the AUGUST 13,1951 25 CENTS Clergymen and Socialism REV. S,TEWART M. ROBIN,SON AfricQ-and Our Security GEN. BONNER FEL,LERS It Started With Plato s. HARCOURT·RIVINGTON JULIEN STEINBERG How to Bring About Inflation HAROLD LOEB Our Avant Garde Illiterates EDWARD DAHLBERG Editors: JohnCham!berlain • Henry Hazlitt • Suzanne La Follette PUBLISHED FORTNIGHTLY FIVE DOLLARS A YEAR the Fl~EEMAN A WO'RD "With which ';s combined themagaz;ne, PLAIN .TALK ABOUT rsClitots, JOHN "iCHAM6ERLAIN HENRY HAZUTT OUR Managing Editor, SUZAN:NE .LA F10LLETTE COiNTRIBUTORS Business· Manager, KU'RT LASSEN BRIG. GEN. BONNER FELLERS (Ret.) knows Africa at first hand from his ex­ AUGUST 13, 1951 perience as military observer there in 1940-42. Later he was a member of CONTENTS VOL. l-NO. 23 General MacArthur's staff in the Far East, and in 1946 was Secretary Gen­ Editorials eral of the Allied Council for Japan. REV. STEWART M. ROBINSON is pastor The Fortnight , 707 of the Second Presbyterian Church of The Southern Rebellion......................... 710 Elizabeth, New Jersey. A chaplain in Stalin's Bad Checks............................ 711 World War I, he served as chair,man of An Economy Based on Swindle.................. 711 the chaplains' committee of thePresby-· terian Church, U.S.A. during the later How Dead is Petain?......................... 712 world war, and is now chairman of the Africa and Our Security BONNER FELLERS 713 General Commission on Chaplains. Planning That Perished BEN RAY REDMAN 716 JULIEN STEINBERG is managing editor of the American Mercury. His recent Clergymen and Socialism STEWART M. ROBINSON 717 book, "Verdict of Three Decades" is a Worth Hearing Again.............................. 720 round-up of facts and historic state­ Man of the Half Century, I JULIEN STEINBERG 721 ments on the Soviet dictatorship. It Started With Plato S. HARCOURT-RIVINGTON 724 S. HARCOURT-RIVINGTON, a B ri It ish economist, contributes to the Daily Mail How to Bring About Inflation HAROLD LOEB 725 and other London publications, and also This Is What They Said. ............... .. ........ .. 726 to French and South American journals. From Our Readers ~ ......... .. 729 His books include "The Evolution of In­ dustry" and "The Great Menace," an exposition of the evils of collectivist Books regimes. Our Avant Garde Illiterates EDWARD DAHLBERG 727 EDWARD DAHLBERG has written a book A Reviewer's Notebook JOHN CHAMBERLAIN 731 on American literature, "Do These Bones Live?", "Bottom Dogs," for which The Terrible Illusion EUGENE DAVIDSON 732 D. H. Lawrence wrote the preface, and Good Ore MADELINE MASON 733 a recent volume of poems, "The Flea How Strong Is Russia? CRAIG THOMPSON 735 of Sodom." Calvinist Believer in Zion MORROE BERGER 735 MADELINE MASON has contributed critiques, poems and short stories to the Saturday Review of Literature, Coronet Poem and other magazines. Among her books The Unregimented Heart E. MERRILL ROOT 735 are "Hill Fragments" and "Riding for Texas." CRAIG THOMPSON is a free-lance The :f'reeman is published fortnightly. Publication Ofhce, Orange, Conn. Editorial writer who contributes primarily to the and General Offices, 240 Madison Avenue, New York 16, N. Y. Copyrighted in Saturday Evening Post and Colliers. the United States, 1951, by The Freeman Magazine, Inc. John Chamberlain, For his latest book, "The Police State," President,' Henry Hazlitt, Vice President; Suzanne La Follette, Secretary; Alfred Kohlberg, Treasurer. he drew on his experience as Time Application pending for second class entry at the Post Office at Orange, Conn. bureau chief in Moscow, 1945-47. Rates: Twenty-five cents the copy; five dollars a year in the United States, nine dollars for two years,' six dollars a year elsewhere. Forthcoming The editors can not be responsible for manuscripts submitted but if return postag;e is enclosed they will endeavor to see that manuscripts rejected are Promptly returned. William Henry Chamberlin, who recently It is not to be understood that articles signed with a name, pseudonym, or initials returned from Europe, has written n@cessarily represent ·.the .. 0Pinion. ·of ··the.editors, ·.. either.as ·to"sub$tance .or style. They are ;rinted because, in the editors' judgment, they" are intrinsically worth "Winning Germany for the West" for reading. our next issue. t e NEW Y'ORK, MONDAY, AUGUST 13, 1951 M Mickey Cohen on a roundabout income-tax rap, THE FORTNIGHT not for gangsterism. The method is Acheson's The reversals and contradictions in our Korean own method; it is precisely what we most object policy have now become completely bewildering. to in Acheson's own cast of character and habit President Truman publicly announces that the of mind. Communists "have no respect for signed treaties or their given word." Yet at the moment he was speak­ The State Department finally got so mad that it is ing our negotiators were trying desperately to get now requiring Soviet diplomats to meet the same re­ from the Communists just such a worthless "given quirements for a driver's license here as any A,mer­ word." The Army announces that the "cease-fire" ican must. What finally made it so angry was the negotiations are simply being used by the Chinese following situation, as described by Anthony Leviero Communists to build up their forces for another in the New York Times: attack. Yet we continue the negotiations while per­ mitting this build-up. Our military leaders ten us In Moscow an American attache has to be able that we must not let down our guard for a mo­ to disassemble and assemble an automobile engine ment. Then they admit that they slowed up their and be able to name every part and describe its drive in Korea, because of the present negotiations, function in order to qualify for a license. The re­ sult has been that all but one of the American when we already had the foe on the run. Our lead­ Embassy automobiles have to be driven by Rus­ ers have been extre!mely solicitous at every point sians and it is assumed the drivers are secret that we should say or do nothing that would i,m­ police who shadow all Americans. peril the "cease-fire" negotiations by causing the Chinese Communists to lose face. By doing this we How can Stalin have any respect for a country ourselves have lost tremendous face. whose diplomatic representatives and State Depart­ ment will 'Submit to such cynically humiliating con­ The climax comes from Secretary Marshall. Ig­ ditions? And exactly what do we achieve, except noring his own disastrous record in China, and the humiliation and loss of face, by maintaining diplo­ present almost hysterical anxiety of his own group matic relations under such conditions? to make a worthless agreement with the Com­ munists, he announces that he is ashamed of the Jean Cattier, the international banker who was American people. "It is unthinkable to ,me," he says, chief of the American ECA mission in Frankfurt, "that the American people would react as they have Germany, and economic adviser to High Commis­ to one Soviet statement. It is very sad." Perhaps sioner John J. McCloy, recently retired from his the saddest thing of all is that the American job with a blast directed at Germany's Chancellor people should tolerate 'Such arrogance from an ap­ Konrad Adenauer for fostering a free enterprise pointed official who has started to confuse himself economy. That's one for the scrapbook kept by with God. Count Screwloose of Toulouse, the comic strip character who preferred the sanity of the insane As we go to press, some Republicans in the House asylum to the insanity of the outside "sane" of Representatives have failed in their bid to get world. The incongruity of an American criticizing rid of Secretary of State Dean Acheson by cut­ Adenauer for championing free enterprise has ting off his· salary. We are glad they failed. We not been lost on the Germans. It is this sort of yield to no man in the intensity of our desire to thing that makes foreigners believe that America get rid of Acheson, but we can not say that we stands for nothing in the world of ideals, prin­ approve of trying to chop him down by indirec­ ciples, ideology or philosophy. No wonder the tion. It's too much like getting Al Capone or Voice of America is so feeble; the brutal truth AUGUST 13, 1951 707 is that America these days has nothing specifi­ Yankee contrariness, and they recommend that cally American to say. "State and local governments should exploit all Federal programs that contribute toward the im­ So now we know that in 1938, when he was editor provement of the New England economy and im­ of Pacific Affairs (the magazine of the Instiltute of prove the standard of living in the area"-this on Pacific Relations), Professor Owen Lattimore was. the ground that the Federal government anyhow indiscreet enough to write a letter to Edward C. is taking more out of New England than it P\lts Carter, the Institute's secretary-general, describing back, and if New England does not grab her the line that the IPR ought to follow. Mr. Lattimore share of grants-in-aid and other benefits, com­ wrote: petitive regions will get it. Regional studies like this, ~aid the President, will aid "planning for I think you are pretty cagey in turning over so much of the China section of the enquiry to the economic growth and progress of the nation." Asiaticus, Han-seng and Chi. They will bring out So grows the Tree of Life in the Welfare State. the absolutely essential radical aspects but can be Only the clinging fruit may flourish. depended on to do it with the right touch...