tough for us in our war with Japan...
...Give A Friend The Truth Send Him The Progressive Today Defense Of Russia Dear Sirs: It is strange that all the red baiters such as Hoover, Hearst...
...The first suggestion is to start a chain of letters to all your friends telling them to hold meetings in their homes (community meetings), and to work for the defeat of these politicians...
...Second, inasmuch as the Army and especially the Navy, will be about the safest place to be, in tomorrow's warfare, I have some nominations to make for draftees...
...And if you cannot give it, tell us why you cannot give it and give us the names of those who are preventing you from giving it...
...What is America's "holy cow" in this respect...
...Chamberlin, Thomas, Eastman and others of their ilk completely ignore the fact that the Red Army, and the Red Army alone absorbed the shock of Hitler's Blitzkrieg over a period of three long years...
...There will be no place in the draft for the "Bulls" and the Tojos, the "Blood and Guts-es" and the Goeb-bels or Streichers...
...He . . . must concentrate his judgment of a thousand different items of vital concern to himself and to the nation, in one single vote...
...how refreshing it is to read that there are so many worthy men in Congress as Richard tells about...
...I quote now from Congressman Mundt, writing from Moscow, in September this year: "Not a single taxi is today available to a visitor or a non-government worker in Moscow...
...Austin Williams Meade, Kan...
...Peter Guldbrandsen Berkeley, Calif...
...First, I think my 86-year old mother who had 11 of us kids and who has 76 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, some of whom she has helped raise, deserves a call in the first peacetime compulsory draft...
...For all this have our boys died and our industrialists made their cost-plus profits...
...Capital is not limited and cannot be monopolized and used alone to exploit, while land is and can...
...G. Edwarh Lind Downey, 111...
...In the meantime let us pool our money—everyone give a dollar to help clean out the monopolistic gangsters that very nearly ruined the great U. S. A. Witness our government borrowing from bankrupt banks to finance the international bankers' wars...
...Some administrators appointed by the President have done a good job...
...What kind of an insinuation does this statement contain...
...They also know that Hitler considered them both unable to offer serious resistance as the conditions and facts then indicated...
...We must abolish state sales taxes and substitute a gross income tax...
...Twenty years of association have driven me reluctantly to the conclusion that our self-styled "liberals," our academic planners and propagandists and our Socialists are great reactionaries...
...How about a real Farmer-Labor party that will smash both, rotten, corrupt, major parties...
...John G. McDonald Los Angeles, Calif...
...It surely is a pleasure to say that I am a progressive when people ask me about politics...
...Interest rates and wage rates are both held down by land monopoly...
...I hope the Congressmen mentioned get a marked copy of the Oct...
...It was the best trained and organized military force in existence...
...Stimulating Dear Sirs: I find The Progressive one of the most stimulating commentaries on contemporary history that I have had the privilege of reading...
...But Richard Neuberger's article in the October 22 issue gave ^ne a happy, uplifted feeling...
...A little over a year before the war broke out in Europe certain members in the British House of Commons demanded from the Government an explanation of its action in granting licenses to British industrialists to sell munitions of war to the Nazis, which, they alleged, would be used to slaughter British boys later...
...Arend M. Kraan Egg Harbor City, N.J...
...Omer G. Miller St...
...Lot To Learn Dear Sirs: I read the newspapers and The Progressive thoroughly...
...MacArthur) that we are entering the "Atomic Age...
...This writer also seems to object to certain contributors having pipes in their mouths...
...There is no registration desk as we conceive it in American hotels...
...Arthur Maier Milwaukee, Wis...
...The spiritual home of peace is the loving heart, a heart indifferent to no friend's need but responsive even to the needs of the enemy of yesterday, to his need of the only knowledge by which he can be a helpful member of the fellowship of nations, the knowledge that love is a stronger pbwer than hate, that love is the power of God...
...The war may be over, but it doesn't seem like it...
...Recommends It Dear Sirs: I have been well pleased with your educational newspaper, and recommend it to my friends...
...How does this conform with a statement in a 1939 issue of Soviet Russia Today: "Russia is industrialized to the extent that it is second only to the U. S. A...
...This was continued for eight or ten minutes, and it stopped only when ammunition was on the point of exhaustion, enough ammunition being retained to provide safety for the force on the return journey...
...There was quite a reaction in Holland, several Multatuli clubs were formed (the official wrote under the name of Multatuli) demanding justice for the people in the colonies, but with that characteristic callousness of the Dutch and German barons, they were outlawed and suppressed...
...If they fail to do so under any excuse whatsoever they will have by default given their approval to the theory, sarcastically attributed to Americans by Canadians, that no act in itself is a crime but that the standing of the perpetrator determines whether or not his act is criminal...
...Thus we see that, on no less an authority than that of the great Allied leader, Churchill himself, the higher-ups in the commission of atrocities have their rights and cannot be condemned, nor would it be right to condemn them, according to the Churchillian code of morals, if their own governments condone their actions...
...Irving W. Lamore Silver Spring, Md...
...Also I have living in Los Angeles a grandfather who was born in 1844...
...The Savoy Hotel is one of the best in Moscow...
...Lowell Norris objects to The Progressive carrying ads of Joseph McCabe's books and calls them atheist publications...
...Horrors...
...One is so likely to hear about the bad...
...Have we a free press or haven't we...
...Some things he likes, others he dislikes...
...To provide this increased purchasing power of the masses we must have steady employment at good wages (say a minimum of 65 cents an hour) and a shorter work week (say a 30 hour week) to provide more jobs...
...When the fire was directed at the center they ran to the side...
...Death by the atomic^Jbomb would have been merciful by comparison...
...Well, as history reveals, the most golden opinions ever expressed were unpaid for by others, but were paid for by expressers of them often with their livelihoods and sometimes with their lives...
...This is the better kind of peacetime conscription I am for...
...They apparently resent the presentation of the real facts about Russia...
...ONE more citation...
...In the first section of his biography published in 1939 and summarized in the July 1939 issue of the Reader's Digest, Churchill tells how, as a young British Army officer acting on orders from above, he had assisted a punitive expedition in devastating the Mamound Valley in India, slaughtering the livestock, destroying the crops and the food supplies, demolishing houses, cutting down the shade trees, and filling up the wells...
...Note that the foregoing ml Churchill's own account and not that of an Indian Nationalist...
...The Editor of The Progressive has been more than fair in giving such malicious utterances space in the Forum...
...1 first read it last Summer when a subscription was sent me by a friend...
...The remedy is nothing short of public ownership of all monopoly capable of exploiting, as of all land, natural resources, and public utilities...
...Now where do our jurists in Europe stand...
...And here is the rub...
...Why didn't he do it...
...One elevator serves those who stay at the hotel which is about the size of the Carpenter in Sioux Falls or perhaps a little larger...
...On the other hand, if thSy convict, condemn and punish these German "War Criminals," they must also be prepared to indict, convict, condemn, and punish all the British, American, French, Dutch, Swedish, and Swiss, and other imperialistic politicians and industrialists who contributed in any way to the building up of the Nazi Party and its war machine in Germany, or the corresponding forces in the other Axis countries...
...Here's the plan...
...As all lawyers know, the most potent factor in determining the law on any point, in the absence of amending enactments by a constitutional legislative body having jurisdiction on the point in question, is precedent...
...A Lincoln Needed Dear Sirs: I am renewing my subscription because I want to stay in the fight against undercover dealings, regimentation, and compulsory military-training...
...Some 55 million men, women, and children in these islands, enjoying a fine native civilization, equal if not superior to that of the Filipinos, are suffering under the cruel, merciless head of their Dutch masters, whose greed has reduced them to a condition close to slavery...
...Charles Amlin S. Pasadena, Calif...
...In the foregoing way our present adulterated capitalism (adulterated with landlordism) and our so-called free enterprise will have to be purified if we don't want it supplanted by something akin to Communism, which might mean security, but would it mean freedom...
...It was holding a seditious meeting...
...What professed lover of democracy would dare suggest such a thing...
...Stalin told Donald Nelson that the Soviet Union intended to pay in full its Lend-Lease obligations to the United States...
...And still, if any people in the world is entitled to this God-given right, it is the people of Java, Celebes, and the thousands of islands that form the Dutch India Empire...
...Let's have both...
...Schacht...
...With Britain and France out of the way as contenders on either land or sea was the appointed time to strike the Soviet Union with the mightiest armed force this world had ever seen, and that contention is literally true...
...It did not keep Germany out of wars and as for keeping strong, we were that withoutit...
...Goodness knows the everyday people in the United States need better representation than what they often get, but then the everyday person just as often fails to learn whether his representatives do a good job or not...
...Then we really would have economic freedom, the basis of all freedom, free enterprise, and opportunity for investment and employment...
...This likely will be the most difficult job in the plan...
...Gibson wants to aggravate it a thousandfold...
...I am old enough to realize the horror of the atomic bomb and I burn up when I read that we slaughtered 200 thousand Japanese people with it...
...There is no warm water in the rooms...
...For the same reason the conquest of the Indies by the Japs was an easy matter...
...Tell them that there are three monopolies that must be crushed, namely, political monopoly, corporate monopoly, and last, but not least, financial monopoly...
...so the female dinosaurs will have to remain in the civilian danger spots, along with us saber-toothed tigers...
...it is costing us $10 per day...
...Frank D. Slocum New York, N. Y. * * * New Party Dear Sirs: I am wondering how many readers of The Progressive are willing to save what is left of our Republic...
...I am afraid the average man, in California at least, knows something about the origin of the war now ended...
...If more troops had been available, says the officer, the casualties would have been greater in proportion...
...The kingdom of God is the kingdom of peace...
...For the physical prostitute, Christ had words of forgiveness, but for the intellectual prostitute, there was nothing but words of condemnation...
...Norris would enjoy taking us back to the Dark Ages, when all heretics could be put on the rack, or burned at the stake...
...Bui women have not yet seen the necessity of exposing the causes of' men's mass murder...
...It was not attacking anyone or anything...
...When fire had been opened on it to disperse it, it tried to run away...
...Program For Abundance Dear Sirs: As the United Nations charter has been approved by the U.-S...
...For argument's sake, let us admit the Red Army was impotent and the Soviet Union was a busted shell of dictatorial despotism, that Hitler kicked it out of his way and marched into Asia to link up with the Japs...
...Had the Red Army failed to stop Hitler at Stalingrad it is very likely that our Soviet haters would be doing guerrilla service, or be inmates of concentration camps, because it was not impossible for the Japs to land on our western shores, and with plundered resources of the Soviet Union and Hitler's backing the Japs would have made things plenty lively for us, and also given our red baiters an opportunity to demonstrate their undying patriotism...
...Three girls comprise its front officg force and they sit in the lobby at a library table...
...Or maybe the reason is something else again...
...There you have the paradox of "national planning" vs...
...C. E. Robel Boise, Idaho Reply To Rev...
...J going to include women...
...I quote Mundt further...
...Chur-chill-himself described the massacre thus, "The crowd was unarmed except with bludgeons...
...Barnes' 'Insinuations' Dear Sirs: Harry Elmer Barnes says in The Progressive for Oct...
...The fire was then directed upon the sides...
...Others have done a bad job...
...Pass The Progressive Along It's American, Alert, Accurate Freedom For The Indies Dear Sirs: Newspapers throughout America will again scream against one of the Four Freedoms by attacking the struggle for freedom and independence in the Dutch Indies...
...Could that be another reason why the red baiters take on fits of Rus-sophobia...
...Sen-ate 89 to 2 and by the overwhelming majority of the American people, it is obvious that our main objective now is the achievement of not necessarily 60 or even 50 mil lion jobs but "full employment"— that is, employment for all who are able and willing to work...
...And we call ourselves civilized...
...The body of man belongs to the animal kingdom, but the mind of man belongs to the kingdom of God, and woe unto that man that sells out that kingdom for a mess of pottage...
...Further on in the same speech Churchill self-righteously declared that this was not "the British way of doing business...
...The real pacifists who are doing— or would be if they had half a chance—more good for the world than the "service" men, will have the option of being the new type draftee, or remaining in the danger zone...
...I value your paper more highly than any other of the many that I read...
...And not the least sad sign of these materialistic times, is the judgment by many people of the worth of an opinion by the money paid for it...
...There would be no more unemployment problem and no excuse for government planned economy...
...Vernie G. Reith Pittsburgh, Pa...
...Just before the recent war flared up in Europe a world famous British politician and historian, who subsequently became one of the Big Three leaders of the democratic powers, inadvertently set forth one of the "rules of the game" as understood by the freedom loving Anglo-Saxons...
...We need today a man with the meek, open, and above-board frank-ness (Abraham Lincoln) who will take this weapon of destruction— atomic energy—and make of it an instrument of liberation for the human race...
...I have nine years in the U. S. Marine Corps, four years in the U. S. Army and four years in the U. S. civil service...
...Then the House of Lords exonerated Dyer...
...That is the American way...
...Some directions taken by the Administration have benefited him, others have harmed him...
...E. E. Coleman Grand Rapids, Mich...
...All children under 12, including waclets and wavelets, should be in the 1 ' jraft...
...2. That the weaknesses of mankind are greater than its virtues...
...Our President can make an outright gift of Lend-Lease, but does he propose to write off your taxes...
...Many sections of the city are overcrowded with unsanitary living conditions, the working classes have all that they can do to secure the simple creature needs essential to keeping body and soul together, and prices of such luxury items as soap, meat, cheese, cigarettes, and condensed milk are almost prohibitive...
...And today shows the most tinny and brassy opinions, now being expressed by radio commentators or newspaper columnists, are best paid for by purchasers of them, least paid for by expressers of them in lines of high thinking and plain living...
...Now I anticipate a smear Mundt campaign in the offing by our "comical comrades...
...3. That managers and rulers are not subject to the corruption of power, and are not as selfish as others...
...I hope that somehow the plans and makers of this weapon are destroyed...
...These distorters and suppressors cry peace, peace, when there is no peace in their hearts...
...As workers would neither need nor want to work many hours there would be jobs^for all...
...During 53 months foreign shore service I was in the first battle of Shanghai, World War II...
...With all Europe under the iron heel of Hitler, its vast productive potential with its millions of slave labor under such a despotic control, with British and American naval power knocked over like ten-pins in a bowling alley, while Hitler rode the waves of total and complete victory over the known world—is this the reason why the red baiters hate the very innards of the Soviet Union...
...The articles by Morris H. Rubin have been most enjoyable...
...Some years ago a former high official of the Dutch Government, who had been for several years in the Indies, wrote a book under the title, Max Havelaar, in which he depicted the situation: "A kind of Holland's Uncle Tom's Cabin...
...Then there is the case of the massacre of Indian civilians at Amrit-sar in 1919 by British troops acting on the orders of one General Dyer...
...Would it not be better to have this cleared up first...
...Without any other serious resistance offered anywhere, Hitler was able to concentrate the weight and number of his powerful force against Russia...
...The Power Of Love Dear Sirs: A letter appeared in the New York Sun, asking why do people write letters to newspapers, and, by implication, questioning the right of writers, unpaid for their opinions, to express them in the public press...
...V I have been especially blue lately...
...Praise For Neuberger Dear Sirs: If I were to write to you every time that I thought how excellent is The Progressive, I would be sending you a letter every week...
...Reply To Gibson Dear Sirs: Perhaps the best of many answers I can give to D. C. Gibson's attack on me in The People's Forum, Oct...
...I wish there were more men like Richard Neuberger and more states like Washington...
...OF course that happened many years ago...
...War Crimes,' Then And Now Dear Sirs: Without exonerating or justifying the horrible atrocities of the Nazis in any way, the attention of the American people should be called to the farcical nature of the "War Crime" trials now in progress in Europe, and to the untenable position in which our American jurists taking part therein find themselves...
...In the absence of such a legislative body, having jurisdiction over so-called international law, precedent reigns supreme...
...We must have unemployment compensation, at least $25 a week...
...Hearts indifferent to a humanity's need of the elementary essentials of life, hearts solely concerned with the privileges and luxuries their power gives them, are not hearts in which peace can find a home...
...The people don't know what's good for them," and "For every hate broadcast you need three of the other kind as a counterpoise...
...We've got a lot to learn if we admire those fiends that invented the bomb...
...We must have extensive Federal works programs for modern highways from Canada to the Gulf, airdromes, airfields, and terminals...
...ten rubles a month and that of a lieutenant one thousand rubles ' a month, and yet these people assure us inequalities have been overcome in the Soviet Union...
...Now what are some of the precedents applicable to the present "War Crime" trials...
...22 Progressive...
...Economic freedom must precede political freedom...
...Report On Russia Dear Sirs: We are constantly being warned of lies about Russia by our "comical comrades" but it appears they have slight regard for-truth themselves...
...Will these speculators in the blood of their electors and their money hungry licensees be placed in the dock along with Dr...
...We must have "all coverage" social insurance to cover every man, woman, and child, the blind, and incapacitated against all the hazards of our modern complex life...
...From European publications I consider reliable I learn that the pay of the Russian soldier is...
...In order to provide full employment we must have a stable and well balanced economy of abundance...
...But Churchill gave the story to the world in 1939...
...This was dispatched by a U. S. official leaving Russia, hence uncen-sored...
...Censorship kept the news of the massacre from the British public for seven months...
...It's a sort of neo-Communist flip-flop—except, of course, that I am only an amateur at politico-economic opportunism and flip-floppery, and have no pseudo-Marxist Generalissimo to tell me when to flip...
Vol. 9 • November 1945 • No. 45
