THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
¦ ¦ ¦ THE PEOPLE'S FORUM ¦ ¦ ¦ By Mossier Key To World Peace Dear Sirs: Through the War Department this Administration has finally, reluctantly, announced that the diet of the German people...
...Peter j. Hagerty Buffalo, N. Y. * * * «Ure This Issue With Friends Lesson In Lunacy Dear Sirs: Who helped arm Japan...
...This too would take care of the things mentioned in the letter, "Report From Germany," in the same issue...
...Individually, and within youf church, labor unions, co-op, farm, and club organizations, adopt overseas relief families...
...5. Save scrap iron...
...PM, whose prospectus says it is "against people pushing other people around" is silent...
...And if we are to have any peacetime conscription of our youth, let it be a conscription for a public works program to make the world a better place in which to live and not for war which is destined to destroy all civilization...
...Throughout America today the press tells us our greatest enemy is the CIO, yet they never condemn the cause of poverty and unemployment...
...These two characters called poverty and unemployment created the CIO...
...However, knowledge of the need for food, clothing, and medical aid along with sympathy for the victims of the ravages of war will not prevent nearly all children in Germany under one year of age and 80 per cent of the children in France under one year of age from dying of starvation this Winter...
...American business firms made shipments of scrap iron to Japan as follows: 1936—1,057,000 tons 1937—1,900,000 tons 1938—1,380,000 tons 1939—2,000,000 tons 1940— 960,000 tons...
...I also favor a World Federation where the achievements of science, atomic energy, and all other energy and knowledge shall be used for the social, moral, and economic benefit of all mankind...
...Get your friends to do likewise...
...Praise For Hesseltine Dear Sirs: WilliamJB...
...PM And The Progressive Dear Sirs: I thought your readers might be interested in the following letter I wrote to PM in New York: To the Editors of PM: For future reference I have been saving choice copies of PM to illustrate how a well known "liberal" newspaper contributed to the problems of postwar Europe...
...but without a break, these hapless youngsters are still being fed to the Military through the draft board hoppers...
...Mrs...
...As for Pvt...
...This human suffering contributes nothing to the preservation of peace...
...Certainly none of us would want to be recipients of this cruel and stupid treatment of a helpless people...
...15 and Oct...
...If a further load of drafting must be imposed, however, let it at least be put on shoulders where in some sense it fits—not on defenseless kids...
...Such a course...
...I don't expect you to print this letter (but I shall send a copy of it to The Progressive...
...I do remail the copy I receive to people that I think are earnestly interested in political truth...
...You know all the answers...
...Later Smith sought to rent the Minneapolis Civic Auditorium for a meeting and an appeal was made to the City Council for a hearing...
...The war is now three months past...
...Not Too Clean Hands Dear Sirs: Quoting from the Dec...
...Any other policy can do nothing but plague us with a well deserved sense of guilt...
...Anita L. Cave Stillwater, Okla...
...PM was at the time whooping it up for bigger and better non-fraternization...
...Words cannot describe the feeling of resentment that I feel when such things can occur in the face of civilization...
...Because in my own letter, "Nagasaki Atrocity," appearing in your Nov...
...Louise N. Wheelwright Blowing Rock, N. C. * * * Villard's 'Frankness' Dear Sirs: The Progressive is an honest and timely paper, but if it prints more of O. G. Villard, it will lose its reputation...
...You keep shoving under our noses your adherence to the idea of collective guilt...
...Far be it from me to suggest that this one just-mentioned group be persecuted, when there is actually no need for the draft anyway...
...The Russian Government protects the working people, and they ought to be protected...
...It is inconceivable that implications of the Potsdam Pact have been made clear to the American people without arousing greater protest...
...This bit of primitive and magical thinking in a so-called liberal newspaper makes one feel heart-sick and disgusted...
...More and more the writers of The Progressive show forth that inner perception of truth so necessary, and sorely needed, for the creation of a new and different civili-" zation if we are to survive...
...3rd, reads in part as follows: "The first German prisoners of war returned to U. S. Army control by the French have been classified as unfit for work by American medical authorities...
...Our congratulations to Mr...
...3 issue of rhe Progressive, Page 2: "Gen...
...In January and February, 1943, Smith was scheduled to speak in the Twin Cities...
...Award Dear Sirs: Now that all sorts of awards and honors, including Nobel Peace Prizes, are being doled out lavishly at the war's end, I've been thinking that some sort of award ought to go to the editors and writers of The Progressive for maintaining the best in the American traditions of honesty, decency, dignity, .and fearlessness...
...THE PEOPLE'S FORUM ¦ ¦ ¦ By Mossier Key To World Peace Dear Sirs: Through the War Department this Administration has finally, reluctantly, announced that the diet of the German people within the American zone will be increased from the starvation point of 1,200 calories per day to the semi-starvation point of 1,550 calories per day, .as of Jan...
...It is a crying shame and an unspeakable outrage that no voice is raised in Congress in their behalf...
...but, as a matter of fact, persecution of the vilest kind is now being visited on these young boys...
...The Fleet, moving at the speed of its slowest unit, the submarines, say 15 to 16 knots, would arrive at a point 800 to 1000 miles North-North-West of Hawaii on Dec...
...The article characterized the policy as hysterical and short-sighted, and predicted that it would fail again...
...The Forgotten Draftees Dear Sirs: I write to enlist your championship of a neglected cause: the forgotten American boy of 18...
...The rise of Soviet power, its tremendous industrial development, population growth and extension of political power overshadow Europe, removing the physical conditions under which Germany might conceivably challenge the world...
...Thanks also for Eugene Dodd's letter, "Defense of Clergy" in that issue...
...Imposed upon such reality our plan for blowing up, burning, or removing industrial plants amounts to nothng less than a super-Buchen-wald policy for destroying a people by removing their means of existence...
...If we wish to be truthful, ever since that day, it has been we—to be more specific, American big business —that have steadily been building up the modern Japanese nation...
...I would finance these pensions and public works programs by a graduated income tax On all incomes above $100 per month and make this tax so heavy on those in the upper brackets as to check the concentration of.wealth in the hands of a few...
...An interesting contrast: Back in early June The Progressive published an article criticizing the non-fraternization policy and pointing out that this policy had been tried after the last war and had been abandoned as a failure partially because of the great rise in venereal diseases occurring in the occupation forces and explaining why...
...I think it is most natural that the best way to increase interest in the educational value of The Progressive would be to make a trial rate of numbers of copies for your subscribers and let them pass them out or mail them to people they know will get interested...
...It were wiser Pvt...
...A Partial Answer Dear Sirs: It is not necessary to inform readers of The Progressive as to the need for immediate relief in Europe and Asia...
...The firms continued shipments—a vjgtory for free business enterprise...
...Harold Bock_ Cascade Locks, Ore...
...Quoting again from the same issue on Page 12: "The net working capital of American corporations has doubled, skyrocketing from $24,-600,000,000 in 1939 to $48,000,000,-000 this year...
...Act now...
...Who got hit...
...PM has been following a vicious racist policy in foreign affairs while pretending to opposition to the same sort of thing at home...
...It stands out all the more because of the shabby liberalism of the "lily liberals," as Fred Rodell calls them, during the war...
...Of course, it would be when the people being pushed around are Germans and German-speaking peoples...
...We earn some of it undoubtedly, but surely we must have some virtues...
...By this action you will be personally responsible for getting food packages to your adopted family regularly every month this Winter...
...Under such "hot" orders the Commanding Admiral would steam "full speed ahead" rather than slowing down...
...Dennis that cruelties perpetrated upon prisoners of war have' by no means been restricted to the yellow races in this or any other war, as witness, for example, the treatment of German prisoners by our own Allies, the Russians and lately, the French...
...The hearing was granted and the Council Chamber was crowded with people who believed in freedom of speech and assemblage, but the opposition, led by no less a personage than the present Mayor Humphrey, won out and Smith's application to rent the Civic Auditorium was denied...
...It really is alarming to know that so many are only parrots repeating untruthful, selfish propaganda that is most detrimental to their own welfare...
...3 issue...
...Or could it be that the Japanese Admiral, after having received orders to attack, slowed down to about six knots, hoping that "a single American plane" might spot them and thereby give him the excuse for returning...
...I'm afraid America does not have too clean hands...
...That's America—our republic...
...2. Big business must be left free to do as it pleases...
...Industrial goods must be produced and exchanged for agricultural products from other countries if these people are to live...
...Insist that the Government lift the present ban on the mailing of food packages to Japan and Germany...
...The problem of preserving the peace is no longer the problem of controlling Germany...
...Every individual who thinks something should be done should write to his Congressman, Senators, and President Truman urging that America increase her commitment to...
...Maybe your dates are garbled...
...Our public health doctors are merely medical men, how could they know what it is all about...
...Reply To Pvt...
...What can be the kind of heart that anyone could have who could (and yet does not) remedy the situation, be they American, Russian, German, or what not...
...It was our Government which step by step helped build up the Japanese war machine and established into power the Japanese militarists and navalists, for let us not forget that enlarged military and naval forces in Japan meant enlarged sales of materials and equipment from America...
...4. Freedom to murder their own sons is the glorious privilege of all citizens...
...We live in a new time and nobody can afford to read baby stories...
...Devastation here is European devastation...
...Greatest Enigma Dear Sirs: Our great nation, surrounded with wealth and plenty, proved we could finance, equip, and feed the world in time of war...
...15 issue...
...Dennis Dear Sirs: I feel obliged to answer the letter, "A Soldier Replies," by Pvt...
...H. H. Ferris Rio, Wis...
...Speech Dear Sirs: On Nov...
...The only war crime of these little ones of all nations was that of being born...
...This program should include the construction of huge dams in the valleys of the rivers in the West, for the purposes of soil conservation, irrigation, flood control and electric power, as well as the construction of a system of North-South, East-West super-highways...
...What you write is completely biased and emotional (and often not even with decent, humane emotions...
...Let me, moreover, assure Pvt...
...Of course, that fits in with the collective guilt type of thinking...
...It is encouraging to note that there still are places in these United States where freedom of speech is permitted and protected by the proper authorities...
...Million Circulation Dear Sirs: I would like to have The Progressive read by every U. S. citizen interested in Progressive Democracy...
...H. W. Meyer New York, N. Y. * * * Bryan And Clergy Dear Sirs: Thanks for William B. Hessel-tine's article on Bryan in the Dec...
...The latter oile was excellent...
...This is rather incredible...
...It will be interesting in the future to note the low levels to which contemporary journalism has sunk...
...Freedom Of...
...To me PM has become indistinguishable from the chauvinistic jingoistic sheets with which we are all too familiar...
...L. Clovis Hirning White Plains, N. Y. * * * Pearl Harbor Time-Table Dear Sirs: In your issue of Nov...
...Dennis that it is only because of my deep feeling for what boys like himself have had to suffer in this inhuman war, I am convinced more than ever of the urgent necessity for the reestablishment of a peaceful and fully democratic new world order, and this can never be accomplished by the perpetuation of the spirit of hate and vengeance against entire peoples with whom we have enjoyed peaceful relations in the past and-whose national economy, as in the case of Japan, we have been chiefly instrumental in creating...
...I just thought you ought to know how an old enthusiast for PM feels about you and that there are many more who feel the same as I do...
...This was before it was brought out that the Russians had no such ban...
...From time to time I'll have a look at PM to see when you show evidence of coming to your senses, but you'll have to change a lot before I can think of you as a really liberal newspaper...
...Having been an ardent enthusiast for PM for years, I may be permitted to speak my mind on your foreign policy...
...Eventually they should be allowed their own civil servants, their Own government, sufficient raw materials, transport, and manufacturing facilities for an industrial nation to live...
...Thirty-four times longshoremen and sailors of the West Coast went on strike to stop shipment of scrap iron and other war materials to Japan...
...If not, the American Friends Service Committee, 20 South 12th St., Philadelphia, Pa., will be glad to furnish you with names, addresses, and advice on types of food and articles to send...
...After that came out, oddly enough you toned down a little on the subject...
...The copy I receive, I mail to Seattle...
...One word more...
...Paul made urgent and strenuous appeals to the mayors of both cities that Smith be not permitted to speak...
...How could a Fleet of 55 war vessels hover on the outskirts, so to speak, of Pearl Harbor for longer than three days and nights, without being sighted by a single American plane or a vessel making her way in or out of Honolulu...
...P. Francis St Helena, Calif...
...The topflight generals' estimates of manpower wanted for occupation armies are very modest figures and^ require no such strain on the American community...
...The Progressive should have a million circulation...
...The liberal press in England is full of concern on the forceful expulsion of millions of people from their old homelands...
...Endorses Lind's Program Dear Sirs: The plan for abundance proposed by G. Edward Lind, in your Forum of Nov...
...Under our constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech and assemblage, it would seem proper that each group, whether Jew or Gentile, atheist or Christian, Communist or Fascist, nationalist or internationalist, capitalist or socialist, America First or America Second, yes, let us even include so-called Americans and Un-Americans, be accorded the privilege freely to express themselves and let each stand on its own merits or fall of its own folly...
...The distance from Hitokappu Bay to Honolulu is about 3,400 miles...
...If you have your own church or labor organizational contacts overseas use them...
...Again I repeat that you are my favorite publication, and I am sorry that I have subscribed only for several months instead of many years...
...but they will prove very handy as a skeleton force of non-coms to handle their unhappy younger brothers when the universal system begins to pour them in by the hundreds of thousands...
...MacArthur said, would result in a more equitable distribution of wealth than Japan has ever had...
...The greatest enigma in America is the real source of our peacetime enemies called poverty and unemployment...
...12 is, I consider, a very sensible one, and perhaps as feasible as any that might be devised under a competitive or capitalistic system...
...Meantime, every voter is urged to write representatives in Washington demanding that the German nation be allowed to work, provide themselves with proper shelter, be allowed enough food, mail service, relief packages from America, protection from the excesses of foreign armed forces...
...John Theiss Detroit, Mich...
...In all conscience, the measure to be advocated should be retroactive at least to the day the surrender in the Pacific was signed...
...It might be well to have MacArthur at the helm in the United States to change at least a part of the system which I think brings on war...
...Finally, recently you printed a vague whitewashing article about migration of people, and have the nerve to imply that the millions of Germans being dumped out of the territory given to Poland are being repatriated—"going home...
...Time is of the essence of this question, for week by week the injustice mounts into the tens of thousands of cases...
...Germany is an urban, industrial nation, two-thirds the size of Texas, containing some 60,000,000 people...
...Certain elements in Minneapolis and St...
...3. It is the duty and privilege of the soldier (who is not free) to fight and die for the freedom of Big Business to do as it pleases...
...S. O. Sanderson Rochester, Minn...
...The strikers failed...
...Strikers should be punished...
...26, according to the "Week in Review" on Pearl Harbor, a fleet of 55 units left Hitokappu Bay, bound for Hawaii, on Nov...
...Not only Germans will die this Winter...
...The few who thought it would be are dead...
...That's what we have the "gliberal" newspaper PM for...
...Clark Dennis, published in your Nov...
...Not only Germany'but all Europe suffers under this disastrous policy...
...IAM extremely grateful to have found a real liberal paper though I have to import it from Wisconsin...
...What this lesson teaches: 1. Strikes are unpatriotic...
...Besides, the issues are obviously related: though the only ostensible reason offered by the Military for refusing to relax the draft was an alleged need of men for occupied countries, these youngsters are little likely to be used there...
...These highways can be lighted by electricity and the traffic made safe by a system of remote control...
...5 many of the nation's daily papers carried an AP wire-photo depicting police evicting a woman heckler from Polytechnic high school auditorium in Los Angeles, where Gerald L. K. Smith was among the speakers...
...That's the level of PM liberalism...
...I discuss your paper at every opportunity...
...Sometimes the mother over the kitchen sink can think faster and clearer than they...
...The key to world peace lies in the establishment of workable cooperation between the United States and Russia through which the people of Europe may achieve a return to freedom and the management of •their own affairs...
...Food is all important if the German nation is to survive this winter, but an organized and workable economy is the next most urgent essential...
...The Progressive fits my idea of a really liberal newspaper...
...The Military is discharging some men who want to stay in service, and, nevertheless, this hideous injustice to the 18-year olds continues, for no reason even plausible before God or man...
...Within the geographical area called Germany lies those concentrations of iron and coal deposits which constitute the industrial heart of Europe...
...Villard is 50 years behind time and he shows his ignorance and low character...
...I would also favor a system of public education where all pupils above the eighth grade would be required to work four hours in the morning and study and recite four hours in the afternoon, as the price of a higher education — all pupils not willing to do this to be barred from the public high schools and all school credits to be based on scholastic ability and not on athletics, social or economic standing, and fol-derol...
...IMAY say that many of my liberal friends are becoming fed up with your stuff and have continued getting PM only because there is no other really liberal paper readily available...
...An Associated Press release from Croutoy, France, dated Nov...
...the agency known as UNRRA...
...3 issue of The Progressive, shows up very clearly the inner wisdom of William Jennings Bryan as displayed in his efforts over the years to create justice for the common man—this in comparison to the issue in the Scopes trial of physical, material, evolutionary science with its bid to exploitation, visioned by Bryan, and which inf ne way we see demonstrated today in the use of the atomic bomb...
...The former German soldiers who had been turned over to the French as laborers, are being taken back by the Americans under a project identified by the army code name 'operation skinny.' They were called back after International Red Cross charges that they were being treated below standards set by international conventions...
...Bessie Max son Ojai, Calif...
...Your policy is a bitter insult to the memory of thousands of anti-Nazi Germans who died in concentration camps even up to the last weeks of the war...
...The politicians, writers, and men at Washington are not the only people thinking...
...It is a very worthy thing to bring his virtues to light...
...Niitaka...
...Thousands of American boys as well as Chinese had their heads, arms, and legs blown off by these munition materials sold to Japan by American firms...
...A Time for Frankness" in the Dec...
...Of course, you wouldn't call them people...
...Yet here in peacetime, the Military in the United States of America can go on drafting into the regular forces boys who should be in school or college or learning a job of peaceful character...
...1. . Displaced persons continue to get 2,600 calories exclusive of fresh vegetables and fruits and workers "from displaced persons camps, 3,000 calories provided with American taxpayers' money voted UNRRA by "Congress...
...Your articles on Germany and Japan have a Goebbels-like flavor and are in the tradition of Nazi journalism...
...Hugh Robert Orr San Jose, Calif...
...That should give you some idea why I prefer The Progressive to your chauvinistic, one-sided, inaccurate newspaper...
...M. D. Clubb Stillwater, Okla...
...Churchill has been so liberally dishing out for gullible American consumption...
...So you want to pretend that the picture of one man is an adequate representation of a whole people...
...Nevertheless, let me assure Pvt...
...1, as stated by you...
...Robert Klorig Mamouth Spring, Ark...
...10 issue is a duplicate of Hitler's Mein Kampf...
...Most of us know it wasn't a pot of glory at the end of the victory rainbow...
...Some liberal newspaper...
...Praise For Brandt Dear Sirs: I have very much enjoyed the two articles by Karl Brandt in your issues of Oct...
...If we don't need it, our enemies will...
...Elizabeth Zutt New York, N. Y. * * # No Pot Of Glory Dear Sirs: If any of the "Big Boys" can prove to me that Science didn't win this war, I am open-minded enough to listen to their arguments...
...Estimates fix the number that German farms can support at 25 million persons...
...In the meantime, I am grateful that there is a paper like The Progressive...
...I heartily endorse the idea of a uniform Federal pension for all citizens over 60 and a Federal works program...
...We need more understanding that can be obtained through an unbiased publication like The Progressive...
...5 issue, I share the same sentiments which Pvt...
...The removal of German industry will thus create a "surplus" population of 35 million Germans who must be supported through relief or starve...
...Dennis' contention that the atomic bomb has "caused the sudden Japanese surrender," and that we may have lost countless thousands of additional American lives had we failed to use our new lethal weapon, it is evident he has been led by the empty propaganda Mr...
...Calling it "The Face of Japan" is a new low in yellow journalism...
...And then lately that picture of the Japanese Premier...
...I read with disgust the article (Oct...
...If peacetime drafting must continue and the Army must have men —beyond its big enlistment drive— there is only one group on which the burden can justly fall, and it would prove much larger than is needed: single men over 21 who were deferred for essential industry and who earned therein far higher wages, during a war in which their contemporaries gave up life...
...Then came the order to go through with the attack, ("Climb Mt...
...This is probably why a great thinker in the past claimed all forms of government would cease to function if their taxpayers received a mental examination...
...You are so fanatical in your anti-German hatred that you go to any length to try to prevent any semblance of humane feelings for a suffering people, even to setting yourselves up as super-authorities on public health and diviners of the future...
...P. F. B. San Francisco, Calif...
...We clergy have had to endure much belittling writings for years...
...My wife has been defending you for some time, but when she saw that picture she came to me and said that it was hard to distinguish this PM from other yellow journals...
...Lindberg for opposing the policy of outdoing our enemies in wanton brutality and destructiveness, it is important that first of all we try to appreciate the feelings of this brave soldier and sympathize with the privations he has had to endure in the bitter fighting in the Pacific war...
...3, 1945) in which you pooh-poohed the apprehensions of U. S. Public Health Physicians on the deterioration of health conditions in Germany, and the danger of outbreak of epidemics and possible menace to our occupation troops...
...Dennis finds so objectionable in Mr...
...Surely we cannot deny this basic fact of history with reference to our relations with pre-war Japan, when it was our own Commodore Perry who, by the signing of the American-Japanese Commercial Treaty of 1854, forced our "Open Door Policy" upon Japan and freed the Japanese people from that extreme isolation they had been enjoying for over two centuries as their protection against white imperial domination in the Far East...
...Many of them have expressed gratitude to me for having brought The Progressive to their attention...
...This would place the Fleet at a point "within 200 miles of Hawaii" some time during the night of Dec...
...I have frequently read the statement that "if you take the profit out of war there wouldn't be any war...
...25 with orders to attack, respectively to return, if a satisfactory settlement were arrived at, or if spotted by a single American plane or ship...
...Bring the boys back home, where they belong...
...Hesseltine in his article "Bryan—20 Years Afterward," in the Dec...
...James A. Mooney Tahlequah, Okla...
...Dennis paid some attention to the astounding, but essentially truthful statement of Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander of our Pacific Fleet, during a celebration in his honor in Washington, that "the atomic bomb did not win the war against Japan," and that "the Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war...
...It was only an old story set to a new tune...
...Many of them look like corpses resurrected from the horror camps of their own fatherland...
...Hesseltine...
...These boys cannot conceivably be of any use policing the world in foreign parts until after long and special training — they have not been matured by sobering war-experience, and it would be hard to find an age-bracket from 18 up less qualified for such a job...
...You would call all 12,-000,000 of them a bunch of criminals getting what's coming to them, every mother's babe of *hem...
...Who objected...
...They do not seem to know that they are only the victims of a most carefully designed exploitive propaganda that is conceived to control their own intelligence...
...Now, after several months one of your chief feature writers (Albert Deutsch) writes in a recent issue of The Nation (not PM) that one result of non-fraternization was a terrific increase in venereal disease and that was one reason for the abandonment of that policy...
...Douglas MacArthur-issued *a stern war does not pay' directive ordering the Japanese Government to tax away the war profits of all Nipponese firms and individuals and impose a capital levy ranging up to 70 per cent on corporate and private fortunes including the imperial household...
...For the lack of Ruhr coal all Europe will go cold, for the lack of its steel transportation paralysis will continue...
...3, but it was only at dawn of Dec...
...There is a partial answer...
...Albert Crites Live Oak, Calif...
...You can . call it isolationist or whatever other 1 catch phrase you will, but to me what I read in there makes sense even when I disagree with them...
...7, that those 351 planes were launched...
...There must have been Air Patrols...
Vol. 9 • December 1945 • No. 52
