JUNE 28~ 1954

The Union Member: America's Laziest Man By Victor Riesel

The Debacle of the Fabians By Russell Kirk

Articles and Book Reviews by Max Eastman, Norbert Muhlen, James Burnham, Joseph Wood~ Krutch, Robert Cantwell, Eugene Lyons, Argus, William F. Buckley, Jr. New Rod Mill at J&L's AI"Iqulppa. Works THE A Fortnightly Among Ourselves For With the publication in 1953 of The Conserva­ ti've Mind, RUSSELL KIRK became nationally re­ reeman Individualists cognized as one of the foremost young leaders of conservative thought in the country. He enjoys an equal reputation in England, hav­ Executive Director KURT LASSEN ing contributed frequently to British journals Managing Editor FLORENCE NORTON and taken his doctor's degree at Scotland's famous old St. Andrews University. Because of his personal acquaintance with the British political and intellectual scene, Mr. Kirk has a more than academic interest in the New Contents VOL. 4, NO. 20 JUNE 28, 1954 Fabianism, which he analyzes in this issue (p. 695). At present Mr. Kirk is finishing a new book, A Program for Conserpatives, Editor~als to be published by the Henry Regnery Company.

At luncheon not long ago we asked VICTOR 'The Fortnight .. 0•0•00000•00 •••••• 0 0 ••••• 0 0 0 •• 0 0 0 o. 689 RIESEL for his explanation of the general How Not to Run a Party . 0 •••••••••••• 0 •••••••••• 0 •• 691 apathy we had noticed among most of the The Oppenheimer Finding 692 members of labor unions with whom we had In Freedom's Calendar 693 any acquaintance. His answer (p. 699) is as Conservativers for Liberty 694 startling as it is honest. Mr. Riesel's labor column is nationally syndicated. Indian Elephant Surplus 694 What reasons lie behind the postponement by the Congress ofa showdown at this session on Articles the President's proposal for a liberal trade program? PATRICK E. NIEBURG, a journalist The Debacle of the Fabians RUSSELL KIRK 695 and specialist on politico-econonlic affairs now America's Laziest Man VICTOR RIESEL 699 located in Washington, refutes the arguments Why Trade Must Be Free PATRICK E. NIEBURG 701 against such a program (p. 701).

Let'rs Be Prejudiced JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH 703 In this issue (po 703) JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH The y,oung Germans-Today NORBERT MUHLEN 705 steps aside brieflY as a drama and book critic ~ to make some cogent comments on a currently Letter from France 0 • JAMES BURNHAM 707 favorite horror word being bandied about by Television Steps In . 0 •••••••• FLORA RHETA SCHREIBER 709 the "liberals."

Peace Prize Rules . 0 0 0 • 0 •••••••••••••• 0 ••• M. K. ARGUS 711 NORBERT MUHLEN has chosen for his present The Angry Bishop EUGENE LYONS 712 report on Germany (p. 705) the potentially most important segment of its population, its youth of recently acquired voting age. He Books knows them well, having spent considerable time among them since the war. Mr. Muhlen Oppenheimer's Mind 0 •••••••• MAX EASTMAN 713 had just become launched on his career in Worker-Priests 0 • EUGENE M. BURKE 714 Germany as a politica,l scientist and journalist

Hemingway's Journalism 0 ••• ROBERT CANTWELL 715 when the Nazis seized power and made his departure advisable. Hysteria for Henry WILLIAM F 0 BUCKLEY, JR. 717

The Thought Flounder .. 0 ••••••••••••••••• KARL HESS 718 On the subject of "audio-visual communica­

Book Marks ... 0 • 0 •••••• 0 ••••• 0 0 ••••••• 0 • • • • • • • • • •• 718 tion," FLORA RHETA SCHREIBER is both a teacher of university standing and a practical tech­ nicia'n. It is therefore as a two-way authority From Our Readers 688 that she reports on the future of educational television. Her comprehensive handbook-text­ book on radio and television-an outgrowth, incidentally, of a FREEMAN article ("The Battle THE FREEMAN is published fortnightly. Publication Office, Orange, Conn. Editorial and Against Print," issue of April 20, 1953)-is General Offices, 240 Madison Avenue, New York 16, N. Y. Copyrighted in the United State~~T 1954, by the Freeman, Magazine, Inc. Henry Hazlitt, Chairman of the Boarrl; scheduled for early publication. Leo wolman, President; Kurt Lassen, Executive Vice President; Claude Robinson, Secretary; Lawrence Fertig, Treasurer. Entered as second class matter at the Post Office at Orange, Conn. Rates: Twenty-five Beginning with the next issue the FREEMAN cents the copy; five dollars a year in the United States; nine dollars for two years; will be published monthly under the editor­ six dollars a year elsewhere. The editors cannot be responsible for u'1solicited manuscripts unless return postage or ship of Frank Chodorov by the Irvington better, a stamped, self-addressed envelope is enclosed. Manuscripts must be typed double-spaced. Press, Irvington-on-Hudson, of which Leonard Articles signed with a name, pseudonym, or initials do not necessarily represent the E. Read is president. A complete explanatory opinion of the editors, either as to substance or style. ~ 11 Printed in U.S.A., by Wilson H. Lee Co., Orange, Connecticut announcelnent will appear in the July issue. Swedish economists sought to insure Break Relations with Malenkov access to essential raw .materials and Our government should sever all dip· provide a stable market for manu­ lomatic relations within the very ne:ar factured products by broadening the future with the Soviet government and Polemics of Freedom base of trade through the exten­ all Communist governments in alliance Your issue of June 14 was a superb sion of five billion kroners credit to with it. Some of the reasons for this example of the sort of thoughtful countries with whom Sweden had little necessary action are that the Soviet j ournalis,m which today stands alone or no trade prior to World War Two. government: as representing the point of view of Actually, the much publicized Russian 1. Has never become the legitimate free men in this Republic. In a time loan of one billion kroners represented representative of the population under grown weak with fears of speaking only a portion of the total credit ex­ its control. This governme'nt, if it can out in defense of liberty and in assault tended under this plan. be so labeled, came into power as the against its enemies, your magazine has This action by the Swedish govern­ result of a coup d'etat and has main­ sounded the sure, strong polemics of ment may have been motivated by self­ tained its internal control by force freedom. Without it, freedom would interest. It certainly w,as not opportun­ of arms ever since. It actually repre­ be mute in our land, and the voices of istic in the sense that it was un­ sents only its immediate membership, the petty hagglers would drone alone. principled. But even if policies estab­ the Russian Communist Party, a'ndthe Temple City, Cal. RAY CAHOON lished solely on the basis of national armed forces under its control. self-interest are to be subject to the 2. Has never kept ·any of the agree­ Swedish-Soviet Tr,ade Agreement criticism of being opportunistic, I ments it has made from time to time think that there are several areas in Although not a professional apologist with the United States. our own foreign and domestic policies for Scandinavian social policy, I feel 3. Has caused death and torture to where we might well establish a basis compelled to take exception to the our citizens both directly and indirectly for such ,criticism. char·acterization by Patrick Nieburg and has refused to accept its clear (May 31) of the Swedish-Soviet Trade Chicago, Ill. CARL E. BAGGE responsibility therefor. Agreement as an example of "eco­ 4. Consistently practices mass mur­ nomic opportunism." As a student at [We would be curious to know on what der of, and mass slavery upon Rus­ the University of Stockholm, I had basis Swedish economists assumed in sians and other nationalities under its occasion to speak to several members 1946 that an economic depression was military control. of the Riksdag and to Einar Torvald­ inevitable in the United States. To us These general facts must lead us to son of the Riksbank at the time that it's news. EDITORS] conclude that the Soviet government is not a responsible government at all, the treaty was being negotiated. Public A Misnomer as well as official sentiment was opposed but is really a military machine in Your article on Gross National Product to any economic alliance with the occupation of the territories of various by Lewis Haney (May 31) is timely Soviets even in 1946. This sentiment nationalities. During the last fifteen had its basis partially in the traditional and important. However, it is so years. this agressive cancer has spread hostility toward the Russians which burdened with the technical terms and itself over ... more than twenty dated back to Charles XII and which point of view of the professional econ­ formerly independent political sover-· even the Grand Alliance of World omist that ma'ny lay.men may miss eignties.•.• the real point at issue. To me, that War Two did not dispel. Granite City, Ill. LUTHER R. DU NARD The fact of the matter is that the point is this: Gross National Product Swedes, as they saw it, had no other is actually a misnomer. It does not Prefers "Conservative" alternative available to them. Not­ represent national production, as most withstanding their efforts to compen­ people have been led to believe. What We have enjoyed the magazine very sate for their lack of domestic coal it does represe'nt is Gross National much and are deeply grateful that and oil through hYdroelectric develop­ Expenditure, and it is so described someone is doing this much needed ment, Swedish industry is wholly de­ in the Federal Reserve Bulletin. work. I have a few suggestions. We pendent upon the importation of these For the purpose of getting them­ do not like the word "libertarian" ... essential raw materials. Coal and oil selves re-elected our politicians have we prefer the good old-fashioned· "con­ accounted for more than 50 per cent in the past referred to a constantly servative" a'nd think no one should of Sweden's imports prior to World rising G.N.P. as a sound and reliable object to being considered that, in the War Two. Increased industrialization measure of national welfare. This has light of all the good that has been which grew out of the establishment bee'n done in the belief that they done under this banner.... of new lines of production made neces­ could sell us the idea that the more DOROTHY L. THOMPSON sary by the wartime hlockade made we can spend, give away, throwaway, East Berlin, Conn. the need for these raw materials even or shoot away, the better off we are regardless of a crushing tax burden lTIOre acute. Voluntary Social Secur,ity Germany had previously constituted and a constantly increasing debt piled almost the sole supplier of these raw up to mortg,age the future of our It was most gratifying to read Paul materials while Great Britain was by children. ... We should be shocked L. Poirot's article "The Price of far the greatest consumer of Swedish and alarmed to realize that, includ­ Security" in the FREEMAN (May 31). pulp,wood and manufactured products. ing the amounts to be voted this year, For severa,lyears I've tried to con­ Germany as a consumer land as a sup­ we will have spe'nt on foreign economic vince my security-minded friends that plier of raw materials was out of the and military aid since the war the if we can't abolish social security world market. Swedish economists astounding sum of close to $67 billion. forthwith, then at least we should shared the view then prevalent in To base our national policies and place it on a voluntary basis. Their Europe that an economic depression course of action on the voracious need argument has always been: "But then in the United States and Great Britain of a rising G.N.P. can lead to nothing it wouldn't be effective"-thereby in­ was inevitable. With Germany and but more war and ultimate dis­ advertently giving the perfect reason Great Britain, to whom Swedish trade aster.... for immediate abolition. had been tied, out of the market, Pasadena, Cal. HERBERT SPENCER Bayside, N.Y. GERTRUDE J. BUCK 688 THE FREEMAN reemanTHE

MONDAY, JUNE 28, 1954

said it would be hard to disagree, but we are again The Fortnight struck by an ambiguity Ito which we referred in our editorial on the January message, "A Free Economy, But-." The President's general state­ By refusing Joseph Laniel's demand for a vote of ments of belief stress economic freedom, boldnes1s, confidence, the French National Ass,embly has opportunity, and the reward of personal effort. pushed one more jerry-built cabinet into the dis­ When dealing with specific proposals, however, card pile that has been aecumulating over the past in such fields as housing, unemployment, medicine, seven years. 'The 'action would be too routine for and social insurance, he reverses his conception, comment except for its almost incredible irrespon­ speaks of the "responsibility of government," and sibility in leaving Franee without a government cans for paternalistic le'g1islation. W,e cannot escape in the 'midst of a major internaltional meeting, a the imipression that President Eisenhower believes crisis in ,a bi,tterwar, and a turning point in the in his own heart in an economy of free enterprise development of western ,European defense. The and individual iniHwtive, butaHows hims-elf to be final proof is given, if ,any is ne,eded, that nothing persuaded by pseudo-expert advisers that he must serious 'can be expected of France under its pre­ make collectivist and welfare-state "concessions" vailing regim,e and mood. If French governments in order to seduee coy and corrupted voters. collapse by the doz,en at the whim of a handful of minor domestic politicians, what would happe'll if Whatever the explanation of its origin, the con­ Soviet tanks start to roll westward? tradictory dome,stic program of the Administration is quite probably inexpedient as well as question­ There seems to be one accidental gift for which able in principle. The President might. do worse we shall be able to thank the 'French assembly. than ponder the recent bitterly fought Australian Laniel's downfall 'is bringing rto 'a shabby close the elecltions. In a country with a large, fully organized dis'mal 'car,eer of the Geneva Conference. From its labor movement and a relatively sm-all middle class, first announcement the FREEMAN ,has insisted that Prim,e Minister Rohert G. Menzies and his Liberal the United States was wrong to cons,ent to the Pa'rty, running on an open free enterprise platform, Geneva Conference and that nothing constructive def.eated the avowedly Socialist Labor P'arty. The could result from it. ,At Berlin w,e let ourselves be Socialistis promised the book in the way of hig'h talked into it by the British and by a French gov­ benefits, low taxes, free medical care. The voters ernment ,that has vanished in ,smoke while the dele­ were not t:aken in. They saw inflation hack of the ga!tes were still sitting around the table. Isn't it promise,s. Becaus'e of the Labor Party's performance time that we began making our national decisions in the Petrov affair ,and the Labor opposition to in terms of our own capabilities and interests? Do strengthened measures against the Australian we need British instruction in order to decide Communist Party, they suspected Socialist softness whether we should and cang.tand by our obligations to Communism. Voters are not so dumb as egg­ to the Republic of Korea? In determ,ining whether heads and publicity men like to think. to intervene in Indo-China, and if so, under what conditions,are we to be guided by humpty-dumpty During the past month the Guatemalan crisis has French politicians or by an objective estimwte of been growiing slte'adily more insistent. The land­ our own available force and long-r,ange needs. ing of two thousand tons of Iron Curtain arms has been followed by nightly arrests of anti­ In an address before the National Citizens for Communists, preliminary steps toward the arm­ Eisenhower Congressional Commit,tee, the Presi­ ing of a "peoples' milHia," and the suspension dent renewed his plea for enactment· of the of constitutional guarantees of civil rights. There Administrat,ion's full legisla1tive program. The t,ext can no longer be any doubt that world Communism was a summary of last January's State of the intends to transform Guatemala into an American Union message. With much of what the President "Yenan," an armed redoubt inside the American

JUNE 28, 1954 689 citadel. From the Guatemalan sanctuary, the suc­ lowing pronouncement from the lion of the Paris ceeding phases in the envelopment and conquest Left Bank cafes, the prophet of existentialism, of the Americas can be directed and supplied. Jean...Paul Sartre: "Do you imagine that the Amer­ icans could ever have manufactured !that marvel­ Although disguised in the subversive forms of ous instrument of propaganda called anti-Com­ tw,entieth century totalitarianism, the Communist munis'm if there were any Communists in the advance in Guatemala is in substance an invasion United States? If, as in France, you meet member8 of ,the New World by an alien power, and thus a of the Communist Party every day or even every violation of the Monroe Doctr,ine, which for a month, how can you believe that they eat babies? century and a Ithird has been upheld and enforced If, on the other hand, you have never seen a by the United Staites. At rbhe same time, i't means Communist, how can one prove to you that Com­ from a milita'ry standpoint an ,ene'my conquest of a munis,ts don't eat b3!bies?" Thi,s is on the five-year­ bridgehead within our str,altegic frontier. In the old mental level of ,the gullible tourist in Soviet face of so direct and dire a challenge, the Admin­ Ruslsia or Nazi Germany who will not believe' in istration seems to be gripped by the same paralysis the reality of anya't~ocity he has not seen ,himself, that during recent months has affected every limb or of the American left-winger· who can't believe of our foreign policy. Counteraction has 'So far that such a nice, gentlemanly looking person as been confined ito a few rather ~mild words of pro­ Alger Hiss could have belonged toa spy ring. test, sm'all arms shipments to Cost,a Rica and Hon­ duras, and the call for a general meet,ing of the Following, in precise line, the old precept that Am,erican states. it takes one to catch one, the New York Times was quick to spot themos't :soft""headed proposition Our leaders seem unable to get it through their advanced by Adlai Stevenson during his recent heads that the Communis'ts m'ean businelss. How­ speech at Columbi,a Univer,si,ty. To normal listene'rs ever hard it is to deal with the Guatem,alan crisis it sounded as though the pride of Pragm:atic Falls today, it will be ,twice as hard a year from now, was telling the scholar's simply ,that they had every and ten times harder and bloodier~if still pos­ right to quake in their boots because of the on­ sible-in a decade. Nor will the Guatemalan Com­ slaughts of the junior Senator from etc. But to munists be intimidated by notes from the State the Times 'he 'said something ,even more important. Depart'ment or watered-down 'resolutions such as It was that "if the universities are free we may could be adopted by a general Pan Ameriean con­ be pretty sure the rest of the nation will be; fer'ence. It require,s iseriousand resolute actions, and if we seek freedom as :a positiv,e good we can among which the obvious and immediate steps in­ probably handle Communism and similar problems clude: breaking off of diplomatic relations, and in our spare time and without anxiety." It has withdrawal of diplomatic, commercial, military, been pretty clear of late that when it comes to and air missions ; economic boycott, and a blockade thinking both the Times and Mr. Stevenson are at least sufficient to prevent entry of further skillful spare-timers. And as for an under:st:anding miHtary supplies; full 'aid to Guatemalan anti­ of Communism and "Isimilar problems," they seem Communist,s, and Ito the neighboring anti...Com­ to have no time at all. 'munist nations of C,entral America. Representative Richard H. Poff of Virginia is a The government of Pakistan has acted wisely legislator with a yen for statistics. He has come and well in ousting the Comimuniist-:supported up with the conclusion ,that during the last eight "united front" regime which came into power years 120,000,000 words have been exchanged in in East Pakis,tan as a result of a recent election. 3,802 meetings between United States representa­ The East Pakistan regime had proved unable or tives and spokesmen for Communist countries. unwilling to repress outbursts of bloody violence According to Mr. Poff, this took 11,400 hours of in some of the factories, and its leader, the veteran talking time. It would require 600 volumes, at politician Fazlul Huk, was talking in terms of 400 pages a book, to reprint all these words and secession. 'There are political and economic prob­ it would take one year, three months, and nine lems in Eas,t Pakistan~ united, by ties of the Moslem days to play them all back on a tape recorder, religion with the western part of that new state operating day and night. These statis,tics should and separated from it by .a thousand miles of be ,commended to the attention of the simple Simons Indian territory, that call for long-term solutions. on both sides of the ,Atlantic who think that a But the ,first duties of a government :are to gove-rn cause of international tension is unwillingness of and to assure the independence of itsterritory and the United States to talk things over with Soviet safety of life and property. It looks as if our mili­ and other Communist representatives at the con­ taryaid to Pakistan was notmisdirec,ted. ference table. Representative Poff did not note what is pretty obvious anyway: that the 120,000,­ No one can be quite so obtusely unintelligent as 000 words add up to precisely nothing, in terms the ultra-sophisticated intelleC'tuaI. Take the fol- of positive results.

690 THE FREEMAN How Not to Run a Party As the curtain is being drawn on the long spring cratic Senators, the New Deal adviser Clark Clif­ run of ,the world's most publicized spectacle, there ford, and other aSisociates,apparently decided is one conclusion concerning which the're will be that the tim'e was ripe to "get Me:Carthy." It no disagreement: the Eisenhower Administration would seem that either by explicit agreement or and the Republican Party have been the big losers. unconscious politic.al osmosis they worked closely About this or that individual~McCarthy and with a number of influential publishers and Stevens the~mslelves, Cohn, Mundt, Welch, Syming­ journalists-among whom the Alsops and Walter ton, Adams, Jenkins, and the others--the judgment Lippmann, and the Luce and New York Times of the audience will continue to differ. Unlikely organizations may be prominently cited. as it seemed at the sta~t, there may have been It seems probable tha!t one individual must have a net benefit to the nation from. the prolonged if directed the operation, but, though ther!e are rough education in issues and m,en that the hear­ 'cogent rumors, the ,evidence does not permit us ings provided. The Democraltic Party stayed in to s.ay who this may have been. In any case, the the wings, and had little to lose if no honor to cabal sel'ected "the Army issue" as its battlefield, gain. But the Republican Party and the Administra­ possibly because it was only on this issue that tion were fixed mercilessly in the spotlight. the m'embers of the cabal could get the tacit agree­ The original occasion for this monstrous show ment of the President to launch the attack. should not be forgotten. The Army, through Sec­ The cabal charged into the field with all guns retary Stevens, form/ally charged that Senator roaring in world-wide salvos. But the shells, it McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and Francis Carr sought, has now been proved, were blanks. The cabal is in the formulation given by the New York Times, shown by the record to have been not far from "separaltely and collecHvely, by improper m,eans, a ,conspiracy; the charge is perilously close to being to obtain special treatment for Pvt. G. David an attempt at a frame-up. Schine, former subcommittee consultant." Senator McCarthy eountercharged that Secretary Stevens There are, of course, many honest and ardent and the Army counsel, John Adams, had tried to anti..McCarthyites whose long standing opinions stop the subcommittee's exposure of Communists are not affected by this hearing. Their aversion at Fort Monmouth, and had 'Used Schine as a to the junior Senator from Wisconsin is based "hostage" to this end. usually on what they believe to be his wrong and The hearings have ranged far afield, in every dangerous methods; and we share the concern over direction, from the original charge and counter­ ,som'e at least of his methods and ac.ts. Is the charge. They have jumped from trivial personal answer by the anti-McCarthyite leadership to be irrelevancies to the most serious constitutional counter-methods that ethically if not legally are issues. However, in the last act the original charge on the verge of conspiracy and frame-up? We await returned. to the center of the stage. with interest and even anxiety the considered Let us put entirely to one side the general comments that will be made by the accepted question of MeGarthyism and McCarthy, of the prophets of anti-MeGarthy morality. Surely they Senator',s morals, m:anners, methods, and aim,s. Let wnl not ,suggest to us, by what they say and do not us grant that his countercharge against the Army say, that "the end" of destroying McCarthy justifies got lost in the shuffle. Thus confining our attention the uSle of "any means." to the original charge that launched the whole per­ With no less anxiety we await signs of what formance, we must note that what little was left lessons will be drawn by the Republican Party, of it after the testimony of Messrs. Stevens and and in particular by its "liberal wing," from this Adams was blown sky-high by the transcript of 'Sorry debacle. We believe that the welfare and telephone calls that was introduced during the safety of the United States call for ,a continuing final sess'ions. When Secretary Stevens was re­ Republican Administration and an increased vealed as having said, two days before it was Republican majority in the Congress. Adlai Steven­ made public, that the Army's statement of com­ son's soft and defeatist address to the final cere­ plaints agains1t McCarthy was "much exaggerated," monies of the Columbia University Bicentennial that was the ,end of ",the Army's case," as well as celebration serves once more to remind us how of the pathetic pretense that Stevens himself had disastrous the Democr,atic alternative might prove initiated the action. to be in these decisive years just .a.hBad. What emerged from the tr,anscripts was some­ But the Republican Party will neithe'r keep nor thing much more fantastic, and in part more ugly. deserve the confidence of the citizens if Repub­ What m,any have for some time suspected can no lican leaderis treat each other as their m'ain enemies, longer be doubted. Early ,this year, a cabal made and if one faction is ready to ally itself even wi,th up of cert.ain Administration officials, several Demo- the hatc'hetmen of the Democrats in order to try

JUNE 28, 1954 691 to crush an intra-party rival. The Pre'Sident has Our illness goes deeper than anyone man. It of late been frequently called upon to assert hi,s is a malady of the soul that summons all the evil leadership. Nowhere is elear-sighted, responsible forces of the Inquisition, of the Gheka, of Hitlerism of Sta.Iinism, of the Ku Klux Klan, and all thos~ leadership more needed at this moment than in nauseous forces which claim dominion over the con­ the conduct of the ,affairs of hi,s own party-the duct and souls of other men. ,entire party, not a f,avored tendency or clique. If the President will not or cannot furnish it, then The nation is being weakened by the excesses it is up to those among the R,epublican Governors, of our investigating committees, fantastic charges Senators, andOongre,ssmen who put the broad of treason against our most honored statesmen the obscene spectacle of distorted denunciation th~ interests of their party above narrow personal hysterical fear of Communist subversion,' the rivalry precisely because they put the interests erosion of civil liberties, the daily affront to human of their ,country above both. dignity. As it happens, the first of these citations is from the Daily Worker, official Communist org,an; the second is from ,an article by Mark Ethridge The Real Hysteria in the Nation, the third is from a speech by Averell No' one can be quite so hysterical as the profe~­ Harriman at Albany. No fair-minded person would sional deplorer of hy,s!teria. Consider Justice Wil­ for a moment suspect Ethridge and Harriman of liam ,0. Dougl!as, for instance, with his "bJ,ack being pro-Communisrt; and Y1et in the current din of silence of fear" aisa description of the state of ,anti-anti-Communism it is a litltle hard to dis­ America at a time when the ,air is shrill with out­ tinguish voices and accents. cries of protest and alarm, voiced without let or hindrance In numerous books, magazine articles, radio broadcasts, and commencement addresses. Or the Synod of -the Pres'b~erian Church com­ The Oppenheimer Finding paring procedures ofcongres1sional investigations with the methods of the Spanish Inquisition. One The repo~t on ",the Oppenheimer case" by the spe­ looks around, in vain, to s'ee the flames of an cial Security Board of the Atomic Energy Com­ auto-da-fe. mission is a triumphant refutation of the favorite In thi,s 'crusade of anti-hysteria hysterics one themes of anti-,American propaganda. It would be can recognize the constant iteration of shopworn hard to imagine an atmosphere further removed cliehes. How often are we told that w,eare living from "hyst,eria" and "witch-"hunting." Inde,ed, the through a "witch-hunt." Then there is also only hysteria exhibited over the whole atf'air has the somewhat curious idea that a profession of come from certain of the scienMsts and New allegi,ance to America makes teachers "second-class Dealers who have been deceived into providing citizens." As Prof.essor Henry Steele Commager copy for the world Communist press by inter­ wrote in the New York Times Magazine: "By preting this inquiry as an attack on personal these oaths we put ,a pr,emium on conformity. This rights and scientific freedom. The Board has ample results in a society of second-elias'S citizens unable rea'son to conclude that its proceedings proved "that to voice their re,al opinions, although the only kind loyalty and security can be examined within the of advice a society needs is unpalatable advice." frameworks of the traditional and inviolable prin­ Robert M. ,Hutchins echoes this idea in a recent ciples of American justice." article in Look: "Tea:chers are becoming second­ Apart from lawyers' quibbles, Dr. Oppenheim,er class citizens. In many stiatesthey are required can have no genuine. complaint against the treat­ to take special oaths that they have not been dis­ ment accorded him. All relevant documents, except loyal. -Why not ask them to take oaths that they secret FiBI reports, were m,ade available to him. have not been robbers or prost,itutes?" AU of his witnesses were abundantly heard. He One wonders whether C.ommager and Hutchins "has been represented by counsel, usually four in regard the President of the United States and the number, at an timeiS in the course of the proceed­ highe,st officers of our armed forces ,as "second­ ings. H,e has confronted every witness appearing class citizens" beeause they ,are required to take before the board, with the privilege of cross oaths of affirmative loyalty. examination." The following three outbursts sound as if they Deviations of the Board from an attitude of were all cut from the same piece of intellectual strict impartiality were uniformly in Dr. Oppen­ cloth, or fustian: heim:er's favor. The Board commended Dr.Oppen­ heimer's "discretion" in general, after citing two In the lunacy of the "red scare" and the "spy" dozen speci'fic examples of his indiscretions. In a hysterics, it is now possible to be "loyal and dis­ curious wording, the Board "would prefer to have creet" and still be an untouchable "security risk" ... We are sure that the country will vigorously found" that Dr. Oppenheimer had broken with the protest this thought-control verdict against Dr. Citizens' Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Oppenheimer. ... Professions "earlier',' than he in fact did (1946),

692 THE FREEMAN and would "prefer" not to have made an explicit ruling on the question of his clearance. One would In Freedom's Calendar think that a Board of this kind "would prefer" merely to discover the facts, and to weigh their June 17, 1953, is an important date in freedom's relation to the security of the United States. calendar. Up to the memorable day when the whole In the report there is thoughtful discussion of apparatus of puppet tyranny in the Soviet zone of many psychological, moral, and social problems at Germany collapsed before the spontaneous storm of stake in the Oppenheimer and similar cases. Un­ mass strikes and popular demonstrations we could fortunately, there is not much sign of any real believe, on the, basis of much circumstantial evi­ comprehension of the nature, meaning, and history dence, that Communist regimes were hated and of Communist politics, a comprehension which, in despised by the peoples over which they tyrannized. this particular instance, would have reinforced the There was the testimony of fugitives of the most majority's negative finding on security clearance. varied political and social backgrounds. There was In his March letter of self-defense, Dr. Oppen­ the silent but impressive plebiscite represented heimer had traced his Communist fellow-traveling by the million and more Europeans from Iron to the influence of Hitler's treatment of the Jews, CUI'itain countries (including many Russians and the depression, and the Spanish Civil War. From Ukr'ainians) who would not go home after the war, the report (as Max Eastman observes in his com­ of the million and more Germans who abandoned ments elsewhere in this i.ssue on Dr. Oppenheimer's all their possessions to flee from the Soviet zone to recent book), we now know that his active support the overcrowded West. There was Hong Kong of pro-Communist organizations-including the bursting at the seams with Chinese fleeing from Communist' Parity-continued at least through 1942, Red terror. There was Korea, where the tide or and his more passive support for some years fugitiVies always followed the U.N. forces, never thereafter. His pro-Communism thus spread over the Communist forces. There were the Chinese and the period of the Moscow Purge 'Trials, and was North Korean pri!soners (some fifty thousand unchecked by two major r.eversals in the Com­ altogethe'r, as against little more than a score of muni.slt Hne (1939 and 1941), one of which made Am,erican reneg:ades who stayed with the Com­ the Communists the allies of Hitler. The key sig­ munis1ts) who steadfastly resisted the suggestion nifieance of these and the other major "turns" of repatriation. in Communist policy for a political estimate of But it was the Germans of the Soviet zone who an organization or an individual 'is obvious to all furnished final clinching proof of the inner rot­ who have made a serious s,tudy of Communism. tenness of Communist regimes and thereby ren­ There is no hint of this understanding in the dered an inestimable service to their countrymen Gray report. on the other side of the zonal boundary and- to the' 'The re'aetion of an individual (or organization) whole of free Europe. Of course their unarmed to successive turns may show the slightness as revolt was put down. But it was not put down by well as the depth of a one..,time attachment to Germans. The whole machinery of the police and Communism. W,e thoroughly agree with the de­ para-military formations Which had been built fenders of Dr. Oppenheimer that it is wrong to up in the Soviet zone proved completely unreliable. "pillory" a man for Hyourthful indiscretions" or There were wider repercussions of the superbly "mistakes" due to "generous ideals." It is not brave June 17 demonstrations. Polish military only wrong but foolish: this too frequent practice units, order:ed to cross the Oder-Neisse border and has deprived the government of services that it suppress the demonstrations in the town of Goer­ badly needs. The trouble is that Dr. Oppenheimer's litz, refused to obey. indiscretions were not a youthful or fleeting June 17 will live long in the hearts of the Ger­ episode~his dubious associations, the report shows, man people as a testimonial of the indomitable had not ceased even in December 1953. And why will of the G\ermans in the Soviet zone for national is i!t that those who call so loudly for the for­ union in freedom. It should also be a day of giveness of Dr. Oppenheimer (and Philip Jessup, mobilization for every diplomatic and information Owen Lattimore, James W'Hchsler, or John Fair­ agency of the United States governm,ent. It would bank) have such hard hearts when judging the be an unpardonable moral and psychological blunder past "indiscretions" of Louis Budenz, Elizabeth if there were any failure to salute this anniversary Bentley, Paul Crouch, or Joseph Kornfeder? of he~oic defeat and to hold out hope and promise This question of the criteria by which we may that some day the ideals for which the men of conclude that a man has erased an earlier sub­ June 17 risked life and liberty will be realized, versive taint de1serves careful and informed re­ that the last German Red Quislings will be run­ examination. Potentially it affects both the public ning f'or their lives. And as soon as the Soviet '\-veal and several million individual citizens. Let empire cracks in what could become its weakest us hope that the Oppenheimer case, whatever its spot-the Soviet zone of Germany-the knell of specific merits, will force the problem into public doom will ,sound for the puppet regimes in Warsaw, a!ttention and official action. Prague, Budapest, and Bucharest.

JUNE 28, 1954 693 the best prospect of conserving individual liberty. Conservatives for Liberty For, as Max Eastman showed cogently in the FREEMAN some time ago, the once honorable word It is high time to discard the obsolete idea that liberal has become horribly perverted, especially in there is an inherent antagonism between conserv­ the United States. A "liberal" in America may now atism and liberty. The precise rev,ers,e of this be anyone from a believer in low taTiffsand honest proposition is true. The ;supreme threat to human municipal government to a joiner of fifty-seven liberty, now as ,always, comes from the ,exces,sive assorted Communis1t fronts and an advocate of arbitrary power of a centralized state. This threat all-out state controls. is greater now than at any tim'e in history because As statism has become the' banner of the Left, of the tendency of the state to reach out into fields individual liberty has become the banner of con­ of economic and social control on a scale unmatched servatism, which, in its true form, is as anti­ by ,any tyrants of the past. pathetic to fascism as to Communism. Most of the Lord Acton, one of the most authentic voices of martyrs in the struggle against Hitler were Chris­ nineteenth-century liberalism, summed up perhaps tian conservatives. the mos't important conclusion of his vast learn­ ing in history and political science in one im­ mortal phrase: "All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The brilliant Indian Elephant Surplus and eloquent Russian historian, V. O. Kluc'hevsky, pronounced the epitaph of seventeenth-century "-Thile keeping our fingers firmly on the pulse of Tsarist absolutism and an unconscious forecast world economy, we've recently felt a vibration of the nature of Soviet absolutism when he wrote: that 'had its origin in faraway Calcutita. Seems "The state swelled, and the people shrank." that the bottom has faIlen out of the market in Consider the shifting a'ttitudes of what might Indian elephants. Whereas a neat specimen, in be called the Left ,and Right in American politics full possession of its tusks, used to fetch any­ toward the role of the state. Thomas Jefferson where from $1,000 to $1,500, you can now get an would certainly have been considered a man of average-sized elephant for around $630. the Left, if the expression had been known in The law of supply and demand is, as usual, be­ his time. Yet a typical excerpt from Jefferson's hind this item of economic intelligence from stra­ anti-statist writing,s suggests the ideology of Rohert tegic 'southern Asia. Although the' supply remained A. 'Taft, rather than of Frianklin D. Roosevelt: more or less level, the demand for elephants has The way to have good and safe government is slumped since the Indian government broke up not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among .the princely states. These Indian princes used the many" distributing to everyone exactly the func­ to commute by riding atop one of these hug:e beasts, tions he is competent to. Let the national govern­ while their retinue followed behind on slightly ment be entrusted with the defense of the nation, smaller ones. However, no princes, no market. and its foreign and federal relations; the state governments, with the civil rights, laws, police, We are, frankly, surprised thait the government and administration of what concerns the state gen­ of India has permitted the elephant market to erally; the counties with the local concerns of the come to this point. From experience here at home, counties... we would have at least expected the government to What has destroyed liberty and the rights of support the price of elephants close to 90 per man under every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating cent of parity. And while we .can't expect stock­ all cares' and powers into one body, no matter piles of pachydernl.s to he kept in government whether of the autocrats of Russia or France or of warehouses, it would not have been surprising to the aristocrats of a Venetian senate. hear of the establishment of an All-India Elephant Now :the extension of the power of the' central­ Maintenance and Marketing Authority. The final ized state, which Jefferson feared, against which step, as we see it, would be a government-sub­ many provisions of the American Constitution are sidized effor't to sell elephants abroad at bargain clearly directed, has become the ideal of the prices. Aggressive salesmanship might open up Left. In its extreme form this leads to Communist vast markets in such exotic places as the United totalitarianism. In the milder forms of West States of America. European socialism and American N'ew Dealism it We realiz'e that the Indian government is not leads to a slower, but steady atrophy of individual very keen, these days, on advice offered by U.S. liberty and self-reliance under the pressure of experts. Neverthele,ss, our extensive observations a state that becomes a more and more universal in the field of bureaucratic surplus management provider, controller, and regulator. suggest that the Indian government might go On both sides of the Atlantic it is the conserv­ ahead and buy up some excess elephants anyway. ative forces, with their philosophy of a free market This would bring 'prices up. Breeders would en­ economy, respect for private property, the rule of courage increased output of baby elephant.s, which law and decentralization of government, that offer in turn could soon become full-grown surpluses.

594 THE FREEMAN The Debacle of the Fabians

The recent writing oj the New Fabians gives By RUSSELL KIRK ample proof oj the final Jailure of British Socialisln and shows. up the Laborites as di/lpirited and devoid oj serious thought.

Nearly two and a half years ago, the Attlee gov­ Socialists, it is of some interest to turn back ernm'ent gave way to the Cons,ervatives. The to eertain books which 'appeared during 1951 and British ISocialists had seemed sick of office a good 1952-the work of eminent radical thinkers con­ while hefore that, anxious enough to forget cerned for the mind and heart of their party. Aneurin Bevan's vaunt, before their postwar Their prophecy of the intellectual bankruptcy of triumph over Mr. Churchill, that "we shaH do such Labor has been amply fulfilled; and yet the various things that never again will there be a Tory gov­ counsels of these w,ell-wishers seem to have made ernment." The more reflective men among the next to no impression upon the men who control Socialists, indeed, had anticipated the defeat of the Labor Party, or, indeed, upon the rank and Labor in 1951 and begun to search their con­ file.. sciences. Much was said, in 1950 and 1951, about the necessity for reviewing socialist thought; Mr. Carr"s Perplexity something has been said on this topic since the Labor government fell; but remarkably little Among the earlier of these voices of fore­ thinking has been done. boding was E. H. Carr's. Mr. Carr is not a member It must strike any close observer of Parliament of the Fabian Society; it is difficult to say he is how curiously ineffectual the Labor opposition has a member of any body, for he veers in his allegiance been since the return of Churchill. The fire is according to the fortunes of particular ideologies, gone out of the Labor 'members, and they are a constant only to pleonexia, the search after power. good deal more interested in squabbling among But Mr. Carr, historian of Soviet Russia, is a themselves than in attempting to criticize the Con­ collectivist, unmistakably, and devoted to the total servatives intelligently. Not that they have formed state. His little book, The New Society (1951) , a truly loyal opposition. The eagerness of the is significant of the present perplexity of British left wing of the Labor leadership to encourage radicalism. The old motives to integrity and dili­ the impossible demand of the engineering unions gence, Mr. Carr confesses, are being destroyed by for a pay increas,e of 15 per cent (which they the Welfare State, or 'have already been destroyed; knew could not be granted), and the embarrassment more and more, most men see no reason why they these same people recently caused Mr. Attlee when should work or:even obey the established rules of he supported the military appropriations of the society; therefore planneTs must find a new sanc­ gov,ernment, are only the two most conspicuous tion to replace the old sanction of fear of want: examples of the irresponsibility of at least half "The donkey needs to see the stick as well as the the Labor members. But they have off,ered no real carrot... I confess that I am less horror-struck substitute for any Conservativemeasur,e, and they than some people at the prospect,. which seems to have shown neither the 'ability to win by-elections me unavoidable, of an ultimate power of what is nor, inde'ed, any convincing wish to take office. called direction of labor r,esting in some arm of Their vague talk of returning to power once the society, whether in an organ of state or of trade blunders of the Tories have brought on a depres­ unions." sion is no 'more than the grumbling, without real Here is the first step toward the forced labor hope, of all broken factions. It is almost impos­ camp. More significant still, perhaps, is Mr. Carr's sible to resist the inference that they have no confession that though he thinks "progress" the idea what they would try to do if they should only goal of life, he cannot define progress: "Prog­ suddenly be asked to assume authority. Mr. Bevan, ress is just what it says, a 'moving on-a conscious some months 'ago, hesitantly spoke up for national­ moving on toward purposes which are felt to be izing the land, confessing simultaneously that he worthy of human faith and human endeavour." If had no idea of just how this could be accom­ the ,early Socialists of England had been so vague plished; his proposal was so unmistakably old­ as this, they would be as insignificant today as fashioned that it met with an awkward silence the American Socialist Party. from most of 'his personal adherents. A book more truly in the Fabian tradition, In the light of the pres-ent confusion of the Restatem,ent of Liberty (1951), by P. C. Gordon

JUNE 28, 1954 695 Walker, former Secr,etary of State for Common­ old-fashioned of all Laborites. His world of oratory wealth Relations in the Attlee government, is no and of polemic is the world of 1918, or 1926, and less startling. Mr. 'Gordon Walker, too, is 'aware he rejoices in all the cliches of the radical agitator; that somehow thrift, honesty, and simple obedience he is still talking of class warfare and capital to law have diminished alarmingly under the Wel­ levies when 'every practical Socialist politician put fare Stat,e; and his 'remedy is increased compulsion. such fancies out of his head years ,ago. On the "The new Stat'ewill also directly augment authority face of things, then, it is surprising that these and social pressure by ne\v poweTs of punishment younger Fabians, full of revisionist schemes, and compulsion. So far from withering 'away, as in should profess such an attachment to the most die­ theory both the individualist and the total State hard of old-school Labor leaders. should, the new IState, if it is to bring into being Whatever their principles of loy.alty, most of and serve the better society, must create new the contributors to New Fabian Essays have turned offenses and punish them." . their backs, or at least their ~shoulders, upon the Most Socialist writers ,are not so logical as original Fabian Essays, ·and their authors. This Mr. Gordon Walker. A. J. P. Taylor, one of the new book is revisionism redoubled. Not all these most industrious of Socialist journalists and New Fabians are going in the same direction. scholars, contents himself with denunciations of the upper classes-any upper classes, conserva­ Mr. Crosland Defines "Statism" tive or socialist-and threats against the farmers. Marx, Mr. 'Taylor observes, knew that the towns, Mr. Crosland almost justiifies the Spectator's in a ,socialist state,mush crush the peasantry; jocular refe'rence to "Socialist Conservatism." The and 'a good thing it would be, too: "He wanted trouble with the socialist W:elfare State, he says to finish the struggle for good and all by liquidat­ in substance, is that everything has been made ing the peasantry; but, failing this Utopian solu­ so jolly that w,e don't ,know which way to turn tion, the towns have to practice the doctrine which next; we have accomplished 'everything, and find is the basi.s of ,all civilized life: 'We have the ourselves bewiIder,ed. Marx was wrong, Mr. Cros­ Maxim gun, and they have not.' " When such land obs,erves, when he predicted the progressive unprovoked ravings as this fill the columns of impoverishment of ,the worker, ending in a prole­ the New Statesman and Nation, sur,ely the. talents tarian revolution; instead, the working classes of the Socialists are at a low ebb; ranting is have grown steadily more prosperous, in spite of substituted for confident planning, the mark of a war and depression, so that their real incom,e in profound frustration. Britain, by 1938, was three and a half times that Even suchan elder statesman of Fabianism as of 1870. Capitalism is not going to be overthrown G. D. H. Cole is at sea. Dismay,ed at the ineffi­ by revolution; instead, a post-capitalist society ciency of nationalized industry and the general is taking shape, characterized by a diminished lack of drive in the Welfare State, he turns back influenee of individual property rights upon eco­ to guild socialism and syndicalism, fumblingly, for nomic and social power, the transfer of economic remedies; and he says, ominously: "Socialism is manag,em,ent to a new class of administrative em­ an unworkable system without ,a new social drive ployees, a great increas'e in ,economic controls by such ,as the Communists have managed to give it." the stat,e, a high level of social s'ervices, a perman­ Familiar as 'even the Fabians now are with the ently high level of 'employment, a steady incr'ease sanctions and methods of the Soviets, few of Mr. of production, a lessening of the class struggle Cole's colleagues ventured to applaud this candor. by the growth of buffer intermediate classes be­ tween the top and the bottom strata of society, and the tendency to substitute "the virtues of Revisionism Redoubled cooperative action" for private initiative and com­ 'The most ,sober and interesting endeavor of the petition. AIl this, 'Mr.· Crosland says, constitutes British Socialists to look into their own hearts "The 'Transition from Capitalism," the subJect of appeared two years ago: New Fabian Essays, his ,essay; and he calls the new society Statism. ,edited by Mr. R. H. S. Crossman, who contributes What is :the difference betw,een this and Social­ the most interesting essay. 'The authors of these ism? !Chiefly, Mr. Crosland writes, in that the articles are the young lions of the Fabian Society: soul of ISocialis'm is 'equality, and this new Statism C. A. R. Crosland!, Roy Jenkins, Margaret Cole, is not really egalitarian. "The purpose of social­ Austen Albu, l,an Mikardo, Denis Healey, John ism is quite simply to 'eradicate this s'ense of class, Strachey-notall of them, perhaps, very young and to ,create in its place a sense of common in­ lions. ,Mr. Attlee has contributed a preface, but terest and equal status." To this task of cr,eating several of the authors are conspicuous among the greater :equality of "living standards and op­ devotees of Mr. iB'evan. Now Mr. Bevan, the middle­ portunities," 'but :ev,en more, of "measures on the aged enfant terrible of his party, is the most socio-psychological plane" for m'akingmen feel ,equal, Mr. Crosland advises sincere Fabians to 1. I can advance no theory as to why Fabians manifest such an address themselves henceforward. Correspondingly, affection for three initials.

696 THE FREEMAN intelligent Socialists ought now to dismiss ce'rtain and the class which furnished the leadership for "lines of policy which are sometimes put forward the town sinks into apathy. How long can this as constituting the essence of good socialism." particular aspect of Statism continue? Not more Thes,e obsolete socialistic objectives are the con­ than a generation, at most, I think; and then will tinued lextension of free social services,more come, not the placid psychological equality that nationaliz'ation of whole industries, the continued is Mr. Crosland's dream, but the grim stick to proliferation of controls, and further redistribu­ replace the carrot, the authoritarian state-unless tion of income by dir,ecttaxation. there is a restoration of the old motives to in­ In short, Mr. Crosland is so bold as to declare tegrity. that nearly the whole of the socialist program is antiquat~d,and he implies that it is becoming Advice from Mr. Crossman positively dangerous if Britain wants to retain the benefits of IStatism. ,His only strong ambition When we turn to Mr. R. H. S. Crossman's essay, is to realize "a society which is not bedeviled by we find that interesting mixture of sound sense the .consciousness of class.". and doctrinaire egalitarianism which occurs in the This is moderation ; but it is also smugness. whole body of Mr. Crossman's writings. Like Mr. Mr. Crosland's .complacency with the present in­ Crosland, Mr. Crossman is willing to concede that sipidity of British life would have driven ideal­ most of the Socialist program is obsolete; what isti.c Socialists like William 'Morris into a Viking is more, he confesses that from the first the rage. In ,some sense, Mr. Crosland's England is F'abians went wrong on a great many philosophical simply the triumph of that lower-middle-class life postulat,es. The present dreary intellectual Istate which Morris and Ruskin detested. Except for of the Labor Party alarms him: "Our socialism his appetite for a psychological equality, Mr. Cros­ may degenerate into Laborism. If this happens, pol­ land's interests seem to be wholly utilitarian, and itics will become a matter of 'ins' and 'outs.' he rejoices in the increasing mechanization of Soon there will be no deep difference between the everything in life, on Bentlramite principles. What two parties, and the dynamic of social chang,e will attracted great numbers of people' to socialism be taken over by new and dangerous political at the turn of the century was its promise to wipe movements." The Fabians must repudiate many of away the grubby industrial world and substitute their most cherished fancies, if they are to survive, something heautiful. The Socialist Party is come he .continues. 'They must realize that the notion down, instead, to 'Mr. Crosland's world, which is of automatic progress is a delusion, for "the evolu­ very like a rather shabby imitation of Looking tionary and the revolutionary philosophies of prog­ Backward. ress have both proved false." 'They must face the fact that the managerial state, as beheld in Soviet Russia, destroys the true equality and respect One Town's Experience for individual personality which Socialists desire. If Mr. C'rosland's generalities are reduced to Fabians must admit that mere democracy, appHed particularcas'es, just how much good has this abstractly to Asia or Africa, does not bring either moral undermining of old classes, together with freedom or equality-it simply gives the old domin­ certain of the features of Statism, done the Eng­ ant .classes, or new oligarchs, a new instrument of lish people? I happen to know something, for in­ power. Fabians should abjure ideology, indeed, stance, of what has occurred in the old weaving and crusading ideals, adopting instead ,a policy town of Huddersfield in Yorkshire. The established of urbane criticism. pattern of industry there was the family business, At home, intelligent Socialists ought to turn operated with great pride of workmanship and high their attention to three problems: the surviving efficiency, with ,excellent relations between the concentration of capital in private hands, despite owners and their mill-hands. During the past the redistribution of income through taxation; twenty years, howev,er, most of this has been the surviving influence of laiss,ez~faireconeeptsin changing. 'The deeay of the old eertitudes 'among the allocation of profits, wages, 'and salaries; and the families of the 'mill owners has made many of the survival, despite nationalization, of "effective the younger generation reckless and profligate­ power ... in the hands of a small managerial the end, perhaps, of two ,centuries of integrity. and Civil Service 'elite." Yet, after ,aU, what have they to look forward to? Mr. Crossman decidedly has thrown overboard One or two deaths in the family will r,esult in the swaggering optimism of the earlier Fabians: virtual .confiscation 'becaus,e of the ,enor,mous death In these conditions it is self-deception to beUeve duties, 'and ,the 'mill will have to be sold to a that the living standards and security enjoyed by company of outsiders, commonly abs,ente,e owners, the British people after 1945 were a stable achieve­ who all too often manufacture shoddy goods. The ment of sodalism. Living in an age not of steady progress towards a world welfare capitalism, but reputation of 'English textiles declines in cons'e­ of world revolution, it is folly for us to assume quence, ,and so does true efficiency ; the working that the Socialist's task is to assist in the gradual people I08'e their accustom,ed 'prideand reliability; improvement of the material lot of the human race

JUNE 28, 1954 697 and the gradual enlargement of the area of human of the old governing classes, ,that the moral and freedom. The forces of history are all pressing material capital of traditional 'British society is towards totalitarianislu: in the Russian bloc, owing perilously close to 'exhaustion. Yet they :shudder to the conscious policy of the Kremlin; in the free world, owing to the growth of the managerial at the thought of proceeding onward to a regime society, the ,effects of total rearmament, and the of compulsion ,and the total state, the only logical repressing of colonial aspir,ations. The task of socia,l­ alternative toa conservative order and a free ism is neither to accelerate this Political Revolu­ economy. tion, nor to oppose it (this would be as futile as They are beginning to realize t'hat their own opposition to the Industrial Revolution a hundred years ago), but to civilize it. moral convictions were derived from traditional British society, but that they have been consum­ This, too, certainly is moderation. True, Mr. ing the vigor of that traditional system, a para­ Crossman retains some vestige of tenderness for sitic sect. They are beginning to realize also that the Soviet 'experiment, so that he does not really the socialist economy, ,similarly, may have been no inquire whether ,Soviet totalitarianism is simply more than a parasitie upon the' free economy it the ,consequence of having B;ad Men in the Kremlin, detested. And now, it occurs to some of .them, or whether it may possibly be the consequence of they are close to the 'peril of an existence not abolishing the traditional motive.s to integrity, and merely parasitic, but saprophytic. so having to rule by force. True, he still turns up his nose 'at "capitalism," going so far as to try to convince himself that the divorce of owner­ Fahianism Now Rootless ship and management in certain great American 'Two years ago, then, the New Fabians exhorted corporations (a problem which disturbs many British Socialists to rethink their program. There American industrialists even more than it dis­ is ve'ry little evidence in Parliam,ent or in the turbs Mr. Crossm.an) is a kind of counterpart to Labor Party organizations that any such rethink­ Soviet totalitarianism. But he has come a great ing has occurred. And no wonder, for the N:ew way toward confessing that the traditional ends Fabians'manifesto was a tissue of negations, not and methods of W,estern society are worth pre­ of affirmations; they off.ered no guidance. British serving. socialism, as amoral and intellectual movement, For what, according to Mr. Crossman, is the developed from two sources: the utilitarian prin­ obj,ectof socialism? Why, human freedom. Not ciples of B'entham (as Mr. Crossman ,re'minds us) democracy, not ~equality, nota planned economy, and the ,equalitarian "social gospel" of the Non­ not even prosperity, 'but freedom. Mr. Crossm'an comformists, reinforced by certain Anglican church­ is vague about his definition of freedom, which m'en. A.s Mr. Crossman himse1f candidly points sometimes he seems to blend indistinguishably with out, the great grim events of our time have ex­ equality; but it is reasonably clear that he likes posed as so many fallacies the Benthamite assump­ old-fashioned liberty, private liberty, and not the tions upon which the Webbs, Laski, H. G. Wells, sophisticated new definitions of fr,eedom as "op­ and their friends founded their socialism; and portunity for creative activity" or "an' activity, when such people turned to Marxism for ,a refuge, an arduous pursuit of a goal that is never reached" they embraced a bear. "Christian" Socialism, on offered by Mr. Carr and Mr. 'Gordon Walker. It the other hand, has tended to disintegrate since will be inter'esting to see whether Mr. Crossman, the First World War, declining into a mere secular holding his present opinions, can continue to be moralism, at 'best, or giving up the ghost as the any sort of Socialist, or can continue to make true charact'er of socialist states became clear. himself think that socialism is the way to freedom. With both its roots hacked through, how long can British socialism hope to keep clear of the A Note of Disillusion pit into which ,British Liberalism has fallen? Fabianism, I ,am inclined to believe, has fought 'There are other interesting contributions to New its last cam:paign. If the Fabian Society survives Fabian Essays. 'Through them all, however, runs as an influence in Briti.sh politics and the aff,airs a note of disillusion and baffled hope. The world, of the mind, it will survive only in a metamorphosed these people hav,e discovered, is not governed by state, with new principles, if not new methods. The little pamphlets, or much altered by tidy little old Fabians were strong in irony, statistical learn­ plans. 'They dread the future, where their predeces­ ing, and pure rationality. What they lacked was sors rejoiced in the day that was dawning; they the higher imagination, that faculty 'which con­ are mightily anxious to consolidate the present servatives like Burke and Disraeli possessed so gains of socialism, rather than to :experiment; conspicuously. Men do not want to be equal, really, they ,suffer, inde'ed, from that ancient malady called or 'efficient, or completely rational, or the recipients the conservatism of fear. And they have good of a planned happiness. What men want is to he r'eason for ,alarm. Their party and principles have simply themselves. This the Fabians refused to so weakened the old order .. of things, deliberately confess; and so they are come to the end of their boring from within, injuring the hearts and minds tether.

698 THE FREEMAN The Union Member: America's Laziest Man

The apathy oj union members makes' them easy dupes By VICTOR RIESEL oj Red agents and gangsters, and involves them in strikes crippling both to our economy and to labor.

Much has been said about Communist and gang­ the union's incumbent secretary-treasurer was ster domination of some of the labor unions and re-elected, even though a year earlier he had about the crippling effect upon our economy of refused to answer this question put to him by strikes that result from such domination. The the Senate Internal Security subcommittee: "Do blame for these costly troubles rests in large you feel that you are innocent of any part in a part upon the rank and file of union members. The conspiracy to undertake to overthrow thegov­ truth is that most dues-payers of the nation's ernment by force and violence?" 75,000 local unions are too indifferent to devote Thus did the 70,000 rank-and-'file members who a few hours each month to attending meetings were too lazy to vote deliver their union by at which their economic fate is decided. default to a man whose loyalty to our country A union having, say, 20,000 members on its is seriously in dou:bt. books may be run by the mere half-hundred men who are interested enough to turn out for Policies 'Decided by a Few meetings. It is estimated that of this country's 16,000,000 union members, only about 750,000 The apathy of union members is underlined vote or monitor their officers' financial, industrial by the following Icase. In March 1953 a strike and political policies. shut down the big General Electric plant at As a result of this apathy, some unions have Evendale, O'hio, which was turning out jet motors become captives of the criminal underworld or to power the aircraft then sweeping Russia's Communists. There is, for example, a notorious MIGs out of the Korean skies. It was a major pro-Soviet labor union called the Mine, Mill, and test of President Eisenhower's new labor policy Smelter Workers. It was expe'1led from the C.I.O. to remain neutral in any industrial furor as in 1949 after a jury of its peers voted to condemn long as he could. Despite protests from the unions, it as a follower of Soviet policy. Its leaders have the Air Force stayed out of the conflict. been accused before congressional ,committees of The A.F.L. International Association of Machin­ being part of the Soviet undercover apparatus. ists, one of two unions involved at this G.E. Its national counsel, Nathan Witt, invoked the plant-a clean, incorruptible union- had called Fifth Amendment and refused to deny member­ a meeting to conduct a strike vote. This union ship in a specific Communist cell within our had some 1,100 members in the plant. Only 114 federal government. Witt, it is charged, was a showed up. Of those who attended, eighty-five member of the same cell as Alger Hiss. voted for the walkout. Thus 8 per cent of the This union controls workers who dig our vital affected membership decided union policy. copper, nickel, and uranium. They are in key The other union there, the C.I.O. United Auto­ uranium smelter plants and in the supersecret mobile Workers, had 4,800 dues-payers at the heavy-water plant at Trail, British Columbia. plant. At a meeting caBed to decide its strike The pro-Communist leadership of this union's policy some 1,200 were present-only one member 100,000 members endangers the security of our in four cared enough to come out to vote on nation. It can paralyze the production of materials major policy. And the strike was voted. needed for weapons that include the hydrogen The leadership of the United Electrical Workers bomb. Yet a survey of its local 'meetings from (U.E.) is as notoriously pro-Communist as that northern Canada to southern Texas shows that of the Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers and as often only thirty to fifty members come to strategically located in the heart of our defense regional headquarters meetings at which union industry. In congressiona,l hearings witnesses policy is decided upon by vote. have linked U.E. leaders such as Jim Matles, In an election held on November 2, 1953, no national organizer, and Julius Emspak, national one bothered to run against the pro-Soviet clique's secretary-treasurer, with the Soviet apparatus. candidate for president, and less than one third Is this the result of rank-and-file laziness? When of the members took the trouble to vote. Further, the 17,000 member 'electrieal union at the G.E.

JUNE 28, 1954 699 8chenectady plant was under U.E. control, only So aghast at the apathy of dues-payers was one fifty to two hundred attended meetings. Yet newcomer to labor leadership that he recently this plant turns out precision electronic mechan­ launched a crusade in his union to place the isms which can be the difference between victory responsibility where it belonged-on the rank­ and defeat in any future war. At Westinghouse and-file member. This man, who refuses to draw plants near Philadelphia local union policy is a personal expense account from his union, New often decided by ten to twenty-five members out of York Musicians Local 802, is its president, Al a membership of 8,000. Manuti. Local 802, 'with 30,000 members, is the Normal attendance in locals with from 200 to world's largest musicians' local. Manuti arrived 4,000 members runs from 2 to 8 per cent of the at a membership meeting last November to find membership, according to a study published by just a few seats occupied. As a result, the entire Cornell University, and in large locals attendance front page of the next issue of the union's pub­ sometimes drops to 1 per cent. lication, Allegro, was devoted to a simulated classi­ fied advertisement appealing to members to attend Reds and Racketeers Take Over the next 'meeting. Al ,Manuti has many counterparts among the This disease of apathy respects no skill, no 250,000 union leaders in the United States. These talent, no occupation. Artisan and artist alike men want thememhership to carry some of the suffer from the lazy-bug. The A.F.L. American responsibility for policies and to help fight off Federation of Radio and Television Artists, New the underworld and' undercover vultures who are York Local, has 4,000 members, among them the ready to capture unions run by only a handful best-known radio voices and TV faces in the of members. world. Yet at a meeting on April 2 last year The American ,Guild of Variety Artists hurled only eighty bothered to come and decide on policy. at its members this ironic challenge on "How to The radio and TV field was at that time the center Kill a Union" in the January 1954 edition of of a pro-Communist, ant'i-Communist controversy. AGVA N eW8: "Don't attend meetings. If you go, The left-wingers had. fifty-eight members present, go late. Don't accept any office. It's easier to and they passed pro-Communist resolutions. To criticize. Insist on official notices being sent you rescind them, the union's officers had to resort but don't pay any attention to them. Under no to a mail referendum of all 4,000 members. circumstances offer constructive suggestions." For years the Radio Writers' Guild held monthly Frank Darling, leader of Local 1031, Inter­ meetings attended by an average of only thirty national Brotherhood of Electrical WorkeTs, in of its 500 members, and the left-wingers captured Chicago, whose 33,000 members make 'most of the it easily. A few years ago the national executive radio and TV sets and parts purchased in the council of this union rejected a resolution pro­ United States, found a way to get members to posed by some of itsanti"'Com'munist 'members attend meetings. Ten year'S ago disrupters and that it offer its services and talents "in the na­ propagandists, loud...lmouths from the Chicago mobs tional interest" in time of emergency. and Communist Party haranguers, so bored the In July 1950, a few weeks after the Communists members that they stopped coming, and the organ­ invaded South Korea, the council again rejected ized few threatened to take over the union. Where­ a resolution which would have placed the Guild upon Frank Darling hired a vaudeville act and a in support of our government. One council mem­ four-piece band and told members to come back ber said that he would never vote for such a tom·eetings and enjoy them:selves. He holds 'a resolution because he had been informed that the business meeting first and then puts on the 'enter­ sole purpose of American troops in Korea was tainment. The local today has its own chorus line­ to smash Korean labor unions! eight dancing girls, all union members. Just as Communists have taken over unions, Frank tells me his union meetings now are the so have crime syndicates. In New Jersey and world's largest. The hall seats 3,600 and takes 800 elsewhere there are local construction unions standees, yet he must run each session in four con­ which almost never hold meetings, and their mem­ secutive nightly installments to accommodate all the bers never demand them. These unions become members who are eager to attend. Darling has the personal property of their officials and are proved that you can get 15,000 members to attend used as fronts for shakedowns and multi-million­ to union business. dollar gambling rackets. But this Chicago local is unique. Neither Iscandals Edward J. White, president of the E.J. White nor the se'C'urity of our nation nor pride of organ­ Company of Newark, New Jersey, recently issued ization stirs the vast majority of the nation's the following appeal: "The card-carrying union 1.6,000,000 rank-and-filers,and labor leadership man can correct any defect in 'his leadership if continues, for the most part, to go by default. he has the moral courage and intestinal fortitude It is time that the public, caught up in feuds to attendm,eetingsand vote for a leader who is and shakedowns and ,espionage and danger of honest and capable." sabotage, put the blame squarely where it belongs.

700 THE FREEMAN Why Trade Must Be Free

To end U.S. giveaways, fight Sovie't trade lures, and stabilize cold war economic pressures, the By PATRICK E. NIEBURG lowering of tariffs and their eventual suspension is a necessary and, in the long view, sound program.

At no time has the problem of fre,e trade played a itably, is the focal change to be considered in any more vitally important role than today. President discussion of how to ease the free world's market Eisenhower sum'med it up in his trade policy pressures. One of the more pessimistic ,estimates of message to Congress when he stated: "If we fail low tariff damage ,envisages ,fifteen million A'mer­ in our trade policy, we may fail in all." icans out of work because of imports of goods The President's message could not have been bet­ produced hycheap foreign labor. Thi.s, the arg­ ter illustrated than by the events immediately ument continues, would weaken the United States preceding it. Secretary of IState Dulles was told by economically and would impair its strength to lead Latin American colleagues that hemispheric unity the free world in its fight against Communism. of purpose and action 'Could only be achieved There is little convincing ev,idence supporting this successfully after a clearly defined U. S. foreign thesis. trade policy assuring them of future profitable commercial relations with the United States. Arguments of the Free Traders Harold Stassen found himself in the uncomfortable position of trying to persuade our European allies The other side of the coin is presented by a to go slow on dealing with the Communist bloc, rapidly growing group of free-traders who believe without being able to offer a positivealt'ernative to that free trade is or should be an integral part of their immediate need for increas'ed trade. a free, competitive society. Convinced that tariff , 'The clamor of free nations to resume, or expand, reduction would -cause only isolated hardships in trade with the Soviet bloc is a result of a sober the United State'S, they point out that both the appraisal of ,their domestic 'economies, which to­ American consumer and foreign labor would stand day produce more than they can absorb. They must to benefit; the American 'Consumer by redueed trade to dispose of their surplus and pay for prices, and foreign labor not only by steady em­ essential imports. More important still, they must ployment, but by rising wages, which would trade to m'aintain .a high level of employment ultimately eliminate the "cheap labor" argument. and individual income-two of the principal factors Another powerful argument of the free-traders in combatting Communism. Any appreciable in­ is that free trade,more than any other measure, " crease in unemployment will be 'exploited by the can replace American foreign aid. The advantage Communists to swell the ranks of local Communist of enabling the free nations to ,earn their necessary parties and challenge the very existence of govern­ foreign exchange is twofold. Not only does it save ments friendly to the United States. Hence, trade the American taxpayer money but the free nations is not only economically vital, but it is a political regain their self-respect by working for their liv­ necessity for the survival of free governments and ing rather than being dependent on aid grants. the concept of collective security. This is one of the best incentives for the develop­ The Communist bloc has gone to great pains to ment of efficient economic units which can com­ advertise the trade opportunities it offers. One pete successfully and which thus are an asset to of the m'ajor problems confronting us, therefore, their national economy and a barrier against the is what we can do to prevent the Communist bloc slow encroachment of government on business. from indirectly controlling the economic well-being What is true for Europe also applies in large of other free nations and threatening the existence measure to Asia. For years now, Japan has been of their governments. For this reason a positive living on borrowed time and Am'erican 'aid. Despite U.S. foreign tradepoHcy is a'S ess·ential in the some two billion dollars in U. ,So aid the Japanese S'truggle to defeat Communism as military aid economy today is still unable to sustain its rapidly to our allies. growing population. American aid has enabled Unfortunately, this issue is easily obseured Japan to rehabilitate her productive capacity, but because of an argumentative dust storm that unless it can find markets for those products in traditionally blows during any consideration of the Western world, Japan too might easily fall trade policies: the effect on domestic labor of a prey to tempting trade offers from the Communist lowered tariff. And the lowering of tariffs, inev- bloc, particularly Red China.

JUNE 28, 1954 701 'The gloomy specter of ,cheap foreign goods, currencies, which is the prerequisite :for free, mul-· dumped on the American market, is horn out of fear tilateral trade. The restoration of a free payments of competition but does not correspond to reality. system should constitute the forerunner to aboli­ Congresl8'man D. Bailey Merrill, of the Eighth Dis­ tion of discriminatory import quotas which impede trict of Indiana, for instance, had his doubts about the free flow of trade. Foreign nations could do the 'effect of foreign trade on his constituents. much to help overcome the objections of U. 8. Rather than rely on preconceived fears, he initiated protectionists against tariff concessions were they a thorough study which revealed that his constit­ honestly and diligently to dedicate themselves to uents stand to bene!fit by increased foreign trade. these .goals. The 'Merrill case ,study is based on 'eleven typical How about our own import quotas? Would their Am,erican counties. A detailed -analysis of the total elimination,' in addition to tariff suspension, in­ labor force, commodity by commodity, product by crease the "flood" of imports and g.eriously affect product, and company 'by company reveals that our own economy? Undoubtedly, it would intensify manufacturing,agriculture, and mining, which imports. However, the "threat" to our economy account for 57 per cent of those employed, benefit would still remain· a minor· prohlem,. since only 5 by foreign trade, through direct and indirect ex­ per eent of the gross national product 'Consists of ports. Imports do not affect adversely -any of the imports. six major categories of ,employment in the -area. There are, of 'Course, isolated cases where im­ Only in isolated cas,es did individual enterprises ports would seriously affect local industries. The contend that imports detract from their business, impact of foreign competition would be 'especially and then indirectly raither than by competition. severe where aeommunity is dependent upon one local industry. However, this impact would he no If Tariffs Were Sus,pended greater than that caused by som'e domestic eco­ nomic shifts, since it requires a prolonged periodl The Randall Commission Report on foreign trade to make itself felt, and adjustments could mean­ policy points out· that suspension of tariffs might time he effected. result in an ,annual increas,e of imports of eight Where national security requires that 'an indus­ hundred million to ,eighteen hundred million dol­ try, threatened 'by imports, be protected, it seems lars. 'Based upon the fact that of a total import in more economical to do so by direct subsidy than by 1951 of $10.8 billion, some six billion entered the tariffs. The watch industry is a good case in point. country free of duty, allowing the remainder to It would be far more economical to subsidize this enter duty free as well, this would account for a industry than to eontinueadherence to ,a tariff minimum increase of imports of 8 per cent and a policy (which in effect is an indirect subsidy) Inaximum of 15 per cent. 'The ,estimated maximum which penalizes consumers and fr,equently en­ increase of imports ($1.8 billion) would still only courages production of goods for which there is no constitute less than 1 per cent of the total personal sound economic justification because they do not consumption in the U. S., which during 1951 face the test of competition. totaled two hundred and eight billion dollars. The Randall Report adds that the 'maximum in­ The HUluan Element crease in import, after suspension of tariffs, might affect 'employment to the tune of 200,000 ~ 'man­ No discussion of economics, of course, can be years. This does not necessarily imply, however, complete unless it considers the human element that 200,000 people would be out of work hecause involved. To do justice to this factor it is necessary of imports. While it might displace some workers to approach the problem in terms of the individual permanently, others might lose one or two days of affected. Congressman Wayne L. Hays (n.) , their work week, or the benefit of overtime. Eighteenth District of Ohio, has for this reason The figures mentioned above, essentially, refer fought and is presently fighting any tariff con­ to ,a temporary suspension. Should tariff suspen­ cessions. It is not because he does not believe in sion hecome a permanent feature, these figures free trade. It is because his district is heavily should be revised upward. It stands to reason that populated with pottery workers and glass blowers permanent tariff 'elimination would attra.ct more centered around the East Liverpool area. He is. foreign companies to make ,a bid for the U. S. concerned for their jobs. Moreover, he expresses. market. As they become more ,efficient in merchan­ the local sentiment, which it is his duty to do as, dising in the United States, their volume of sales their representative, when he opposes tariff con­ to this country would increase. cessions. From an American point of view, however, a low Both .'Representative Hays and his constituents tariff structure would remain only a partial solu­ could probably he swayed to change their position, tion until the United States could benefit by it. It if, as tariffs are reduced gradually, conditions in seems only reasonable for the United States to their district could be adjusted to provide jobs for expect that tariff concessions be matched by for­ those who would lose 'employment 'because of im­ eign nations with a return to free convertibility of ports. However, this requires a period of adjust-

702 THE FREEMAN tnent, a redirection of efforts, before the impact of The validity of the argument for reduction of reduced tariffs or tariff Isuspension could be mit­ tariffs and their eventual suspension can be seen igated to a point where it would he less painful. from the wide support it has gained from a repre­ Translating this into the national level, it seems sentative cross-section of the American people. The that, though tariff concessions would have only a major trade unions have come out strongly in favor minor over-all effect, an evolutionary process would of it. Manufacturers of various kinds of products bene'fit this country more than a sudden revolution­ support it. The International Relations Committee ary 'move. That would mean a rapid reduction of of the National Association of Manufacturers tariffs where it 'can be accomplished without hard­ recommended reduction of tariffs and other trade ship, followed ultimately by complete suspension of barriers. The U. S. Chamber of Commerce gave its tariffs. 'This seems more practical than a sudden stamp of ,approval. abolition of all tariffs that would permit no period The 'economic well-being and possibly the polit­ of adjustment. ical independence of the free nations depends to a large measure upon our foreign trade policy. Benefits to the U.S. Tariff reductions now and eventual suspension are therefore not a problem to be m,easur,ed only in So far only the negative aspects of foreign trade terms of ,economic gain or loss to us, but against have been ,examined. But foreign trade is a two­ the requirements of national security which demand way street from which the United States benefits that the free nations remain free and allied with as well. Increased imports stimulate increased ex­ us in the common struggle :against Communism. ports, and thus swell the ranks of those employed, directly or indirectly, by exports while at the same time reducing the 'effect of displacement by im­ ports. Again, it 'might he interesting to compare Let's Be Prejudiced the 'magnitude of estimated displacenlentwith the By JO'SEPH WO,OID' KRUTCH number of people dependent upon foreign trade, which totaled 4,376,000, according to :Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks. Even if one equates "Prejudice" is the dirtiest word in the modern 200,000 man-years with 200,000 jobs, this would vocabulary. So perhaps it ought to be-if only we still be less than 5 per cent. Compared to a total were quite sure what it meant. But at least this employment of more than sixty million, the number reader of contemporary discussions is getting is insignificant. At the rate of foreign aid spent by bewildered. He doesn't know what the writer,s mean the United States since 1947, each of the 200,000 and he wonders if they do either. displaced workers could draw $25,000 annually, 'Take the case where the "liberals" protest that were the government to use an equivalent sum for we are "prejudiced" in favor of the Western con­ the relief of displaced labor. This 'would still leave ception of democr.acy as opposed to the Russian. the United States in a better position because of They seem to imply that a really "unprejudiced" the benefits derived from increased trade, as op­ man would necessarily agree that one is just as posed to aid. valid as the other. But just how unprejudiced What int,ernational trade can mean to individual can you get if· you are going to think at all? American companies haswell been demonstrated'by To clear the air let us put the word "prejudice" suchexa'mples as Yale & Towne and Burroughs alongside the word "preference" and ask if there Adding Machines. Yale & Towne has long imported is really no difference between them. It can hardly products its suhsidiariesmanufacture abroad, be said that we ought to be completely free of sometimes in competition with domestic produc­ preferences. If we were, then we would be incap­ tion. 'The results have been most ,encouraging. The able of making what the philosophers call a value company has a diversi'fied line of products which is judgment. And a society in which nothing seemed highly competitive and which has insured profits preferable to anything :else would be more barbarous for ,all concerned-consumers, employees, and stock­ than any which anthropology has ever discovered. holders. Yet as the word "prejudice" is frequently used it When Burroughs moved some of its manufac­ is difficult to see how we could give up what it turing facilities to England and "imported" them is taken to mean without giving up preferences to the United States, no one was discharged. In­ too. Is there really anything so shameful about stead, increased domestic 'sales added to the labor preferring the Western concept of democracy to force. While A'mericans, whether 'employees, con­ the Soviet? sumers, or stockholders benefited from this trade, Ever since the Renaissance the course of Western foreign countries got their share of profit, too, in civilization has been determined by our prefer­ the form of wages, taxes, 'etc., which in turn con­ ene-es-or prejudices, if you insist-in favor, let tributed to their solution of the dollar 'gap, m'ade us say, of investigation as opposed to dogma, health them less dependent on U. IS. aid, :and 'better pros­ as opposed to disease, liberty as opposed to con­ pective customers for American goods. formity, kindness as opposed to cruelty. No tech-

JUNE 28, 1954 703. nique ever invented to undermine that civilization "mysteriously" or not. Perhaps the time has come was ever more subtle than that which seeks to to realize this fact and to re-establish the first line convince us that every preference is a prejudice, of defense where logically it has to be. In one that all prejudices are wrong, and that, for ex­ of his saner moments Nietzsche declared that "All ample, we are only "prejudiced" in favor of our life is a disput,e about taste"-and tastes are pref­ own mores when we find the Western concept of erences. To assert their legitimacy is to take a fair play more attractive than the doctrine that position midway between: "Right is right because class intere;st alone determines .rbhe meaning of God so ordained it" and ";Nothing is right or wrong "justice" or that policy, not a respect for truth, except as custom makes it so." It is to assert that should det-ermine what w-ewill promise or say. if there are no absolutes in the universe then the Any man so unprejudiced as all that is a mon­ only escape from anarchy lies through those "pref­ ster. If his condemnation is not that he chooses erences" which man himself asserts when he chooses darkness raither than light, it may be something honor rather than treachery, love rather than hate', even worse-that he perceive,s no distinction be­ beauty rather than ugliness, light rather than dark­ tween them. Yet a reviewer who is pretending to ness. If the'Y are all the same to the universe they praise a group of recent books about the Soviet are not all the same to him. If to find them not Union finds it necHssary to interject the remark all the same is "nothing but" a taste or a preference that "'All the writers ... assume that our way of arbitrarily chosen, then such arbitrary choices Hfe is mysteriously ri~ht 'and that the other s'ide are among the most fateful that ·R man or a civiliza­ is evil." Why that adverb "mysteriously"? What i,s tion can 'make, and nothing is more inappropriate somY'steriolis about the assumption that one thing than to talk about "mere tastes" and "mere pref­ is be1tter than another ? How can one possibly erences." indulge in any meaningful comparisons unless one A society without what are commonly called pre­ does assume that a choice between them is legiti­ judices is unthinkable. iObviolisly the "liberal" is mate? Is it really necessary to invoke a "mystery" aware of that fact when he defends his own set of to explain the feeling that judicial assassination preferences and is a relativist in respect to every­ , is "somehow" not right? thing except his own. To he prejudiced even within a reasonable meaning of the term is not quite so The "Intellectual" Pattern bad as it would be to have no preferences at all- .if such a thing were possible. A prejudiced man Unfortunately, the "liberal" to whom all prefer­ may som;etimes be a bad man; a man without pref­ encesexcept his own are wicked prejudices had the erences would not be ,a man at all. To every human way prepared for him by the so...called "impartial­ being some things are better than others. To have ity" of the kind of history and sociology which many preferences and to consider them important was written during the second half of the nine­ is-no matter what some may call them-something tenth century and the first half of the twentieth. to he proud of, not ashamed. When a Lecky popularized the conviction that there i.s no distinction between mores and morals, the whole disastrous paralysis of judgment as a legiti­ mate function of thinking man set in. Soon the Needling the News sociologists with their "objective" studies' fol­ lowed, and shortly after them came the anthro­ Chiang's navy has sunk a ship belonging to the pologists with their "cultural relativism." The one Chinese Reds. If this were 1950, reealling the was soon telling us that the only criterion for infamous blockade against a willing ally, the U.S. what men ought to do is what it has been dis­ iSeventh Fleet would now he steaming toward covered the'Y are doing; the other that the civiliza­ Formosa with open gun-hatches. tion of the European is not hetter than that of the plains Indian but only "different.".By the premises John L. Lewis "has found the banking business a of either it is only natural to conclude also that rnoney-making proposition," according to a news Western democracy i,s only "differe'nt" from what report. He has also found his end of the coal the Kremlin has stolen the word to describe. business prodrzwtive of profit-in sharp contrast Such convictions three fourths of the "intel­ to several thousand investors who ,have put their lectuals" firmly hold. By now they have also se,eped money into the industry. down until they have begun to permeate not only the middle class but almost every stratum of society, The Soviet Union has reimposed the death penalty until the strongest prefe'fences begin .to waver when for murderers, it having been abolished in 1950 those who entertain them are reminded that they except for traitors, spies, ,and diversionist agents. are "mere prejudice,s" after all. Two questions: 1) Narne a single Russian who could It is not likely that "our way of life" can be not be liquidated before the law's coverage was preserved by those who would like to pr·eserve it expanded; 2) Are murders by M,alenkov included? unless they believe that it is preferab~e-whether MARTIN JOHNSTON

704 THE FREEMAN The Young Germans-Today

It is not the ghosts of Nazism that haunt Germany's By NORBERT MUHLEN youth, but rather the fear of being rejected in their fervent hope to' participate in, and even fight for, a Europ'ean community of free natio.ns.

In ,a large West IGerman city in the winter of It seems that 'Germany's youth in the last few 1953, six thousand boys and girls 'were invited to years has undergone ,a change less conspicuous, per­ a birthday party. The birthday to be celebrated haps, 'though hardly less impressive than the change was their own political birthday; they had reached vlhich has transformed the destroyed 'Germany of voting age in the past three months. A middle­ yesterday into the prospering nation of today. aged woman interested in political education had "Ruins are t'heessence of our time," W'erner Heist, hit on the idea of collecting their names, sending a young poet, wrote shortly after the war. That invitations to them as well as to a hundred or was the mood of his generation. The thing most so local leaders, s,ecretaries, aldermen, Congress­ ,ruined was their faith. :They thought they could men, and other spokesmen of all political parties, never again trust a man, a program, or an idea and hiring a festive hall in which they could meet after their trust in Nazi teachings had let them and talk. down so badly. When the Third Reich fell it had The young people, dressed in their Sunday best, "debunked" itself in the 'eyes of the young who had sat quietly at long tables while the politicians­ been taught by the,s:e very Nazis to judgie political most of them bald and with bulging briefcases-ar­ ideas in terms of power and succ,ess alone. Sur­ rived and :settled down among them. Solemnly rounded by the wreck of this teaching, they em­ ev.erybody ordered a cup of coffee or soft drinks. braced at least tentatively a complete lack of faith A few 'even asked for beer. in all ideas, programs, 'men, ,and communities. For the first half hour only the politicians Since then another g,eneration has grown up. talked. After they had had their say, they asked The five years of the Adenauer administration the young guests for questions. An ,eager looking has already had a much greater impact on their boy in a blue !serge suit asked why he eould not use minds than the few last years of the Hitler era a transfer on the tramway to work. A very pretty they 'experienced. girl, at another table, asked why her mother was not assigned a new apartment, since she had been The New Skepticism promised it for five years and had to live now with four children in two rooms. Another girl At first glance these young 'Germans seem to alsked the Bundestag deputy next to her whether have gotten ov,er their past. They seem to have she needed a passport for a bicycling trip to firm ground under their feet ,again and an urge to Denmark she 'planned for the summer. I moved enjoy themselves somewhat like young Americans, from table to table listening in on the discussions. whose habits, fads, and styles they have adopted N'ot one of the young people mentioned politics, -from the way they dress to the obsession of either to ask a question or to sta'te an opinion. hoys with motors, the obsession of girls with After an hour of strained and stolid ,talk, the movies, a passionate interest in popular music and tables were removed and dancing began. comic strips, and so on. 'This was a repr,esentative group of the German Below this surface, the less happy vestiges of youth which, just a few years ago, many Americans the recent past have not heen entirely removed. were writing off as completely ruined by their Cynicism has given way to 'a skepticism which leads indoctrination under Hitler. These young people, to a still deeper distrust, 'a reluctance to accept it was said, could nev,er be redeemed, would new ideas, and to serious difUculties in becoming aggressively retain their Nazism forever,and were, part of a genuine community. in short, the problem children of Europe. After 'These impressions, gained in my associations this early harsh view subsided, bias often con­ with young :Germans over the past few years, were tinued to replace observation. confirmed by an extraordinarily comprehensive and What kind of people are today's young 'Germans? careful survey undertaken at the end of 1953 by Much depends not only on the answer, but on what teams of IGerman researchers who gauged the Europe thinks is the answer. Tomorrow these young moods, opinions, habits, and attitudes of German Germans will be the people-and probably the youth by personal interviews with a stratified army-of Europe's strongestcountry~ sample of 1,498 girls and boys from fifteen to

JUNE 28, 1954 705 twenty-four years of age (collected and published with the citizensf total privacy, which ,enables in Jugend zwischen 15 und24, by,EM,NI:D Institute them in full freedom to pursue their profit and for Opinion 'Research, Bielefeld, 1954). Whether its pleasure. To a high degree, this is the present findings are correct within a few percentage points Gern1an order; it is the traditional society of or not, they cle,arly indicate the new direction in the Unpolitische, the "unpolitical" people, as it which 'German youth is moving. existed in IGerm'an thinking before Hitler, and to The direct impact of the Nazi past on the young which the majority reverted after Hitler's attempt Germans of today is surprisingly faint; few con­ to "politicize" Germany. scious, and even fewer fanatical followers of More than one third of the youth (37 per cent) Hitler and his doctrines ,survive. To most young approved of the dictum that "rather than every­ Germans, Nazism is today a dim, distant memory, body being intere'Sted in, and feeling responsible and to the youngest of the 'war children it is a for the politics of our country, politics should bygone chapter, somewhat similar to, say, the be left to the man who holds the state power in Great Depression, or Prohibition, in the eyes of his hands." But 57 per cent said they did not young Americans today. When I mentioned the agree with such an opinion-a ratio of free minds Third Reich, I usually encountered a 'rather dis­ certainly considerably better among young Ger­ passionate and often ignorant image-those were mans than among those of the older generation. the times when everybody had to wear a swastika Even those young GeTmans, however, who want a and had to salute with "Heil Hitler," 'a girl of strong state leadership have no desire for a dicta­ twelve explained to ID,e. And 'a boy of fourteen torship. 'This was demonstrated by the fact that said: "The Nazis were for big 'parades, and they a large majority (69 per cent) do not want "the had a fl:ag of their own." state to have the right of interrupting education One out of two (52 per eent) could not name an in the common interest of, ,say, labor service." essential characteristic of N'azism, and almost as Just as many were against ",a single, state-led many (46 per cent) were unable to give an essen­ youth organization" such as existed under the tial ,characteristic of Hitler himself. Where an Nazis 'and ,exists again today in lEast IGermany. image of the Nazi past persists it tends to be If there is still a strong sentiment conceding negative; it does not conjure up good 'memories. to the 'State a superior political authority in which The majority were quick to point out as Nazism',s the individual citizen has no shar,e of responsibility chief features its lack of personal freedom, the or participation, one of the reasons is probably brute force with which it dominated the individual, that 'many young IGermans are willing to accept its single law of "thou must." superior authority from their elders in priv,ate life. 8eventy-three per cent of the young Germans Today's Government on Trial said they would ,educate' their own children exactly as they themselves were being educated by their 'This lack of interest in, and even rejection of parents. N:azism by the great majority of young Germans In contrast with the manner in which they ac­ does not imply that they actively support the pres­ ceptauthority, their community 'Spirit is rather ent form of government. They tend rather to tol­ weak. A third (32 per cent) say they have nobody erate it with notable reservations and reluctance. with whom they .can discuss their personal prob­ Except for a few professional spokesmen of "Youth" lems; 50 peT cent say they have no good friend; connected with political parities, I cannot remem­ 22 per cent, not 'even a comrade. Some three fifths ber a young 'German talking to me with warmth (62 per cent) do not belong to 'any organization, and conviction in favor of today's order. If they and one out of ,two objects to going to youth accept it for the time being, it is because they camps. are willing to give it a chance. This loneliness extends all the way up from the From the survey cited above it appears that personal level of family 'and friends to the nation. about one third (35 per cent) accept the present Yet their longing for a new community has made stat,e, while about one fifth (19 per cent) do not, them accept the vista of a united Europe. The and almost one half (46 percent) have no con­ young iGermans who want to participate more scious, clear-cut opinion about it one way or the actively in public. life and who desire personal other, although they tend to be rather for than responsibility rather than orders from above, have against it in a vague, half-hearted manner. taken the lead in what has become the most wide­ I tseems, nevertheless, that many young 'Germans spread and also the most promising hope of young have a rather precise idea of how they want their Germany. Impressed by Adenauer's ,sincere appeals, ,country to be. 'This might not be a democratic fed up with nationalist heroics and the lust for country in the sense in which most Americans conquest and domination, strongly opposed to new understand it, yet it would be a peaceful, lawful, wars and desirous to live in friendship with their constitutional republic. Tn their view, a benevolent, W,est European neighbors, they set their hopes on strong, successfuIgovernment should take care of the integration of IGermany with the European an public affairs, without interfering in any way community. This was the only idea which in my

706 THE FREEMA,N discussions with young Germans evoked a strik­ I~etter from France ingly warm, and often enthusiastic response. Sixty-five per cent of the young Germans ques­ tioned by the pollsters saw the best ,solution of Food, Sports, Tourists the problems of their nation in "Germany',s being an equal partner in a united Europe." That this By JAMES BURNHAM ra'tio of decidedly pro-European, anti-naitionalist feeling is considerably higher among young Ger­ Imagine a sausage of delicate young pork seasoned mans than among older Germans today, seems a with herbs from a ga,rden continuously tended since very promising fact. the thirteenth century. Think of that sausage as surrounded with a rich dough .the recipe for which was handed down for generations among the secret T'heir Goal-European Unity treasures of a famous Priory of Provence. Imagine That nationalism is on the wane among young the compound baked to the moment of airy per­ Germans with their 'almost exaggerated interest in fection, and covered with 'a sauce that raises every foreign books, foreign movies, and foreign travel, taste bud to an exact harmonious pitch. And note is demonstrated by'their conviction that "we Ger­ that this end product of so much art and thought mans can learn a ,great deal from other peoples." and craft is but the first and least of the six Of the countries considered as teachers, America courses that compose the lesser of the two prix takes first place. 'The lessons to be learned from fixe meals that appear on the menu of a com­ it in the eyes of young Germans are---in addition paratively modest provinci'al French restaurant. to economic and technological progress, which plays It is too much, you say? Too much skill, feel­ the largest role-the arts of peaceful living, of ing, and tim.e to spend on such an object? Yes, democracy, and of tolerance. or so at any rate it seems to me. Entering France For the goal of European unity, rather than from the bare and austere dignities of Spain, the of German national interests, young 'Germans are spirit is smothered in food and drink. Everywhere ready to do their part. Only 28 per cent claimed the eye is assailed by posters, signs, and adver­ they would "like to be soldiers." But 70 per cent tisements of eating and wine. The new Guide said they would be willing ,to serve "under special Michelin has deleted ,the descriptions of "artistic conditions." What these conditions should be is monuments" and spots of "scenic interest," but on one of the main topics of discussion. The majority its every page are the restaurants of the locality, view is that they would volunteer for military ordered according to culinary rank, with the spe­ service in defense of Europe against an aggressor. cialties of each notable house painstakingly listed: Three out of four agree that they would have to Coq au Riesling, Truite au bleu, Terrine de foies defend their homeland against invaders (named, de volaille trufjee au porto, Rognons de veau au or tacitly understood, as the ISoviets). Only 1 per Xeres, Feuillete de homard Nantua, Queulles de cent mentioned, as a cause for which they would brochet, Filet de marcassin grand veneur garni fight, the unification of Germany or the recon­ creme demarrons. .. quest of the 'German 'East. Do not think that all this is just for the tourist In the last year, and particularly in the last or the very rich. Throughout France there are months, these high hopes have 'begun to cool off thousands of restaurants serving fantastic meals. somewhat. The reason is the ,setbacks to European Walking down the street in small towns Where integration in Western countries and the deep few tourists 'ever come, you will pass a dozen distrust, particularly of ,Britain and France, toward little shops that fe'ature in their windows a pre­ the new ,Germany. They begin to f.ear they might cisely staged display of succulent, luxurious food­ have to ,fight a war with unwilling allies who will stuff.The other day we 'were the only Americans leave them in the lurch after final defeat. Even at lunch in a restaurant of no more than middle if the methods, appeals, and goals of Adenauer rank. A,round us the tables of French customers seem to he the very opposite to those of Hitler, 'were being served with course after 'elaborate traumatic memories begin to stir up fears of an­ course: cold meats and jellied eggs ; baked pigs' other total letdown. feet; garnished filets; fresh salmon, sole, and 'The rehabilitation of German youth has only trout; asparagus and salads; and,for standard begun. 'The attempt at democratic participation and ending, heaped plates of tiny wild strawberries the preparedness to join the W,estern community covered 'with sugar and iced whipped sour cream. are slowly gaining ground. IThese may not be able Food and sports. An Europe i,s wild about sports. to survive cantinued discourq,gement and rejection Sports occupy half the space of most newspapers. from the other prospective partners, which threaten "Football" (our soccer), first of all and for all to throw the young Germans back into a state of countries; but 'everything else also, from tennis selfish isolation. But today they are still willing to pigeon shooting. Road races for autos, moto­ to bind themselves to the West if the West will cycles, ,motor Iscooters, and bicycles a,re being bind itse'lf to [Germany, and act a.ccordingly. constantly staged. At every village crowds line

JUNE 28, 1954 707 the road for hours before the pa,ssing of the cluster 'economic conditions, to be cured by economic im­ of bicycle racers, helme1ted, muddy, and straining provement, a disease' for which dollars are sufficient ea«h muscle, preceded by police and carloads of offi­ remedy? cials, and paced by handlers who pass the riders In all F,rance there is not a single newspaper flasks of water, br,andy, or coffee. The cafes buzz that is unambiguously 'anti-Communist and anti­ with gossip over the moslt recent bribery Soviet, and only two or three that even publish scandal or Italy'!s latest coup in buying up a Scan­ single articles that 'are clearly so. Throughout dinavian football forward. April, during the long agony of the garrison of Food, sports, and tourists. Long before the Dienbienphu, the 'Company of the Comedie Fran~aise great summer wave rolls in from A'merica, tour­ (a governmental institution) 'played nightly in ists are flooding over France 'and Italy from Fin­ Moscow. I was not able to find a single editorial land, Sweden, England, Belgium, Switze'rland, and of protest. Each day, on the front pages next to the Germany, and the French are themselves spreading news from Indo-'China, the papers ieatured pictures over 'Spain, Italy, and the Swiss mountains. On of the troupe visiting iRed 'Square or model f'ac­ the great double-spiral staircase leading to the tory, and printed their speeches of compliment to Vatican museums we were nearly crushed by the their ISoviet 'confreres. On May 19, hardly a week jamming regiments of 'German students who were after the fall of Dienbienphu, Edouard Herriot, being led into cultural battle by black-coated young President of theFTench Assembly, joined Aragon, priests with thick guide book instead of breviary Duclos, and Joliot-Curie to congratulate Pierre Cot in hand. The American or German cars of the Swiss on receiving the Stalin Prize from the hand of tourists, as if released by a spring from the Ilya Ehrenburg. "Oldman as I am," wrot'e Herriot, cramping limits of ,their own country, hurl down "I hand the torch over to· you." In June the the French and Italian roads. Each French town Strasbourg Music Festival will hear the world and village now has at its entrance a neat new premiere of Shostakovitch's 'Tenth Symphony di­ sign that lists its prime tourist attractions. rected by Stalin Prize conductor Mravinsky. Over the monuments and ~elds the tribes of tourists swarm as once swarmed the Goths and Red Propaganda Is Routine Franks and Vandals. Is this the form, then, taken in our tim'e by the Wandering of the :Peoples which Over the 'principal newsstand of Ravenna, hard Toynbee has told us characterizes the break-up of by the tomb of Dante, a hundred meters from the a civilization? mosaic splendors of San Vitale and the gold and dark blue mosaics glowing in the marble-filtered Economic Improvement light of the Mausoleum of IG'alla Placida, the en­ larged masthead of L'Unita, official Com'munist Although dark spots remain, the improvement in daily, has the top billing. Across the streets of Europe's material conditions over the past eight Venice and Padua in the first week of 'May, flags years leaps from ,every 'quarter to the eye. The and stream'ers announced the Provincial Con­ billions of the Marshall Plan, though they have ference of the Communist Party, and posters called not alone been responsible, have had their palpable on Catholics to unite with Communists to out­ effect. They speak from the fittings of the rail­ law nuclear weapons and lead Italy toward a new way ears, the new electric gasoline pumps that foreign policy. 'On the 'Corner of the Piazza San have replaced the 'Creaking hand cranks of eve'll Marco, not fifty feet from the porch of the Cathe­ five years ago, the mechanical ice boxes, the dral, the windows of a Communist bookstore dis­ plumbing, the Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles and playa stock nicely adjusted to almost any passing Ghryslers for which, despite high duties and ex­ taste. The President of the French Republic re­ cellent local cars, thousands of Europeans have ceives the Communist parliamentary leader,s to dis­ managed to find sufficient dollar credits. cuss the cabinet cri'sis as Moscow's mouthpiece in 'Those who conceived~ the Ma,rshall Plan have by Paris, L'Humanite, publishes its rejoicing over now, it would seem, almost 'all they asked for. the "victory" of Dienbienphu. Europe is fed and clothed and sleeps in beds. All these things are hardly noticeable. That is With the partial exception of Italy, there is little why, of course, they are so terrible. It is all unemployment. Europe's industries advance monthly routine, normal. There is no disturbance, and not to new records in production, the railroads run the 'mildest sign of "hysteria." N'o one is sur­ often and on tim,e, gold and exchange reserves are prised or shocked or alarmed-no one, at any rate, in general greatly strengthened. IE uropean eco­ whose voice can be loudly or widely heard. This nomic recovery, howev,er 'incomplete,exceeds in was themood,perhaps, in 'which Athens, after the S'cale what anyone eight years ago had any rational harsh times with Sparta and Thebes and Ma'Cedon right to expect. and the marauding legions, transformed itself into Why, then, 'Geneva? a passive museum and pleasure-house for the Can it be that there was a flaw in the easy tourists, 'bureaucrats, 'and idlers of all-conquering theory that Communism is a product of adverse imperial Rome.

708 THE FREEMAN Report on Education: Television Steps In

By FLORA RHETA SCHREIBER

'Twenty-eight mothers laboriously monitored their communities are ahead of smaller rural ones.Thb local commercial television station in Wilm'ette, conspicuous ,exception is New York City, which Illinois, for four days last winter. In the prog,rams has no hope of its own educational television they saw, they recorded seventy-seven murders, station in the immediate future. fifty-three shootings, :seven kidnappings, and !The ,first educational television station togo thirty gunfights. 'Then through a door-to-door on the air was the University of Houston's KUHT. campaign they formed the Wilmette Council for The second was the Allan Hancock Foundation's Channel 11 and set up their own local educational KiT'HE in Los Angeles. Then came WKAR in East television station. Lansing, Michigan, followed by stations in Pitts­ 'Two years ,earlier the women's campaign would burgh, St. Louis, iSan Francisco, and Madison, 'have failed. There was then just no w'ay of obtain­ Wisconsin. 'The end of 1954 will see at least ing a station the policy of which they could in­ twenty land perhaps 'as many as thirty educational fluence directly. In April 1952, however, the Fed­ and community TV stations in operation. Within eral Communications Commission, in a decision range of these stations will be some thirty to unprecedented in American broadcasting, allocated forty-five million people. 242 stations-and since that time eight additional The average station reaches an a,rea of forty to channels--to non-commercial, educational television. fifty miles, but its influence may extend farther. This means that somewhat more than 12 per cent There are plans to link the stations first into of the television stations in the country will be regional networks and ultimately into a national operated by non-commercial broadcasters. And these network. Alabama, IOklahoma, New Jersey, and stations will raise a new and different voice. Wisconsin already have plans for state networks. "You are now the inheritors of ia highly valuable Until a national network iis formed, the Educational portion of that ethereal public domain-the radio Television land Radio Center at Ann Arbor, Mich­ spectrum," said Paul A. Walker, then chairman of igan, will act as a national clearing house· for the FCC, before the Institute for Education by program ideas and as an exchange center for Radio and Television at its convention that April. servicing local stations with kinescopes, films, and "What you do this year may dete,rmine for a long, scripts. On May 16 the center first assumed another long time-.:perhaps for generations-the role of role-....that of producer-when it telecast a one-hour education in television." program called Vision, a composite of programs previously produced by the N'ational Association Community Support Widens of Educational Broadcasters, the University of Iowa, and 'New York City's municipal radio sta­ 'The new stations 'will take their place as part tion and Board of Higher Education. And so, for of the total ,educational pattern, which includes the ,first time, eduC'ational television declared its programs :such as CBS' The Search, ,NBC's Crusade network status. in Europe, the Ford Foundation's Omnibus, the Support has not -come from the state legislatures, Sloan 'Foundation's The American Inventory, and the ,sourc.e originally thought most likely. It 'has the instructional prog,rams of the ;University of come instead from 'private subscription, following Michigan, Western Reserve University,and Johns the 'pattern set by KPFA, a non-profit FM station Hopkins University. Commercial broadcasters will in 'Berkeley, California, which consistently broad­ continue to give programs of this nature. The FCC's casts programs of high ,quality and supports itself report ,expressly states that commercial licensees entirely by ten-dollar subscriptions from its audi­ are not relieved "from their duty to carry prog,riams ence. 'Foundations hav,e provided backing. And in­ which fulfill educational needs and s'erve theeduca­ dustry itself, which as a whole fought the FCC's tional interests of the community in which they decision, has 'also lent a helping hand. One Middle­ operate." Western unive,rsity, for example, has the support How are the educators taking advantage of their of ten industries which jointly contribute $25,000 new "inheritance"? Nearly fifty educational TV a year for its television support. organizations have gained support in about 120 !Support has even come from commercial tele­ communities. As might be expected, larger urban casters. ,In \Seattle the local commercial TV station

JUNE 28, 1954 709 had no mean record of "telecourses;' in primitive Science Reviww is seen in 280,000 homes. And art, house design, eighteenth-century music, :and in the audience for the Museum of Natural History's the production of plays like Chekhov's Marriage Adventure is five million. Prop08al. Y'et it was Mrs. A. Scott Bullitt, the Pittsburgh's educational television leaders be­ owner of this station, who initiated the local lieve that their station can provide a bridge to movement for educational television. "There are the neglected cultural opportunities of the city. natural limits," she announced unequivocally," to After discovering that les,s than 5 per cent of the a'bility of a commercial station to serve fully the residents of Allegheny County visited Carne­ and adequately the educational requirements of gie Institute last year and that less than 1 per a community." In San Antonio, commercial sta­ cent ever attended a ,concert by the Pittsburgh tion WO,AI has donated studios, towers, trans­ Symphony, they 'plan to make such facilities better mitters, and $50,000 to the local educational sta­ appreciated through TV 'programs. tion. Tn Birmingham, Alabama, the Storer Broad­ Educational programs are planned not only for casting Company has offered the educational sta­ improving the cultural interests of the audience as tion a ,five-kilowatt transmitter, the use of its tower, a whole, but also for in-school viewing and the and studio is'pace. formal instruction of adults. In-school viewing is as old as television itself.·And it is, of course, e~tension C'ulture "Pays Off" an of what radio (notably through New York's municipal station, WNYC) has been doing Even more important than towers and trans­ successfully for a long time. mitters is the new note in programming sounded In-school viewing has made progress. At first the by educational broadcasters. In iSt. Louis they have experimenters had a grandiose vision ofa master said: "There is no need to appeal to the lowest teacher whose image on classroom screens would common denominator. If we broadcast over people's one day replace the flesh-and-blood teacher. Happily, heads, then let them lift up their heads." And the this vision has disappeared, ,and television teach­ University of Houston's KUHT ,began with the ing 'has become a supplement to, not a substitute self-committing announcement that it was not in- for, direct t,eaching. To teach Shakespeare ex­ .terested in a mass audience. By all commercial clusively through television would be superficial. standards this is rank heresy. Yet, to borrow But to supplement the teaching of Shakespeare the commercial idiom, heresy "paid off." For these with a television 'program of one of his plays at programs-dramas written, directed, and acted by the mom'ent that the student is already excited local people ; courses ranging from dairy herd about it makes Shakespeare more meaningful and management to the humanities-have regularly vivid. drawn an audience as large as that of Houston's The glamor that television has for the student second largest commercial station. became very clear tome when, at the offices of Many of the new programs will be as utilitarian the Joint Committee for Educational Television in as the one in dairy herd management. There Washington, D.C., I viewed a kinescope ofa lecture will 'be programs for housewives on how to glamor­ on IGreek drama given by a North Carolina Uni­ ize housework; programs in speech correction, versity professor in his classroom. There were no and how the spending or saving of money con­ production devices whatever. Yet the student who tributes to the total economy. In Cincinnati, saw it with me said he found this exciting, problems of rent control are televised to the com­ whereas he would not listen willingly to the same munity each week in Landlord V8. Tenant through lecture in class. Illogical as it seems, that is how an actual hearing of a tenant-landlord dispute. In he felt. Columbus, Picture of Health familiarizes viewers In colleges the emerging pattern of instruction with the services of the IOhio State University through television is to introduce a subject on Health Center. And there will be the usual cater­ the ,screen and later require the student to attend ing to the how-to-fix-it complex with which our seminars on the campus. This is, of course, de­ broadcasting and magazines are obse'Ssed. signed to counteract the dangers of superficiality But there will also be programs of an entirely inherent in teaching by television. cultural nature. In Rochester, New York, for in­ Perhaps the outstanding beneficiary of in-school stance, a gifted artist does 'his own painting be­ television will be the rural child. He has been fore the cameras and tries to persuade viewers deprived of the range of subje'ct matter and the that this lactivity can have meaning for them, too. quality of teaching given the average city child. The need for such programs is shown by the very The television teacher obviously cannot give him size of the audience that listens to the current uni­ the personal attention he should have, but can versity programs. The average adult audience for pf'ovide information he would otherwise be denied. a single Western Reserve University lecture on In-school viewing will mean that not infrequently psychology at 9 A.M. is 58,000. The Unive~sity of a mother, at home, can tune in on her child's Michigan's Sunday afternoon television hour classroom. When he comes hom,e she can comment reaches from 80,000 to 100,000. The Johns Hopkins on the lesson which she herself saw and which

710 THE FREEMAN unites her in a new intimacy with her child. The very hero-worshipping admiration that com­ Peace Prize Rules mercial television ,engenders-the adulation, for instance, of the space pilot or the !flight nurse-is By 1\'1. K. ARGUS frequently the means of arousing interest in a school subject. The ,appeal reduces itself most The Communist-dominated World Peace Congress sim'ply to this: Learn your multiplication table has awarded its 1953 Peace Prize to Charlie and then you, too, can some day become a space Chaplin. It may appear rather puzzling why Mr. pilot or a flight nurse. 'Students thus motivated Chaplin, of all his fellow-actors, should receive may continue this new-found habit when watching such a prize. A prize for his contribution to the commercial programs. They will, perhaps, eventually footlights and limelight-yes. Perhap.s even a prize come to expect more serious values from the com­ for marital multiplicity. But why a peace prize? mercial programs, too. The answer is simple. Anyone can hecome eligible The record shows again and again that students for a Red peace prize if he is fortunate enough taught by television get as good grades in examin­ to get the State Department on his side and have ations as do regular classroom students. The U.S. it cancel his exit permit, if he wants to leave Navy's experience at Port Washington, L.I., in this country, or his entry permit, if he wants fact, is that television students-incidentally, they to get in. Thus, through the good offices of our are pretty generally called "viewdents"-scored considerate Department of State, Mr. Chaplin has higher than classroom students in the same subject. becom'e eminently fit to win 'the award. This is due partly to the student's response to the The State Department's aid is one of the main novelty of the television-learning experience and prerequisites for eligibility. It is also of incalcul­ partly to the fact that teachers themselves, aware able help to get yourself investigat'ed. Without an that they are working in a new medium, e'xert investigation, you are simply a progressive fighter special 'effort in preparation and presentation. for peace, which is not bad but not good enough. With an investigation, you become a courageous Possible Dangers fighter for peace, and that is much better. In order to maintain your prestige as a courageous fighter Despite the proved strengths of educational tele­ for peace you must from time to time come out vision, there are also serious potential dangers. with the strongest possible blasts against the Education today is torn with controversy from witch-hunters-a task not at all dangerous to within and without. There are conflicts of fun­ either life or limb. damental philosophy and of method. Educational television can help to clarify these conflicts. But You must always fight for the cause of peace-for it cannot fail to mirror this discord as well, and example, in your grocery store, collecting signa­ to reflect the weaknesses of education itself. tures on a plea for international amity. Or in your In certain instances educational television will Parent-Teachers Association, campaigning only for run the risk of becoming the mouthpiece of partic­ the election of officials who stand for peace. ular cults and of that appalling educational patter Whenever you read about an atomic blast in the that has a way of destroying language and true Soviet Union, shout with glee : "The cause of communication. It may 'also fall heir to the stereo­ peace has been strengthened! Hurrah!" Whenever types of thinking and f.eeling which for many you read about an atomic explosion in the United educators have become an occupational hazard. An States, cry in dismay: "This is the end of our always present danger is oversimplification of civilization!" Regard any war waged by the Com­ programs, which, according to President Millis of munistsas a war of national liberation in the Western Reserve, would mean that "we miss a struggle for peace. On the other hand, consider large part of our opportunity." "The thing that any peace move by the United States a vicious has been most thrilling to me ...," he points out, provocation for the purpose of unleashing a third "has been to discover huge audienc,es so 'motivated, world war. so desirous of information and knowledge and the Whatever happens, blame the United States­ opportunity to learn, that members will take diffi­ whether it is an epidemic in China, an assassination cult material right out of the classroom and love in East Berlin, or a Soviet veto in the United it." Nations. And always keep alive the slogan ".A.mer­ The most serious danger o.f an is that of thought icans, go away," even if you are an American and control and of partis,an propaganda. Educational live in this country: let the Americans get out television, if it is to advance securely, must avoid of here too. the innocuousness of saying nothing and the op­ You see how simple it is to aspire to a World posite danger of allowing irresponsible elements to Peace Congress prize. No trouble whatsoever. That use it to say too much. 'Only thus can ,education is, if you are this side of the Iron Curtain. If itself and the country as a whole reap the harvest you are ,behind it you'll get a more lasting a,vard­ of this precious "inheritance." the prize of Eternal Peace.

JUNE 28, 1954 711 In this sense he has 'misled some of us grievously. R'epeatedly, he voiced opinions which, blameless A Second Look per se, fell in nicely with those currently pushed by the fellow-traveling community. Repeatedly, his name cropped up in 'connection with outfits and publications we knew to be under Red control. The Angry Bishop Repeatedly, his signature was appended to state­ ments which, however nobly intended, in effect I have just read I Protest by Bishop G. Bromley supported the "line" for anti-anti-Communists. Oxnam, recounting his "ten-hour ordeal" 'before the Nlearly all of this, he shows convincingly, was Velde Committee. 'The little book rumbles with coincidental. But we have inconsequence been .led righteous wrath through pagefuls of the cliches of into the sin ofmisjudging him. Even in this book, ritualistic liberalism, and is most un-Christian in .in the very process of disowning Red sympathies, its unforgiving hatred of the Congressmen in­ the Bishop unconsciously follows the line laid down volved. by and for conscious stooges on some matters. I In an eloquent prayer quoted in the book the have space only for two examples : Bishop says, "'May we ,even love those who despite­ fully use us." One wishes he had added, "Do as I 1. 'The thesis, first developed by the Communists say, brethren, not as I do." For his spite against and incr,easingly taken over by the'ir peripheral M,essrs. Velde, Scherer, Jackson, and the rest is like friends, is that a disillusioned Communist who a running sore. Not once does he find it in his heart ,cooperates with the FBI and Congress in ,exposing to attribute to them any but malicious motive's, the conspiracy is a villainous "informer" to be even in cases where 'error or zeal is a far more shunned by decent people. 'This thesis the Bishop reasonable explanation of some action. accepts uncritically and promotes with vehemence. "What are the real forces behind Mr. V:elde?" he 'The tone of the book is set in its opening sen­ asks ominously. "Who is back of Mr. Scherer?" tences: "The informer is infiltrating American life. The questions are not answered, darkly suggesting ... 'He is a'man of the shadows ... etc." He heaps plots-the kind of innuendo which enrages the contempt on "the ,ex-iCommunist turned informer" Bishop when directed against himself. Mr. Jack­ and berates the committee for relying "too largely son's behavior he sees as just "a personal grudge," upon the help of former Communists.'" Clearly becaus.e of "the iembarrassment he faced the day we America should thank ,God that Whittaker Cham­ engaged in debate" on the air. bers, Bella Dodd, Elizabeth B'entley, Louis Budenz, 'The Bishop stands four-score 'and no nonsense in and the rest did not seek this Bishop's guidance the ranks of the "hysteria" 'boys. His voice rises hefore following the dictates of their conscience. above the din to proclaim that "A proud people 'is For the ,effect of his book is to dissuade any Com­ becoming a silent people. The American is holding munist poss,essing information of value to our his tongue." He, too, strikes the mock-heroic pose count'ry from testifying, on pain of foul abuse. of one who dares speak for the siIencedand terror­ '2. 'To discredit congressional inquiries, the com­ ized. As for those who doubt the' hy.steria, he rades have made the 'most of an old andeve'r­ crushes them with the most question-begging effective trick. Whenever the role of individual formula of many ,a yea'r: "Their denial of the suspects is examined, they raise the cry that some presence of f.ear is as false as the pre'Sence of fear large group is under attack. Thus an attempt to is a fact." uncover spies in atomic projects becomes an "as­ All the samie, the book leaves little doubt, in my sault on science." 'The :exposure of concealed mind at least, that the Bishop is opposed to Com­ Kremlin agents ·among teachers becomes "an attack munism and has not knowingly been a feIlow­ on academic freedom." traveler. This i.s disturbing. For agr,eat many The Bishop is aware that clergymen have given years I have regarded him asa witting tool of what aid and comfort to Communist enterprises and he rightly calls the Communist "conspiracy." How would hardly insist that they be immune to in­ did that unfair impression take shape? vestigation. Yet he pictures the interrogation of I do not, in all conscience, feel myself wholly to men of the cloth as an attack on "religion"! He blame. Nor can I blam,e the congressional com­ inveighs against anyone who "questions the loyalty mitt'ee, since I have read none of its "releases" of the Protestant Churches," though no one has about the Bishop and had no occasion to consult its done so. Despite the Congressman's clear dis­ suppressed A'ppendix. Exploring the enigma, I am avowals, he writes of 'Mr. V:elde's "alleg,ed intention forced to suggest that the fault, if fault it be, is to investigate the churches." largely his own. We form our mental images of 'Thus, on issue after issue, he follows the fellow­ men in public lif.e on the basis of what they say or ~ traveling line: innocently, angrily, and mischie­ do. And it happens that Bishop Oxnam's words v.ously. A touch of humility and of charity might and acts, as reflected in the press, helped build the therefore help him understand that those who picture of a fellow-traveler. misjudge him are not ·alI neeessarily scoundrels.

712 THE FREEMAN Oppenheimer's Mind I By MAX E,ASTMAN 1

The special providence whi,ch watches over Simon vestigated him contains, besides an affirmation ot & Schuster, history's greatest book salesmen, has Dr. Oppenheimer's loyalty to the United States, seen to it that they bring out a book -by J. Robert other and more important examples of his unclear Oppenheimer at the very crux of the dispute over thought and motivation. Two brief citations will his security clearance as counselor to the Atomic show what I mean-and will also, in my opinion, Energy Commission. (Science and the Common justify the board's decision to revoke his security Understanding, by J. Robert Oppenheimer. 120 pp. clearance. New York: Simon & Schuster. $2.75.) The book, which is full of pious platitudes and banalities 1. In 1949, appearing before an executive session about brotherhood and harmony and equality and of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, progress, the growth of knowledge, the community Dr. Oppenheimer characterized his friend, Dr. of man, man's frailty ,and splendor, 'his "undying Bernard Peters, as "a dangerous Red and former deeds," and all sorts of nice' things, and even a Communist. This te'Stimony soon appeared in the casual-seeming slap at Com'munism, will doubtless Rochester, N,ew York, newspapers. be seized upon by 'Oppenheimer's friends to defend "'At this time Dr. Peters was on the staff of the his right, while hobnobbing inclose friendship University of Rochester. Dr. Oppenheimer, as a with such notorious servitors of the Communist result of protestations by Dr. Condon, by Dr. conspiracy as Haakon Chevalier, to sit in on the Peters himself,and by other scientists, then wrote most vital secrets of America'smilita'ry defense. a letter for publication to the Rochester news­ 'To my mind its message, although somewhat papers, which in 'effect repudi,ated his testimony obscur,ed by a remarkable mismanagement of given in secret session. language, is opposite to that. 1 think it demon­ "His testimony before the board [when ques­ strates, 'l?O far as that could be done by a theoretical tioned about the incident] indicated that he failed treatise, that Dr. Oppenheimer, although undoubt­ to appreciate the great impropriety of making edly a whiz in mathematics, is not to be trusted statements of one character in a secret session for clear-motived or ,clearly reasoned confrontation and of a different character for pUblication, and of fact in social, political, moral, or any other that he believed that the important thing was to human problems. I think it proves him to be what protect Dr. Peters' professional status." we call, in the disrespectfully anti-Communist circles I move in, a constitutional mush-head. 2. During 1950 Dr. Oppenheimer testified to the FBI that, although he was in the habit of giving Mathematical, like musical, ability seems capable SOlne monthly contributions to the Communist of residing in a sort of closed chamber of. the Party, he had a change of mind about the policies brain, not infecting the rest of the tissue with of the Soviet Union,and "at the time of the Finnish any of the attributes of unusual intelligence, This War and the subsequent break between Germany was not true, to be sure, of Isaac Newton, who and Russia in 1941 realized the Communist in­ as Master of the Mint during the time when Eng­ filtration tactics into the alleged anti-Fascist groups land called in her clipped and debas'ed coins and and became fed up with the whole thing and lost replaced them with honest money, gave an example what little inter,est he had." of practical skill and political good judgment that The board established, on the other hand, "by still lives in cultural history. Newton also com­ testimony and other information," that "Dr. Oppen­ manded-unfortunately in Latin-a beautifully heimermade periodic contributions through Com­ spare and lucid prose style. Oppenheimer, by con­ munist Party functionaries to the Communist trast, seems frequently, when carried away by the Party ... in amounts aggregating not less than resonance of some unctuous cliche, to lose a clear $500 and not more than $1,000 a year during a sense of the logical implication of his words. period of approximately four years ending in "We, like all men, are among those who bring a April 1942," and that "as of April 1942 Dr. Oppen­ little light to the vast unending darkness of man's heimer had for S'everal months been participating life and the world," is one 'example which has at in government atomic energy research activities." least the merit of being brief. But now to return to Dr. Oppenheimer's book. 'The report of the special Personnel Security It purports, in the first 'place, to give in popular Board of the Atomic Energy Commission that in- form a glimpse of the newer developments in

JUNE 28. 1954 713 physical science. This, I must warn the reader, describe a friend in secret session and another in is as confusing a glimpse and as badly expressed writing a letter for publication in the newspapers, as any I have read, and that is saying a lot, for or who conceives himself in one· connection as most of them, 1 must confess, leave my head swim­ being "fed up" with Communism by 1941, in ming. But that is incidental, and not the main another as still so zealous for it that he was con­ purpose of the book. I lts main purpose, or in his tributing money to the party through party func­ own terms its "thesis," is that "the new things tionaries in 1942. That would be too easy a clever we have learned in science, and specifically what trick. we have learned in atomic physics ... provide us with valid and greatly needed analogies to human No, the "valid analogy" with self-contradictory problems lying outs,ide the present domain of conceptions in physics that mainly interests Dr. science or its present borderlands." Oppenheimer is the pleasure of ignoring the con­ Just what a "valid analogy" may be, Dr. Oppen­ tradiction betwe'en knowledge and emotional belief, heimer does not explain. But 1 gather, after a "between the cognitive and the affective sides of painstaking effort, that it means an analogy which our lives." What Dr. Oppenheimer is looking for, helps the author to believe about these outlying and is finding in the present immaturity of physical human problems whatever he finds it comforting science, is a justification for traditional beliefs to believe. The eurrent opinion of. physicists that which have no ground except his emotional yearn­ the behavior of individual electrons is not subject ing to believe them. He wants to set these beliefs to causal law has seemed to some people to side by side with reasoned knowledge, and thus justify by analogy their own feeling of independ­ avoid the hard, cool confrontation of human prob­ ence from causality, their "sense of freedom." lems that a truly scientific attitude demands. This analogy, Dr. 'Oppenheimer informs us, pretty His book, in other words, employs physics itself, as it looks to the naked eye, is not valid. He does the most successfully objective caprice into all not explain why, he just dismisses it as "light­ knowledge. 1 think a seientist who spends his hearted." But what analogy is valid? time writing a book with that purpose is con­ stitutionally soft. In nonmathematical matters, at 'VeIl, here is the principal one: Modern physicists least, I would be distrustful both of his thoughts have found it necessary in dealing with such and his motives. 1 would not expect either of them things as light to conceive it in two different, to be concise and clear. In short, 1 think Dr. and essentially contradictory ways. In one opera­ Oppenheimer's book tends to prove-so to speak, tion, or calculation, they conceive it as consisting a priori-what the ,special Personnel Seeurity (in Newtonian fashion) of corpuscles, in another Board found out by an exhaustive examination (as Huygens assp.rted) of waves. Instead of call­ of his actual dealings with "human problems lying ing ,these opposing concepts eontradictory, the outside the present domain of science." physicists call them "complementary." And Dr. Oppenheimer at least-whether or not there may be physicists with a little more intellectual humility­ thinks that this is due to "the nature of the world." ,Worker-Priests To "my mind-though 1 may be rushing in where Saints in Hell, by Gilbert Cesbron. Translated nonmathematical angels fear to tread-it is obvi­ from the French by John Russell. 312 pp. New ously due to the nature, the very immature and York: Doubleday and Company. $3.75 inadequate nature, of our knowledge of the world, our way of conceiving it.· To regard this self­ The writer who would make a contemporary sit­ contradictory way of conceiving reality as an uation live for us must of course bring to it ultimate scientific achievement instead of a prob­ the journalist's eye for detail. If, however, he lem for a better science to solve is, in my opinion, attempts this in novel form then he must pene­ to bring science itself to the support of that gen­ trate the facts with creative imagination or run eral Retreat from Rea.son which will ultimat,ely a double risk. Either he will simply make it a destroy it. report whose only dimension is length, or hecome However, the reader is entitled to dismiss that a pamphleteer whose work has length and some as the opinion of a brash and cocky amateur, and breadth but no depth. It is in this second category it doesn't matter to the present discussion. What that 1 would place M. Ceshron's attemp't to novel­ matters is that Dr. Oppenheimer regards as a ize the French worker-priest. "valid analogy" to this sielf-contradictory manner The author has taken great pains to get the of conceiving light a self-contradictory approach right atmosphere. He has seen the immediate to "human problems lying out8ide the present problem of distinguishing the temporal as rep­ domain of science." resented by the class war from the spiritual as rep,:" I hope the reader is not expecting me to illus­ resented by the worker-priest. Yet despite authen­ trate this self-contradictory approach by the ex­ tic details, a sympathetically drawn priest, and ample of a man who employs one concept to the verisimilitude of the dialogue, his work re..

714 rrHEFREEMAN mains a documentary pamphlet (however pas­ A priest is ordained as an instrument of the sionately and compassionately it is written). For Church; the primary purpose in life is to be a the only level of reality envisaged by M. Cesbron Ininister of sacrifice and sacraments, and his own is the problerrl evident to a journalist's eye. The sanctification is ultimately bound up with that levels of reality that give depth and universal activity. Once this central purpose is abandoned, meaning to the bare facts call for a literary then the temptation is to succumb to his environ­ imagination that appears in this story but rarely. ment. It was the actualization of this danger, not To point up the spiritual anguish of his protagon­ lack of sympathy for the movement, that brought ist by contrasting him with a complacent cure, about restrictions on the worker-priest movement. a discouraged co-worker, and an unsympathetic The real root of the crisis is that a number of archbishop, is a facile technique but hardly the priests have renounced in whole or in part their work of a good novelist. Its result is fiction, not priestly function and have begun to subordinate literature, or at best a pamphlet not a novel. the spiritual to the temporal. By failing to per­ What the author has failed to realize is that ceive this the author has failed to give reality the real crisis stems not from the situation but to his portrait of the worker-priest. from the fact that Father Pierre is not a layman. EUGENE M. BURKE

Hemingway's Journalism By ROBERT CANTWELL

Charles Fenton has made an eX!haustive study of ·enterprise, would unquestionably have been of Ernest Hemingway's professional writing ex­ locked up as dangerous :egomaniacs. perience up to the time he published his first 'The qualities that make up a great newspaper­ books (The Apprenticeship of Ernest Hemingway, man are ,extremely ,elusiv,e; It might be argued btl Charles A. Fenton. 302 pp. New York: that they are nonexistent. If a journalist becomes F'arrar, Straus and Young. $5.00). The result is famous, like 'Lincoln Steffens or Walter Lippmann impressive as a piece of research into anybody's or Vincent rS'heean or William Allen White, we newspaper work. are given in his memoirs or biography ,an abun­ This observation is not meant ,facetiously. There dance, or a surfeit, of the wise and mellow advice is not 'much 'published 'about news'paper writing. that he delivered to perplexed generals, presidents, The Apprenticeship of Ernest Hemingway provides and religious leaders in the course of his profes­ only incidental insights into Hemingway's charac­ sional career. If he is an ordinary hard-working ter, but it raises some interesting questions about (or overworked) reporter, as Hemingway was, journalism. Mr. Fenton, an instructor at Yale, has his run-of-the 'mill writings are unexamined. As dug through the files of the Oak Park High a result Mr. Fenton's critical Istudy of what one School publications for Hemingway's contributions; newspaperman actually wrote may be revolutionary he has gone over the author's early writings in in the good sense of the word. the Kansas City Star and the Toronto Star, and Hemingw'ay began writing 'while he was ,an he has interviewed classmat,es, staff members, unenthusiastic football player at Oak Park High editors, former friends, professional associates, and School near Chicago. From the files of the school Hemingway himself to discover what Hemingway literary journal, the Tabula,and the newspaper, actually wrote and published in the days before the Trapeze, Mr. Fenton has recovered Hemingway's he became known. Hemingway was average, per­ early humorous paragraphs, his imitations of 'Ring haps a little better than ,average, but not much, Lardner, and his stories modeled on Kipling and and it is this fact that makes a study of his routine Jack London, an ,enterprise which, he says, can have newspaper writing an important addition to the offered "lit1tle appeal and considerable irritation" Hter:ature on American journalism. to the 'eminent ,author. We rarely get, in any such study, any account of From other literary graduates of Oak 'Park, what any reporter actually wrote. Mark Twain's notably Janet Lewis and Edward Wagenknecht, humorous pieces have heen collected, and Pro­ Mr. Fenton has reconstructed the intellectual fessor Arlin Turner has done a revolutionary job atmospher·e of the school. H'e seems to have over­ in republishing Hawthorne's eontributions to the looked the poet, Kenneth Fearing, who was also American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining a student there, and who found when he went on J{nowledge. But for the most part the biographies to ,college that he had already been taught the and autobiographies of modern newspapermen are substance of his college freshman year. a welter of vague refer'enees to forgotten scoops In what appears to be an unblushing bid for and practical jokes played around the offi.ce, admir­ readers among secondary school teachers, Mr. Fen­ ing anecdotes about possessed and im'Placableedi­ ton lavishes 'high praise on Hemingway's English tors <, who, had they been found in any other field teachers, Miss Dixon and Miss Biggs. "American

JUNE 28, 1954 715 high schools have been blessed with m'any Miss In fact, from the examples he gives, they were Dixons," he says. Am'ericari high schools have rubbish. also been blessed, if that is the right word, with Mr. Fenton has worked for all it is worth many thousands of students who write the way the paradox that Hemingway's war ,fiction was Hemingway wrote in those days. :The unmistakable based on his seven days in the front lines before impression arises thatH,emingway's ,English classes he 'was wounded. Hemingway's combat fiction (and were among theas'pects of his high school expe­ his postwar featur,e stories razzing noncombatant 'rience that meant very little to him. His high school soldiers) came out of his experience in the trenches prose was fresh and unhackneyed. His writing was asa Red Cross lieutenant, handing out coffee and a part of ordinary high school lif,e, like football or doughnuts. It was a dangerous and honorable the senior play. Writing then had none of the self­ military duty, as H,emingway's 227 trench-mortar conscious sophistication ofa provincial newspaper and machine-gun wounds (and this book) ade­ office, or the equally self-'conscious artiness of quately testify. 'But it was not the sort of combat Gertrude Stein's ;expatriate circle. it was an or­ experience that figured in his 'fiction, and still less dinary aspect of everyday doings, creating no was it the kind of duty that would be recognized psychological istr,ains in the author or reader, with as combat by the m,elodramatic standards of the no intellectual standard of living to be maintained, newspapers where Hemingway worked. The neces­ and no routine drudg,eries or creative inspirations sity of living up to claims which were essentially to be invested with heroic glamor. justified, though technically open to challenge, placed a curious ,strain on Hemingway's writing. Hemingway's contributions to the Kansas City Part of the importance of The Apprenticeship of Star, during his ,sev,en 'months as a reporter there, Ernest Hemingway is the' revelation of the gradual were like any other newspaper stories. You can thickening of his perc,eptions, the growth of a r,ead .comparable works in almost any issue of any sense of disgust and resentment that showed metropolitan daily. After Hemingway's war ex­ through his stories, and his adoption of a stylized periences there followed another period of daily pose that helped him to hold his own in a field journalism, largely feature writing, in 'Toronto. where phonies and blowhards abounded. After a brief job in Chicago, editing the house organ of a phony cooperativ,e society, Hemingway One reason why they abounded there was the became a foreign correspondent, and in this fi'eld lack of any public scrutiny of what any news­ his ·graphic s'ense unquestionably made him out­ paperman .actually wrote.. Fenton's study of Hem­ standing. He was 'creating a distinctive and un­ ingway's new~paper 'work is ,entirely convincing usual style, or 'even an original kind of r,eporting, until one turns to the fiction that Hemingway in the period before his first books of fiction ap­ wrote as soon as he got 'away from journalism. peared. Rereading In Our Time in the light of Mr. Fenton's F'enton is lavish with his praise of the researches' into the journalism that preceded it is Kansas City Star as a great newspaper. His stand­ startling because there is so little connection be­ ard is entirely literary; there is nota line to tween the two. Hemingway's first stories read like suggest the other qualities that make great news­ the accounts of someone rescued f.roma desert papers, or that o~ce made them. He is likewise island, or saved at the last minut'e from execution, full of praise for the Star's style sheet, with its exulting in the flowing stream and the fresh air elementary instructions (Use short sentences. with unearthly 'abandon. They hav'e isomething of Don't use old slang.J of which all that can be the same [quality found in his 'early high school said is that they should never have 'been necessary. stories, though their freshness was now comhined Hemingway's contributions to the Star included with the extraordinary sensuous warmth of his a story of "a well-dressed young woman" Who prose. 'The lasting 'elements in Hemingway's fiction rede,emed her pawned wedding ring, now that her had nothing to do with journalism. 'They came from husband was drafted. ,One of his features was a his aeceptance of all the qualities that had been Negro dialect story, justa shade above minstrel­ suppressed in his newspaper writing, and even more show dialect in its artificiality. One story that won from the sense of liberation that came with his high praise from his hard-bitten editor dealt with escape from journalism. The 'weaknesses of his 'a shabbily dressed ,girl who walked back and forth, stories, the false toughness, or the tricks and man­ w,eeping, outside a dance given for soldiers by an nerisms of his brief episodes, wer,e results of his organization of socially prominent women. Her boy newspaper experience, or ·efforts to make some ar­ friend 'was inside, dancing with the social elite tistic us'e of material gather,ed in his newspaper of Kansas City. As observation of a primitive piece days. If any moral should he drawn from this of psychological warfare, the story is not bad, but examination of one newspaperman's daily writings, that is not why it was written, published, or it is that people with literary abilities should not prais·ed. It was praised for its watered-down, work on ne'wspapers. American literature would un­ O. Henry-like pathos. Mr. F,enton speaks of the questionably gain, but it is disquieting to think "unstated, ironic implications" of such paragraphs. of what would happen to journalism.

716 THE FREEMAN jecting uncongenial commodities? Can't the people Hysteria for Henry -primarily through the use of social sanctions, Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent, by Henry Steele Com­ but, in the cag.e of war or national .emergency, mager. 155 pp. New York: Oxford University through the use of state sanctions too-express Press. $2.50 their disapproval of hawkers of com'modities highly offensive to them? As they have done and are The only significant feature of Professor Com­ doing, for example, with nudism, prostitution, mager's latest book is political,and even that is union-busting, racism and, yes, fellow-trav,eling? not to.be found in the text alone, but in the union 3) Has the society ever existed where there have of text and flyleaf. For the flyleaf parades a not been conformities with certain ideas, with all throbbing ,endorsement of Commager's thesis-by that this means in terms of social attitudes toward a real live ,statesman, the man with the viable the dissident? And is it not inevitable (we are political future, Adlai Stevenson. Intellectually­ not speaking here of whether it is desirable) that even forensically-there is nothing new in this at the point where society definitively identifies small volume. It is merely the latest entry in the the dissident who holds intolerable and unassimil­ diction-contest going the rounds of the Liberal 'able ideas-of the type that threaten those institu­ intelligentsia: who can sound off best, in 150,000 tions the society is bent upon preserving-it is w,ords or less, about the glories of dissent, the likely to enlist the aid of the policeman or soldier dignity of 'man, the undefinability of loyalty, and in enforcing the majority view (as when it dis­ the demise of American freedom. Alan Barth, ciplined the polygamist Mormons, and the slave­ Bert Andrews, Walter Gellhorn, Eleanor Bontecou, owning Southerners) ? 'These are a very few of the Zechariah Chafee, Jr., Alexander Meiklejohn, questions highly relevant to a discussion of dissent Merle Miller, Roger 'Baldwin, Norman Thomas and and comformity that IMr. Gommager simply doesn't countless others have had a go at it. I am not talk about. on the judges' committee (and anyway, the -contest On the subject of security programs, the reader has no -closing date), but I think it is safe to say must regretfully conclude that Mr. Commager isa that Mr. Commager's offering -raises the median hopeless case. He fails to make the mostelemen­ eloquence of the literature. He writes well, and he tary-and in this case, the most fundamental-dis­ is adroit in quoting apposite 'epigrams, phrases, and tinctions, much less the more subtle ones. If he is paragraphs to strengthen and clarify his points. even aware that security organizations are set up not to adjudicate guilt or innocence but to do some­ Mr. Commager is a 32nd degree pragmatist. thing quite different, he doesn't say so. Certainly One of the five chapters, in his book is devoted he is not aware that ,a security program based to a demonstration of the value of pragmatis'm, on the "reasonable doubt" standard is the only a tribute to the benefits this philosophy has ex­ defensive weapon at the disposal of a society whose tended to our 'Republic, and a horror-story 'account strength-whose survival, perhaps-depends in of what lies before us should we indulge con­ part on its outwitting 'men and women whose pro­ temporary cravings for absolutism. Yet Mr. Com­ fession requires that they be skilled in persuading mager's faith in the iValidity of future ideas is us that they are patriotic citizens. And this means nothing short of mystical-and positively un­ that ,security officials must interest themselves in an pragmatical. He has no particular notions as to employee's associations and associates, and that what these new ideas are, but he does know they if these are of such nature as to call forth a rea­ are being stifled, 'and he is quite eertain they are sonable doubt as to the reliability of theemploye:e better than existing ideas (which are in turn, in question, then he must be removed from a needless to say, an improvement over old ideas). sensitive agency. What Mr. Commager calls "guilt His fascination with relativism (this is 'what Mr. by association" (actually, security-risk by associ­ Commager'sbrand of pragmatism comes down to) ation) is the cornerstone of the structure of the is so obsessive that he reverentially quotes even so federal security program. hoary a chestnut as Holmes' cynical and childish There is no significant voice in this country "I prefer champagne to ditch-water, but there is urging that those particular principles on which no reason to suppose that the cosmos does." the federal security program is based carryover Here are some of the questions Mr. Commager into the courts. Nor, I beIieve,are there any signs (and his fraternity) obstin;:ttely refuse to answe'r that the security program itself has degenerated even in their catch-all books about our reign of terror: 1) Is it not inherent in the free market idea that new ideas, upon examination, may be Any book reviewed in this Book Section (or any emphatically rejected? In other words, isn't society other current book) supplied by return mail. You entitled to go back and trade with the same old pay only the bookstore price. We pay the postage, butcher? Isn't this what the United States is in anywhere in the world. Catalogue on request. effect up to in its new-found attitude toward THE BOOKMAILER, Box 101, New York 16 Communism? 2) How does a society go 'about re-

JUNE 28, 1954 717 to the 'point where an un-reasonable doubt is bles," for "wreck," and "she had the oo-la-Ia" for sufficient to deprive a man of gov,ernment em­ "woman (kept)." On the last page of this section ployment. In spite of this, Mr. Commag,er gets so there is a synonylTI for "you" that goes "Hey, you, carried away that, before he is through, he ,ends with the double-breasted ears." us up branding Adams, Paine, Emerson, Jefferson, As The Phrase Finder itself would say (page Seward, and Lincoln .as loyalty risks! 1,132), the whole thing leaves one "staring in So: let those who insist that controversy over pop-eyed wonder." KARL HESS whether we need a vigorous security program is behind us, with both sides 'finally agreeing that we do, read this book hearing .constantly in mind its endorsement bya determined 'Presidential aspirant. Book Marks Then let them ask themselves whether the Repub­ We Chose to Stay, by Lali Horstmann. 207 pp. licans are 'entitled to make a campaign issue out Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. $3.00 of the views on internal security pr,esumably held by the nominal leader of the Democratic Party. Mrs. Horstmann is the widow of a well-to-do German gentleman-farmer and former diplomat WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. whose great pleasure in life was the collection of objets d'art. and the highly refined cult of elaborate and gracious entertaining. He clung to The Thought Flounder this pleasure even after Hitler came to power. The Phrase Finder, compiled by J. 1. Rodale Thus, Mrs. Horstmann remained up to the bitter with the collaboration of Edward J. Fluck. 1,325 end at the core of what once was Germany's pp. Emmaus, Penna.: Rodale Press. $6.95 "high society." From this vantage point she has Certainly since the time when Dr. Charles William now written the grim story of the end of Berlin Eliot decided that wisdom was roughly five feet and the occupation of eastern Germany. Her long on the shelf, and undoubtedly before, ther,e dramatized, yet always sober personal account has been a frantic attempt to reduce human think­ of disintegration, panic, and finally resignation to ing to the state of the vitamin. That is, to the the inevitable, oppressive horror of Soviet occupa­ state of something synthetically duplicable and tion is, in a way, the swan song of the traditional capable of being admini,stered in ever-smaller landowning class east of the Elbe. And the solitary capsules. The works on "self-improvement," vocab­ figure of her husband, who stubbornly refused ulary building, "success," and the other shop clerk to forsake his house and the little village he panaceas, whether cynically slick or fatuously sin­ ,"owned" and went about rearranging the Chinese cere, are manifestations of this abuse of mind. vases on his mantlepiece while the raping and Now we have this description-defying achieve­ plundering hordes of the Red Army were batter­ ment in ersatz thought procHssing. It almost has to ingat the doors, suddenly gains stature as he is he seen to be beHeved. Its avowed and incredible, led away by members of the N'.K.V.D. to 'an inter­ if not downright terrifying, purpose is to "'think rogation from which he never returned. up' for you not just a word but a clause or even a sentence." Confederate Agent, by James D. Horan. 326 pp. The first section is devoted to an Index of Key­ New York: Crown Publishers. $5.00 Words. One looks, for instance, under the word In addition to fighting from the familiar earthen­ "forgetful" and finds such an entry as stultorum works of the heroic pictures, combatants in the feriae. Very useful., Presumably it is to remind the War Between the States also fought in the dark forgetful reader thatcom,e the Quirinalia anyone world of cloak-and-dagger intrigue. This book, whe neglected his rites to Fornax may get them in about an almost incredible Confederate effort to on this day instead. set off Fifth Column explosions that would have Then there is a dictionary of names. This is blasted Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio away from where you learn that Tamerlane had "a fierce the Union, is perhaps the greatest proof of this countenance and eyes which expressed fiendish fact that has been or could be adduced. Certainly cruelty and struck terror into lookers-on." it is one of the very greatest historical prizes of 'Then comes the Metaphor Finder. That is where America's great, tragic, personal war. you learn that a metaphor for "poetry" is: "Jin­ Primarily it is the story (from recently un­ gle a few coins in the ragged garment of life." covered records) of the properly dashing Captain But then comes the pinnacle of this Everest of Thomas B. Hines. Beyond that, however, Mr. tin, the Sophisticated Synonyms. As a synonym, Horan proves himself a first-rate historical re­ sophisticated, for "enjoyment" we find such sug­ searcher in giving the full picture of behind-the­ gestions as "high-jinks," or "to read back num­ lines plotting, the counterespionage that dampened hers of the National Geographic." One then pol­ it, and the final, fatal indeeitsion of the North­ ishesone's monocle and moves on to such sophis­ erners who were to bear the actual arms in this tications as "transformed the place into a sham- massive Confederate plot.

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AND NOW THE BIG TRUTH by Robert Wood Johnson There is still a way to secure for the American people protection against treaty-made laws. 'I he House now has the opportunity to Here is the stuff of which political victories are made. Here is the introduce a measure that would require ratification of treaties by real record of three Democratic Administrations. It is a story of a malority vote in both Houses of Congress, not by two-thirds of mounting inflation and the usurpation of power. It is a story that rhe Senate alone. This could be the beginning of a successful must be told as an answer to the big lies. campaign. Get copies now for distribution. Single copy .10; 12 copies $1.00; 100 copies $5.00; 1,000 copies $45.00. Reprint #40 Single copy .10j 12 copies $1.00; 100 copies $5.00; 1,000 copies $40.00. Reprint #38 INSTEAD OF PUBLIC POWER by Thomas P. Swift THE RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF LABOR by Donald R. Richberg In an area of American life where socialism has taken deep root­ the production of electrical power-private industry now has sounded A noted authority tackles the proposition: industrial peace in this a bdld, ... new challenge. This is the widely-applicable story of how country is impossible so long as the leaders of organized labor five Pacific Northwest companies forthrightly have taken over from are unchecked in the power they wield over their fellow-men and government the "impossible" job of big dam build ng. in their war on private enterprise. A provocative and important Single copy .10; 12 copies $1.00; 100 copies $3.00; 1,000 copies article. $25.00. Reprint # 41 Single copy .10; 12 copies $1.00; 100 copies $6.00; 1,000 copies $45.00. Reprint #30 NON-COMMUNICATIVE ART by Max Eastman For any innocent bystander ever struck and crushed by a run­ WHY SOCIALIZE NIAGARA? by Robert S. Byfield away Picasso or any other galloping abstraction, this article will bring balm as well as delight. With precision and expert under­ Why does New York's Governor Dewey plan to have a State standing, Mr. Eastman skillfully dismantles the engines of visual Authority develop "people's kilowatts" at Niagara Falls? Read cacophony from which unintelligible IImodern" art pours out smoky the facts about how indefensible the plan is and how Governor clouds of utter confusion. Dewey belies his own professed faith in free enterprise. Single copy .10; 12 copies $1.00; 100 copies $8.00; 1,000 copies Single copy .10; 12 copies $1.00; 100 copies $6.00; 1,000 copies $75.00. ReprJnt#42 $45.00. Reprint #28

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