THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
. . . THE PEOPLE'S FORUM . . . Criticizes Sen. Johnson Dear Sirs: There are many ominous and disturbing features about Sen. Edwin C. Johnson's article entitled, "Let's Talk Turkey". The cause for...
...That is why the CO is not doing it...
...If any one of my detractors showed the slightest first-hand knowledge of the international situation in general and of Russia in particular I would be delighted to put on a full-dress debate...
...The mothers of these boys will not be consulted...
...It will be recalled that there was a determined effort made by our allies in the last war to do much the same thing and that only the adamant refusal of Gen...
...Victor C. Svimonoff Bakersfleld, Calif...
...The capitalist world was tacitly acknowledging the authority of the proletarian dictatorship...
...It is most unfortunate that Eisenhower does not have a Wilson behind him...
...Rodell insists...
...But, the majority insisting otherwise, I think Mr...
...An attack on Wheeler and Lindbergh is an attack on our greatest Americans...
...Among the intrepid guests, traveling untold miles in the then impenetrable and vast regiohs of medieval Europe and Asia, was the young and gallant king of Trans-Caucasian Georgia, David, the Restorer...
...He further contends thafc the members of such movements occupy themselves by attacking members, who essentially are seeking the same goals, but are not of their distinct group or party...
...And in that sense the Teheran conference was the "coronation ceremony" of the Kremlin dictator...
...Nor do their ideas reveal any knowledge of Russian history, politics, or economics, outside of a few Communist catch-phrases...
...M/.R1E A. Sanford La Crosse, Wis...
...I hope to see it introduced in Congress and reprinted in the Congressional Record...
...We wish The Progressive and both the La Follette boys long life and the best of luck...
...He cannot read or speak a foreign language...
...Loy Vincent Denver, Colo...
...John Henry Baldwin, the author, examines the activities of the left wing movements and finds that they have no mass support and no influence...
...The greatest of all myths is the idea that the object of living is or ought to be acquisition of material wealth...
...Likes The Tone Dear Sirs: We have taken The Progressive almost since the beginning...
...Questions For Congress Dear Sirs: This writer can see no disloyalty and lack of patriotism in discussing the protection of the most valuable thing in all the world—the youth of America...
...In conclusion, it should be said that vastly more important than the non-existent "luxury" of the CO's status, is the dangerous precedent for forced or "slave" labor which has been established in his case—a precedent which is the proper concern of all those who cherish the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, and American civil liberty in general...
...In the knowledge that education and propaganda are in the hands of capitalistic powers, what chance has an outsider unless he is smart enough to get under their guard...
...3. Germany should be unilaterally disarmed on moral grounds...
...Which brings us around to the question of just how much does Britain dominate the Washington Administration...
...This proposal to use emotion instead of reason is not new and experience has caused socialists to veer away from it...
...However, when I read some of the parroted opinions expressed by Americans, I wonder where they have obtained their information...
...And at that he has a certain ability, the ability of making the fellows on the team get along with each other...
...L. S. Shuck, Jr., is a masterpiece...
...Even though officially named "Marshal", "Prime Minister," "Commissar of Defense" and wearing a faithful reproduction of the Czarist uniform, this politician was primarily the General Secretary of ihe Communist Party of the U. S. S. R. and as such the Chief Executive of the Communist organizations in Europe and Asia and the dominions beyond the seas...
...For that we must muster all the intellectual and spiritual forces of the East and the West...
...Camouflaged servant of hell and reaction," "paid or unpaid servant of the bankers," "propagandist for the British," "writer of foolish drivel," these are some of the favorite brickbats...
...Pershing prevented American troops being incorporated into the British and French armies as replacements...
...Was Montgomery protecting his fellow countrymen by throwing the Americans into the thick of the fray while the British and Canadians were kept in safer areas...
...They confuse the democratic Polish Government in London, in which the Socialist and Peasant parties have played a leading part, with the pre-war Polish dictatorship...
...The ruling class in Russia was responsible because they attempted to mobilize 12,000,000 men for war from an agrarian mode of life...
...Why is the over-all command of the Mediterranean area British, although American military and naval units are still operating in considerable numbers there...
...La Follette's description of the last few hours with her son, before leaving for the Army, was truly interesting...
...The CO asks for no special privileges nor luxury accommodations in which to enjoy the so-called "pleasanter aspects" in this "-best of all possible wars...
...Personally, I believe Roosevelt, despite all the adverse critical mouthings concerning the dictatorship myth is the most adamant upholder of true American democracy the White House has had for generations...
...It is a myth possibly almost as old as humanity itself...
...On the basis of such information, conscientious objection is to be judged...
...They are not to be classed with Smith, Pelley, etc...
...William Henry Chamberlin Cambridge, Mass...
...8 Progressive, it might be a wise thing, for the writer to really get facts about the conscientious objectors before making such statements,, and the title of the letter, "Yellow Rats," sounds like the German Gastapo: It is rather amusing to see such' ignorance of the truth...
...But this background does give me a concrete, as distinguished from an abstract conception of Soviet realities...
...8 issue, being an open letter to the President by Lt...
...He will be loyal to his friends and malicious to nobody...
...It has had uncounted centuries during which to strengthen its unhallowed hold on the minds of deluded mortals...
...There are some pertinent questions the readers might well put to their respective Congressmen: Why should a British General be put in command of American troops on the Western Front...
...He simply announces his decision to serve society in the way he believes most effective, regardless of the treatment accorded him by the state...
...In short, he will be a perfect George F. Babbitt type of Secretary of State...
...Most of these men have already served two to three years under these conditions, and many volunteer for dangerous "guinea pig" experiments in medical research, or for parachute squads fighting forest fires—likewise without pay...
...Where did Stettinius come into this picture...
...Share This Issue With Friends Comments On Critics Dear Sirs: , It's a poor week when some contributor to the People's Forum does not try to prove that I am lower than the scum of the earth...
...However, I do not think mass support can be won today without the use of mass psychology...
...Salutes Lt...
...The pertinent historical facts gradually emerging from the war-torn "White Books" also need careful scrutiny by those who feel compelled to defend the necessity of war...
...The question is not whether the Germans are really a nation of devils, but whether such an idea is conducive to peace...
...The U. S. has between 30,000 and 50,000 COs, of whom 15,000 are non-combatants in medical service with the armed forces...
...In short, they are a violation of every one of the Senator's prescriptions for peace, which, I agree, must rest on common sense and justice, steeped in spiritual idealism...
...Some 4,000 COs are in prison, and these, according to Roger Baldwin, director of the American Civil Liberties Union, have taken many steps—at the risk of solitary confinement — to eliminate race discrimination and extra-legal punitive practices on the part of prison authorities...
...Johnson's profound belief in the efficacy of force, and that might makes right, will no more lead to peace when coming from him than when entertained by one of our enemies...
...It is to the everlasting credit of Woodrow Wilson that he backed up Pershing to the limit...
...W. Churchill, General Manager of the British Empire, Incorporated, and the Hon...
...This certainly doesn't make me infallible...
...Here again, it is not the intrinsic wisdom of the peace terms, but rather the notion that they represent what the Senator says they do...
...A searchingly retrospective view of the election recordings from that year onward will show that many millions of voters had begun doing some switching, not only as to personal allegiances, but also with regard to preferences in relation to Presidential advisers and policies, and, in fact, in their entire economic outlook...
...Lewis R. Kimberly Fort Thomas, Ky, * * * Kenew Your Subscription Today Retort To Rodell Dear Sirs: I was greatly intrigued in reading Fred Rodell's article in the Jan...
...This evil monster is raising its ugly head...
...Permit me to elucidate a little on this trenchant observation...
...He never grad-mted from college...
...Eileen Walker S. Pasadena, Calif...
...Now, this would certainly remove the Germans as the cause for future wars, but evidences so ghastly a frame of mind that it would only be directed elsewhere in the not too distant future...
...But now that we belatedly learn that since last Dec...
...The "dirty work" the soldier is doing need not, and should not, be done...
...What about this talk that in 1938 Roosevelt "switched his allegiance, his advisors, and his policies...
...There is something incredibly naive and unrealistic about them, especially in their tragic confusion of intranational with international thought patterns...
...is proud of his friendship with five-Star generals...
...Iowa City, la...
...The COs' Position Dear Sirs: Mrs...
...Are any Australian or Canadian conscripts being used in Europe...
...He will get his name in the papers three times a day, and issue deep pronouncements written (and thought up) by others...
...As an administrator he displayed, while at the Lend-Lease Administration, a certain amount of astuteness in that he was a perfect operator by remote control...
...How did he do it...
...Dexterous Feat Dear Sirs: I want to congratulate William Henry Chamberlin on finally succeeding in writing a full-page article, "Which Way To Japan?," Jan...
...But modern capitalism is now deservedly disintegrating...
...That would probably be the natural course for him to pursue were he permitted to...
...He is trying now to give them what their votes indicated were their most prominent desires — an early and complete victory, a peace as stable and permanent as possible under some kind of international arrangement and collaboration, and on the home scene 60 million jobs to become available without serious alteration of, or infringement upon, the restraints inherent in our vaunted private enterprise system...
...Masterpiece...
...La Follette to see the logic of conscientious objection, but the logic of her position is even more obscure...
...The cause for alarm arises not so much in the proposals, but in the mental attitude implicit in their formulation...
...Just what are the considerations that must be reckoned as underlying this charge of a surrender by F. D. R. to "reaction...
...In effect, the Non-Partisan Institute of Socialistic Research is only interested in aiding the existing political organizations that advocate socialism, to achieve power and influence...
...Then he came into the picture as an umpire...
...As some among us are prone to' criticize Russia in regard to the war, it is well to point out that Russia was the most consistent advocate of disarmament at Geneva...
...He will make few tactical mistakes (his crew of personal advisers will take care of that...
...The supplies from behind could not meet the demands from the front and the whole works caved in...
...Mrs...
...4. Russia, Britain, and the United States should be permitted to have an international Gestapo in Germany...
...4th issue of The Progressive, was a masterpiece...
...Of course, Roosevelt is moved by a set of circumstances which appear to him and he is forced into many compromises, but he has accomplished a good deal in this country of vested interests and skillfully managed reaction...
...And so, Sen...
...I personally believe the people who make up the Institute should be given an expression of thanks...
...Stettinius is the perfect Roosevelt administrator: He is easily flattered by the attention of the great...
...Can this be "luxury...
...Now I loye an argument...
...All the arguments adduced from any source still fail to explain satisfactorily why those who are obviously friends of man and his progress can "hate" war and engage in it...
...The position of COs was legalized only after their integrity had been tested by every conceivable form of social and physical abuse during World War I.) It may be difficult for Mrs...
...Many like myself, who for argumentative reasons will confess to inclusion in the condescending appellation, "Roosevelt - worshipper, Anglophile, ardent 'internationalists,' " may feel inclined to remon- I strate that Fred Rodell has himself been "transparently deceitful," though not necessarily with deliberate intent...
...Only a very stupid or very bigoted person would assume that there is any infallible judgment about such a big and incompleted historical event as the Russian Revolution...
...As it happens, I lived for 12 years in the Soviet Union...
...He was shrewd enough to hire a staff of efficient sub-ad ministrators, counsellors, etc...
...keeps immense scrap books filled with newspaper clippings, party announcements, invitations, and other memorabilia of aa intense social life...
...True, he came to the office virtually every, day and worked hard, but he had little or no influence on policy...
...We salute him, with grateful hearts...
...The only time he had a chance to shape policy was when the sub-administrators couldn't agree among themselves, or got into a tussle with oth er agencies...
...We lived over—with her—these precious moments...
...What the student of pacifism would very much like to know is how, after the lessons of World War I, to say nothing of older history and experience, anyone can stay that way...
...Such an attitude merely illustrates the devastating power of modern propaganda operating in modern literate societies where a state, as the result of international conflict, has assumed that allotropic form of democracy known as total-itariansim...
...Isabel Bacon La Follette has twice (in her columns for Feb...
...1 issue is a hummer...
...With a social system scientific, just, and humane, our race may deserve and enjoy a future incomparably better than our too benighted past...
...He Mass Support Dear Sirs: The fascistic methods used in gaining mass support for the Nazis and Fascists are being considered by the author of the pamphlet, "How To Win Masses," for use in winning masses for socialism...
...Being a Georgian by birth, the peculiar situations into which a rendezvous with destiny has catapulted some of my neighborhood playmates, prompts me to record these fanciful meditations...
...Impressions Of Stettinius Dear Sirs: I notice that Drew Pearson referred to our new Secretary of State as a man of "energetic and charming mediocrity...
...loves the limelig-ht with the natural instinct of an actor...
...It is about time we stopped permitting our prejudices to rule and arrived at fundamentals...
...We do not question either their sincerity or their idealism, or their right to their conviction...
...They did the work—he got the glory...
...The idea of production for use instead of for profit is so obviously good, in a comprehensive social sense, that mere mention of it should- suffice to bring about its universal adoption...
...We like the tone of The Progressive, but we have been strongly in favor of Roosevelt as the best bet upon'the economic horizon...
...The majority of the COs who are not in prison—the 4Es—are doing "work of national importance" for the duration, without pay, injury compensation, or dependency allotments...
...At one time he had a girl working half-time just keeping his scrap books up to date...
...Union City, N. J. * * * Masterpiece Dear Sirs: "The World Looks To America," by the Editor, Morris H. Rubin, in Dec...
...8 issue fulfills a long felt and urgent need of our people...
...And, we might ask, how ardent and assiduous was the type of support F. D. R. received from present-day leftist critics back in those days when he "was a progressive President...
...In the year 1943 the greatest politician of modern times, a son of a Georgian cobbler, Soso Djugashvili, nicknamed "Stalin" (made of steel) held a conference at Teheran, Iran, a foreign capital, sequestered by him for convenience and safety in receiving homage from the two distinguished plenipotentiaries of plutocratic democracies: the Rt...
...George Crawford Washington, D. C. * * * Cease Destruction Dear Sirs: Battleships, submarines, bombers, robots, machine guns, flame throwers, and all the other infernal weapons of modern warfare may in time end the present war...
...Have we been returned to a colonial status in the British Empire in substance, if not in fact...
...But even so, haven't isolationist courses proved "likewise...
...And yet press dispatches concerning the fighting scarcely mentioned any but American armies striving to stop the Germans...
...5. Property seized from the inhabitants of Germany by the Nazis be restored...
...We have copied so many European patterns, that we supposedly disliked, and now this...
...Thus a modern "Genghis-Khan," implacable and in complete command of all political and technical devices of the age, graciously received the travel and hazard-worn spokesmen of the capitalist world...
...I speak and read the Russian language and I have foHowed developments in that country reasonably closely since I left it...
...Is Russia still shipping steel to japan in exchange for crude rubber...
...Rodell, significantly perhaps, says nothing about the Prime Minister, not having anything like solid support for his recently revealed policies...
...6. A government subject to our Bill of Rights be created in Germany (whatever that means...
...Mrs...
...Mary Jeffs N. Hollywood, Calif...
...The Office of Lend-Lease Admin istiation was not a procurement agency, but an outfit that did a cer tain amount of screening of requests (and that certainly was necessary because our Allies would have eaten us out of hearth and home if all their requests were tak en seriously) and expedited certain programs, mainly those dealing with non-military goods...
...He knows better than most of us the desires of the multitudes who by a slender majority elected him...
...He also had British and Canadian troops under him...
...1 issue...
...2. The old "war guilt" clauses, in which the victor is judge and jury in his own case, be reaffirmed in aggravated form...
...Communism in reality was the more equitable distribution of a scarcity which fit the situation very well...
...As for Rodell's advancement of Anglophile and "internationalist" implications, we are not disillusioned by the Churchill Government's attitudes, nor by Stalin's asserted cunning and avidity...
...Why are Australian forces no longer being mentioned in accounts of action against the Japanese...
...His article in the Jan...
...Then there were several excellent letters in the Forum, among them those objecting to peacetime compulsory military training...
...He had attracted the particular attention of the "dictator of the Universe," by his stubborn fight against the Mongolian armies and now, newly confirmed in his royal office, he was paying a call on the invincible Genghis-Khan...
...We knew long ago that internationalism presented a complicated, rough, and rocky road for America to travel...
...The essence of pacifism is that killing is no man's work...
...Understand Russia Dear Sirs: Americans pride themselves as being "the best informed people in the world...
...But they can never really end war and secure the peace...
...When, by way of rare exception, they depart from their line of undocumented personal abuse, they quickly get beyond their intellectual depth...
...F. D. Roosevelt, Chief Executive of Uncle Sam and Co...
...To illustrate, let us take the extreme view exhibited by countless Americans that the 80 million Germans of Europe should be slaughtered to the last baby and bishop...
...We are at war because man, who is wont to boast foolishly of what he calls his "civilization," has not yet learned to live and let live...
...What qualifications has this gilded mediocrity—Time once maliciously called him a Charlie Chap-pin without a mustache—for the post of Secretary of State at the Most tragic hour of our national existence...
...Unfortunately these letters are as short on factual knowledge as they are long on personal abuse: You cannot argue with a scream or debate with a smear...
...8th, without taking one backhanded slam at Joe Stalin and Soviet Russia...
...Some have little faith in the future of this system, of its ability to survive and at the same time administer adequately to the basic human needs of all mankind, the present writer being among this number...
...I have read his stuff and I resent his statements concerning Burton K. Wheeler and Charles A. Lindbergh...
...Laws, customs, and institutions have from time immemorial been builded on unstable foundations with this myth as a cornerstone...
...O. M. Thomason Willernie, Minn...
...And his influence on our foreign policy will be as if writ in water...
...James H. Andrews Kewanee, 111...
...It is up to us to understand her and she us...
...My detractors, so far as their letters indicate, have never spent 12 months or 12 days or 12 hours in Russia...
...His program boiled down is as follows : 1. Germany should be broken up again and even the Saar Plebiscite, the Sudeten settlement, and the inclusion of German Austria into Germany be negated...
...The old monastic orders were really communistic and they revert back to the early Christian Church which recognized neither rich nor poor and did not believe in private property...
...Modern capitalism, which exalts competitive private-profit above social welfare, is based on the greatest of all myths...
...As top man in the State Department, he will doubtless bring in many efficient sub-administrators —or as many as Harry Hopkins and F. D. R. will permit—who will do tie hard work...
...It has been inevitable that this great myth has had an inordinate share in shaping the course of human destiny...
...It will have to be done, if done at all, by a long and arduous and perhaps seemingly hopeless process of education...
...We are not really so dejected or disillusioned as Mr...
...Harry Hopkins, the War Food Administrator, etc...
...M. K. Hallett New Raymer, Colo...
...Now the fact is, no one is doing the CO's work for him, least of all the soldier...
...If our struggling, floundering race ever breaks that hold, it will not be broken with dynamite or TNT...
...Whether we like it or not, Russia will come out of this war a good deal stronger than when she went in...
...Dear Sirs: The front page article, "America's Hour Has Struck...
...Francis V. Streit 415-32nd St...
...Communism may be all right for Russia (although I doubt that they have the same set-up they started with) but it definitely cannot work in America—not because of its government control, but because it is based on the distribution of a scarcity...
...Shuck Dear Sirs: Hurrah for Lt...
...William Weinstein 1911 Davidson Ave...
...Mrs...
...The proposals are nothing but an exaggerated form of the social attitudes which followed World War I and eventually lead to World War II...
...E. Painter Phoenix, Ariz...
...This is another way of saying that we have not yet learned how to distribute justly and scientifically the products of human toil, ingenuity, and resourcefulness...
...28 and Nov...
...Stalin And Genghis-Khan Dear Sirs: Genghis-Khan, the greatest soldier of his day, was holding a coronation ceremony at his 100,000-tent capital, Karakorum, Outer Mongolia, in the year of our Lord 1224...
...Communism, however, was not new as an economic system...
...To begin with, the real directors of the Lend-Lease machinery were — and are — the generals and ad mirals, Mr...
...Mrs...
...And this is possible whenever there is a rising in the minds and hearts of the people everywhere, unimpeachable enough, sincere enough, and strong enough to make the effective demand that this infamous destruction of property and life must cease...
...The fault lies not so much in that such proposals may not be expedient, but rather in the notion that they are other than the product of "cruelty, revenge, exploitation, enslavement, imperialism and power polities," to which an arrogant, blasphemous self-righteousness has been added...
...Without her help there can be no world peace...
...It is because far too many of us, probably a great majority of us, believe in this myth that our erratic and irresponsible world is now at war...
...First we might establish that it wasn't a band of "Red bandits" who decided to throw out the Czar and his regime, but the complete economic collapse of Russia that caused the upheaval in the first place...
...Better to have them work ing inside the Government under Rooseveltian control than outside it and operating independently, as under Republican regimes on an extraterritorial economic basis...
...Thomas P. Christensen 315 Ronalds St...
...Albert Crites Live Oak, Calif...
...Louis, Mo...
...Give A Friend The Truth Send Him The Progressive Today Myth Of Materialism Dear Sirs: Here is one for Fred Rodell, whose front-page article in the Jan...
...He -will be a perfect host to obsequious diplomats seeking Lend-Lease goods and other bounties from bounteous Uncle Sam...
...Shuck...
...They write of "Baltic patriots" when they are apparently thinking of the Polish officers who were mysteriously slaughtered in the Katyn Forest...
...Bronx, New York City * * * Objects To Ad Dear Sirs: Aren't you ashamed to carry such an ad as that of Birkhead's book...
...So, until someone enters the lists against me who has been in Russia or who has devoted some serious study to the subject, I am inclined to say to my critics, paraphrasing Woodrow Wilson on Jeremiah O'-Leary: "I should be grieved and surprised if you, or anyone like you, would agree with anything I might write on any subject whatever...
...At this point the Communists took over as a means of bringing order out of chaos...
...When he was a boy in school, he was filled with repugnance at the Hessian overlords who, according to the historical textbooks of that day, wantonly rented the young men of Hesse to the British to fight the latter's war against Americans...
...Rodell should have taken cognizance of that, because every liberal must agree that private enterprise tenets have never become generally operative for ren dering even an average kind of prosperity until big business, such as the Rockefellers, the Morgans, and the Will Claytons held posts of power...
...20,1944), expressed her opinion that conscientious objection is a wartime "luxury," and that a conscientious objector is one who thinks "some one else will do the dirty work for him...
...Nor are we here concerned with how they "got that way...
...As it is obvious that Russia will dominate Europe and a great deal of Asia at war's end, it would be well for us, as Americans, to delve into this subject and arrive at some basic facts...
...Montgomery, we are caused to wonder whether the shoe is not on the other foot...
...Lawrence J. Vair Pinecliffe, Colo...
...It would take a volume to explain what they don't know factually about Soviet Russia...
...That was a dexterous performance...
...Like The Gestapo Dear Sirs: Answering M. O. Malmin in the Jan...
...This constant fighting among the Socialist organizations is indeed a source, of fun for the class enemy and reassures capitalism that it has nothing to fear from socialism, as it is being fought for today...
...in the Jan...
...7. The German people should at all times be subject to military invasion by their enemies...
...J. B. Sager St...
...12 hundreds of thousands of American boys have been sent into peril at the command of Gen...
Vol. 9 • January 1945 • No. 5
