THE EDITOR RESERVES THE LAST COLUMN
The Editor Reserves . . . The Last Column THE morale of American GI's in Germany is crashing to a new low, according to recently returned observers. Quite apart from an understandable longing to...
...School books are being prepared, and with the help of anti-Nazi teachers, everything is being done to counteract Nazi influence in the refugee camps...
...FEW Americans are aware of the fact that the Communist press of Europe is engaged in a bitter, apparently synchronized campaign to discredit the United States...
...Joseph G. Harrison, roving correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor—a paper which strongly advocates close Soviet-American relations—reported from Vienna last week that the Communist press throughout Europe is almost daily publishing articles —"many of them deliberately inaccurate—which aim at stirring up anti-American feeling...
...The camps will be prop-' erly equipped for the Winter to prevent diseases which might possibly endanger the Danish population...
...Quite apart from an understandable longing to go home, the boys are embittered by constant strife among the occupying Allies, the lack of clear-cut objectives, and the revenge policy of doing unto all the' Germans as the Nazis did unto the people they conquered...
...It is hoped," he said, "that by Dec...
...M.H.R...
...Stassen's sorn political enemy, Sen...
...Curiously enough, the Red press of Europe is blistering the United States for, among other things, abandoning "isolationism" and preparing to build a peacetime conscript army—policies which were mainstays of the party line in America for four years...
...Harold E. Stassen, recently released from the Navy where he was constantly alert to build his personal political fortunes, has made it clear that he is a candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination...
...Henrik Ship-stead, comes up for reelection in 1946...
...Last week Hjalmar Petersen, formerly a power in the Minnesota Farmer-Labor movement, publicly challenged Stassen to stand up and fight it out in Minnesota—where he and his record are known best—but there wasn't the slightest hint from the Stassen crowd that their contender wanted to show his stuff in a tune-up bout...
...The former Minnesota Governor, who is being boomed as a liberal because of his pronounced convictions for world government, apparently has decided to duck a test vote in his own state...
...After two world wars America has been contaminated with the bourgeois ideas of Europe, with problems of protecting frontiers, with military service, and with nationalism and militarism...
...The first thing you know the U. S. Red sheets, the Daily Worker and New Masses of New York, will want to snuggle up to us as comrades in the struggle against peacetime conscription—or will forget their former complaint that we were "isolationist gutter-rats," and denounce us now for being meddlers in "the political problems of European states...
...This, of course, would be an ideal opportunity for Stassen to test his personal strength and the popularity of his views on international affairs—Shipstead is a confirmed non-interventionist—but all reports from Minnesota indicate that he will play it close to the vest...
...Harrison makes the significant point that the anti-American drive is turned on, like a faucet, whenever there is any disagreement between the U. S. and the U.S.S.R., "whatever the subject may be...
...1, 140,000 refugees will be quartered in barracks, and an educational program for both adults and children will be put into operation among the German refugees...
...CAPT...
...The GI's know little or nothing about politics or economics, but they are wondering—more and more vocally, one newly arrived observer told me—how we at home can possibly expect peace and a democratic reconstruction of Europe by wrecking the agricultural and industrial machinery of a vital sector of the continent...
...At a recent meeting of the Danish Students Association, Worldover Press reports, Johannes Kjaerboel, chief of the Danish Refugee Administration and former Minister of Social Affairs, outlined a program which, he said, would make it clear that the Danes at least are not treating the German refugees the way the Germans treated their prisoners...
...This Danish policy of enlightened self-interest is a refreshing contrast to Four Power policy within Germany, where we are so complacent about the coming scourge of hunger and disease that we have ordered the Germans to prepare the graves for those who will die this Winter as a result of our own program...
...This campaign, which Harrison, a careful reporter, describes as "too widespread" and too consistent to be accidental," takes the' form of playing up, "out of all proportion," any favorable news either from the U. S. or of American activities overseas," and of "playing down any reports of constructive American activity, such as care and feeding of hungry children, reconstruction of wrecked cities and railroads, and encouragement of democratic tendencies...
...TINY Denmark is currently putting the Great Powers to shame in dealing with the German problem...
...Said La Voce, the Italian Communist paper: "Gone is that America, mother of democracy and freedom, which paid no attention to frontiers and which was free of political problems of European states...
Vol. 9 • December 1945 • No. 48
