the DECEMBER 17, 1951 25 CENTS Europe Turns to Freedom . William Henry Chamberlin The Weapon of Taxation .••••.•.•••..•.. Towner Phelan Emmett Lavery's Strange Crusade ••••••.. Oliver Carlson The Moment of Decision .•..••.•.•.•.... George E. Sokolsky Bob Taft's Foreign Policy.••.••..••..•..• An Editorial Editors: J01hn Chamberlain • He1nry Hazlitt • Suzanne La Follette PUBLISHED FORTNIGHTLY FIVE DOLLARS A YEAR theFREEMAN A WORD ABOUT with which is. combined the ma,gazine, PLAIN TALK OUR Editors, JOHN CHAMBERLAIN HENRY HAZLITT CONTRIBUTORS Managing Editor, SUZANNE LAFOLLETTE Business Manager, KURT LASSEN DECEMBER 17, 1951 WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN'S report on Europe's economic recovery through free enterprise is based on his observa­ CONTENTS VOL. 2-NO. 6 tions during three visits-in 1946, 1949 and 1951. OLIVER CARLSON'S most recent article in the Freeman was "Hollywood's Pre­ Editorials mature Americans" (October 8). His earlier "What Really Happened in Pasa­ The Fortnight............................... 163 dena?" (July 30) created nationwide Bob Taft's Foreign Policy. .................. .. 165 interest. Truman's Second Bankruptcy................. 166 TOWNER PHELAN, Vice President of Primer for Appointees ALEX L. HILLMAN 167 the St. Louis Union Trust Company, is Europe Turns to Freedom well known to our readers. His latest WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN 169 article was "Controls Won't Stop Infla­ This is What They Said " .. .. .. .. .. .. 172 tion" (November 19). ALICE WIDENER adds another presen­ Emmett Lavery's Strange Crusade OLIVER CARLSON 173 tation of Stalin's statements on Soviet The Weapon of Taxation TOWNER PHELAN 175 policy to her "What Every Secretary of Pattern for Confession ALICE WIDENER 178 State Should Know" (the Freeman, The Moment of Decision GEORGE E. SOKOLSKY 180 July 2). Mrs. Widener has written radio What's Happening to Our features and magazine articles. Magazine Fiction? FRANCES BECK 181 GEORGE E. SOKOLSKY, popular news­ From Our Readers. .............................. .. 183 paper columnist and radio commentator, has contributed several articles to our Books columns; also the excerpts on the be­ trayal of China from the MacArthur A Reviewer's Notebook JOHN CHAMBERLAIN 185 Hearings, "Out of Their Own Mouths" The Almighty Atom ROBIN BEACH 186 (Section II, September 24). Laurels for Borrowers EDWARD DAHLBERG 187 FRANCES BECK is an inveterate reader The Lost Spain RALPH DE TOLEDANO 190 of fiction and occasionally writes it. She lives in Oklahoma. Scarecrow and Swan PARKER TYLER 190 ROBIN BEACH, electrical ,engineer and An "Old Party" Talks EDWIN CLARK 191 author of "The Story of Electricity and Magnetism," has contributed book re­ Poem views to technical journals. Formerly head of the Engineering Department at Non-Partisan SJANNA SOLUM 183 Brooklyn Polytechnic, he now heads his own consulting firm. PARKER TYLER, a frequent contributor to the literary quarterlies, is the author The Freeman is published fortnightly. Publication ORice, Orange, Conn. Editorial of "Hollywood Hallucination" and two and General Offices, 240 Madison Avenue, New York 16, N. Y. Copyrighted in other books on film subjects. the United States, 1951, by the Freeman Magazine, Inc. 10hn Chamberlain, President; Henry Hazlitt, Vice President; Suzanne La Follette, Secretary; Alfred Kohlberg, Treasurer. Forthcoming Entered as second class matter at the Post Office at Orange, Conn.. Rates: Twenty­ In early issues we shall publish an ap­ five cents the copy; five dollars a year in the United States, nine dollars for two years; siX' dollars a year elsewhere. praisal of Sumner Welles by Forrest Davis; a discussion of the Socialist The editors can not be responsible for manuscripts submitted but if return postage is enclosed they will endeavor to see that manuscripts rejected are promptly returned. menace to our ciVilization, by George It i.r not to be understood that articles signed with a name, pseudonym, or initials Winder; and an article by Louis Brom­ necessarily represent the opinion of the editors, either as to substance or style. field on the degradation of American They are printed because, in the editors' judgment, they are intrinsically worth reading. liberalism. ~u The Wilson H. Lee Co., Orange, Connecticut t e NEW YORK, M'O,NDAY, DEC'EMBER 17, 1951 THE F,ORTNIGHT there explain the shake-up in terms of economy, according to a dispatch in the New York Times, most of the officials affected lay the shake-up toa Just when one concludes that our truce negoti­ clash between the State Department and ECA over ators in Korea have made every blunder in the policy toward Austrian use of Marshall Plan funds book, they prove that still another can be made. and control of East-West trade through Austria. After nearly five months of negotiations it sud­ This bears out recent dispatches to the eff·ect that denly occurs to them that the Communists can and Europe swarms with representatives of U. S. probably will use an armistice to build up their agencies, busy reproducing in European capitals offensive power for ,a final push. But by raising this the confusion which causes Washington bureaucrats question so late in the proceedings, and when they -as one of them put it-to "levitate" instead of are apparently on the actual verge of ,a truce, our getting anywhere. If the Administration' is unable negotiators succeed in raising doubts about their or unwilling to de'fine a policy toward Europe and own sincerity. to ,see that all its ,agencies promote that policy, isn't it about time for Congress to take a hand? All this could have been avoided by the most After'all, it still has Constitutional power over the elementary precautions. All that was necessary was public purse. It could make a policy its'elf.by clearly a clear public statement by our government, last defining the purposes for which funds voted for July, before a single .session with the Communists, Europe are to be used. of the minimum terms on which we would agree to a truce. We could have said bluntly that unless the It is scarcely news that President Truman hates Communists agreed in advance to discuss details the press. But it came as news to us that the Ad­ only on the basis of such minimum terms it would ministration was within an inch of getting a be pointless to' enter into negotiations. The chief throttling hold on the finances of a free press reason we did not do this is that it would have during the closing minutes of the last session of looked too much like what General MacArthur had Congress. The legislative clause in question was been dismissed for proposing. contained in Senate 2170; it would have given the Administration's price-control czar full authority Better, we could have drafted our proposed truce over the size and allocation of the advertising terms in the form ofa final detailed document and budgets of private industry. This authority would then considered seriously just what such a docu­ have permitted the Administration to decide what ment would be worth even if we got the Communist constitutes "reasonable" advertising expenses, signature. Instead, President Truman announced and to exclude from the "cost of sales" any out­ that an agreement with the Communists is not worth lay deemed "unreasonable." The proposed legis­ the paper it is written on,and then ordered the lation, tucked in an "amendment" to an amend­ Army negotiators to act as if this were not true. ment, passed an absent-minded Senate by a 49 to And one reason why the Army commanders, in 21 vote. It would have passed in the House of turn, order what is in effect a cease-fire and then Repres~ntatives if John E. Lyle, Jr., of Corpus deny they hav,e ordered it, is that they are fran­ Christi, Texas, hadn't spotted the danger in the tically trying to follow the fluctuating but unac­ legislation to the whole concept of free speech. knowledged directions from the State Department Mr. Lyle, it seems to us, deserves an editorial in Washington. garland in every newspaper and magazine in the land. There are aspects of the removal of nine ECA officials in Austria which seem to invite Congres­ There is a drive on to compel city authorities to sional interest. Although high American officials put fluorine in drinking water. Fluorine, so the DECEMBER 17, 1951 163 dentists tell us, is good for children's teeth: it writing these days for the simple reason that it is hardens them in their formative stages and so impossible to earn a decent living at the trade. Mr. prevents decay. But there is also some fairly well­ Grattan hints that the public has sold off on writers authenticated evidence that fluorine, in dosages because, for the past generation at least, they have repeated over a long period of time, can cause had little clarity of vision; which is another way of hardening of the arteries and diseases of the arg;uing that they have had practically nothing to veins. The attempt to legislate political tampering say. That Mr. Grattan is on the track of something with the' reservoirs, then, turns out to have a significant is borne out by the current best-seller "class angle"-it would help a small class of soft­ lists. In recent weeks the two leaders on the fiction toothed juveniles and hurt a larger class of hard­ list have been Herman Wouk's "The Caine Mutiny" toothed adults. The moral for lovers of both free­ and Nicholas Monsarrat's "The ICruel Sea." The dom and common sense would seem to be this: let non-fiction leaders have been Rachel L. Carson's the doctors and dentists decide individual medical "The Sea Around Us" and Thor Heyerdahl's "Kon­ needs on an individual basis. We don't want to Tiki." All four of these books deal with the great die of hardening of the arteries just to give a salt wastes of the ocean.