A JOB TO DO
Coleman, Mcalister
A Job To Do By McALISTER COLEMAN HAVING spent the past few weeks in the hospital and out of it in a feeble effort to recover the health I lost on a New England "health farm," I have been trying to...
...And then Attlee went on and told the Tories who are the majority of our Congress today, just what his government was going to do—nationalize key industries under democratic public planning...
...Furthermore, Max declared that he was a Simonpure, practical 'realist' and that people like Progressives and other radicals who went around talking about peace and good-will and such namby-pamby stuff were, consciously or unconsciously, helping Hitler and Hirohito and Gerald L. K. Smith...
...We have to think rather of the best means of building up peace...
...New Haven has just gone through the motions of a mayoralty election...
...The editorial writers again agreed that it was a good thing we won World Wrar I when we did, as there is now some question as to who won World War II, and as for World War III— * * * IWAS charmed with the idea of Max Lerner, editor of PM, of writing editorials to be bottled...
...I have no doubt that this "will be a fascinating bit of historical data for the atom-survivors of 1965...
...Rolling an embittered eye "amid the encircling gloom," Max has decided that it is pretty nearly all up with what we jocosely call our "civilization...
...It is not clear from where I am writing how come The Nation now takes such a firm stand against peacetime conscription, whether it's because the atomic bomb has made a ghastly joke of huge armies and navies, or whether Freda doesn't want to go to war with the Soviets within the next five years...
...Well at first Max, knowing no more about editing a paper than our ship's cat, was quite humble, and did a fairly tolerable though decidedly long-winded job...
...We can be thankful that we are alive to take an active part in it...
...All that is clear is that in discussing Truman's policies, The Nation seems to have lost a big piece of its "first, fine careless rapture" over what the great, liberal lismocratic Party under the leadership of the com-mon-sensical, plain man from Missouri was going to do to get us out of the rubble the war left behind...
...He got the idea that all the world from Boston to Bessarabia was waiting around to get the party line from Lerner...
...We are all paddling at a furious rate—backwards...
...In order that mankind in the - distant future (always with the proviso that there is any mankind or future) may know what Max Lerner of PM was thinking about in November, 1945, he has put his thoughts on paper with the suggestion that the manuscript may then be put into a bottle to be picked up by such survivors of the present shambles as are still floating around...
...Whatever happened...
...my stout survivors, and let us drift on to our doom...
...My...
...Contrast the speech of Clement Attlee's outlining the British Labor Party's plans before our Congress to the mumblings of our pseudo-liberals, foretelling the ruination of all our civilization...
...14, 1945, which says that Max Lerner has just about given up civilization...
...I should have stood in bed...
...I have a hunch that a lot of the current "liberal" misogamy derives from the fact that the "liberals" have just discovered that putting all their eggs into old tory capitalist basket was a big mistake...
...A Job To Do By McALISTER COLEMAN HAVING spent the past few weeks in the hospital and out of it in a feeble effort to recover the health I lost on a New England "health farm," I have been trying to catch up on what has been the state of the nation in the recent past...
...However, though Heaven knows there is nothing for us to dance in the streets about, I do believe we needn't be quite so low in our minds as the totalitarian liberals bid us become...
...IT took a deal of courage for the leader of a Socialist government which is seeking a huge loan from capitalist America to stick to his guns that way...
...Briefly, and not at all confidentially, Max thinks civilization stinks...
...Look mates...
...We have a building job to do, here and now, as Attlee suggests—the building of a good peace centering around the freedom and security of the plain people of all the world...
...The top-men in this town whose Yale University is dedicated to "lux et Veritas" ("light and truth" to you) are sunk in gloom and convinced that errer is the order of the 'day...
...Heave ho...
...will cry the finder of the Cassandra-laden glass, "here is a bottle with a piece in it from PM, dated Nov...
...exclaims the crew in unison, "but who was Max Lerner and what was PM...
...Said Attlee in the course of that frank and memorable address: "In facing world problems as we must, it is a great mistake, in my view, to think constantly of war and the prevention of war...
...So once more The Nation winces under the pains of disillusionment, and once more its bemused readers wonder what the hell it's all about...
...We have not stood up to our enemies for six years to be beaten by economics...
...Tut...
...Among other things we do not have to lie in darkened editorial offices with atomizers held to our neurotic noses sobbing about the perfidy of old-line politicians, our relations with Soviet Russia, and that next and final war coming up in five years—the Last Lallapalooza...
...my hearties, Where's your history...
...He was of course uneasy about his job, so he covered this up by announcing that he was pope of the only true liberal church and that anyone who didn't accept his daily bulls would immediately be subject to excommunication...
...Italian tenders of the Republican machine elected their man, William Celentano, in place of the Irish tender of the Democratic machine, the longtime Mayor Murphy...
...Thanksgiving Day has come and gone and I figure that we ordinary people have quite a lot to be thankful for...
...From what I read and hear, we have stopped drifting as we were doing when I was stricken...
...But in this bottled editorial Max is very mad at 'realists.' He says that being hard-boiled and all, got folks into the mess they were in, back in 1945...
...But then Attlee and his followers haven't been busy of late compromising and making deals and hitching up with "practical politicians...
...To expect consistency from a self-styled liberal who thinks that you can get world-wide democracy by one-half the world blowing the other half off the face of the earth is like asking a man on a sinking log in the South Pacific for directions to Newport, R. I." * * * THEN I read in The Nation how Freda Kirchwey is apprehensive that the Administration is preparing for war with the Soviets within five years...
...Max Lerner was a college professor who received a call to go down into Brooklyn and edit a tabloid named PM (meaning Post Meridan, not Post Mortem) and financed by a liberal Chicago multi-millionaire...
...And then, all of a sudden, he became Messianic...
...That accounts for the fact that the President is so lathered up about pushing through peacetime conscription...
...Every editorial writer in town agreed that it was a blessed American privilege that we could have any election at all, and where would we be if the fascists had won ? Then we had a celebration of Armistice Day, but it rained out the planned festivities on the Green and some of the boys had to settle down to steady drinking in the back rooms...
Vol. 9 • December 1945 • No. 48
