DON'T SHOOT CONSERVATIVES! A Plea for To/eranee

Our Principal Ally: Superior Air Power General Bonner Fellers

Our Pink-Tinted Clergy Julian Maxwell TAPPING THE NEW OPEN HEARTHS AT J&L's PITTSBURGH WORKS. The molten steel flowing into two giant-size ladles symbolizes J&L's capacity for modern, scientific methods of mass-producing steel. To satisfy a giant's thirst...huge draughts of steel are IItapped"

NDUSTRY'S thirst for steel is a giant's toys and office equipment, cans and zation of equipment. And, behind I thirst. It's a perpetual thirst ... building materials, steel-making has J&L's manpower stands a great the thirst of machine shops ... the to keep pace ... quantity-wise and teacher ... 100 years of steel-making thirst of huge stamping press lines ... quality-wise. experience ... 100 years ofproducing the thirst that prevails wherever steel Steel-making at J&L is geared to the steels of today ... 100 years of is being worked and shaped. this fast-moving pace. The expansion preparing for the steels of the future. In order to fulfill America's de­ ofopen hearth capacity typifies J&L's J&L stands ready to meet the chal­ mandfor automobiles and appliances, policy of development and moderni- lenge of tomorrow!

dONES & LAUGHLIN STEEL CORPORATIDN PITTSBURGH THE Our Contributors ..4 Fortnightly BONNER FELLERS, as a Brigadier General in the For U.S. ArnlY, was the official United States ob­ reeman Individualists server of combat with the British Forces in the Middle East, 1940-42. He is author of a Editor HENRY IlAZLITr book on national defense, Wings of Peace, published this spring by Henry Regnery. Managiq Editor FLORENCE NORTON GLENN HOOVER is professor of sociology at Mills College in California. His report on the economic situation of Denmark, entitled "Learn­ ing from the Danes," appeared in the Sep­ Contents VOL. 3, No. 22 JULY 27, 1953 tember 8, 1952, issue of the FREEMAN. JULIAN MAXWELL'S "Our Pink-Tinted Clergy," Editorials was written at our special request so that FREEMAN readers might have a clear presenta­ The Fortnight...... 761 tion of the issues involved in this' currently One-Man Government?...... 762 controversial subject. Don't Shoot Conservatives!...... 763 The Glory of Berlin...... 764 LEO WOLMAN, a professor of economics at What Treaties Can Lead To...... 765 Columbia University in New York, has written extensively on trade unions in America, and is Articles now working on a forthcoming volume to be entitled Half Century of Union Membership. Our Principal Ally: ALLEN CHURCHILL is widely known in magazine Superior Air Power BONNER FELLERS 767 and publishing circles as an editor and writer. What's Left of the "Single Tax"? GLENN HOOVER 770 His ar,ticles have appeared in the nation's Our Pink-Tinted Clergy JULIAN MAXWELL 773 leading periodicals, including Collier's,Cosmo­ The Wonderful World of Books JAMES BURNHAM 776 politan, This Week, American Mercury, Esquire, Two Sides to a Strike LEO WOLMAN 777 and others. Men's Magazines ALLEN CHURCHILL 779 Government by Crisis R. G. WALDECK 781 R. G. WALDECK, known to her friends as "Countess Rosie," came to this country in 1931 Books and the Arts from her native Gernlany. In addition to her journalistic activities, she has since written a An Example of Integrity MAX EASTMAN 783 number of historical novels and political· books, Billionaire Corporations ASHER BRYNES 784 among them Athene Palace and Europe Be­ With Fear of Truth WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN 785 tween the Acts. She is now on an extended Eloquent But Erroneous ANTHONY HARRIGAN 786 tour of the major capitals of Europe, from Hagiolatry R. A. PARKER 786 where she will send regular "Letters" to the Theory Versus Fact FREDA UTLEY 787 FREEMAN. Life Among the Peasants RAY PALMER 788 Wagner FestivaL ROCK FERRIS 789 ROCK FERRIS, for many years a distinguished Americans in Paris JEROME MELLQUIST 789 concert pianist, has recently returned from Italy to continue in his native land the career of music columnist he began while living in Poem Florence after the war.

Highway : WITTER BYNNER 782 JEROME MELLQUIST has sent us another of his lively reports on art in Paris, this time on This Is What They Said...... 769 the Americans exhibiting there this season. Worth Hearing Again 778 In Forthcoming Issues From ()ur Iteaders 760 Before Congress adjourns this summer a vote may be taken on the Bricker Amendment to the Constitution, which would make it impossible THE FREEMAN is published fortnightly. Publication Office, Orange, Conn. Editorial and for any treaty with a foreign government to General offic eS 240 Madison Avenue, New York 16, N. Y. Copyrighted in the United interfere with domestic legislation-or lack of States, 1953, 'by1 the Freeman Magazine, Inc. Henry Hazlitt, President; Lawrence Fertig, Vice President; Claude Robinson, Secretary; Kurt Lassen, Treasurer. it-affecting the life and liberty of the Amer­ Entered as second class matter at the Post Office at Orange, Conn. Rates: Twenty-five ican people. The FREEMAN has asked Frank E. cents the eopy; five dollars a year in the United States; nine dollars for two years; six dollars a year elsewhere. Holman, former president of the American Bar The editors cannot be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts unless return postage or, Association, to state the case for this Amend­ better, a stamped, seif-addressed envelope is enclosed. Manuscripts must be typed double-spaced. nlent from the point of view of law as well as Articles signed with a name, pseudonym, or initials do not necessarily represent the of individual freedom. His article will appear opinion of the editors, either as to substance or style. ~. 11 Printed in U.S.A., by Wilson H. Lee Co., Orange, Connecticut in Ollr August 10 issue. that the Senator was less than crystal dustry she can do without, incidentally FROM OUR READERS clear in the contested "go it alone" killing millions of civilians who might II II portion of that speech. At a guess, otherwise be on our side. ... She many of them regret that he has since seems to be building sufficient long­ hedged on what they hoped he ,actually range aircraft to keep us diverted, as Two. Presbyterian Groups meant.... we should also do to worry her, but May I call your attention to an error If General Ridgway's bitter analysis why assume the real attack against us in the article "Dr. Mackay's Strange of what we have thrown away in Korea will be made so expensively and haz­ Scales" [July 13]? In the first para­ is truth, then perhaps U.N. influence ardously instead of by guided missiles graph is the statement that Dr. is no more to blame than ,the Presi­ from her great fleet of submarines, Mackay is the "newly elected Modera­ dent's and the senile Pentagon's deter­ which only a Navy can stop? tor of the Presbyterian Church in the mination to follow the Truman policies. Just where will we be if we start United States." The Presbyterian Still taking orders from London? the next war with a great s,trategic Church in the United States is that I agree completely with your "No Air Force, which the enemy has dis­ branch of Presbyterianism commonly More U.N. Wars" [June 29]. If this is counted in advance, a Navy inadequate known as "Southern Presbyterian." not what Taft meant.... then my to control the seas, and an Army too The Church of which Dr. Mackay was mental processes are disintegrating. small to expand into what may be elected Moderator is the Presbyterian Athens, Ga. DUNCAN BURNET needed? Only if and when a rearmed Church in the United States of Amer­ Germany can hold Russia on the ica, commonly known as "Northern Air Strategy ground, will 'a major air attack on Presbyterian." The review of Bonner Fellers' Wings Russia payoff. The names are so similar that such for Peace, June 29th issue, seems to Thank God the National Security an error is quite excusahle... The underestimate Russi'an strategy. Russia Council under the direction of the article otherwise is excellent. ... will not strike until she can measur­ President seems to be realistically re­ JAMES FRANCIS MILLER ably counter our air attack, which she evaluating our military needs. Pikeville, Ky. is doing by dispersion of industry, con­ Washington, D. C. LUCIAN B. MOODY centrating on air defense, and above Senator Taft's Speech all by such vast reserves of muni­ Tops You went down the line for Senator tions that she can conquer Europe, and The FREEMAN is tops in my estimation. Taft's Cincinnati speech [June 15] hold it without home production until I don't know how I ever got along with .hundreds of unvocal Taft sup­ the industry of Europe is working in without it. porters among your subscribers ap­ her behalf. FLORENCE D. WATKINS plauding. You will have to pardon a Weare playing into her hands to Cockeysville, Md. great many of these if they thought wreck our economy to damage an in- (Cont'inued on p. 791)

WHAT MADE AMERICA?

Ever since the landing of the Pilgrim individual initiative wherever it is found. fathers, one golden thread has been woven It is summed up in the word 1I0pportunity," unmistakably through the fabric of Ameri­ which springs from our system of free enter­ can life. Without it, we could not have prise. the America of today. Nor the America Because we have reached the limit of our of tomorrow. It is the spirit of courage land frontiers, let no one think that we and achievement. And we must never shall cease to grow. This is not the kind lose sight of it. of thinking that built America. Progress comes on the frontiers of mind and spirit­ Here, guided by the fundamental truth that the; frontiers of imaginafi.on, inve,ntio'n, /lall men are created equal/' exists a con­ courage-and work. Thatls what it takes cept of freedom which goes far beyond to turn dreams into realities. what one may find in other lands. It knows no barriers of caste or class-or race That is what will make the America of to­ or color or creed. It is ready to reward morrow.

HARNISCH.EGER CORPORATlrOIi MilwGuke.e 46. Wiscons,in tAe~L~ ~_ ~ -~_#' ~ d _. --f J1ft tb-=-- _ """''''N'' """ 'NO'N" row," ",0,"" ...... ,,"'''' """" """'" ..."" .." .....",,.,. W...,NO ...,..'NT _ ..... OAN" reemanTHE MONDAY, JULY 27, 1953

still hope for the world in the mutual treachery The Fortnight of the present Kremlin survivors.

Is the removal of Beria likely to mean an increase The American experts who failed to guess that or a decrease in repression in Russia itself and Beria was about to be liquidated should not feel in the occupied countries? Is it likely to mean an too badly about it. After all, if anyone was sup­ intensification, or a relaxation, in the cold war or posed to know what was going on in the Kremlin in armed aggression against the free world? The it was Beria-but even he slipped up. astonishingly wide range of answers, on the part of the supposed Western experts on Russia, once There is more than one question at issue between more illustrates how well the Kremlin has so far Syngman Rhee and President Eisenhower concern­ kept its secrets. We hear on one side that it was ing the Korean truce terms, and we certainly do Beria who took the lead in releasing political not maintain that Dr. Rhee's position should be prisoners in Russia after Stalin's death, in ex­ accepted as against that of the American negotia­ onerating the Jewish doctors from the "murder" tors in every case. But Senator Knowland, the act­ charges, and in the "soft" policy in East Germany. ing Republican leader in the upper house, seems to It is pointed out on the other side that since June us to have put his finger on the chief reason why 27, the presumed day of Beria's arrest, evidences the rift between Rhee and the American negotia­ of the "soft" policy have continued in Hungary, tors developed. "I think," he said, "that Mr. Rhee Rumania, Czechoslovakia, East Berlin, and even was not sufficiently consulted [on truce terms] in the Korean truce negotiations. during the Truman Administration and I don't think he was sufficiently consulted during the The same lack of agreement surrounds the ques­ Eisenhower Administration." What is incredible tion whether the purging of Beria has strength­ is that the British, who have suffered 1 per cent ened or weakened the internal power of the Krem­ of the casualties of the Allies in Korea, have had lin leaders who remain. That purge has of course so much to say about the truce terms, while the made it plain even to the dullest intellect that South Koreans, who have suffered 63 per cent of there was a struggle for power within the Moscow the casualties and are still holding 65 per cent of triumvirate. But though everyone now knows who the line, were allowed so little to say on the truce the loser was, no one seems quite sure about the terms until they refused to acquiesce in them real victor. Was it Malenkov, Molotov, Bulganin, after they were made public. or Comrade X? "A United Nations with responsible and adequate Yet certain conclusions are reasonably safe. In a authority could apprehend Syngman Rhee and hold monolithic state like Russia, built on lies, espio­ him in contempt of world law." Thus spake Norman nage, and terror, no one can trust anyone else. Cousins, President of the Un1ited World Federalists, Shared leadership and distributed power repre­ according to the New York Times. One wonders sent a condition of highly unstable equilibrium. why Mr. Cousins did not go a little farther back Absolute power must tend to gravitate into one and envisage his United Nations serving writs on man's hands. The elimination of Beria is bad news Nam II for leading the North Korean army across insofar as it reduces the possibility of an inter­ the 38th Parallel, on Mao Tse-tung for sending an necine war which would split the Communist invading army across the Yalu R1iver, and on world into factions or fragments under competing Joseph Stalin for starting the whole business. One Titos. In this possibility lies the chief immediate may also wonder why such statesmen as Sir hope of liberty inside the present Iron Curtain Winston Churchill, Prime Minister Nehru of India, and of peace outside. But the purging of Beria, and Mr. Lester Pearson of Canada and the United we may be sure, is only the beginning of a great Nations have referred to the leader of a hard­ new purge. Until a single victor emerges, there is pressed and much suffering ally in terms of

JULY 27, 1953 761 truculence and bitterness which they never em­ article by Julian Maxwell on "Our Pink~Tinted ployed toward the aggressor enemy. The ghost of Clergy" which was ordered and written before the Poland is beginning to walk in South Korea. Matthews article appeared, and independent 01. any knowledge of that article. The subject seems more With the sole exception of the hysteria over the than ripe for further investigation and exploration. fake "book-burning" issue, nothing better illus­ trates the present strength and determination of In some cases the proper retort to the indignant the anti-anti-Communists in this country than the query, "Who called that clergyman a Communist1" furor over J. B. Matthews, whom Senator McCarthy might well be, "Who called that Communist a had appointed only a few weeks ago as executive clergyman1" director of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Before his appointment Mr. Mat­ thews had written an article for the July issue of the American Mercury, which had appeared One-Man Government? after his appointment was announced, entitled "Reds and Our Churches." It opened with the The Brothers Alsop on June 29 devoted a column statement: "'The largest single group supporting to the fact that Republican Congressman Noah the Communist apparatus in the United States Mason of Illinois is opposed to many Eisenhower today is composed of Protestant clergymen." It measures. Mason has been in .congress for many then went on to name names and supporting evi­ years; the Brothers do not dispute the assump­ dence, and concluded by declaring: "It hardly needs tion that he represents the views of his con­ to be said that the vast majority of American stituency. But the Alsops would deny him that Protestant clergymen are loyal to the free institu­ right. Eisenhower is the leader of the Republican tions of this country, as well as loyal to their Party. Every Republican should take orders from solemn trust as ministers of the 'Gospel." a Republican President. The Alsops conclude: "The question remains-and it is a pressing quest,ion­ Then the storm broke. The Democratic members whose party is it, Noah Mason's or Dwight D. of the subcommittee demanded Mr. Matthews' res­ Eisenhower's1" ignation; so did a Republican member, Senator We had the notion (incomprehensible to those Potter. There w,ere screams from the press and who believe in one-man government) that the Re­ from an articulate minority of clergymen. Prac­ publican Party belonged to the people who vote tically all of them quoted only the first paragraph Republican and that each iCongressman is expected of Mr. Matthews' piece, acted as if he had ,indicted to follow his judgment and conscience, subject to the whole clergy, and seemed in effect to take the the verdict of his constituency. If the Alsops are position that any Communist should be immune right, why go to the expense of a Congress? Let from investigation or even the mention of a doubt the President write and promulgate the laws, and if he bears the title of Reverend. forget that Article 1, Sec. 1 says: "All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Con­ A telegram of protest to President Eisenhower gress of the United States which shall consist of from the three national co-chairmen of the Com­ a Senate and a House of Representatives." mission on Religious Organizations of the N'ational How New Dealers think the Pre5ident should Conference of Christians and Jews had the sense assert his leadership is described in the New York and the fairness to declare: "We fully recognize Post by its Washington correspondent, William V. the right of Congress to investigate the loyalty of Shannon: any citizen regardless of the office he may occupy, General Eisenhower has a,bandoned to Congress ecclesiastical or otherwise." But Mr. Eisenhower, in ,the traditional Presidential responsibility of writ­ the face of Mr. Matthews' careful exemption of ing and planning legislation... It is due in part the overwhelming majority of clergymen from to the President's quaint antique view that it is his his charge, replied by denouncing "generalized and duty to recommend but not to see that recommenda­ tion is carried out. .. irresponsible attacks that sweepingly condemn the During the Democratic administrations all im­ whole of any group of citizens." portant bills were written downtown in the various agencies and cleared through the White House. If The upshot of the affair was that Mr. Matthews the committee chairman would not sponsor the bill, was forced to resign. In view of this, we do not some sympathetic Congressman was found to put his name on it. see how what's left of the Senatorial committee The measure then became known as "an admin­ can in fairness deny him the opportunity, for istration bilL" All the resources of the President which he has asked, to document and verify his and executive departments were put behind it. charges before it. The FREEMAN does not pretend Those Congressmen who did not fall in line when to know in advance that his charges are all true they were needed did not receive a friendly hearing when they came looking fora hometown dam or an any more than those who denounced him can know appointment for a friend. This system was not fool­ that they are false. But we publish in this issue an proof but no better one had been devised.

762 THE FREEMAN Don't Shoot Conservatives!

Don't shoot conservatives! Don't hang anti-Com­ Europeans the impression that there is now going munists! Don't slaughter whole populations just on in America the equivalent of the ceremonial because they dare to disagree with Eleanor book burning that occurred in Germany under the Roosevelt. Don't burn the FREEMAN. Remember, the Nazis. freedom to read is essential to our democracy. The concerted campaign of these misguided "lib­ People have a right to read even the American erals" is a deliberate effort to divert attention Constitution, in order to learn both sides of the from the real issues by raising and waving a man question. We know that everybody lives in mortal of straw. Who are the book burners in this coun­ terror of what Senator Lehman is going to say try? Where are they? Let the people who are next. But we must take our courage in 'both hands throwing around these irresponsible charges pre­ and say "booh." sent names, dates, and evidence. And let a Con­ Surely you don't disagree with any of this! Are gress1ional committee examine that evidence. you lin favor of shooting conservatives? Are you against the freedom to read? The real issue that ha.s been so obscured and Except for a change of sides and names, the perverted is this: What books ought a government foregoing paragraphs represent exactly the type library to select? By what standards ought it to of argument being seriously and systematically select them? put forward by the Eleanor Roosevelts and the Our government libraries overseas are special­ Herbert Lehmans and the American Library As­ purpose libraries. They came into being a.s the sociation and the American Book Publishers Council result of an act of Congress-the United States and other groups that ought to know better. Information and Educational Act of 1948. The In an Associated Press dispatch from Athens of purpose of the information serv,ice so set up is July 6, for example, Mrs. Roosevelt is quoted as declared in the law itself to be the "dissemination declaring that Senator McCarthy has done "a abroad of information about the United States, its great deal of harm to my country... He has people, and its policies." More specifically, the State made the great mass of people ,blindly afraid ... Department has declared that the purpose of the People in the United States today are afraid to information centers lis "to reflect American ob­ be different, to disagree with neighbors because jectives, values, the nature of American institu­ of the possible consequences." This picture of the tions and life, and to utilize the book and related American people does not even deserve to be materials to advance ideas of America in the called a caricature; it is an irresponsible slander. struggle against Communi.sm." The Americans who at present are doing most harm It follows from this that any 'book that gives a to our country are precisely those who are giving false picture of the United States, its people, or Europeans (many of whom are only too eager, in its policies, or any book that actually tends to their present mood, to think the worst of us) this promote Communism, does not belong on the picture of their fellow-Americans. library shelves. Mrs. Roosevelt is no worse than those who There is another point, of central importance, framed and signed the "manifesto" put out on that has been consistently ignored in discussion June 25 by the Am~rican Library Association in of this problem. There are about twelve thousand concert with the American Book Publishers Council. new titles published in this country each year. This manifesto pretended that there has sud­ Of these, the American government libraries abroad denly developed in thi.s country a tremendous have been taking about a thousand new titles a threat to "the freedom to read": year. This means that only one new book in twelve It is under attack. Private groups and public has been selected for acquisition; the other eleven authorities... are working to remove books from have been ignored. The books favored for selection, sale, to censor textbooks. .. to purge libraries. therefore, implicitly carry some kind of government .. Weare deeply concerned about these attempts approval. The real question to be raised, then, about at suppression... Such pressure toward conform­ books by Owen Lattimore, Howard Fast, and ity is perhaps natural to a time of ... pervading fear... We have been dismayed by the confused Dashiell Hammett is not why they were eventually and fearful response of the State Department to discarded but why they were chosen in the- first recent attacks... We are therefore enormously place. Yet the whole hullabaloo of the self-styled heartened by the President's recent vigorous at­ liberals has been raised about a handful of books tack on book burning. We support this position first taken and then discarded~with not a word fully... said about the eleven out of twelve books that were And so on and on. By their perfervid rhetoric never chosen at all. The dishonest claim is be­ the authors of this hysterical statement are giving ing repeatedly made that a book discarded by the

JULY 27, 1953 7&3 libraries is being "suppressed." Anybody who in the illusion of invincibility which it carefully wishes, of course, still has an undisputed right to cultivates. The peoples under its control are brain­ buy and read it. The only real question that should washed (to use an appropriate new expression from have been raised about it is whether it should have China) with propaganda and terrorized by a host been acquired with taxpayers' money >in the first of spies and by ruthless police methods. Only those place and given the implied endorsement of the who have lived under this kind of regime can American government libraries that stocked it. realize how dia'bolically strong this type of tyranny We do not see why, ,finally, any distinction should is, how weak and helpless the individual feels in be made between the standards applied in acquiring the grip of a leviathan more formidable than or not acquiring new books and the standards ap­ Hobbes ever dreamed of. plied in discarding old ones. There is no reason It is the glory and the significance of the work­ why a book should be treated as if it had acquired ers of East Berlin and of Magdeburg, Chemnitz, some sort of sacred s'quatter's rights by the mere Halle, and other industr,ial towns in East Germany fact of being already on the shelves. The local that they broke this evil spell more clearly and librarians should be authorized to dispose of pre­ decisively than it has ever been broken before. viously acquired books which in their judgment do There are several significant political lessons to be not conform to the purposes of the libraries or drawn from what happened in the Soviet zone. have outlived their usefulness. The best way to First, a united Germany, based on free elections dispose of them, ordinarily, would be through and free institutions and provided with adequate second-hand channels to the best bidder, in accord­ armed force for self defense, is a "safe" Germany ance with private library practice. This procedure from the standpoint of theWest. The pictures of would cut the ground from under the nonsensical Berlin .crowds throwing stones at Soviet tanks, charges that these books were being "suppressed," and burning 'Soviet flags, should put an end to the "censored," "burned," etc. silly idea that Germans have an affinity with Com­ When the present wave of hysteria has passed, munismand are eager to throw in their lot with it is ,even conceivable that the whole issue will be the Soviet Union. treated with a little common sense. It would indeed be strange if this were true when one looks back to the unparalleled outrages of murder, wholesale rape, and looting that marked the Soviet invasion of Germany in 1945 and to the The Glory of Berlin merciless ,systematic exploitation that followed these original excesses. The spark that at last Even though the tanks and machine guns of the touched off the outbreak was a final turn of the Red Army have temporarily crushed the movement, Soviet economic thumbscrew, requiring the build­ the uprising in Berlin and other cities of the ing workers in the East zone to work harder for Soviet zone remains one of the most important, as less pay. One can confidently expect that if and well as one of the finest and bravest events of when Soviet troops are withdrawn the pitiful pup­ recent times. Things can never be the same again pets who have been governing the area under in East IGermany. The men in the Kremlin may orders from Moscow will vanish from the scene well remember the wise and witty remark of and the clumsy war monuments set up to honor the Talleyrand-that one can do anything with bay­ unknown Sov,iet soldier (popularly referred to by onets, except sit on them. Germans as the unknown rapist or the unknown The entire Soviet position in Germany was irre­ looter) will be demolished with lightning speed. trievably undermined on those June days when Second, a tyranny .in retreat is most vulnerable. the workers rose against the "dictatorship of the H. L. Mencken put a political truth in his famHiar proletariat," burned Soviet flags, stormed railway flamboyant language when he wrote once that the stations and public buildings, and made life very tsars got along excellently so long as they ruled unpleasant for members of the Red Quisling Russia "like a house of correcHon, a Southern regime. The very calling in of Soviet troops was Baptist 'university' or the D.A.'R." It was no a confession of political defeat, a recognition that accident 'that the outbreak in the East zone started the East 'German military and police forces, huilt after some concessions had been made by the gov­ up under Soviet tutelage, are completely unreliable ernment and there were s.jgns of weakness and and would, in all probability, desert en masse to vacHlation at the top. the West at the first opportunity. It is significant Third, while the outbreak was spontaneous, the that the Russians executed eighteen of their own proximity of free ,West Berlin was very helpful. soldiers who refused to fire on the rioters. An appeal of the West 'German trade unions broad­ Facts, as Lenin liked to say, are stubborn things. cast at a timely moment by R'IAS, the American And no amount of propaganda can obscure the radio station in West Berlin, helped to touch off impact of this first big mass outbreak against the general strike; and broadcasts from RIAS Communism. were an aid in keeping the strikers informed of Much of the sinister power of Communism lies what was going on elsewhere.

764 THE FREEMAN What occurred in East Berlin, what occurred Berlin five years ago stood up without flinching or earI.ier in Czechoslovakia, shows that, despite the wavering to the Soviet blockade, frustrated by the fellow-travelers, the pedantic legalists, and the large-scale airlift inaugurated by ,General Lucius faint hearts there is a strong case for keeping up Clay. Now East Berlin has given impressive proof maximum psychological warfare in all the Iron that, although its body may still be under Sov,iet Curtain countries. control, its spirit is with the West. Fourth, the uprising in East Germany and the Some day a united Berl,in may be the capital of demonstrations in Czechoslovakia indicated a severe a free, united Germany, cleared of the last hateful cris,is in the Soviet satellite area. Economic ex­ traces of Soviet rule. Then the memory of all the ploitation is beginning to yield dim,inishing political Berliners who lost their lives in the struggle returns. The Kremlin and the Gauleiters it has put against Nazi and Communist tyranny will be held in charge of the countr,ies behind the Iron Curtain in honor. And, as the prisoners of the June 1953 face a difficult dilem'ma. They cannot improve the revolt are released, the lines of the Russian poet, intolerahle daily living conditions of the people Pushkin, addressed to the early Russian martyrs without scrapping a considerable part of their of freedom, the Decabr,is,ti, will apply to them, and schemes formilitarizaHon and intensive industrial to all the 18,000,000 Germans who are still living development. To do this is contrary to every Com­ in the vast prison of the Soviet zone: munist instinct. The one development which might get the Kremlin off the hook of this dilemma is ~rhe heavy hanging cha,ins shall fall some ill-timed, overeager gesture of appeasement ~rhe walls shall crumble at the word from the West. ..And freedom greet you with the light Berlin has twice proved itself a brave city. West .And brothers give you back the sword. What Treaties Can Lead To

Does our membership in the United Nations annul pealed. Much of our Constitution has already been in any way the limitations placed by our Constitu­ superseded in this way, and the remainder of it is tion on the prerogatives of our Chief Executive? scheduled for repeal by the Senatorial ratification In otheT words, does the fact that we belong to the of tt score of treaties now in process of preparation United Nations give our President rights he does and. submission to the United States Senate ... not have under our Constitution? If it does, what "Our complete transformation from Constitu­ effect does such a situation have upon our sov­ tional Government into Statism would be climaxed eTeignty as a nation and our liber.ty as individual by the ratification of the so-called Genocide Pact citizens? And what effect would our ratification of and the United Nations Covenant on Civil and the United Nations Covenant on Human Rights Political Rights. Both of these are now in the have upon us? works." In an address before a meeting of the Los Angeles Legion Luncheon Club on December 16, Frank E. Holman, Past President of the Ameri­ 1952, Clarence Manion, former Dean of Notre can Bar Association, in an address at Yakima, Dame Law School, declared: Washington, on July 10, 1952, observed: "Today ... the Bill of Rights is seriously threat­ "Prior to the adoption of the United States Con­ ened with complete destruction, not by a military stitution over 164 years ago (September 17, 1787), conquest of the United States, but through the never before in the course of history had any gov­ processes of a well-managed deception upon the ern:ment anywhere been organized on the principle people of this country engineered by enemies of that the people, as individuals, are endowed by American freedom and American independence ... their Creator with certain inalienable rights as to "Through the influence of our st·ar-gazers we are life, liberty, and property, including the right of being urged to believe that since the world is not loeal self-government, and on the principle that ready or willing to adopt our Bill of Rights we these rights are inherent in the people as indivi­ should adopt another which the rest of the world duals and are not something that their government will accept. has graciously conferred upon them and may there­ "We are urged to do this in the interest of world fore at any time retake from them. unity and through the mechanism of multilateral "Theretofore, in the history of the world, govern­ international treaties. If any such treaties violate ments had granted freedom to the individual our time-honored Bill of Rights or any other provi­ citi~~ens and local self-government to the people, sion of our precious Constitution, then to that ex­ only if forced to do so or if the sovereign for the tent our Constitution and our Bill of Rights is re- time being felt so inclined. The previous concept

JULY 27, 1953 765 of the scope and power of a national government remuneration.' ... Article 24 provides that every­ w'as that it had inherent powers of its own and one has 'the right to rest and leisure' and 'periodic might grant or withhold rights to the individual holidays with pay.' Article 25 provides that every­ citizen as it saw fit. Such is the totalitarian theory one has 'the right to food, clothing, housing and of government. medical care and necessary social services and the' "But by the Americ'an Constitution and Bill of right to security in the event of unemployment, Rights this concept was reversed. Only certain sickness, disability, widowhood, old age' without specific and limited functions and powers were con­ any provision that he shall work for it or help ferred upon the officials of our national govern­ establish a fund to pay for it. Put these or similar ment. It was to be 'a government of delegated and pronouncements in treaty form, ratified only by the limited powers only, and the people, by the Consti­ Senate, and you will by a few pages of 'Treaty Law' tution, forbade and intended to forbid the federal transform the government of the United States government doing anything not authorized by the from a Republic into a soci'alistic state ... Constitution, nor permitted under the prohibitions of the Bill of Rjghts. There w,as no intention that "The outstanding and most alarming example the national.government should have a reservoir of of the effect of 'treaties' on our domestic law and implied powers to change basic state and individual on our own United States Constitution 'and upon rights as fixed by the Constitution and'the Bill of the thinking of our judges is to be found in the Rights or to embark upon a collectivist or a police Opinion of the Chief Justice of the United States state program or a World State Program, either in the recent decision dealing with the President's through federal legislation or through international seizure of private property in the steel case. treaties or otherwise ... Lawyers had generally recognized that because of "Our wise forefathers knew that the mind and the peculiar provisions of Article VI of our Consti­ spirit could not be controlled and regimented by tution ratified treaties of the United States are the government or by the officers of government so long Supreme Law of the Land overriding state laws as freedom of speech and of press were preserved. and constitutions and even existing laws of Con­ Accordingly, the first provision of our Bill of gress. This of itself constitutes a dangerous threat Rights provided that, 'Congress shall make no l,aw to American rights which needs corre'ction by ,an ... abridging freedom of speech or of press' ... appropriate Constitutional amendment. But now "But under Article 2 of the proposed United the Chief Justice of the United States advances the Nations Covenant on Human Rights it is provided shocking doctrine in his dissent in the steel seizure that 'in case of a state of emergency officially pro­ case that the United Nations Charter gives the claimed by the authorities, a state may t'ake meas­ President of the United States authority to seize ures de'rogating from its obligations' to preserve private property nowhere granted to him either by freedom of speech and of press 'and other freedoms the Constitution or by the laws of the country ... which under our Bill of Rights are not subject to "In other words, ,acting under the Charter, the suspension. In other words, the whole right of President has powers not granted to him by the freedom of speech and of press may be suspended Constitution but moreover even denied to him by when a 'state of emergency' is officially declared by the Constitution ..• the authorities in power. Well, we have lived in a "The' Chief Justice succeeded in getting two state of officially declared emergencies frequently other members of the Supreme Court to join him during the last twenty years, and 'are still doing so. in this extraordinary doctrine whereby the United If this Covenant on Human Rights is ratified by Nations CHarter would be superior to the Constitu­ our Senate, a President, by declaring a 'state of tion of the United States. If he could have suc­ emergency' as provided in the Covenant, could ceeded in getting two additional members of the close all the newspapers in the United States, or Supreme Court to side with him the United States such of those and in such places as he may think it would in effect then and the're have ceased to be an wise to close. independent Republic and we would have been "Look at the scheme the 'treaty makers' in the committed and bound by whatever the United United Nations have for completely socializing our Nations does or directs us to do. We would have government and our economy without the Congress had a full-fledged world government overnight, ,and or our State Legislatures having anything to say this is exactly what may happen under so-calle~ about the matter. How do the 'treaty makers' pro­ 'Treaty Law' unless a constitutional amendment is pose to do this? The progr,am is spelled out in the passed protecting American rights and Americ~n Declaration on Human 'Rights which, under United law and American independence against the effect Nations propaganda, has been celebrated through­ of United Nations' treaties." out the land as a 'great charter of human liberty.' To sum up, no proposed amendment to the Con­ Article 22 of the Declaration provides that every­ stitution has ever been more urgent than the one has the right to 'just and favorable conditions of Bricker Amendment, which would make it ,clear work and to protection against unemployment' and beyond debate that treaties cannot impair or super­ that everyone has the right to 'just and favorable sede our Constitutional rights.

766 THE FREEMAN Our Principal Ally: Superior Air Power

On the b,asis of a careful s,tudy, hitherto By BONNER FELLERS un@~bllished, there is no longer any doubt Brig. Gen. U.S. Army, Ret. that air supremacy is our only defense.

From the maze of conflicting Anglo-American rela­ rying atomic or hydrogen bombs and backed by tions an issue of great moment is coming to light. defensive fighter-interceptors, they proposed to off­ It is this: how can the free world best be defended? set the Communist numerical superiority in man­ The British propose that the present plan for power. large NATO ground forces be abandoned, and The British study held, moreover, that it was im­ that we rely principally on air power to defend us. possible to r,aise or maintain the NAT'O forces Our State and Defense Department leaders, on the at present contemplated. The maximum NAT,O other hand, have rejected any such proposal. They strength envisaged by the February 1952 Lisbon continue to insist on a ground force containment Conference was 100 divisions and 9,000 combat against Red encroachment. aircraft. (Even these inadequate strength goals Britain has always been reluctant to go along have since been repudiated.) A surface defense of with the N,ATO program for the ground defense of western Europe, it was argued, even if successful, Europe. A study of the manpower and resources of could not save Europe and America from atomic NATO, as compared to those of Moscow-dominated . attacks launched by the Red Air Force from Euro­ countries, convinced the British that it is impossi­ pean and Arctic bases. Nor could a surface defense ble to build an adequate defense of western Europe succeed unles,s NATO controlled the air over west­ around a large standing army. As a consequence, ern Europe. Yet, as the British pointed out, the in late 1951, the British announced a policy of NA'TO powers ·are not even planning to build air non-participation in the European Defense Army. supremacy! Without this, the Red Air Force could Soon afterward they placed before top-level Amer­ paralyze shipping to the United Kingdom, and ican officials their new concept for the defense of could likewise keep American supplies and rein­ the free world. In late July 1952, Sir Oliver Franks, forcements from reaching N'AT'O ground forces then British Ambassador in Washington, presented fighting in Europe. Deprived of these, Europe could a carefully prepared Staff Study to our Joint Chiefs not possibly defend herself, even if sufficient of Staff and Department of State representatives. ground troops were available. The armies would There followed a long and detailed discussion at have little to fight with, and Br1itaoin's population a conference in Washington attended by repre­ would face starvation. sentatives of the two countries. Since only air supremacy could avert these dis­ asters, the British are now planning to triple their A Substitute for Containment own bomber strength, with special emphasis on long-range bombers. They are also building toward The Staff Study, or Appreciation as the British a goal of 1,000 first-line fighter,s for the defense call it, was comprehensive and compelling. Signed of England. Britain's Army and ,Navy, since they by the three ,British Chiefs---General Slim for the can neither defend Englandaga1nst air attack nor Army, Admiral Mc:Grigor for the Royal Navy, and effectively strike against Russia, have been assigned Air Marshall Slessor for the Royal Air Force-it secondary roles in the over-all strategy. proposed daringly new and revolutionary defense concepts. Intercontinental Bombers The logic of its conclusions was inescapable. After assessing Communist milita'ry might, the The essence of the British concept lies in the British contended that the free world is physically full exploitation of air power and atomic or hy­ incapable of containing the vast frontiers of China, drogen bombs, first as a war deterrent, and second Russia, and the European satellites. Instead, they as the only means of striking at Russia's war po­ proposed to substitute for the containment concept tential deep in the interior if war is forced upon us. the use of superior weapons-which the free world The British are tremendously impressed with the is better able to produce than Russi'a ,and her sat­ deterrent power of America's new intercontinental p.llites. With intercontinental strategic bombers car- bomber-the B-52-armed with atomic or hydrogen

JULY 27. 1953 767 bombs. They agree with our own Air Force chiefs and Navy in supporting roles would enable us to that Russia cannot defend herself successfully create air supremacy and at the same time effect against this kind of attack, despite more than 3,000 material over-all savings. modern Red fighter-interceptors now assigned to There was general accord at the conference that this mission. (Incidentally, only a few hundred on foreign soil air forces are generally less un­ fighter-interceptors are now available for the de­ welcome to the local population than are ground fense of the entire United States, and these are not forces. all modern.) The ,ability of our new high-altitude Inanswer to the arguments of the British, Amer­ jet bombers to penetrate air defense systems makes ican military chiefs endorsed air power as the intercontinental bombers our preeminent arm dominant element in war but-except for the Air against Russia. Strategic air power, therefore, in Force representative-they were not convinced that sufficient numbers for sustained attack is, accord­ strategic bombing could be decisive. Our Army and ing to the Br1itish, the primary war-winning factor. Navy representatives made no objection to giving The British Staff Study did not directly attack priority to air power-so long as there was no de­ our naval super-carrier program, except to comment crease of emphasis on the traditional roles of their that our carriers are fine if we can afford such respective services! However, our Army leaders ar­ an expensive form of air power when its effective­ gued that ground troops are less costly than air ness is doubtful. The British consider the role of power and just as great a w'ar deterrent. (One the fleet to be one of safeguarding sea lanes, and representative was actually disturbed lest adoption not of providing carrier bases for air attacks of the strategy proposed by Britain would be taken against enemy land targets and supply centers­ as an indication tha't the views of ex-President which in the case of Russia are often deep in the Herbert Hoover had prevailed.) Further, though interior. ,Carrier-based air support of ground troops American Army leaders ,agreed that a new strategy they ,also regard as undependable and prohibitive must be developed eventually, they contended that in cost. Land-based aircraft are both more effective the British might not be up-to-date on the possi­ and less costly. The super-carr,ier, in their view, is bilities of atomic weapons in ground combat. In too expensive to build and operate, and too vulner­ reply, Air Marshal Sle,ssor reminded our representa­ able to enemy air and submarine attack. tives that Britain had already produced atomic ex­ British experience with anti-aircraft guns has plosions and that her knowledge of the atom was shown that they are not very effective at high al­ certainly adequate for planning purposes. titudes. Britain is therefore reducing the strength of her anti-aircraft ground units and placing more Under Lock and Key reliance on guided missiles, and particularly on those which can be launched from fighter-intercep­ Having failed utterly at the conference to break tors in flight. These missiles have the ability to down British arguments, Ameriean military leaders seek the target at which they are fired. Their use have since kept extremely quiet about British views. in fighters, in the place of conventional machine­ They have also continued the antiquated and im­ gun or cannon projectiles, will enormously increase possible NAT,O program of ground defense. Though fighter-interceptor effectiveness. . 'our troops would always be hopelessly outnumbered, our chiefs maintain that this numerical inferiority Unequal Burden of Costs would be offset by atomic cannon, demolitions, and various other new defensive techniques. Of vital concern, both to us and the British, is While our Joint Chiefs of Staff have placed the the prohibitive cost of maintaining N'ATO armies British proposals under lock and key, the British under the present plan. Only the United States­ representatives have not considered that their plan and then only by contributing considerably more should be denied the public. The fact that Britain than in the past-could meet the initial and contin­ hopes to continue as a heavy recipient of military uing costs. But such unequal American contributions and financial aid from the United States m,ay have cannot be extended indefinitely. Meanwhile, these caused her not to argue publicly after her plan re­ expenditures, plus those for the regular U. S. Army ceived our official cold shoulder. But gradually and N'avy, make it impossible for Americans to the principal lines of thought have been disclosed shoulder the additional burden of financing and through the implementation of the new British de­ building global air supremacy-of the utmost neces­ fense program. sity in case of war. It is certain, however, that the reduction in our To~ achieve this ,air supremacy will be so costly 1954 Air Force appropriations is a disappointment, an undertaking, and will make such heavy demands to the British. This proposed budget marks. a dis­ on industry, that our currently planned Army and tinct departure from British defense concepts. The Navy expenditures will have to be reduced. Only Air Force cut of $5,OOO,000~OOO could well be a ,af,ter this reduction can sufficient funds and indus­ death blow to hope of global air supremacy for the trial effort be directed toward the necess,ary in­ free world. The increase in ground force appro­ creased air effort. The employment of the Army priations, together with Secretary Wilson's strange

768 THE FREEMAN and conflicting testimony, discloses our trend toward the employment of mass armies and universal serv­ ice for American youth. As a consequence, we may II THIS IS WHAT. THEY SAID II now expect increased emphasis on carrier-based air­ craft, and more fissionable materials devoted to It can, of course, be argued that Chinese fear of atomic cannon and other battlefield weapons. It is germ warfare and American fear of Communist likely that, more and more, strategic bomber strat­ spying represent opposite sides of the same medal. egy will be superimposed on, and tied to, tradi­ tional surface strategy. THE ECONOMIST, London, April 4, 1953 And on my part I ask you very simply to assign to If Atomic War Comes me the task of reducing the annual operating ex­ These trends are sinister. penses of your national government. We must move The Red Air Force .is at this moment capable of with a direct and resolute purpose now. The mem­ launching a full-scale atomic assault ag,ainst both bers of Congress and I are pledged to immediate Europe and America. It is a grim reality that we economy. have neither adequate fighter-interceptors to de­ FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, Message to Con­ fend ourselves against such an attack nor sufficient gress, March 10, 1933 intercontinental' bombers for sustained attack on Russia's war potential. Present NAT'O plans pro­ Anti-Semitism and other forms of racial prejudice pose to hold the vast Red Army at hay with nu­ and discrimination have almost entirely disap­ merically inferior ground forces, which are depend­ peared in Soviet Russia. ent for support on a NATO air force much too CORLISS LAMONT, Soviet Civilization, 1952 weak to meet the Red Air Force. If atomic war comes, the enemy doubtless will There was Menuhin. He used to talk about his art strike first. Our Air Force (or what is left after and his God and his fiddle. Then one day when he the first enemy attack) must be able to knock out was supposed to play in Philly, we told the musi­ his ability to strike us immediately after this initial cians he didn't hold a union card and they walked attack; otherwise our Air Force will be rapidly out. So now him and his God and his fiddle, they're consumed. Meanwhile, the enemy Air Force would in the San Francisco local. be free to continue to inflict terrific damage and JAMES C. PETRILLO, quoted by the New York to destroy our war industries, including our air­ Times, June 10, 1953 craft industry. It would be years before we would be able to create a new ,and effeetive Air Force, if What Proposal, What Panic? indeed we ever could. The peace proposal of the People's China and Korea The Red Army is the most powerful peacetime created a panic on the New York Stock Exchange. ground force the world has ever produced. If war GLOS PRACY (Warsaw), April 16, 1953, quoted comes, to engage its full weight will lead to ghastly in News from Behind the Iron Curtain. slaughter and eventual disaster. Does America dare let the Kremlin add air su­ Handouts UnHmited premacy to its obvious advantage in ground forces? vVould we be in "this present crisis" if we had ... Through force of ,circumstance, the British-more given both Britain and Russia five billion each at than we-have had to face the facts and realities the close of the war; if we had presented to Russia of modern warfare. They cannot afford the luxury four or five large dams, one of the things they love of pretending that the three main elements of de­ most, with the compliments and gratitude of the fense-air, land, and sea-can each play an equal American people ... if hundreds of American citie'S role. They are compelled to rely on new concepts had "adopted" British and Russian devastated cities and new weapons rather than on standing armies of similar size ... if we had invited Russian which can never match the Red Army. Although and native Communists to speak on all college cam­ traditionally a sea power, the British have accepted puses ... if we had given UNESCO 300 million a the fact that Russia cannot be blockaded and have year instead of a· niggardly three million? therefore drastically curtailed naval expenditures. READ BAIN, Professor of Sociology, Miami Their Air Force has become the "first line of de­ University, Ohio, address of April 25, 1951 fense" in the ocean of the sky. The British, wisely, have given up the effort of The Freeman invites contributions to this column, and will trying to satisfy all their 'generals and admirals pay $2 for each quotation published. If an item is sent in by and the loyal alumni of the two original sister mor~ than one person, the one from whom it is first received will be paid. To facilitate verification, the sender should give services. How long can,we in the United States the title of the periodical or book from which the item is afford to base our defense plan and stake our des­ taken, with the exact date if the source is a periodical and the publication year and page num,ber if it is a book. tiny on service loyalties rather than on strategic Quotations should be brief. They can not he returned or realities? acknowledged. THE EDITORS

JULY 27, 1953 769 What's Left of the "Single Tax"?

The movement Henry George began seventy-five years (tgo is describled by a professor of ,sociology. By GLENN H'OOVER In our next issue the distinguished economis,t, Frank H. K~ight, will present a different .point of view.

The crusade for the "Single Tax," under the lead­ the earth would be recognized, and each person's ership of Henry George, was probably the most share of the annual value of the earth would go spectacular crusade in our history. George was into the public treasury rather than to those who forty years old when his Progress and Poverty was claim the· earth as their own. ' published in 1879. Before he died, some eighteen Paradoxically enough, Single Taxers are not years later, this im:pecunious, unschooled, and ob­ primarily interested in taxes at all, not even the scure printer from San Francisco had become one tax on land, except as a means of siphoning the of the most noted figures of his age. economic rent of land into the public treasury. His Progress and Poverty had been translated Some Single Taxers-though not all-have believed into all the important languages of his time, and that the economic rent of land would provide gov­ millions of copies of it had been sold. He had ernments with enough revenue to meet their legit­ lectured to enthusiastic audiences in Australia, imate needs. If so, no other taxes need be levied. New Zealand, and the British Isles, and it is said They therefore called themselves,and were called that in England only Gladstone was better known. by others, "Single Taxers." He had twice been a candidate for mayor of New It must be evident, however, that whether or not York City, and in his first campaign he received the annual value of land would provide govern­ more votes than the young but redoubtable Theo­ ments with enough revenue to enable them to abol­ dore Roosevelt. He died (1897) just before the end ish all other taxes is merely a "fringe" issue. The of his second campaign, and as his body lay in right of each to an equal share of the annual value state in the Grand Central Palace, one hundred of the earth does not at all depend on whether this thousand mourners filed by his bier, and another sum would be large enough to support our govern­ hundred thousand prayed or meditated outside. ments. If it should-which now seems highly im­ What happened to the Georgist movement? Did probable-governments could reduce their debts, or it collapse because it dealt with petty or transitory even declare a "dividend"! If the sum proved in­ issues as did the Populists, the Grangers, the Free adequate, governments would of course, have to Silverites, or the California advocates of "'Thirty impose other taxes, even if the single tax on land Dollars Every Thursday"? Has George's economic were adopted. logic been refuted and rejected by professional economists? Is the world no longer interested in E:thics plus Economics land reform? How much of the economic rent of land is already taken for public purposes by means The notion that, as Jefferson put it, "the earth of the'general property tax? These and similar belongs in usufruct to the living" is the very core questions must occur to anyone interested in the of the Single Tax doctrine. It is not, strictly speak­ history of reform movements. And they are. of ing, an economic notion at all but an ethical one. particular interest to those who believe. that the Nevertheless, it is based on certain economic prem­ earth, together with the waters upon it and the air ises which should be re-examined so that we may around it, are, of right, the common property of see if they have withstood the ravages of time and mankind. the criticism of economists. The term "Single Tax" as applied to Henry 'The economic premises which are per.tinent to the George's program, isa very inadequate description ethical claim of the Single Taxers are: of it. The program was based on the simple propo­ 1. The earth is not the product of labor, but a sition that land is a free gift of Nature and that free gift of Nature or of Nature's God. all persons have equal claim to it. However, the 2. Its value-apart from improvements-iscre­ earth cannot be equally shared by "dividing it up." ated by the increase in the population it serves. What can be shared is not the earth itself, but 3. The supply of land-unlike the products of the value of it-its economic rent. If landowners labor-cannot be decreased by any tax that can be were compelled to pay as a tax the annual va]ue of imposed upon it. For example, windows could be their land, this revenue could be used for public "taxed out of existence," but not land: purposes. In this way the common right of all to 4. Taxes imposed on the site value of landcannot

7'70 THE FREEMAN be shifted. When a tax is imposed on a produced istic. Problems related to the cold war, Communism, goods, the tax enters into the cost of production and inflation, trade unions, crime, tariffs, education, must be recovered in its price. However, a tax on etc., are of as much public interest as an increase or land values will not decrease the supply of land or decrease in taxes And the notion that a sort of increase the demand for it. Nor will it increase the "landed gentry" is essential to the stability of so­ price of land, of farm crops, or the rent of urban ciety in this urban age borders on the fantastic. property. 5. The rent received by landowners is not a pay­ Em.otional Appeal Lacking ment for any service they render to society. Doeconomis,ts reject the foregoing premises? On As a crusade, the Single Tax movement did not the contrary, everyone of them is accepted as true long survive the death of its leader. Without Henry by economists-almost without exception. They are George's unusual abilities as an orator and a not propositions which Henry George, or any of writer, the movement could make but little emotion­ his followers, ever claimed as their own. Most of al appeal to the masses, and those who respond to them must always have been accepted as true by appeals to reason are seldom the stuff of which thinking men. For example, all primitive tribes crusades are made. Even those who favored the agree that the portion of the earth over which they public appropriation of the economic rent shied roam as collectors, hunters, or fishermen is the away from the movement because it had attracted common property of all. It was only when agricul­ so many eccentric5 who persisted in presenting ture was introduced that society recognized any George's program ,as a panacea. Thoughtful men private right to any given part of the common will hesitate to identify themselves with even the earth-and then only for such periods as the most sensible program if they find it is being of­ original claimant cultivated it. fered to the public as a miracle-working cure-all. George frankly based his program on the Ricard­ Most American farmers who owned their farms ian explanation of rent. He insisted that it had would not support the program because they were "the self-evident character of a geometric axiom," interested in profiting from a rise in land values. and he never professed to add anything to the Ric­ They reacted to it more as l,and speculators than ardian analysis. Instead, he confined himself to as land-hungry peasants, and showed little interest drawing the ethical conclusion that if, as Ricardo in sharing equally the value of God's footstool. The demonstrated, rent is an unearned income which grain farmers of the Middle West joined the grows with the increase in population, then justice Granger movement and tried to obtain lower freight requires that it be devoted to public purposes. rates for wheat and corn. Those farmers who had The objections to the Single Tax, as recorded in mortgaged their farms reacted primarily as debtors most texts on economics, are adequately summa­ and supported the Greenback Party, the Populists, rized in Economic Principles, Problems, and Pol­ or followed Bryan in his efforts to obtain "cheap icies (fourth edition) by Professor William H. money" with which they hoped to payoff their K!iekhofer. He lis,ts all objections under three head­ debts. George, as he himself put it, "stood for ings-ethic-al, political, and economic. There is first men," but most of the agrarians preferred someone the ethical objection that by adopting such a pro­ who stood more specifically for farmers. gram society would fail to "keep faith" with those The industrial workers, although often warmed who had bought land with the expecta'tion that the by George's eloquence, proved to be more interested land values "created by themselves and their in improving their lot as wage earners than in neighbors" would go to the landowners. assuring to each man his equal share in the socially On political grounds, the objection is made created v,alue of land. They preferred to organize that if adequate public revenue could be raised by themselves into unions. Having learned that, with appropriating the socially created economic rent, the monopoly power thus obtained, they could exact many citizens would lack any incentive to partic­ higher wages than they could get by selling their ipate in government. Others argue that a large services in a free m'arket, they were not much group of landowners is essential to the stability and interested in economic justice. Thenceforth they progress of political society. On economic grounds showed but little interest in proposals for improve­ the objection is made that the private appropriation ing the lot of the entire "working class," and they of the economic rent of land is essential in order to were even less attracted to any movement seeking secure "the best care and management of the land." justice for all m,ankind. Professor Kiekhofer does not disclose his own The Single Tax movement, once a crusade, has opinions, and it might not be proper for him to do now sobered up and settled down to the more prosa­ so in an introductory text. My own view is that ic but fruitful task of adult education. There is there is some merit in the objection that the full no Single Tax Party, no national organization, and economic rent should not be taken without some no hierarchy empowered to expel heretics who de­ compens'ation to the landowners. But the notion part from the orthodox faith. Single Taxers are that citizens, if relieved from taxation, would have pronounced individualists, and any man may claim no interest in their government, is quite unreal- to be a Bingle Taxer or a Georgist-and any other

JULY 27, 1958 7,71 man may just as vehemently deny this claim! lieve that all who are in the same boat with him One of the more stable organizations is the are paying the same tax. But the simplicity and Robert Schalkenbach Foundation (New York) even-handed justice of sales taxes should not blind which publishes and circulates Georgist literature, us to the fact that they are regressive in character ~ both in English and in foreign languages. It also If that illogical celebrity-the man-in-the-street­ gives financial support to the American Journal of could only think straight, he would not argue that Economics and Sociology, and is now awarding taxes should be levied in accordance with ability to grants-in-aid to graduate students who are doing pay, and at the same time defend taxes on sales. research in some phase of the land problem. Single Taxers do not so argue. Another organization, now in its twenty-third An increased use of taxes on sales and income by year, is the Henry George School of Social Science, state and local governments does not always result which publishes the Henry George News and offers in lowering the taxes on the site value of land. But class instruction in fundamental economics in its in some regions it has meant just that. Landowners branches in many of the leading cities throughout are frequently the most vociferous and influential the United States and Canada. The effort concen­ of all taxpayers, and they favor the shifting of local trated on these schools is further evidence that government costs to the state governments. The the advocates of land-value taxation have definitely local governments derive much of their revenue abandoned the more spectacular political cam­ from taxes on land, while state governments derive paigns for various "single tax" measures, and are most of their revenue from taxes paid-directly or resting.their hopes on the slower processes of ed­ indirectlY-'by the landless. If landowners can ucation. persuade the states, or the national government, to Single Taxers are also supporting every effort bear an increased share of the cost of supporting to have personal property and improvements ex­ schools, building and maintaining roads and streets, empted from taxation. This normally results in caring for the poor, etc., they can keep more of increasing the share of local revenue derived from their rents while the landless will pay more taxes. taxes on the site value of land. Taxes on personal This program has been aptly described as "Single property, both tangible and intangible, are already Tax in revers,e." in such disrepute that they have been abandoned in But the landowners themselves seldom have many places, and are levied at lower rates in others. enough votes to make "thegreat tax shift" from Single Taxers have also consistently opposed the land to sales and income. To gain their ends they levying of taxes on improvements because such have encouraged their neighbors to believe that it taxes obviously discourage the construction of would be well to transfer more and more of the buildings and the proper maintenance of them. costs of local government to the states-or better These efforts are having results, as is shown by the yet to the national government. Many of those recent action of the State of Pennsylvania in per­ without land-or any understanding of economics mitting all third-class cities to tax improvements ---:have been easily seduced by the arguments of at lower rates than those imposed on land. This the landowners. Why should they pay for the sup­ privilege had previously been accorded only to the port of the traditional functions of local govern­ two second-class cities of Pittsburgh and Scranton. ments if they can get their state or the national government to support them? The argument is Sales Tax Opposed simple and the simpletons who are persuaded by it may get what they deserve; but the landowners Single Taxers are also entitled to considerable get what they do not deserve-additional revenue credit for opposing any additional use of the sales from the socially created value of land~ tax device by state and local governments. As If the term "Single Tax" is used to include aU compared with the tax on self-assessed incomes, a of Henry George's economic notions, then the "true sales tax is easy to collect, and those who pay it believers" are not very numerous. He was con­ need not devote two or three week ends each year vinced that "in spite of the incre,ase of productive to the baffling and wearying task of computing power, wages constantly tend to a minimum which their sales tax liability. For example, taxes on the will give but a bare living." Both George and his sale of gasoline would be much less popular if each contemporary, Karl Marx, predicted that real auto owner had to report the number of gallons he wages would never rise appreciably unless their had purchased in the preceding tax period and reforms were adopted. In their abilities to foretell then make the required payment-whether at once the future, time has proved both of them to be, at or in four equal installments! best, but very minor prophets. Each man pays his sales tax when he buys, and It must be admitted too that George's attack on he gets some comfort from believing that every MaUhus and his unconvincing explanation of the other man does the same. This is not true of taxes rate of interest have added nothing to his reputa­ on income. Insofar as they are based on self-assess­ tion among modern scholars. But his notions on ment, a premium is placed on dishonesty. An in­ these matters are almost quite irrelevant to the come tax payer must be naive indeed if he can be- program which he advocated-the socialization of

772 THE FREEMAN the economic rent of land. Men can, and do, sup­ And finally, a word of caution. No one, to my port this program while disagreeing violently on knowledge, has any authority to speak for all who such questions as the inevitability of poverty· or call themselves Single Taxers, and certainly I do the merits of the Malthusian doctrine. The impor­ not presume to do so. I do not even enjoy being tant thing is that the economic principles on which called one, unless the term is limited to mean one George's program is based have won general accept­ who believes in the governmental appropriation of ance. The opposition to his program is based almost the socially created value of land-with or without exclusively on ethical grounds, and on this issue some compensation to its present owners. As we reasonable men may reasonably differ. become more disillusioned with our existing taxes Space limitations make it impossible to discuss on personal property, improvements, sales, and in­ the Single Tax movement in foreign countries. come, it seems probable that much more of the Suffice it to say that in Australia, New Zealand, economic rent of land will be taken for public South Africa, and particularly in Denmark, the purposes. advocates of land value taxation are very active. That reform may prove to be the only enduring At the local level they have made considerable legacy of the Single Tax movement. It will not progress toward exempting personal property and satisfy those who yearn for utopia, but the prac­ improvements from taxation. In Britain no tangible tical idealists throughout the world who are work­ results have yet been achieved in the field of legis­ ing for it will be content. To have the earth recog­ lation, but London is the center of a very effective nized as the common heritage of mankind-rich and educational campaign, and Land and Liberty is a poor alike-would show the skeptics that the self­ well edited London journal which serves the Single ishness of individuals and of classes cannot forever Tax movement throughout the world. prevail against appeals to reason and justice.

Our Pink-Tinted Clergy

In their Isponsorship (Of Comm1tnist causes ja growing By JULIAN MAXWELL number of pur churchmen are furthering the aim of a secret core in their m,idst to destroy' religion.

It was a rainy Sunday morning in Brooklyn. I fixed on the gleaming communion altar, moved to stepped out of the protective cover of the subway the' great chancery window where the ascension of and turned left, down Montague Street. Ahead of Christ was pictured in vivid colors, then traveled me was the Holy Trinity Church, its spire partly slowly up the gothic arches to the high-vaulted obscured by the mist. I was on my way to its Sun­ clerestory. Was it really possible, I asked myself, day morning service conducted by the Reverend that all this was only so much stone and glass­ William Howard Melish, formerly Chairman of the a new front for' Communism? National Council of American-8ovietFrienrlship This question has troubled congregations in a and, according to Louis Budenz, a card-carrying good many churches in recent years. Mr. Melish i,s member of the Communist Party. only one of a number of clergymen who are accused An elderly woman smiled as I walked through either of being out-and-out Communists or of tak­ the large paneled door and handed me a small ing part in pro~Communist activities. In the New pamphlet outlining the service and giving church York area alone there are at least a dozen Red or news. The sermon was entitled, "Though One Rose pink-tinted clergymen. These include the Reverend From the Dead." J. Henry Carpenter of Brooklyn, who was recently The organ began to play, and Mr. Melish, a refused a passport by the 8tate Department, the sandy-haired man with close-set eyes and rimless Reverend 'George A. Buttrick of the Presbyterian glassels, appeared dressed in an ornate white robe. Church on Madi,son Avenue, the Reverend Allan After the first hymn, "Fairest Lord Jesus," he Knight Chalmers of the Broadway Tabernacle Con­ began his sermon, in the mechanical yet full­ gregational Church, the Reverend Jack R. throated tones of an uninspired actor. He told the McMichael, Director of the Methodist Federation story of Lazarus, the poor beggar who got into for Social Action, the Reverend MarkA. ,Dawber, heaven, and of Dives, the rich man who didn't. "If Secretary of the Home Missions Council, and Dr. more people in this world would worry les,s about Harry F. Ward, Professor Emeritus of Christian their money and more about sharing it, it would Ethics at Union Theological Seminary. be a better world," he said. As he spoke my eyes, Just about two months ago Dr. Ward was the

JULY 27, 1953 773 honor 'guest at a "peace and friendship" dinner at Crossroads, a Presbyterian Sunday School quar­ the Hotel Mc,Alpin. in N'ew York. Nearly four terly,' discussed the position of the working man: hundred per,sqns attended. Dr. Ward was being "As the world became more industrialized social honored for his "signal contribution to the cause problems became more complicated and acute. With of American-Soviet understanding and world insufficient protection by law industrial workers­ peace." 'The featured speakers included Paul Robe­ including children-endured severe privation and son, Corliss Lamont, and that millionaire champion were often unscrupulously exploited. In the midst of Red China, Frederick Vanderbilt Field. The of this situation a prophetic voice was heard-a speeches, of course, sang the praises of Russia and voice that was to be heard yet more loudly in the damned the "warmongering" of the United States. years to come. It was the Voice of Karl Marx... " Of the above-mentioned clergymen, McMichael is probably the most powerful. His Social Federa­ In Praise of Stalin tion, which has been labeled subversive by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, The Reverend Jerome Davis, a former professor claims to represent twenty Methodist bishops and at the Yale Divinity School, often expresses the some four thousand clerics. McMichael himself, who pro-Communist clergyman's opinion of foreign has been associated with more than twenty Red affairs. In the July 1947 issue of Classmate, a front organizations, is a dynamic and personable Methodist publication, he sang the praises of one man who runs his outfit like a high-powered public Joseph Stalin. "It would be an error," said Davis, relations firm. From his offices in the official Meth­ "to consider the Soviet leader a wilful man who odist building on Fifth Avenue, which he occupies believes in forcing his ideas upon others. Every­ despite strenuous church opposition, he dissemin­ thing he does reflects the desires and hopes of the ates a veritable flood of pro-Communist propaganda. masses to a large degree." In his recently published book, Behint$ Soviet Surprising Frankness Power, Davis made some interesting comments on religion and Communism. He wrote: Of the several other Red-front religious groups, Bolshevism is commonly pictured as the antithesis Harry Ward's Methodist-iEpiscopal Federation and of Christianity. Yet Hewlett Johnson, Dean .... of the 'Institute of Applied Religion are probably the Canterbury [the Red Dean] declares, "the Commun­ best known. The head of the Institute, the ,Reverend ist puts the Christian to shame in the thoroughness of his quest for a harmonious society. Here he Claude C. Williams of ,Detroit, undoubtedly has proves himself to be the heir of the Christian inten­ provided us with the frankest statement on record tion ... the Communist struggle for community con­ of a Red churchman's philosophy. "Denomination­ tains an element of true religion and as >such de­ ally," said Williams not long ago, "I am a Pres­ mands Christian recognition." The former United byterian; religiously a Unitarian; and politically, States Ambassador to Russia, Joseph E. Davies, I'm a Communist. I'm not preaching to make people says, "the Christian religion could be imposed upon Russian Communism without violating the 'economic good or anything of the 'Sort. I'm in the church and political purposes of Communism, which are because I can reach people easier that way and get based after all on the .same principle of the; brother­ them organized for Communism." hood of man which Jesus preached." However, the party probably gets its greatest This paragraph explains the essence of the·fal­ support from clergymen actually working inside lacious reasoning which often leads some of our churches or official church organizations, writing muddleheaded ministers into the ranks of Com­ and editing articles for the church magazines, and munism. Forgetting that Communism presupposes making important policy decisions. For instance, atheism and amorality, they take the bait labeled Dr. Ward had a direct hand in writing the Social Social Welfare which the Reds dangle so enticingly Creed for the churches of the National Council-a before them and are hooked in short order. This creed which advocates "social planning and control basic naivete of outlook crops up continually in the of the credit and monetary systems and the eco­ personality of the pink-tinted clergyman-he fol­ nomic processes for the common good." lows the track of Communism but never manages The articles that sometimes pop up in the church to catch up with the vehicle; and if he ever does magazines are surprising. For example, an article catch up with it, he is crushed under its wheels. in the Methodist publication, Adult Student, for Methodist BishopG. Bromley Oxnam of Mary­ April 1950, contained the following strange descrip­ land is typical of this g,roup. A former. president tion of our economic system: "Our chief rulers are of the National Council of Churches,which claims 'the descendants (and their satellites) of the house to speak for 35,000,000 Americans, and current of Morgan (the head of the world's greatest com­ president of the World Council of Churches, he bination of finance), the Rockefellers (head of the stands at the top of the clerical "world. Yet he is world's greatest oil supply), the Mellons (alumi­ completely oblivious to the Communist threat to num and oil), the Du Ponts (chemical products and that world. He has visited Rus'sia three times and allied industries), and the Ford Empire." he often expresses sympathy for Red doctrines. He Another piece in the January-March issue of denies he is a Communist, but his sayings have a

774 TH:E1 FREEMAN peculiar ring, like the statement he once made with concentrated purpose to achieve this end. about basic Marxist theory: "From each according The Communists began to infiltrate the clergy to his ability to each according to his need has its in Russia shortly -after the revolution. Their aim roots in the teachings of Jesus." was to kill two birds with one stone. First, they Another clergyman whose frock is probably a wanted to hear confessions of compatriots suspected darker Red is the Reverend Stephen H. Fritchman of defection and get evidence to send them to of Los Angeles. Tagged by many as the "Red IDean Siberia. Second, they hoped to use their positions of America," he worked for years putting out pro­ inside the church to influence laymen and other Communist propaganda in the Christian Register, clergymen to support Communism, in the long run a Presbyterian publication. Eventually church undermining the whole structure of organized officials forced him out of his job, along with his religion. assistant, Martha Fletcher, who fled to Paris where A similar program was begun in the United her lawyers advised her to stay if she wanted to State,s in the early 1930s. Earl Browder, former keep out of jail. But the officials couldn't stop boss of the party, defined the purpose of the pro­ Fritchman from finding a new pulpit, and he is gram. "By going to the religious masses," he said, today pastor of one of the largest Unitarian "we are for the first time able to bring our anti­ churches on the West Coast. religious ideas to them." To serve this goal several In general it is extremely difficult to force sus­ Reds were Ispecifically trained for subversive serv­ pected ministers out of their jobs and prevent ice in the clergy. Later on, rank-and-file party mem­ them from getting new ones. 'Thi!s is partly due to bers were ordered to join churches and form the complex structure of most church regulations organizations Which would attract fellow-travelers and partly because of the traditional respect 'ac­ with religious interests. Herbert Philbrick, who corded a "man of the cloth." The case of the joined the party to work for the FBI, gives the Reverend Melish in Brooklyn is an example. When following account of his own experience: members of his Episcopal .congregation found out "In 1942 I was ordered by the party to maintain about his connections with Red-f.ront organizations, strong ties with the Baptist Church, the denomina­ a group got together and demanded he be removed. tion with which I had been affiliated since early At the time he was serving as assistant rector to youth. I did this, joining the First Baptist Church his father, the Reverend J. Howard Melish, at the of Wakefield, Massachusetts, becoming a member Holy Trinity Church. The father refused to remove of the administration committee, chairman of the his son, and the younger Melish vehemently denied public relations committee, 'Sunday iSchool teacher, he wasra Communist. and head of the young married people's club. None Irate;churchgoers immediately brought pressure of thechurch members had any knowledge of my to bear 'on the Vestry, and it voted to request the affiliation with the Communist Party." father'sremoval so that hi,s son could be forced out Philbrick recently told a congressional commit­ of the church. Bishop James Pernette Wolf re­ tee in W,ashington the names of five ministers in moved Melish senior as re,quested, but in the mean­ and around Boston who are Communist Party time a new Vestry had been elected and had decided members but whose connections are still completely not to request the removal of his son. Under church unknown to members of their cong,regations. regulations, Wolf was powerles,s to act without a go-ahead from the Vestry and, as a result, young A Natural Sanctuary Melish stepped into his father's place as acting rector, a position he still holds. Melish senior At first the Red infiltration of religion was an fought his case for reinstatement up to the United important but secondary maneuver. Before World States ,supreme Court without success. War Two the main Communist effort was directed How~ver, the greatest threat to the churches toward labor. The Reds were interested in convert­ today does not come from fellow-travelers or even ing workers to the cause and installing Reds in suspected ICommunists. 'They are out in the open. key jobs in unions. After 1945, however, cold war Most of their affiliations or pinkish leanings are tension began to mount and Communist labor or­ known, and it is possible to be on guard. The real ganjzers and other members of the movement were , danger comes from the dyed-in-the-wool Reds in rorced to take to the underground. In a search for the clergy whose names are known to none perhaps a new mask for their activities, they turned auto­ except 'the ., most inner Party councils. Thoroughly matically to the church. It was a natural sanctuary. Godless,and·specially trained for their task, they The Red hunters might scour the country, the Reds have none of the worries of their more scrupulous thought, but surely they would not invade the and foggy-headed sympathizers. 'They do not 'have sacred confines of religion. The Communists began to reconcile Communism with faith or build elab­ planning a new campaign. orate rationalizations to explain Communism's lack It was not long in coming. The names of min­ of Christian morality. They see the Communist isters soon began to appear by the hundreds on the goal clearly, which is the total obliteration of Stockholm Appeal and other Moscow-inspired pe­ religion from the face of the earth, and they act titions calling for "peace." Later on, ministers

JULY 27, 1953 775 were to provide the greatest bulk of support for secret operative inside the Communist Partyre­ the appeal to save the Rosenbergsand their names ported that orders had been received for anew also were to turn up on germ warfare charges step-up in efforts to takeover religion in this against the allies in Korea. There was the famous country. So we must follow the advice ·of John, in letter from Dryden L. Phelps, American Bapti,st the .New Testament, "Beloved, believe not every Missionary in Chengtu, Saechwen, China. Said spirit, but try the spirits which they are of God : Phelps: "N'inety-five per cent of the U.S. press on because many false prophets are gone out into the Far East is absolutely false. Believe the op­ the world." posite and you will be close to the facts. The South Korean government first attacked North Korea. It seems that only Soviet Russia Today [a pro-Red magazine to which the letter was addressed] and The Wonderful World of Books Harry Ward's Social Action bulletin of the M. E. Federation are about the only trustworthy papers On May 1, two persons who identified themselves as in the U.,s. now." Edward J. Fitzgerald and Harry Magdoff, testified Not all the ministers who serve Communism are under oath ata public session of the Senate's In­ Reds or pink-tinted. A large number -are actually ternal Security Subcommittee'. It was a routine per­ tricked into giving their names to support Com­ formance, except that these two seemed rather more munist causes. For example, last Christmas the important than the usual run. They had ente'red the Reds sent out copies of a petition to President Tru­ government in 1936 or '3'7, and left in 1947. The man from the mailing address of a fictitious minis­ National Research Project, under David Weintraub, ter in N'ew York. The petition began: "As the had funneled them into the broad goveTnment ap­ Christmas season approaches, its message of God's paratus. After gathering their honey from a vari­ grace to all men of good will rings out...." It ety of wartime agencies, they had shifted into the continued in this vein for several paragraphs and , Department of Commerce where, at the time of finally at the very bottom turned into an appeal to their leave-taking, ;they were flexibly located at the the President to grant amnesty to the eleven Com­ $10,000 level. munist leaders convicted of plotting to overthrow They were both, so they testified, economists,·and the government. Many a clergyman, overflowing indeed they were marvelously placed for the exer­ with Yuletide spirit, signed the petition without cise of an economic sort of talent. During the war, reading down to the vital paragraphs. The Daily for example, one was in charge of a continuous Worker quoted the names of 161 prominent church­ survey of ten thousand metal working. plants. Both men as appearing on the petitions, which were were apparently demons at devising census and mailed to the White House. statistical projects covering key sections of Ameri­ Only a few months ago, one hundred ministers can industry. attended a conference in Washington only to dis­ In the standard formula, the two witnesses de­ cover too late that the main speaker was the Legis­ clined to answer all questions relating to Commu­ lative Secretary of the Communist Party. The Reds nism, Communists, espionage, classified documents, pulled a ,similar trick in New York in January. and a long list of individuals. (In a 1945 sworn The National Committee to Defend Negro Leader­ memorandum, secret but available to their govern­ ship invited several clergymen to attend a dinner mental superiors, both had been identified as mem­ where awards were to be passed out to Negro men bers of a Soviet espionage ring.) and women who had contributed to the fight for Mr. Magdoff declined to answer, also, all ques­ "democracy." As it turned out, the fighters for tions dealing with his current business. Mr. Fitz­ democracy were Communists, and the after-dinner gerald was, on this point, more open. He confessed speechmaking period was devoted to a long diatribe that he was a "free lance writer." His main genre against America by Red leaders. is, it seems, book reviews, particularly published. 'The problem of investigating Communist infiltra­ he testified, in the book sections of the New York tion and influence in the churches presents many Times and Herald Tribune, and the Saturday Re­ difficulties. In the first place, New Deal and con­ view. In these hospitable organs-together consti­ servative factions of the Protestant movement have tuting the principal screening membrane for the been involved in a political ,civil war for the past books that filter through to· the American public­ ten years, which has tended to obscure the real he has done well for one whose active acquaintance danger· in clouds of propaganda. Second, there is with the delights of literature began so short a the dilemma of ultimate faith to be considered. while ago. According to the testimony, during the The vast majority of our churchmen are loyal, first four months of this year 53 reviews of his God-fearing men. If an investigation of suspected (some signed by such other names as "Martin Reds were undertaken in -a mood of hysteria, it Rice") appeared in the Saturday Review alone, would undermine the very religious beliefs we are thirty-odd in the Herald Tribune, and six to twelve try,ing· to preserve. in the more austere atmosphere of the·Times. However, something must be done: Recently a JAMES BURNHAM

776 THE FREEMAN Two Sides toa Strike

The recent Southern California Edison strike By LEO WOLMAN show.s how a c,onjlict of .ri.ghts can be settled justly land without government intervention.

The voluminous and ever-growing literature on the intimidation, to require employers to enter into labor problem, org'anized labor, labor relations, and compulsory membership arrangements with unions, collective bargaining has very little that is useful to or to subordinate the public to any private interest. say about strikes, the leading weapon of union labor What these issues mean in practice, and how in its succession of conflicts with employers. Dis­ they can be disposed of in such a way as to clarify cussionsof the right to strike rarely deal with the the goals of public policy, is illustrated by the issues that cause strikes, the methods by which his,tory of a strike against the Southern California they are called, and the manner in which they are Edison Company, called las,t March by a local union conducted. of the A.F.L. Electrical Workers' Union. The strike Neither during nor after the two great steel lasted two months. In its course, the company, strikes of 1949 and 1952 was any investigation thanks to the loyalty of many of its employees and made by responsible public agencies of 'the degree the courage and competence of its management, to which these costly stoppages reflected the will continued to supply electrical service to its cus­ of the. members of the steel union. N'othing avail­ tomers. The company's position, explained in a able in the extensive writing on this subject de­ series of public statements during the strike, and scribes authoritatively the union's adminis,trative the terms of settlement show how'a conflict of this machinery which prepared the way for the strikes, na'ture raises most of the ques1tions of public policy made the decisions to call them, and decided when which again and again plague Congress in its and how they were to terminate. Although the efforts to write and rewrite our federal labor law. President's emergency board of 1949 dealt briefly If 'Congress S'tudied the events of this encounter, and critically with the failure of the union to bar­ it would see more clearly than ever before what gain with large segments of the steel industry, the kind of labor legislation this country really needs matter was promptly dropped, and no report was in order to secure the legitimate interes'ts of the ever made of the consequences of the union's public and of labor, union or non-union. unwillingness to exhaust the processes of collec­ tive bargaining before engaging in industrial A Public ·Disaster Averted warfare. Yet all of these questions are matters of deep ISouthern California Edison fought, first of all, public concern. Accurate knowledge of them would against the power and right of a private organiza­ seem to be indispensable to Congress in making tion to shut down a vi·tal public service. The area public policy and drafting federal labor legisla­ served by the company includes some 3,000,000 tion. They are surely not answered by reiterating people. Every type of economic life and activity­ that there is an inalienableright to strike and to farming, industry, public and social services-is picket and that denial of these rights, however and represented. If the union had been successful in for what purpose they are exercised, is a clear its purpose to cut off the supply of electricity, the violation of American law. effects would have been devastating. As the com­ panyput it: "If the officials of Local 47 of IBEW­ Protection of Citizens A.F.L. had the power to cause a major disaster such as an earthquake in this territory ... and they For, as everyone knows, there are many rights, exercised that power, such a condition could neither some superior to others. When these numerous be tolerated nor condoned. Yet we are today con­ rights come into conflict with one another, it is the fronted with a strike which could cause damage function of public policy to decide which gives way. far in excess of any damage from all the earth­ Certainly no one would claim that the right to quakes which we have experienced in our history organize and to act and bargain collectively wipes in this are'a .. ." out all other rights, though many behave today as In this, as in most labor disputes, there was if this were so. It cannot, however, have been the originally nothing in the union"s demands that intent of Congress, in drafting the Wagner Act, could not have been accommodated by peaceful and or the Taft~HartleyAct,to sacrifice the right of all reasonable negotiation. The union must have known citizens to protection aga'inst violence, force, and that i,ts wage demands were unreasonable, for they

JULY 27, 1953 '.1'11 were far in excess of concessions the company had their members with the idea that loyalty to the already made to a C.I.O. union of its employees. union in many respects prevents loyalty to the The second major demand, for a union shop, or company; that as a member [of the union] you compulsory membership, was nothing more than owe everything to the union and nothing to the a demand for more power by a private organization company except that which the union leadership which showed by its behavior that it had greater approves and dictates with reference to your per­ power than it could safely be entrusted with. formance on the job." Accordingly, the agreement 'There is every evidence in this episode that the of May 11, which settled the strike, states that it union's demands were not economic, but political­ is the obligation of members of the union to pre­ a condition which has become increasingly common serve "the good name and good will and the. prop­ to all relations between organized labor and em­ erty of the company" and "to cooperate and assist ployers in this country. When, therefore, colleC'tive in the performance of the duty and obligation of bargaining is turned into a process in which the the company to the public." prestige of one labor leader, national or local, i,s On the surface this strike against the Edison pitted against the prestige of a fellow-leader, the Company seems indistinguishable from the numer­ outlook for harmonious and sound labor settle­ ous outbreaks of labor warfare to which all Ameri­ ments becomes dark indeed. can industry is today exposed. But, in fact, this s'trike and the way it was handled by the com­ The Right Not to Join a Union pany's management were unique in the recent history of this type of episode. There was, first, On the issue of compulsory membership the com­ the refusal by the company to evade the issues pany remained adamant from beginning to end, which the strike, in its origin and conduct, created. and it won its point, as it should have. California The company might, as many enterprises have Edison consistently held that it had nei,ther the done, have compromised the issues and brought the legal nor the moral right to force anyone into a conflict to a· quick end. It refused to pay the price union. By taking this posiUon, the company has of surrendering underlying principles of human shown more strength and foresight than our conduct and piling up grea'ter trouble in the future federal government. For in the Wagner and Taft­ for the vast community it serves, the welf'are of Hartley Acts, as well as in the recently amended its employees, and its own prosperity. The strike Railway Labor AC't, Congress yielded to union was unique, also, in that it was settled without political pressure and conferred governmental sanc­ government intervention, which, allowed to oper­ tion on union demands for compulsory membership. ate here as it has elsewhere, would have produced By doing so the Congress for all prac,tical purposes the typical political settlement, full of potential nullified the fundamental objective of both the disorder calculated to break out as soon as the Wagner and Taft-Hartley Acts, which was to men returned to work. secure to individuals the right of self-organization, that is, the right to determine, freely and without coercion, whether to join or refrain from joining a union. Thus, Congres,s first granted a workman W_O_R_T_H_H_EA_R_I_N_G_A_G_AI_N__ an indispensable right and then took it away. To III-__ II this surrender, the Edison Company refused to be a party. The Workers Decided As in the great majority of strikes, this strike The most gratifying thing, to me' at least, that also was featured by violence, including dynamit­ grew out of the recent election in November was ing, and by what in the long run has proved to be the forthright attitude expressed, or implied, by most damaging to peaceful labor relations, persis­ A.merican working men and women. . .. They let tent efforts of the leader.s of the unions to blaC'ken it be known, in no uncertain terms, that they pre­ the reputation of the company and to destroy em­ ferred a free economy to a controlled economy. ployees' loyalty to it. Anyone familiar with the They turned their backs upon paternalism, regi­ evolution, of union behavior in the past twenty mentation, and spe:cial privilege. They also made years knows how harmful to good relations between it clear that they favored a "Uve-and-Iet-live" pol­ employers and employees the policy of driving a icy for business, along with a decent respect for" wedge between management and labor has been. the profit-moti've in business. Obviously, it was not It is by all odds the foremost of all of the problems Amerioan business or American management associated with the growth of organized labor, and which decided the recent election.... It was the persisting in it is bound to injure the interests of rank and file of American workers who,with the both workingmen and business. American farmers, decided that it was "time for a The seriousnes's of this problem was recognized change." by the company. A letter from the company to BENJAMIN H. NAMM, in a speech before the employees .on April 3 says: "Through the year.s, Richmond Retail Merchants Association, Rich­ the leaders of the [union] have been indoctrinating mond, Va., February 26, 1953

778', THE FREEMAN Men's Magazines.

Magazines exclusively for the America·n male now By ALLEN CHURCHILL have a circulation of eleven million, but are slante,d in large part to the mentality of a "delayed adolescent."

Not long ago, 'an English author lecturing here (Esquire's 800,000 circulation is presumably "bet­ had to sprint for a train, and left the books he ter," because the magazine costs fifty cents, or was reading behind in the taxi. Faced with a long twice as much as the others.) Naturally each has an ride at the mercy of the nation's newsstands, he office-conception of its average reader, from which determined to make the most of it, and reported it should be possible to decide whether the fellow one of his conclusions at the end. the magazines are aiming 'at is a real man. "You know," he said, "there are no m'agazines for men." The Typical Fan Hearing this, friends in the business reacted violently. Men's magazines, they pointed out, are Esquire considers its average reader a man of the high-power trend in publishing today. Where not more than thirty-eight. He is an executive with four yearis ago there were only Esquire, Argosy, an income of $8-10,000, a home owner, college and True, there ,are now more than thirty, with graduate, and club joiner. So far, so good, but names like Man's, Cavalier, Real, Sir, and His. what of his opinions? Esquire doesn't care. More Together,' with the three pioneers, they add up to important is the fact that he buys the best liquor an aggregate monthly circulation of eleven million. and clothes in town. To all of which the Englishman had a ready True visualizes an equally shadowy male. Its answer. "They're not magazines for men," he editor, Ken Purdy, is under forty himself and edits stated flatly. "They're for grown-up boys." the magazine for men of that age and younger. An Anyone examining the more-than-thirty maga­ auto addict, Purdy drives 'a 1912 Mercer and treats zines put out to catch the male eye can't help think­ his readers to regular stories on this, together with ing that the foreign visitor had something. Circu­ tales of less civilized adventure. lation leaders in the field are True (2,000,000) Until recently the editor of Argosy was Jerry and Argosy (1,500,000). In recent is,sues these two Mason, hut now he lis Howard Lewis, a man younger featured such articles as "How I Won the Mexican than Purdy. "My man," Lewis tells you, "is be­ Road Race," "The ,Mob Said They'd Kill Me," "I tween thirty-two and four. He's had a high school Jumped into a erownfire," and "The Strangest education and his income is $4-5,000. He either has Hunt of My Life." A smaller competitor, Man's, been in the war or in the army since, and it's the boasted "I Ate a Man." It seems to be a sad fact experience of his life. He still wants to read about -anyone picking up a mass-circul'ation men's mag­ it. He's married, has a .couple of kids, and whether azine today would do just about as well with Boy's he lives in the ,country or city he is interested in Life. hunting, fishing, and outdoor things." This despite the fact that of the more than 70,­ In short, it would seem that, to the magazine 000,000 males in this country, some 50,000,000 are editors who cater to him, the American male is over forty and presumably have outgrown any little more than an extrovert with a pocketbook­ lingering youth. Further, a good percent'age of a description some might consider unflattering. American males have attended college and should Especially as there i,s on the record an indication be willing, if not eager, to entertain mature that American males can cope with mature reading thoughts. But from men's magazines it would ap­ fodder. pear that all today's man wants to do about life is It's to be found in the success of Esquire, the escape from it. In male-magazine pagels you never daddy of all the magazines. Esquire has made no find what editorial offices call a "think" piece. In­ less than $100,000,000 in twenty years of existence. stead, you are more likely to find articles beginning But that i,s only part of the story. Originally the like this: "As long as Julius stuck to the kind of magazine was conceived by David A. Smart to be panthers that make good eating for a man, he was sold over the counters of haberdashery stores. At all right. But when he let himself be deviled into the last moment, for reasons of prestige, a few going after that skinny one.... " thousand' were put on newsstands. 'This wa,s De­ Despite the numerous competitors that have cember 1933, a time of bank holidays and bleak sprung up in their wake, Esquire, True, and Argosy depression. On all sides Smart was warned that remain the most successful magazines in the field. publishing a fifty-cent magazine was a form of

JULY 27, 1953 779 madness. What happened on publication day Argosy, which after the war hurled themselves amazed him as well as everyone else. Newsstand into the men's field with spectacular sllccess. Both copies vanished as if blitzed. Dealers clamored so are published by firms that have made millions loudly for more that the haberdashery stores were publishing blood-and-thunder shockers. told to turn their copies back for sale. In all, As one of the sixty magazines (and Gold Medal 100,000 copies were sold, and Esquire became the Books) published by Fawcett Publications, True only magazine in history to sell out its first issue has rubbed office-elbows with Daring Detective, at a profit. (Later Life's first issue sold out, but Rocky Lane Western, and Captain Marvel Adven­ at an advertising loss.) ture. Argosy, one of forty magazines put out by Smart had intended to edit Esquire himself, in Popular Publications, shares attention with Famous odd moments. Now, holding a fortune by the tail, Fantastic Mysteries, Ace High Western, and Dime he became publisher and appointed a young man Detective, which today costs fifteen' cents. named Arnold Gingrich editor. In the annals of male magazine,s, Gingrich occupies a special niche. RedCorpu8cle Stimulation He's the only editor in the field who ever gave American men credit for brains. With a successful Both Argosy and True may be the proudest pos­ magazine behind him, Gingrich was peculiarly able sessions of the firms that own them. Nevertheless, to do this. At a time when most publications were it is impossible not to think that they are governed floundering financially, he could approach writers by precisely the same sort of thinking that goes like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Theo­ into Captain Marvel and Dime Detective. Some­ dore Dreiser, and John Dos Passos, amazing them times this is apparent in the writing. "The slovenly by promptly writing out a check. landlady of the third-rate boarding house along "Now what'll you write for us?" he would ask, North Boyleston Street in Los Angeles said I'd handing over the irresistible lure. probably find ex-Lt. Red R. Carmack, a hell of a So, sandwiched between the sexy Esquire car­ man back in the days when he was flying the Hump, toonsand such famous non-fiction as "Latins Are upstairs in his room," is the beginning of one Lousy Lovers," there appeared some of the best article in True. writing of the decade. Esquire pubHshed what is N'ot to be outdone, Argosy thus describes the probably Hemingway's finest short story-"Snows reactions of an Indianapolis speed racer: "He felt of Killimanjaro." But in addition to established the piled-up tension socking in his guts." writers, Gingrich used new ones. William ·Saroyan, For the most part, though, the writing in the Louis Paul, Michael Fessier, J eSlse Stuart, and two magazines is straightforward, as befits prose others found 'a first market in the ~Magazine for written by some of the country's top commercial Men. writers-Philip Wylie, Corey Ford, and Alan Hynd, ' among them. True sometimes pays more than the Not Too Highbrow Saturday Evening Post for articles. Argosy, which uses fiction (True does not), pays more for it than Yet nowhere on the record is there any sign that Esquire. Esquire's readers objected to such comparatively But, if the writing in the two magazines and highbrow fare. 'On the contrary-though many first their more than twenty-five imitators is often im­ bought Esquire because of the pin-ups and cartoons mature, the conception of material is almost wholly (which, looking back, are of an unbelievable raw- so. Both magazines embrace heartily the magazine ness), they also enjoyed the stories. Writers like shibboleth of reader-identification, which is cal­

Saroyan actually preferred Esquire a,s a market, culated to take the reader out of himselfl making since readers who liked, or didn't like, their stories him identify with men leading a less responsible, wrote in to say so. Esquire readers even turned more colorful existence than his. Though such ,read­ out to be remarkably literate. When Gingrich pub­ ing may stimulate the red corpuscles, it does not lished a plagiarized version of "The Damned provoke thought. Indeed, when represented in True,

Thing," by Ambrose Biercel all hell broke loose. Argosy, et al., thinking is more likely to be shock. Gingrich, the literary man, had failed to spot the Ken Purdy most successfully shocked his readers plagiarism. Hi,s readers caught it in droves. with an article caned "Flying Saucers Are Real," Still, this evidence that American m'ales-and in which it was maintained that the saucers flew many females as well-appreciated the best in fic­ here from another planet. With this article, True tion started no trends. It even failed to convince snared as much publicity as any magazine in re­ Esquire, for eventually Smart took over the editor­ cent years. CIrculation soared and copies sold out ship with a quick lessening of literary standards. in two days. Two footnotes to this feat deserve (Smart died in 1952 and Gingrich is now hack a's recording. One is that the success of True unwit­ publisher, which should have interesting conse­ tingly helped Argosy, for many who found True quences.) sold out bought its competitor. Second is that Purdy But where Esquire should have been convinced, got in. so .much hot water over the article that per­ there was not the same opportunity for True and force he became an expert in the saucer field. He

780 THE FREEMAN has come to believe that flying saucers are a gim­ Letter troln Paris mick of our own. Galloping along the highroad of circulation suc- .cess, men's magazines have failed to heed one sign­ post. They have not followed the established Government by Crisis women's magazines-Ladies Home Journal, Mc­ By R. G. WALDE!CK Call's, Woman's Home Companion-in stressing service, or self-help, features. Only Esquire, which After six weeks and five attempts France at last for twenty years has been showing American males has a premier who seems fairly certain of remain­ how to dress, has done so. By their own special ing in office more than a few days. Some say at standards-and for their own special male-True, least till autumn. At best, however, it is likely to Argosy, and the others do have service features. be but a brief respite in what has become a state But where women's magazines try to help all of recurring ministerial crisis. Already three women, even telling them how to wash dishes speakers have attacked the government of M. better, the men's magazines advise only the few. Joseph Laniel as doomed at the outset to a period Thus Argosy has an article on "The Fanciest of inaction. Since all three are extreme leftists, IIand Gun," aimed to catch the attention of those they have of course their own reasons for wishing who collect guns. True has one called "How To the new premier-who is conservative center­ Shoot a Fish from a Tree," aimed at an even more nothing but the worst. But they are unfortunately specialized group. Argosy has matched Ken Purdy's right. For the Constitution of 1946 makes it im­ interest in cars by discovering Ralph Stein, an possible for France to have a government worthy artist with a passion for Alfa...Romeos. Next to of the name. cars the two magazines stress guns. True has a Here in Paris that fact is regarded as elemen­ regular series on them by veteran Lucian Carey. tary. You hear it expressed in the bistros, the Argosy counters with a huntin'-and-fishin' section subway, at the Jockey Club. You read it in news­ written by Byron Dalrymple. paper editorials and pronouncements of all political parties, left, right, and center. What you rarely see in print or hear discussed is the simple ques­ He-Man Stuff tion-Why? Why is the Constitution of 1946 a But look for features that might stimulate the failure? mind or satisfy the intellect and you find-nothing. The Constitution of 1946 was the creation of a Even sex, the standby when women's magazines coalition that included the Communists. And these want to stimulate controversy, is missing. In the Communists deliberately and methodically set out carbon-copy imitations it is more prominent, but to make it unworkable-to alienate the elected True and Argosy offer a one-sided male existence from the electors, to prevent the installation of in which women are only an occasional irritant. a sufficiently strong executive, to confuse and de­ Yes, the rule is rugged, he-man reading, the moralize the people and disgust then1 with the lineal descendant of Boy's Life. This is at its best parliamentary regime altogether. They succeeded. in True in the book-length features, sometimes With superior political cunning they put over on condensations of books, sometimes not. In Argosy, General Charles de Gaulle, who was then in power, it is a feature called the "Court of Last Resort," a proportionate electoral system which is fine for the purpose of which is to free men unjustly sent the party machines but eliminates the nomination to prison, usually on charges of murder. of any candidate outside the parties, no matter The record of the Court is impressive. It has how talented, popular, and desirable he might be. saved several men and is working on the cases of The result is that the deputies feel themselves re­ others. By every standard the Court should make sponsible not to their constituents, but to their gripping reading, especially as its activities are separate parties. This condition exists to some chronicled by ErIe Stanley Gardner, whose detec­ extent, of course, in all free countries. But here tive stories have sold more copies than any other in France it is so exaggerated that there is practi­ living writer's. Yet when writing on the Court, cally no bond at all between the deputies and the Gardner seems to lose his touch, as if he had been public. Hence the people consider quite rightly sold on the idea of writing down to the American that their duly elected representatives do not male. Perhaps he has been, for the whole field represent them but are rather agents imposed seems to operate on the theory that contemporary upon them by the various party organizations. man is a delayed adolescent who would rather be Worse still, the Communists put over the idea out hunting than home reading a newspaper. of a single chamber-the National Assem'bly of It's a sorry situation that may have a sorrier Deputies-possessing the full legislative powers result. Next time an outsider is asked to comment of the Republic. By assuming executive functions on the American scene he may not say that there which it cannot fulfill, the Assembly actually de­ are no men's magazines. He may say there are stroys all governmental authority. In short, the no men. French Constitution of 1946 is essentially similar

JULY 27, 1953 781 to that of the Weimar Republic-and nothing there was a good deal of conferring among the worse could be said of any Constitution! benches before the balloting started. It would seem But few Frenchmen knew or remembered in that one party agreed to cutdown its votes as 1946 the lesson of the Weimar Republic. Also, the another increased its-and for no special reason proportionate electoral system had a certain ap­ but the sheer fun of calculating to the finest point peal for the new men of the center and right who how to hold back just the one winning vote. had been catapulted into politics by the Resistance. But even if Bidault had obtained that one vote, Most of them'were unknown to the public, and would he have succeeded in retaining the support they feared they had no chance of election to of the Radical-Socialists for all the measures he parliament unless presented to the electorate by proposed? This is the crucial question at the the parties. heart of any ministerial crisis in France, now Thus Communist cunning, aided by De Gaulle's or in the future: Is there a m'ajority in the Assem­ political naivete and the selfishness and corruption bly upon which a government can rely? In spite of all parties, has saddled France with an absurd of the final acceptance of M. Laniel, the long-term Constitution and an Assembly of a distressingly answer is no. The present Assembly can produce low moral and intellectual level. nothing but caretaker governments. Nor could The Communists have every reason to congratu­ anything be gained by the dis'solutionof this body late themselves. They have accomplished exactly as now constituted. Under the existing electoral what they set out to accomplish seven y.ears ago: system, .the incoming Assembly would prove as a parliament that can agree only on doing nothing; unmanageable as the outgoing. Only a revision of a regime of such instability as to make France a the Constitution and a change of the electoral rather dubious partner in the Western alliance; system would bring order to what is today chaos. almost universal popular disgust with the whole Does this mean that the end of the Fourth Re­ unhappy situation. public is likely? A number of informed Frenchmen I asked believe it is. General Alphonse Juin, it is I got the feel and sound of that situation at a rumored, is convinced that only a strong man can night session of the Assembly. Georges Bidault, lead France out of chaos and 'that he is that who had been Foreign Minister in the government man. There is also recurrent talk of De Gaulle. of Rene M'ayer, was supposed to assume the pre­ Nowithstanding the failure of his Rassemblement miership. Earlier that day he had demanded ex­ Populaire, he continues a figure to be reckoned tended, if not full, powers for at least a year. with. Moreover, when he saw how his Cons,titution In this period, he·declared, he would pledge him­ worked in practice, he came out for revising it self to work out solutions to France's three most with a view to strengthening the executive. pressing problems: that of establishing an eco­ Oddly enough, there are also reports of a pos­ nomic and financial equilibrium; that of "making sible monarchist restoration. This is by no means Europe without unmaking France"; that of ending limited to the traditionalist monarchist circles of the war in Indo-China while keeping faith with the Faubourg St. Germain. Quite a few left-of­ France's friends and her own past glories. center Frenchmen have told me they prefer a con­ Bidault's program had been received without stitutional monarchy to the strong-man-on-horse­ any particular enthusiasm, but the general con­ back type of dictator a la Juin or a la De Gaulle. sensus was that he was in again. And why not? It is possible that the British Coronation aroused He had been premier twice and minister eleven such notions, and they are ephemeral. In addition, times since the Liberation. Everybody knew what the pretender, the Comte de Paris, has made some­ to expect of him. Anyway, there had to be an end thing of an impression with his idea of a "social of the crisis. In the ensuing debate only the So­ monarchy." In my own opinion, the monarchist cialists and Communists had voiced any criticism solution is unlikely-although nothing is impos­ of his program. There was nothing unusual in sible in a country whose governmental m'achine that. The hundred Communists always voted has stopped working. against everything and everybody. The Socialists could not be counted on· to vote for Bidault. His majority hinged on the Radical-Socialists, and the fact that they remained silent during the debate was a favorable sign. Highway But 10, when the ballot was finally taken, Bidault On, on with Fate and all her struggling train, 'received only twenty-seven Radical votes, and She rides superbly and her name is Pain. failed by 'a single vote to become premier for the On, on with Fate till she has circled earth, third time in his recent career. Bidault's friends She canters madly and her name is Mirth. were very bitter. They said Bidault didn't know On, on with Fate whose hand is like a dove, what the Radicals were up to because they took She rides in mercy and her name is Love. no part in the debate. They claimed also that the parties were in cahoots to turn him down. Actually, WITTER BYNNER

782 THE FREEMAN An Example of Integrity By MAX EASTMAN I

There's a sadness for me in reading Sherwood his firm, broad-shouldered, smiling receptivity to Anderson's letters. (Letters of Sherwood Anderson, the whole experience was impressive. He seemed to selected and edited by Howard Mumford Jones in contain it all though he was also in it. He was a association with Walter B. Rideout, 479 pp., Little, poet, a rejoicer in experience, perpetually experi­ Brown & Company, $6.00.) They confirm a feeling menting with life's values, perpetually, zealously, I had reached only during his last years, that we and yet at a slow mental pace, meditating about might have been deeply communicative friends for them. The fruits are to be found in these letters all our lives. It would have been so simple, only a almost as ripe and abundant as in his books. motion on one side or the other in the early days when I published his famously shocking story "It takes strength to be tender, and these men "Hands" in the old Masses, and when to him-as haven't strength," he says'of Henry Mencken and he says in one of these letters-the magazine was Sinclair Lewis. And he writes to Waldo Frank: of "tremendous signHicance ... I can remember "I do think you are terribly young... I have with what eagerness I used to watch for its ap­ wanted life and the sun of days to put you in a pearance out in Chicago." great cradle and swing all your false weariness away." What a beautiful thing to say! What a The motion was never made, until a year or two stirring and fructifying friend he must have been! before he died when I stopped for dinner with him in Marion, Virginia, on my way motoring south, Professor Jones thinks it "at least possible" that and then later he and his loved Eleanor came up to "out of his voluminous publications ... only Wines­ my house in Croton for a week end. Once after burg, Ohio and a handful of the short stories will that, and for the last time, I had dinner with hinI surv,ive, marvelous as some pages in Tar, for ex­ at Mrs. Burton Emmet's picture-'filled house on ample, and Dark Laughter may be." Upon that I W'ashington Mews. Tom Wolfe was there, and Ella have no opinion, for I have not read enough of his Winter, the brazenly bright-minded pro~Communist books, but I have a hunch that these letters will wife, formerly of Lincoln Steffens, then of Donald survive. The record they contain of a literary Ogden Stewart. Who else I don't remember, but artist, a very American one, struggling in the com­ the mixture was politically undiscriminating, and petitive, racy, and rather glib and phony stream that was true, I think, of Sherwood's entourage in of American writing at that time, and our time general. It accounts for the impropriety of having too-artistic excellence being here more than else­ his letters edited by an unabashed sponsor of where confused with celebrity and what Veblen various Communist traps for suckers, including the called "pecuniary beauty"-struggling in this roar­ welcome to that balefully asinine old scalawag, the ing stream of skilled journalism to master the Red Dean of Canterbury. I must add that Pro­ pure art of writing, to live the life of it, to main­ fessor Jones is conscientious in telling us of tain the absolute integrity of it, will not be for­ Sherwood that "not once but many times he re­ gotten. As men find less rest in the supernatural, pudiated the Communists," and to include letters they will be more drawn to these efforts to make containing such deeply directional remarks as this: something pure, and so-to-speak supernal, out of "Words like 'the people,' 'the masses,' 'the prole­ this earthly life. Not in art only-that is but one tariat,' 'the capitalist,' so happily and freely thrown phase of such endeavor-but it is the one which about, everyone so grouped. 'There are times when communicates itself. I devoutly wish Karl Marx had never lived. A man As I wrote you, I went to Washington in the fall has to work hard to pull himself away from this and wrote a new novel. The publisher had it an­ nounced. It was another novel about men and women indulgence." and the tangle of their love for each other. I was about to send it in to be published, but first went out I remember at that dinner Sherwood's remarking to Chi'Ciago to see my little daughter. One night while he was never at ease-never was himself-except I was there, I suddenly threw the novel out of the with women, and Tom's having a violent, almost hotel window. I did this because I had become con­ vinced that I had only written it in order to get hysterical reaction to that. It was a hectic dinner, some money t,o do something else I wanted to do. and Sherwood's genial great quietness of spirit, The whole impulse suddenly seemed to me corrupt.

JULY 27, 1953 783 Had the turn been made, that might have been de­ scribed as a turning point in American literature, Billionaire Corporations its discovery of the very profound difference be­ tween business, and most particularly perhaps the Giant Business: Threat to Democracy, by T. K. highly skilled business of journalism, and creative Quinn. 321 pp. New York: Exposition Press. art. Sherwood Anderson was aware of the inward $3.75 taste of this difference because he had been a busi­ It may seem a harsh thing to say bang at the be­ nessman, part of the time a writer of advertising ginning, but Mr. Quinn himself admires blunt­ copy, up to the age of forty, when that mysterious ness; consequently let the truth be told: his form­ "nervous breakdown" occurred which caused him to ula for cutting up the monster corporations of close up his office and become what his deep heart American industry is not new and has never told him to be, a literary artist. . worked. If big business is a big evil, and Mr. Quinn makes out an attractive case for that side There is a vast collection of these letters in the of the question, then surely this is no way to Newberry Library in Chicago, enough to make establish virtue. Suppose we had more legislation another volume, the editors say. But the basis upon on the order of the Sherman and Clayton Acts, which these have been chosen is so wise as to seem but better conceived and clearly worded so that -except for the absence of his love letters-con­ there were no loopholes for corporation lawyers clusive. The selection was of letters which "related to crawl through and nibble, nibble, nibble such significantly to at least one of several major con­ laws to death. Suppose we also had a Federal In­ cerns ...: (1) Anderson's own methods and pur­ corporation Act limiting every corporate business poses as a writer and his struggle to become one; in interstate commerce, by the terms of its (2) his special sense of the place (or lack of place) Federal charter, to one kind of production or one of the writer in America; (3) the nature and type of service or sales effort. Suppose, finally, psychology of art, with particular reference to that the Federal Government subsidized small writing; (4) his relationships with other writers businessmen to step into the places vacated by and artists. Included also are a number of letters the shrunken giants-suppose all this to be pro­ showing his response to various social, economic, moted, voted, lawed, and executed in the name of and political issues of the day." democracy, of equality, and you suppose something that in the light of political history iis absurd. To these last I could have added a significant ex­ There are few things in politics that one can be ample, if I had not been so forgetful. 1 thought dogmatic. about, but this happens to be one of when the editors wrote me that I had nothing in them. Democratic electorates have voted them­ my files from Sherwood but brief notes or postal selves farms, jobs, pensions, medical care, and the cards, but subsequently there turned up his reply like; they have never voted anybody the capital to some request of mine to take a stand in regard with which to start or to expand the middle-size to a thing that was happening among the revolu­ type of business which Mr. Quin'n has in mind. tionaries, whether in Soviet Russia or at home. It On the other hand there is indeed a case for the may well have had to do with the position of the very small business and something should be literary artist, for I was then writing my book, done about the high rate of bankruptcies that has Artists in Uniform, in which I described the party prevailed in that· group since the end of the last dictatorship over literature that had been set up in war. Today a ne"v business, according to Depart­ Moscow and was kowtowed to by some of our ment of Commerce statistics, has only a better friends on the old Masses. H,is answer was charac­ than even chance to survive its first year; and a teristic-it was, perhaps, in the circumstances, three out of four chance of surviving its second wise: year. The somber background to this picture of failure is that the top 1 per cent of the solvent Dear Max: businesses in this country control about 50 per lam in receipt of your letter and wish it were possible for you .or anyone else to clear my mind cent of our production facilities-and none of the about all this matter of the v'arious revolutionary "billionaire corporations," as Mr. Quinn says, forces. It seems a shame they should have to spend ever fails. They cannot be allowed to fail, as a so much energy hurting one another and being cruel, matter of public policy. but, Max, here I am a provincial, absorbed really People who don't like to work for somebody in storytelling. How am I to know what is black and what is white? The whole thing leaves me terribly else, who like to be their own boss even if it hurts confused. -and such people have been the upsetters of I am back in nlY small town where I have a farm apple carts since the dawn of time-are finding and this summer several men are coming here with fewer and fewer opportunities to make a living their wives. They are all men who are up to some outside factory walls. Even our farms are so kind of work and we are going to try living together cooperatively. Wish us luck. heavily mechanized today that it takes more ex­ With my love to your lady, perience, land, and capital to run them than ever Sherwood before; in sum, agricultural overhead costs are

784 THE FREEMAN so high now that two-thirds of the farms are op­ the anti-anti...Communist cocktail is prepared. erated almost entirely by family labor. Except for One can read this book from cover to cover with­ the field of medicine, the non-business professions out finding one clear-cut statement of a documented such as architecture and the law are crowded to act of Soviet aggression; the blockade of West the sticking point. Big business does what it can: Berlin, the coup d'etat in Czechoslovakia, the inva­ decentralization has become almost as potent a sion of South Korea, might never have happened word as productivity in managerial circles. But so far as Mrs. Dean's thinking is concerned. And there is a limit to what can be done in devolving such individuals as Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter responsibility (and independence) to lesser super­ White, Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, Harry Gold, visors way down the line of command. There is the Rosenbergs, land the' long parade of individuals also a limit to what can be done in the way of who "for fear of self-incrimination" have refused finding the executive talent on the factory floor to answer when asked whether they had committed and promoting everybody from the ranks. espionage' against the United States-these are What we need is a positive program to provide "unpersons" in Mrs. Dean's sche1me of things. for all of our citizens who are willing to work So it is easy for her to deprecate preparedness harder, who have shown their stability by saving against the Soviet military and political threat some capital, and who possess the experience and with such phrase's as "If the Republicans can avoid knowledge required to run a business-what we succumbing to the fear of Russia and Communism" need is a program to assist them to the oppor­ ... "Before the Republicans can liberate other tunity of doing exactly that. ASHER BRYNES nations they must liberate themselves from the fear not merely of Russia and Communism, which had also come to dominate the Democrats, but from fear of the changes the t'wentieth century has With Fear of Truth wrought within our own borders." Foreign Policy Without Fear, by Vera Micheles Mrs. Dean is a thoroughgoing collectivist. "For Dean. 220 pp. Ne'w York: McGraw-Hill Company. people abroad"-those convenient anonymous au­ $3.75 thorities-"TVA has become the most significant symbol of what is best in modern America." The Vera Micheles Dean's collected writings deserve a New Deal, to her, is the transition to a promised place on the shelf with Owen Lattimore's. Both are land; and she never seems to consider the possi­ classical examples of what Arthur Koestler calls bility that America's relative wealth among nations "anti-anti...Communism." is more attributable to the survival of old indi­ 'There is a subtle technique in anti-anti-Commu­ vidualist economic values than to the tinkering and nist writing, whiich any student of comparative po­ experimentation which went on under Roosevelt litical thought will find in the' present work by the and Truman. research director of the Foreign PoHcy Association Loftily and scornfully indifferent to the very as weB as in La'ttimore's books on the Far East. real and very present Soviet danger, Mrs. Dean is The first principle is to omit any specific reasons quiek to see danger where Communists like to see why the ,Soviet empire, with the 800,000,000 people it: in West Germany, where there is not a regular it controls, its enormous international fifth column, soldier under arms, and in Japan, where there is a and its huge military establishment represents a small, lightly-armed, skeleton army. Incredible as it permanent, constant threat to the security of the may seem, the author speaks of a Russian "legiti­ United States and other free na'tions. mate fear ... of new German threats to Moscow Then it is easy to proceed to the assumption, and Stalingrad" and of "the need of China and suggested rather than openly stated, that anyone Russia for safeguards against the revival of a who sounds an alarm about Communism is an un­ militant Japan." sophisticated, uncivilized lout, and a hysterical The consistent pattern of distortion in this book witch-hunter into the bargain. Add a few insinua­ is easier to understand if one looks balCk to Mrs. tions that the United States and the Soviet Union Dean's prolific writings in the war and postwar are just two strong nations engaged in an ordinary years. She was ready with an apology and "ex­ tussle of power politics in which there is much to planation" for every Soviet act of violence and be said on both sides. Never miss an opportunity terror, from the denial of all liberty within the to blacken as a benighted reactionary the men who Soviet Union to the annexation of the Baltic re­ are linked with the anti-iCommunist struggle, like publics and Eastern Poland. Her interpretation of Chiang Kai-shek, Syngman Rhee, and Bao Dai. the ferocious purges of the thirties was that a Bring into the pi'cture as witnesses anonymous "fifth column" was being destroyed. This is scarcely Europe'ans and Asiati'cs (Mrs. Dean is especially borne out by the fact that half a million Soviet fond of the device of referring to these unnamed citizens fought in the German armed forces during individuals as "our friends") who somehow always the war-much the biggest a'ctive "fifth column" turn out to be strong opponents of any policy of 'which appeared in any country invaded by the effectively resisting Communism. Shake weU, and Nazis.

JULY 27, 1953 785 · Mrs. Dean's new book is a very old and shop­ pletely without merit? Certainly not! In any case worn bill of goods. She se'ems to have learned noth­ there is the question of stylistic quality. If we draw ing and forgotten nothing as a result of the cold a sharp distinction between political and stylistic war. WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN qualities, it is possible to offer positive praise. Indeed, to suggest that Adlai Stevenson is not an ingratiating orator i.s almost impertinent. That Stevenson makes the classic failure to discriminate Eloquent But Erroneous between necessary reform and dubious inno­ vation does not prevent numerous conservatives Major Campaign Speeches of Adlai Stevenson, from recognizing his personal gifts. Indeed, a study 1952. 320 pp. New York: Random House. $3.50 of this book shows that despite the staff work of Ours is a political age. Parties, administrations, Messrs. Schlesinger, De Voto, Mac-Leish, et al., the state poliicy, fiscal theory, etc., are what we con­ mark of the man is on the' speeches-the cut and tinually dwell on, and therefore' everything we read trim of the literary style is Stevenson's and not the and write is colored by political convictions. There work of professorial ghostwriters. is little,. that we can do about this situation. An Clearly, Stevenson of Illinois is neither devil nor independent literary judgment of a book involving dupe. He is not a rude courthouse politician like politics is almost impossible nowadays. This truth Harry Trum,an. Neither is he a mystic daydreamer comes home with great force in a reading of on the order of Henry Wallace. Strange to say, Stevenson's speeches. Stevenson's greatest resemblance is to another Mid­ One's reaction to this volume is determined by west gentleman, Robert Taft of Ohio. Inherited whether or not one voted for Stevenson. The big wealth, Ivy League education, study of law, and a bump in this book, for those who did not vote for family tradition of statecraft marks both me'll­ him, is Adlai Stevenson's endorsement of the New men at opposite ends of the political spectrum. One Deal-Fair Deal era. Time and again in this volume can but regret that Stevenson was not influenced of fifty speeches the Democratic Party is depicted In his formative years by the noble vision of Ameri­ as the force that saved the nation and inaugurated can conservatism, the vision embodied in the work an era of prosperity. But neither "deal" solved the of Fisher Ames, Hamilton Fish, and John Hay. problem of depression. It was the inflationary ANTHONY HARRIGAN spending of World War Two that produced our present economy of "full employment." iThe pump­ priming Hnd assorted measures to regulate produc­ tion (such as dyeing potatoes blue, or the experi­ Hagiolatry ment with paying farmers to slaughter pigs) con­ Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870, by stituted failure. Leon Edel. 350 pp. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott 'The whole libe'ral, dreamy, and utopian ideology Company, $5.90 dominating Adlai Stevenson is embodied in the farm policy address he delivered at Kasson, Minne­ Some years ago, when The Complete Plays of sota, with its key statement: "Facilities must be Henry James appeared, edited with an introductory adequate to meet the constantly growing demand essay by ,Leon 'Edel, some of us were' more im­ for power on the farm, at prices the farmer can pressed by E del the editor than by James the afford to pay" [italics added]. Here, in the pro­ dramatist. Here Iwas a literary dete'ctive who could verbial nutshell, is the utopian thinking that brands tell us just what his hero Henry was doing every Stevenson as woefully weak in economics. For in minute of the day and night. Especially memorable the event that the government supplies farmers was his reconstruction of the disastrous opening with power at a price below the cost of producing night of Guy Domville at the St. James Theatre in it, the inescapable fact is that the city-dweller pays London-when Bernard Shaw, Arnold Bennett, and the difference out of his pocket. Indeed, this is a H. G. Wells sat in the stalls as critics, and poor prime example of favoring a special interest. Henry was crucified by the catcalls of the gallery. Despite this and other curious assertions of gov­ Here was the perfect, the complete Jamesian, hence­ ernmental beneficence, the' 1952 leader of the Demo­ forth to be acclaimed as "the foremost authority cratic Party states in the address, "The American on Henry James." Future," that "we will not abandon our free-enter­ Now appears the first volume of Leon Edel's prise system. We will oppose all attempts to limit long-awaited "de1finitive" biography of James­ its freedom whether by centralized gove'rnment or with two more promised. Here"'again is ample evi­ by private monopoly." In the light of this species dence of Edel's indefatigable sleuthing. No clue is of economic thinking, it is not especially startling too faint or faraway to escape his bloodhound nos­ that the American states and people rejected Ste­ trils, no legwork too fatiguing. Edel has searched venson's offer of leadership. the New York Hall of Records for correct addresses Well, then, do we have to conclude that the Major and·dates; he has examined the will of grandfather Campaign Speeches of Adlai Stevenson are com- William of Albany, and the records of the litigation

786 THE FREEMAN that followed the breaking of that will; his opera­ been performing a deft surgical operation on the tives have trekked through the files of dusty Rimbaud myth. We need a sort of Mass Observation crumbling newspapers; he has corresponded with survey of the James myth, undertaken with rigor­ the descendants of the friends of the J ameses, even ous, impartial, nonliterary honesty, without the unto the third generation; he has perused hundreds incense, the genuflections, and the esoteric rituals of unpublished letters. You will find it difficult to of the bigh priests. R. A. PARKER trip Mr. Edel on addresses and dates. Nor does all this biographical data weigh his narraNve down, for Leon Edel has perfected a sort of "throw­ away" technique, more familiar on the stage than Theory Versus Fact in print. Yet the seed of a doubt is implanted in the The World and the West, by' Arnold J. Toynbee. reader's mind. You begin to ask yourself: "Is Henry 99 pp. New York: Oxford University Press. $2.00 James so supremely important as to warrant this I got to know Professor Toynbee nearly thirty singl~-minded, almost fanatical devotion?" Then years ago, when I was his only student at a series you discover that the whole structure is based upon of lectures at King's College, London University. the dogma that Henry James is the supreme genius The emptiness of his classroom was not due to his of the modern novel. To support this major premise, being a then virtually unknown young professor; certain evidence must be omitted or played down, it was because his course on Greece offered no other theories enunciated and elaborated. One of "credits." these concerns Henry's reported stammer and im­ Now, looking back on those distant days when I pediment in speech-surely worth investigation, sat listening to his accounts of a walking tour, or but brushed aside Iby Leon Edel as merely 'tapocry­ informally discussing the modern world with him phal." Then IMr .. Edel develops an elaborate theory across the table, I think I understand why he writes of the rivalry between William and Henry, proffer­ the curious books which he chooses to call histori­ ing a J acob-'Esau conflict, served up with sauce cal studies. He is the perpetually retarded clever freudienne. Surely if in future volume's he hopes to adolescent who has never been awakened to reality canonize his hero Henry at the expense of William, through contact with the actual, as distinct from he willibe lost in the realms of fantasy and fallacy. the academic world. William's keen and penetrating criticism of Henry It would be an exaggeration to say that to Toyn­ cannot be dismissed as 'mere juvenile jealousy. Con­ bee Communism appears to offer fulfiUment of trasting their literary ideals, William once wrote mankind's age-old longing for the Kingdom of to Henry: Heaven on earth. In spite of his sheltered life, some ... mine being to say a thing in one sentence as doubts are aroused in his mind as to whether all straight and explicit as it can be Inade, and then to is as right as it should be in Soviet Russia. He drop it forever; yours being to avoid naming it never gives his millions of readers any inkling of straight, but by dint of breathing and sighing all the brutish, hungry, and fear-ridden existence of round and round it, to arouse in the reader who mayhave had a similar perception already (Reaven the subjects of the Communist empire. One would help him if he hasn't!) the illusion of a solid object, never know from reading his books that there are made (like the "ghost" at the Polytechnic) wholly concentration camps in Russia, or that Moscow out of impalpable materials, air, and the prismatic practices genocide. Nevertheless he is not alto­ interference of light, ingeniously focused by mirrors gether ignorant of Soviet realities; in The World upon empty space. and the West Toynbee admits that Soviet Russia Despite all of Edel's conspicuous gifts and energy is detested by the Western world because of her in research, one is reluctantly driven to the con­ tyranny. However, in his view this is the result not clusion that this opening volume must be charac­ of Communist theory and practice, but of "the terized as hagiography rather than critical biog­ Russian attitude of resignation toward an auto­ raphy. Its reasoning is deductive rather than in­ cratic regime ... whether this calls itself Czarism ductive. Legitimately Leon Edel may be called the or Communism." In a word, like Crankshaw, Pro­ hero-worshipper-in-chief of the James cult, which fessor Toynbee has adopted the racist theory that for more than half a century has been so assidu­ it is not Communism per se but the Russian char­ ously cultivated and propagated. With the younger acter itself which is responsible for the illiberal generation "appreciation of James" has become nature of the !Soviet state. Hence Toynbee not only almost standard equipment in the cultural bag of comforts our former Communist sympathizers and the "liberal" Left Wing intellectual. present anti-anti-Communists who rely on 'Tito, Surely the time is ripe for an impartial, rigorous or possibly Mao Tse-tung, to take Communism investigation of the role of the literary cult in con­ away from the Russians. He also caters to the deep­ temporary society. We have witnessed the rise of seated American belief that all is for the best in any number of these-the Rimbaud cult, the Gide the best possible of worlds. cult, the Joyce cult, the Kafka cult, to name but a In this book Toynbee carries farther than in his few. Etiemble, a great French scholar, has recently A Study of History the thesis that Communism is

JULY 27, 1953 787 not a negation of the values upon which Western optimism of those who, like himself, have never civilization·· is founded, but a "heresy" born of our faced up to the terrible reality of the Communist failure to live up to our pr-inciples. It has to be ad­ menace, he is helping to destroy our civilization. mitted that there was originally some substance to FREDA UTLEY this theory. But there comes a point where heresy becomes negation, when anti-Christ succeeds to Christ. This is what Toynbee refuses to see. In­ stead of recogniz,ing the fact that the strength and Life Among the Peasants success of Communism today are due to its utter Kingfishers Catch Fire, by Rumer Godden. 282 pp. ruthlessness and the fear it instills, even beyond New York: Viking Press. $3.50 the borders of the Soviet empire, he persists in at­ tributing its influence to its "spiritual" appeal. He "Sophie is like a kingfisher," her long-suffering, tells us that "in the encounter between Russia and stuffy British admirer Toby says with atypical the West, the spiritual initiative, though not the subtlety, "choosing some strange, unthought-of technological lead, has now passed, at any rate for place for her ne'St, diving relentlessly for her private the moment, from the Western to the Russian fish, then flashing out of sight." side." However, he offers us a "measure of reas­ The unthought-of place that Sophie Barrington surance." If we listen to Uncle Arnold we may yet Ward, widowed in India with two children and no succeed in taking "the spiritual leadership" of the moneY,chose for her "nest" was a house in the world away from Uncle Joe's successors and fol­ Vale of Kashmir, out beyond the English colony lowers. Moreover, even if we fail, we can console of the town and among the Indians. To her daughter ourselves with the Toynbee dictum that Commun­ and younger son she explained that they were poor ism is an "exotic" Western doctrine "the adoption now, and were to be peasants. But Sophie put of which by Russia, so far from signifying that windows in the house that she rented, and stoves in Western culture is in jeopardy, really shows how the kitchen and upstairs; to the Indians she was potent its ascendancy .has become." Could any rich. She promptly drove the neighborhood crazy Soviet dialectician do better? with her waywardness. 'The situation deteriorates rapidly and excitingly as Sophie trie'S to unravel As his English critics have pointed out, Toynbee the sorry episodes that befall her, her children, and is a master of the art of making facts fit precon­ her Indian neighbors. ,she goes through hen and ceived theory. In The World and the West he dis­ high water of her own making, yet comes out plays a truly amazing capacity to twist history or undismayed, or at least unregenerate'. "Sophie never ignore the record in order to prove his thesis that sees effects," says an English aunt, and indeed what what we are now experiencing is a revolt of the appear to the English missionarie'S and doctors to greater part of humanity, led by Russia, against be theft, attempted murder, and rape Sophie comes Western domination. Soviet Russia is represented to see from the Indian point of view as something to us as the big worm which has turned" and which quite other. Good for Sophie, but what havoc! is encouraging all the little worms to do likewise. At the book's end Sophie gathers up her odd Toynbee presents her as a victim of Western ag­ possessions and her offspring and marche'S away to gression "from the thirteenth century to 1945." build another nest, this time in Lebanon. Toby, Not only does he omit all mention of the long record who has come half way around the globe to save of Russian aggression east, west, and south; he her from herself and from furthe'r messing up the tells us also that it is our fault that the Russian beautiful Vale of Kashmir, is asleep in the house people are inured to tyranny. "The Russian attitude boat. He proudly expects to take her back to Eng­ toward autocratic regimes," he writes, is due to the land with him the following day. "It isn't very feeling that "it is a lesser evil than the alternative polite to go without saying good-bye to Toby," fate of being conquered by aggressive neighbors." remonstrates Teresa, Sophie's daughter. Polite, yet! If he had confined himself to the accusation that We are asked to admire, to be· amused and charmed the West's treatment of China, India, and other by Sophie, and in the end she is revealed as a first­ Asian and African peoples negated professed class heel. This is a betrayal of the reader; it is Western principles and has led to revolt against us bad .art. today, his book would have had some value. But by Unfortunately Miss Godden's story lacks third placing Russia among the oppressed nations in­ dimension. Her heroine flashes her green wings" stead of among the aggressors, he makes his whole collects her "private fish," be they rugs or people, thesis ridiculous. and slums around, but charm arises from some­ Toynbee 'Suggests that Communism, like Christi­ thing deeper than bright feathers. A more limited anity in the Roman Empire, offers men an "ideal of objective, a drop of milk in Sophie's soul, might human fraternity that will overcome the clash of have made her redeemable to us, and to her creator. ~ultures." I am sure the learned professor is Miss Godden is too sensitive a writer and too lively neither a Communist nor a Soviet propagandist. a storyteller for us not to regret that she failed to But by clouding our minds and feeding the foolish ' make her heroine, whole. RAY PALMER

788 THE FREEMAN owns a quarter interest in the· Festi­ val.. She is going back this year. It IIA work which reaches to the S I_C I'I_M_U -----.l/l will be her first trip to Germany very core of the Chinese p'fob. since before the war, and she re­ lem as few books 'have succeeded turns as an American citizen. Wagner Festival in doing befo're.II The Festspielhaus seats 1,800 -Springfield Republican For those who love Wagner, Bay­ people. As originally built to Wag­ reuth is the place to be between July ner's specifications it seated fewer, 23 and August 23 this year. Next but when Winifred Williams~Klind­ year there isn't going to be a Festi­ wirth, Richard's daughter-in-law and CALVARY val. And without a Festival, Bay­ Friedlinde's mother, came into reuth is a pretty sober town. power, she added more seats. The It's to be a gala affair, opening stage is one of the largest in the IN CHINA with a performance of Lohengrin. world, and acoustically perfect. Dur­ By Rev. Robert WI Greene, M.M. On the second night Parsifal will be ing the war the Festspielhaus suf­ given. Parsifal has an historic fered no damage, so that when the This personal record of a Mary­ record at Bayreuth. Wagner settled American occupation troops moved knoll Missioner's ordeal at the there in 1872 to build his dream in, it was a natural for us-a shows. hands of the Communists is "a theater and present the Ring. To his Of course the stage was too large, testimony of courage and faith so a smaller one was built over it. written by a gentle man. ... amazement the Ring didn't prove Here revealed is the mind of the enough of an attraction. Although This was fine for the troops but not for the Aquacade of the Rhine­ Communist officials, trained by a thousand.patrons paid the equiva­ the Soviets; and the effect of lent of over two hundred dollars maidens. So when the festivals started again, the small stag,e was propaganda upon the Chinese apiece, and the Ring was given twice, people. It will serve to teach us removed. it rang up a nice deficit of more than what to expect in dealing with $39,000. Because of the U'SO shows, cer­ the new Chinese converts to this After this inauspicious beginning, tain American vaudeville artists vicious gospel." - Los Angeles Wagner went to London to conduct are now billing themselve.s as "of Times the opera of Bayreuth." The singers concerts, trying to raise money for At all bookstores $3.50 his Festspielhau8. There were no this year include such top names as further performances at Bayreuth Regina Resnik, Eleanor Steber, G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS until Parsifal was presented there Astrid Varnay, George London, New York 16 for the first time in 1882. In the Ramon Vinay, "and others," as the meantime Wagner had been forced brochure says. It is safe to assume for financial reasons to let other that the "others" will not be mem­ of provocative panels. Open-minded­ opera houses perform the Ring; but bers of the USO. ROCK FERRIS ness, one has been told, is one of the Parsifal, which had been written American virtues, and here, presum­ with the Bayreuth stage in mind, ably, it would be exemplified. Un­ was presented only there. fortunately, a loose-meshed sieve has Wagner died in 1883, but his wife II ART__II been employed, the consequence be­ Cosima carried on the Bayreuth ing that while a few live coals are festivals. At long last, twenty-six sifted out, plenty of slag, cinders, years after the original failure, the and even long-dead ashes have also Ring-the main reason that the Americans in Paris dropped in. Fest.spielhaus was built-joined the While western Germany confronts Occupying the initial alcove is repertoire. an exhibition of American paintings that so-called "primitive" John Kane, This year there is to be a com­ of the more placid nineteenth cen­ who as an immigrant settled in plete performance of the Ring, with tury, Paris has lately been inspect­ Pittsburgh and, inspired by its in­ a day out between Siegfried and ing at the Musee de l'Art Moderne dustrial pipes and; telephone poles, Gotterdammerung. Cynics have said the explosive effects of "Twelve Con­ set down a homespun account of this is so that the British will have temporary American Painters and such felicities. Yet somehow his time to change into evening clothes. Sculptors" who incorporate the dis­ treatment does not reveal the gran­ Actually, it's not quite as bad as order of the present. It had been ite strength one associates with that, for most of the operas start hoped-particularly in view of the simple folk: already the pigment at four in the afternoon, and have impressive auspices of the show, cracks and soon will be peeling, a long intermission after the first both American and French, and dip­ while the molasses tint of the color act. lomatic no less than cultural-that hardly endears it to the eye seeking Of course all the visiting VIP's here at last confusion would be sup­ beyond thestandardized passivity of are invited to Wahnfried, which was erseded by clarity and that some its subject matter. Dangling above Wagner's villa. Hitler frequently in­ recognizable artistic silhouette would these limp and unkindled canvases is vited himself there. He rebuilt the emerge from the United States. Jacaranda, an Alexander Calder that Bachelor House, and generally made What is the evidence? might have been imported from a such a nuisance of himself that Guided by the catalogue, the vis­ jungle, high and airy and almost Friedlinde, Wagner's granddaughter, itor will learn that he is to behold feathery. finally left Germany-although she not a panorama, but rather a series Another enclosure brackets to-

JUL"Y 27, 1953 789 gether Morris Graves, a Pacific has provided a comparison to the Coast painter who closes his eyes lasso, does, however, bespeak the when he thinks about birds (and ardors of a more· youthful republic. sometimes almost seems to close his Perhaps the pigment splatters and eyes when painting them, too), and even fights itSJelf, yet he has flung John Marin, that water-color master off old trammels. Also sprung from who still awaits his proper introduc­ the realist category is Stuart Davis, tion to Europe. Certainly he did not whose sharply cut and abbreviated secure it on this occasion; his quick­ forms relate more to advertising silver washes, high-strung composi- posters than to painting. Even so, Open your , tions, and elusive atmosphere suffer they are greatly preferable to the by exposure to a too-obtrusive light. funereal odes-to-decomposition by Los Angeles After all, chamber music rather loses Ivan Le Lorraine Albright. itself in a major concert hall. Then As for sculpture, apart from f' Savings Account there is Ben Shahn, who, however Calder, long praised and justly re­ at touching his democratic sympathy spected in Europe,and his two con­ with the crippled and needy of the freres, David Smith, who shapes in COAST FEDERAL cities, simply does not house them, iron, and Theodore Roszak, who con­ so to speak, in a sufficiently protec­ trives horned and beaked and prick­ SAYINGS tive habitation. He combines tem­ ing effigies in metal and other mal­ AND LOAN ASSOCIATION pera with cut-outs (perhaps photos) leable material, here again some and inky drawing, until only an traces of bolder and braver energies abrasiveness is left. are apparent. Nevertheless, the en­ Elsewhere, visitors confront the semble blurs more than it clarifies. deadened streets and gleaming office­ One peers through to certain bright interiors of Edward Hopper, who vistas in Marin, to troubled ones in supposedly is the bard of American Pollock, to electrifying possibilities understatement. Glimpsed here, alas, in the sculpture, yet the general his subdued speech seems rather to effect attains no harmony. In short, derive from a parched and needy Europe still awaits a satisfactory organ of articulation. Jackson Pol­ American silhouette in art. lock whose drifting line sometimes JEROME MELLQUIST

GEORGE Social Thinker Ys. Land Communist Controversy Rages Anew Was Henry George the founder of "Agrarian Communism" in America? Has the total ,communism inherent in his great masterpiece escaped until now even the keenest of minds? Socionomisf Spencer Heath says: "Tax-slaves forfeit freedom for servitude; the future free-man will pay only the market-gauged site-rent value of whatever public services he receives." Tax-Lords versus Landlords! Judge for yourself! Read Henry George's PROGRIESS AND POV;ERTY for the Land Communist argument and point of view. Then read the -ANSWER-in 26 pages of critical review and darification, showing Landlords and private property in land as Society's first and last-its only ultimate defense-against total enslavement by the State. $1.00.to $50,000.00 opens your savings account. John Dewey says of Henry George: "No man, no graduate of a higher educational institution, has a right to regard himself as an educated man in social thought unless 9th &I·l'ill Bldg. he has some first-hand acquaintance with the theoretical 'contribution of this great American thinker." Tolstoi, Helen Keller, Nicholas Murray Butler-all have written Los Angeles 14. California in similar and even stronger vein. RESOURCES OVER Yes, PROGRESS AND POVERTY is an appealing book. Grossly fallacious in ONE HUNDRED FIFTY MILLlO,N DOLLARS its economic·argument and inevitably totalitarian in its proposed application, it is yet idealistic, rhetorical, poetical, beautiful-thus subtly deceptive-in its world-wide renown. Order your copy now at the special low price of $1.50 and you will receive, in addition, a free copy of its definitive expose. PROGRESS AND POVERTY REVIEWED and Its Fallacies Exposed, a 26-page booklet by Spencer Heath, DL.B., COAST LL.M. The Science of Society Foundatiron, 11 Waverly Place, Ne,w York 3,N. Y. FEDERAL Please send me the book PROGRESS AND POVERTY, Anniversary Edition, 571 pages, cloth bound, with free gift of Spencer Heath's booklet PROGRESS SAVINGS AND POVERTY REVIEWED and Its Fallacies Exposed. I enclose $1.50.

.JOE CRAIL, PRESIDENT NAME ADDRESS . CITy '" ZONE STATE .

790 THE FREEMAN II FROM OUR READERS II (ContLnued from p. 760) "~u don't make milk The "Book Burners" Thank you for your editorial [June 29] criticizing President Eisenhower's by stinting on the feed" speech at Dartmouth. There was cer­ tainly something missing in that speech. How could he warn the students, "Don't join the book burners," without Thus simply, Secretary of Commerce Weeks stated in a recent mentioning the many books by anti­ address a profound business truth which is frequently over­ Communist authors which have been killed in more subtle ways by Com­ looked. munist and leftist infiltration of the book reviews, the magazine and book "If the regulated industries are to render their full services to publishers, and even the book shops? the nation," the Secretary said, "it is my judgment that the ... There are other ways of destroying regulatory bodies must allow earnings adequate to attract and a book than by burning it. support the equity capital theycan use effectivelyfor economies, New York City MARY REISNER improvement and growth." And he observed further that "the Strikes me the FREEMAN is guilty of an courage and inventiveness that risks great sums for improve­ "unfortunate lack of balance" similar ments and economies in the future does not naturally emerge to that it attributed to President Eisen­ from men who have not the credit to raise the money nor the hower's Dartmouth speech. In your assurance that they would be allowed a return on it when their captious expository you permit your readers to weigh the President's pos­ dreams come true." ition by reporting five words of his speech. That has been the situation of the railroads. Earning a return San Francisco, Cal. WILLIAM BROWN on their investment which over the years has averaged less than 4 per cent, the railroads have not found it possible to attract Book Reviewer Replies the equity capital they could "use effectively for economies, In your issue of June 1, violent ex­ improvement and growth." ception is taken [page 637] to my re­ view in the New York Times of John Nevertheless, by drawing heavily on their reserves and by Flynn's latest book. Rather than sharply increasing their obligations for the purchase of equip­ answer the unwarranted charges in the article itself, I wish to call your at­ ment on the installment plan, the railroads have put into service tention to a letter I received a few since the end of World War II more than 500,000 freight cars days after the review appeared. It and almost 18,000 new diesel-electric locomotive units. For reads, in part, as follows: these and other improvements they have spent more than a A note of appreciation for that billion dollars a year. review... I got the impression that you disagreed thoroughly with every sentiment in the book, but it was Such improvements mean not only better service to the public very evident that you tried to be but also more efficient railroad operation, with costs and rates fair. For that, many thanks-and forget the brickbats that are sure lower than would otherwise have been necessary. And as re­ to come your way. search opens up other possibilities, there will be other oppor­ This letter is signed by Devin A. tunities for railroads to make improvements which will mean Garrity, President of The Devin-Adair still better service at the lowest possible cost. Company and publisher of Mr. Flynn's book. I have Mr. Garrity's permission To take advantage of these opportunities, the railroads will need to quote it to you. not only "the courage and inventiveness that risks great sums New York City JOHN B. OAKES for improvements and economies in the future," as Secretary This supplies no answer to the specific Weeks said, but also the cash and the credit which, in the long criticisms that Mr. Garrett made of run, can come only from "not stinting on the feed." Mr. Oakes' review. THE EIDITOR

Education for Legislators O. Glenn Saxon's article "Decentralize Electric Power" in the issue of June 29 should be placed on the desk of ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN RAILROADS every Republican in Congress. I think many of the Democrats such as Senator .)t~ ;A~:;~::;:u;'e:~r:'MondaY Byrd would go along with the article's You'll enjoy THE evening on NBC. reasoning. Arlington, N. J. HARVEY H. .JONES fifth;' WltyDon't, You Defeat Communism with "OUl! Sound Money by returning to the , GOLD COIN STANDARD?

tt,. I he surest way to overturn an existing social ship and democracy. We must be proud of it ..• order is to debauch the currency." These por­ display it fearlessly to the world ... make it tentous words, credited to Lenin, point the way the principle that will persist for free men .• to defeat Communism, at home and abroad. and keep them free! Make monetary strength the weapon-and sound For twenty years the recently deposed federal money the ammunition. administration pooh-poohed this principle. Our The only sound money system that has ever citizens suffered-became more and more the been successful is the Gold Coin Standard.* It economic slaves of government. The value of stabilizes the value of money-prevents issu­ their earnings and savings shrank-up to 60%. ance of fiat currency ... gives the individual Fortunately, technological advancements, such close control over government policy since he as Kennametal, increased industrial productivity can redeem hiscurrericy for gold coin whenever during this period-and helped partially to off­ such policy is inimical to preservation of indi­ set the evil effects of irredeemable currency. vidual rights and liberty. The President, important Cabinet members, This· sovereignty of the Gitizen over· govern~ Senators, and Congressmen are aware of the ment is the great difference between dictator- inherent relationship between the Gold Coin Standard and individual freedom. Why, then, Excerpt from Republican should legislative action on it be delayed? "Monetary Pol'icy" Plank The tremendous impact on all other nations of sound money in the United States will lead the way to international economic stability ... im­ pel a new high level in human relationships, and pr-ovide a healthful domestic atmosphere in which American industry, of which Kennametal Inc. is a key enterprise, will provide ever-increas­ ing benefits for all our people. We must resume without devaluation or delay.

!* The right to redeem currency for gold will help keep America free ••• ask your Senators and Congressman to work and vote to restore the Gold Coi n Standard. Write to The Gold Standard League, Latrobe, Pa., for further information. The League is an association of patriotic citizens ioined in the common cause of restoring WORLD'S LARGEST Independent Manufacturer Whose Facilities are Devoted Exclusively a sound monetary system. to Processing and Application of CEMENTED CARBIDES