DECLINE OF THE REPUBLIC

FEBRUARY 25, 1952 25 CENTS

DECLINE OF THE REPUBLICGaret Garrett

HERE COMES ANOTHER BUREAURobert E. C:o'ulson

CORRUPTION AS A CAMPAIGN ISSUEA. A. Imberman

BALONEY IN BEEF CONTROLSLew'is N:ordyke

HOW TO DEFEND FREE ENTERPRISEWalter Sulzibach

Editors: John C;hamiberlain -Henry HazHtt - Suzanne La Fo,lIette

PUBLISHED FORTNiIGHT'LY FIVE DOLLARS A YEAR

theFREEMANwith which is combined the magazine, PLAIN TALK

Editors JOHN CHAM'B,ERLAIN' HENRY HAZUTT

Managing Editor SUZANNE LA FOtLETTE

Business Manager KURT LASSEN

A W,ORDABOUT,OIURCONTRIBUTORS

Manners, Arts and Morals WILLIAM S. SCHLAMM 343

Books

A Reviewer's Notebook JOHN CHAMBERLAIN 345Our Enemy, the State:

ARe-Review CECIL PALMER 346Popular Frontism JAMES RORTY 347The Epic Falters ARTHUR KEMP 348Brazilian Panorama THOMAS G. BERGIN 350Married to Chicago ALIX DU POY 350The Great Adversary MICHAEL J. BERNSTEIN 351

The Freenlan is published fortnightly. Publication oRice, Orange, Conn. Editorialand General GRices, 240 Madison Avenue, New York 16, N. Y. Copyrighted inthe United States, 1952, by the Freeman Magazine, Inc. John Chamberlain,President; Henry Hazlitt, Vice President; Suzanne La Follette, Secretary; AlfredKohlberg, Treasurer.

Entrred as second class matter at the Post ORice at Orange, Conn.. Rates: Twentyfive cents the copy; five dollars 01 year in the United States, nine dollars for twoyears; six dollars a yea,r elsewhere.

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It is not to be understood that articles signed with a name, pseudonym, or initialsnecessarily represent the opinion of the editors, either as to substance or style.They are printed because. in the editors' judgment, they are intrinsically worthreading.

ROBERT E. COULSON has been Mayor ofWaukegan, Illinois, for three years,and is now a candidate for the office ofState Senator. He served as AssistantState's Attorney of Lake County in1940-41 and 1946-49. During the intervening five years he served with theCounter-Intelligence Corps in thiscountry and the Office of StrategicServices in Burma and China. MayorCoulson has lectured on juvenile delinquency, and an article of his on thissubject appeared in Harper's in 1948.

GARET GARRETT is a friequeu't contributor to the Freeman. His article is achapter from a forthcoming pamphlet,"Rise of Empire," to be published byCaxton Printers, Caldwell, Idaho.

A. A. IMBERMAN, who heads a publicrel'altions firm in Chic,ago, wrote "FreeEnterprise: The Worker's View" for theFreeman of October 8, 1951. H'e has contributed to Public Opinion Quarterly.

LEWIS NORDYKE,a Texas newspaperman, has reported on all phases of thecattle business for the past fifteenyears. His "Cattle Empire" was published in 1949, and he is now at workon another book on historical phasesof the cattle industry.

WALTER SULZBACH contributed an article on the European Payments Unionto the Freeman of June 18, 1951. He isa writer and lecturer on economics andpolitical science, and formerly heldprofessorships in economics at theUniversity of Frankfurt and the Claremont Graduate School in California.

CECIL PALMER, noted British publisher, author and lecturer, was afounder and executive officer of the Society of Individualists. His suddendeath on January 18 was a loss to thecause of anti-Statism. Mr. Palmer'smost recent book, "The British Socialist Illfare State," is scheduled forspring publication in this country.

MICHAEL J. BERNSTEIN is an attorneywho was formerly managing editor ofthe Literary World. He has contributedto Land and Freedom and other SingleTax publications.

VOL. 2-NO.ll

FEBRUARY 25/ 1952

CONTENTS

Editorials

The For,tnight............................... 323George F. I(ennan: Policy-Guesser............ 325The Drastic 1\1:1'. Morris...................... 326Religion and the Schools..................... 327MSA-A Second Chance? .. .. .. .. .. . .. .. .. ... 328

H,e~e Gomes ,a Bure,au RoBERT E. COULSON 329Decline of the American Republic GARET GARRETT 331Corruption asa Campaign Issue A. A. IMBERMAN 333Baloney in Beef Controls LEWIS NORDYKE 336T'hi,s Is What They Said. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 338Let's Ostracize Communists EUGENE LYONS 339How To Defend Free Enterprise WALTER SULZBACH 340From Our Readers................................. 342

~ II The Wilson H. Lee Co.• Cb''\UIe. Connecticut

t eNEW YORK, M'ONDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1952

THE FOIRTNIGHTThe Administration and the Europe-firsters hadno stomach for reviving the great debate of a yearago, and their strategy in dealing with formerPresident Herbert Hoover's powerful statement ofJanuary 27 was to ignore his arguments and factsand to try to dismiss him as a military amateur.But they received a jolt when Mr. Hoover published the messages of approval he had receivedfrom a formidable list of generals, admirals andformer ambassadors.

Meanwhile there has been no real answer to thefacts that Mr. Hoover cited. The French have cutdown their promise of fifteen divisions at theend of 1952, made a year ago, to ten. The Germancontribution is still on paper. The British haveannounced that their four divisions on the conti...nent will not be a part of the European army, butwill only "cooperate." "In sum, the only substantial additions to West Europe ground armies during the two years past have been the Americandivisions we have sent over."

Aside from American and British divisions, Mr.Hoover continued, "it would be difficult to findten battle-worthy divisions in the Western European Army today." Even if the dream of a sixtydivision army is realized two or three years fromnow, it would compare with over 200 equippeddivisions which these same western Europeannations placed in the field within sixty days afterthe outbreak of each of the World Wars. Andagainst our proposed sixty divisions we are toldthat the Communist armies comprise 300 divisions.General Eisenhower himself now concedes thatNATO "is little more than a skeleton."

As Mr. Hoover has summed it up, this is not acalculated risk but a calculated Dunquerque.When we add that the western European nationsare contributing less than 10 per cent of the totalmilitary expenditures of NATO, is not surprisingthat Mr. Hoover thinks it time we told our westernEuropean friends "certain things in no uncertain

terms." Among them are that "ground armies areEurope's own sole problem" on the European continent, and that prior to actual war, certainly,the limit of our aid should be "deterrent air andsea power and munitions."

As for Korea, as Mr. Hoover points out, duringthe past year "the United Nations vetoed GeneralMacArthur's policies of destroying the Chineseair sanctuary in Manchuria and the employmentof Chiang Kai-shek's armies to save Americanlives. Accordingly, we denied ourselves victory."In our truce negotiations, "we have retreated fromthe original purpose of unity and independencefor Korea to an appeasement idea of a division ofKorea about where it was before."

The former President's summary reminds us of aprophetic letter we received on July 20 last, whenthe truce negotiations had been on for only aboutten days. The letter was from a former high official of the State Department. He wrote: "It wasblatantly apparent that the Malik speech couldmean only one of two things: either the Communists had to have a cease-fire or they wereplanning a trick. In either event, our positionshould have been that they were the ones seekingthe cease-fire and not we, and that, correspondingly, we would lay down the terms and conditionsto be met. In short, we should have taken a toughstand. Instead, we had Ridgway send out more or

'less hysterical appeals over the radio every otherminute begging for a cease-fire, then instructedhim to do nothing which would cause the Communists to lose face, with the result that we losttremendous face and were terribly humiliated."After seven months of negotiations none of thisneeds to be changed.

People who believe there has been somethingamiss with the conduct of American foreign policy under the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations have had a tough ten years. They have argued themselves blue in the face, they have marshaled endless displays of excellent logic, yet ithas often seemed as though they were speaking

FE'BRUARY 25, 1952 323

into a soundless void. During the past two weeks,however, it has begun to look as though a decadeof pertinacity has not been entirely in vain. Forone thing, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations unanimously agreed to repudiate the Yaltaprovision which handed certain Japanese islandsto the Russians. For another, 55 Senators haveproposed a Constitutional Amendment designedto keep slipshod "international" covenants of thetype consistently dreamed up by the UN fromoverriding the basic law of the land. It may bethe counsel of realism to doubt the durability ofsuch evidences of returning sanity, particularlyin view of the fact that Senator Taft seems to bemaking no headway in his efforts to protect theConstitutional right of Congress to limit the useof American troops abroad. However, as congenital optimists we can hardly forebear to let out ajoyous squeak. Some day we hope to be able tomake it a whoop.

There are, we believe, some 40,000 Americanwomen and children in Germany, the families ofour occupying forces and officials there. Noweither the Administration believes that a Russianattack on Europe is imminent, or it does not. If itdoes not believe that a Russian attack on Europeis really imminent, what is its excuse for the enormous military expenditures for which it is nowasking, for the more than $10,000,000,000 of foreign aid that it now wishes to provide, mainly inEurope, and for its pledges of even greater American land forces in Europe? If the Administrationdoes believe that a Russian attack on Europe isimminent, why does it keep these Americanwomen and children in jeopardy?

Those Floridians who have taken to beating andshooting Negroes they don't happen to like or agreewith may derive some comfort from the fact thatthey are behaving in the way that Joe Stalin andVishinsky think is typically American. They maybe sure that every poor mouzhik behind the IronCurtain will hear about their exploits.

Judge Thomas F. Murphy, a competent investigator, was independent enough to comprehend theuses to which his reputation would be put if heagreed to be President Truman's clean-up man.So he asked to be excused. A Democrat of longstanding, he did not propose to bail Mr. Trumanout with his high personal reputation; nor didhe want to be a party to an attack on Congressional prerogatives and duties. No""v Mr. NewboldMorris, who has every citizen's inalienable rightto call himself a Republican, has come to PresidentTruman's aid. Mr. Morris's special competenceas an investigator is an unknown quantity, exceptthat his investigation of various subversive organizations whose activities he has supported inthe past was, to put it mildly, a shockinglyamateurish job. Senator Mundt was unable tofind any evidence that Mr. Morris has ever re-

324 the FREE~N

pented his cavalier endorsement of four groupslisted as subversive by the U. S. Attorney General("American Committee for Yugoslav Relief," "Action Committee to Free Spain Now," "AmericanYouth Conference" and "Lawyers Committee forthe American League for Peace and Democracy").

Representative Potter and Senator Mundt, confident that naivete rather than subversive intentmade Mr. Morris participate in such activities, advanced the neat point that the same naivete surelywould disqualify him for a job which, if anything,requires the hardest-boiled worldliness combinedwith an unerring instinct for right and wrong. Wewould like to expand that estimate. Even if Mr.Morris had never fallen for the peculiar charmsof New York's Communists, a man so patently incapable of perceiving the tie':'up between politicsand his surprise appointment would seem a poorbet for untieing the much more subtly strungknots between politics and corruption. Merely byaccepting such an appointment a few months before election, Mr. Morris, Republican or not, seemsto be casting suspicion on his technical fitness forthe job. However, we certainly hope we are wrong.

In the fifth of a series of articles on the effect ofwar mobilization, Benjamin Fine, education editorof the New York Times, on January 18, found anunique horror with which to scarify "progressive" educators. A Citizens School Committee inLos Angeles, it seems, has adopted a resolutionfavoring: 1) Emphasis on the teaching of spelling,English grammar, clear handwriting, elementaryarithmetic, geography, history and literature. 2)More discipline in the classroom. 3) The use ofgrading marks and report cards. 4) Tests for promotion at the close of each term. "If put intopractice," says Mr. Fine, "the above suggestionswill turn the educational clock back a good halfcentury." We are still shuddering.

Recently, on a trip outside the continental limitsof the United States, we heard some grumblingabout the treatment of dogs in America. It seemsthat American dogs have it too good! Some 550million dollars are lavished on America's 22 million dog population to carry it from cradle togravee Even the mutts in the back alleys get anoccasional fat marrow bone. Of the huge amountof money spent on American dogs, some 200 million dollars go for pasteurized, homogenized andvitaminized multi-flavored dog foods. Oh, to be adog in America! But just try to tell a Socialistthat a dog's life under capitalism is often betterthan a human being's life· under socialism andsee what it gets you. The look the Socialist willgive you shouldn't happen to a dog.

We can't vouch for it, but an informant tells usthat the philosophy of the Pentagon about Koreacan be summed up as follows: "It's true it isn'ta good war, but it's better than no war at all."

George F. Kennan: Policy-Guesser

MR. GEORGE F. KENNAN, who has beennominated as Ambassador to the USSR, is

I regarded by official Washington and manynewspaper columnists and editors with a respectapproaching reverence. He is the author of the"containment" policy (which is costing us billionsof dollars, thousands of casualties and a calamitous loss of prestige, and containing Soviet expansion with all the effectiveness of a sieve), andhe is said to be the American diplomat who morethan any other understands the Soviet mind andthe designs of the Kremlin.

With all due respect to Mr. Kennan, we do notfind in his statements on foreign policy any signof ~reater awareness of the Kremlin's strategyin its war against the West, than in the statements of Dean Acheson or any other State Department official. There is no such sign in his recent book, "American Foreign Policy, 1900-1950."And the misgivings inspired by this book (andthe wasteful and ineffectual "containment policy") are only deepened by the appearance ofPart V of the McCarran Committee hearings.

This volume contains the official transcript ofthe secret round table discussion at the State Department in 1949, concerning which Mr. HaroldStassen testified before the Committee. Mr. Kennan, then Director of the Department's ForeignPolicy Planning Committee, "briefed" that conference on what, he said, "seems to us to be therelationship between the problem of China . . .and our general foreign policy."

Ignoring the all-important fact that Americanpolicy had delivered Chinese nationalism into thehands of the Communists, Mr. Kennan told theconference that the attachment of Europeancountries to national independence and their repugnance to "the sort of thing that was beingthrust upon countries by the Russians," hadenabled our assistance to Europe to be of "realpolitical value." But, he said,

there is also the fact that it does seem to us a moreserious prospect that the Russians should get holdof Europe from the sheer military standpoint ofnational security than it does that they should gethold of China and Asia.

Mr. Kennan was also of the opinion that SovietRussia could do little for China-the logic of itssituation, he .thought, indicated that such resources as it could spare would go to building upthe Soviet Far East. Indeed, he quoted Stalin'sanswer to the question what Russia was going togive to China when the war was over:

"What the hell do you think we can give to China?We have a hundred cities of our own to build inthe Soviet Far East. If anybody is going to giveanything to the Far E'ast I think it's you." And Ithink he was speaking quite sincerely.

Unfortunately for Mr. Kennan's claim to expertness on Soviet designs, the Korean war hastaught us what Stalin was prepared to give toChina, namely: arms. It has also made a mockeryof his appraisal of the Soviet concept of the military role of a Communist China:

I think militarily they do not look to the Chinesefor very much except on a local scale. That is, I'would say that if you were probably able to takethem apart in the minds of people in the Kremlinon this subject you would find that the role theyallotted in their minds to the Chinese Communistmilitary forces was one of assuring the exclusionof ourselves and other imperialist [sic] elementsfrom those areas contiguous to the borders of theSoviet Union and that they would be relying stillbasically on the Red Army for their security. Imean they would allot a sort of a role of provincial legionnaires to the Chinese Communist forcesin their minds and not a major role. I doubt thatthey would want them to become, even if theycould, a nlajor military power.

Here it may be remarked that the well-knownforeign correspondent, Karl von Wiegand, onlyrecently reported on reliable authority that Soviet Russia is planning the complete militarization of Communist China, with the objective ofbuilding up an army of twenty million men.

It is the tragedy of the Western world that itsofficial experts on foreign policy seem unable orunwilling to read. Had they read "Mein Kampf,"they might have averted the most disastrous warin history. They are now depending on suchguesses as Mr. Kennan's concerning Soviet designs, instead of the Soviet blueprint for worldconquest which was published in the mid-twentiesand has already been in large measure carriedout. Had Mr. Kennan only taken the trouble toread the blueprint, he could have told his listenersthat it has been the declared Soviet intention fora quarter-century to destroy the West throughthe conquest of Asia. This strategy was clearlyand publicly defined before 1928 in Stalin's book,"Marxism and the National and Colonial Questions" (New York: International Publishers),from which Mrs. Alice Widener has twice quotedin these pages. On page 148 of that book, Stalinsaid:

Two things are possible: either we succeed in stirring up and revolutionizing the far im.perialistrear-the colonial and semi-colonial countries ofthe East-and thereby hasten the fall of capitalism, or we muff it, and thereby ... weaken theforce of our movement. . . . The road to the victory of the revolution in the West lies through arevolutionary alliance with the liberation movement of the colonies and dependent countries. . . .

The pamphlet, "China in Revolution," fromwhich Mrs. Widener has also quoted, contains a

FEBRUARY 25, 1952 325

speech delivered by Stalin on November 30, 1926,in which he clearly stated the military role allotted to China "in the minds of the people in theKremlin" :

... military questions in China are ... the mostimportant factor in the Chinese Revolution. TheCommunists must, with this objective in view,study militarism ... the future revolutionarypower in China will have the advantage that itwill be an anti-imperialist power ... every advance of this power is a blow aimed at 'worldimperialism [Le. the West] and is therefore astroke in favor of the revolutionary \vorld movement.

That same pamphlet contains a speech byDmitri Manuilsky, now UN delegate of the socalled Ukrainian Republic, who said, among otherthings:

... The American imperialists ... are bound tomiscalculate because they overlook the historicalrole which China is called upon to play in Asiaand on the Pacific.... Liberated China will become the magnet for all the peoples . . . who inhabit the Philippines, Indonesia, and the numerousislands of the Pacific: it will become a menacingthreat for the capitalist world of three continents.China must inevitably clash with American imperialism. . . . Revolutionary China . . . can become, in alliance with the USSR, the greatestworld factor in the Far East....

We leave it to our readers whether history hasborne out the declared intentions of the Sovietleaders or the guesses of Mr. Kennan. It is verylate-American policy-makers may have miscalculated too long-but we think Mr. Kennan, before he goes to Moscow, ought to brush up onwhat the Soviet leaders have said, not in conferences with Western "imperialists," but in theirpublished manuals for their own imperialist revolutionary movement.

The Drastic Mr. MorrisTHOUGH Mr. Trum,an had publicly warned of

forthcoming drastic developments in hispromised clean-up of governmental misfits,·· theappointment of Mr. Newbold Morris for the jobhas caught us entirely unprepared. That the operation requires boldness will be readily grantedby anyone who knows the intricacies of the furand freezer business. But we wonder if Mr. Truman is not overdoing it.

Once Judge Thomas Murphy had stood him- up,Mr. Truman gre-w understandably desperate aboutarranging a date with an attractive independent,any attractive independent, willing to dance withhim the clean-up quadrille. But the longer hewaited the clearer it became that the affair wouldbe stiffly formal and anything but fun: The dancesteps were rigidly prearranged (the Attorney General, who himself has to be investigated, contributes the choreography), and the timing wasatrociously obvious (to install that sort of "in-

326 the FREEMAN

vestigation" in an election year is tantamount tosuppressing an inconvenient campaign issue). Soobjectionable, in fact, does the strategy behindthe Morris appointment look to us that we proposeto discuss it here without reference to his personality, with which we deal separately on page324 of this issue.

The most questionable aspect of the stratagemis its axiomatic principle: the contention that appointed special investigators are bound to do abetter job than Congress. That this contention isso axiomatically accepted by the public, or ratherby the press, speaks for the success of the defamation campaign the same press has for yearsbeen aiming at Congress. Our Constitutional system of checks and balances leaves no possibledoubt that a meticulous supervision of the executive branch is not so much a Congressional prerogative as an ineluctable Congressional duty.And notwithstanding the editorial insinuations ofjournalists engaged in the fashionable Congressbaiting, the investigatory achievements of the lasttwo Congresses have been, on the whole, reallymagnificent.

There exist, of course, a few famous precedentsof investigations conducted by special citizens'commissions rather than Congress. But significantly, each of these precedents (and they wereimmeasurably rarer than the public is made tobelieve these days) occurred when the investigated Administration was so completely in controlof a friendly Congress that a Congressional investigation might have smelled of leniency, if not ofvlhitewash. By the same token, whenever Congressrecovered the politely tense relations with theChief Executive which so peculiarly, and advantageously, fit our political system, it dischargedits investigatory duties under its own steam andto the ultimate satisfaction of all.

And no wonder. In Constitutional theory as wellas in political practice, the investigatory powersof Congress are of course clearly superior to thoseof any other body, appointed or otherwise. For,while Congress can always hire competent talentfor intricately technical scrutinies, even the mostindependent technicians will, as a rule, lack theinexorable authority of a Congress which knowsand uses its powers. In our form of governmentno other process of political fact-finding canmatch the validity of a Congressional investigation-provided, of course, the- executive branchdoes not willfully sabotage it. For, if the Presidentwants to prevent Congress from getting the facts,he is the one man in Creation who can do so.

And this is precisely the case of Mr. Truman.Sworn to be the foremost defender of the Constitution, the incumbent President has never misseda chance to undermine the nation's confidence inCongress. For rather transparent reasons of hisOvVl1, Mr. Truman has always been particularlyanxious to obstruct Congressional inquiries intogovernmental failures-by "classifying" impor-

tant evidence, under the discriminatory powers ofhis office, in order to withhold it from Congressional scrutiny; by silencing relevant witnessesamong Federal employees with the gag of officediscipline; and by many another technique available to a willful President. The ruse he relied onmost in the area of Federal corruption was, fromthe start, the scheme of sidetracking the wholeinvestigation by thro,ving it to appointed specialinvestigators. In this Mr. Truman has been regrettably helped by a myopic press which, in itsstrange quarrel with Congress, is inclined to findmythical merits in appointed investigatory commissions.

What makes the stratagem additionally suspectis Mr. Truman's obvious intent to blanket the discussion of a most pertinent campaign issue for thecrucial months preceding the election. Once thosefamously judicious "independent" investigatorshave begun their search, which, for quite a fewmonths, ·will of necessity remain invisible and inaudible to the public, he apparently figures he cancloak his understandable desire for silence withthe seemingly dignified plea that their findingsmust not be prejudged by public disclosure. Andif by a stroke of good luck, helped a bit by Executive finagling, the "independent" investigatorswere to emerge with their report not before nextNovember, the hottest political issue would havebeen taken out of politics-no mean achievementeven for a politician of Mr. Truman's extraordinary cunning.

Religion and the Schools'

THE New York State Board of Regents has proposed a program for daily prayer and for the

intensification of religious attitudes in the publicschools. The proposal has brought Dr. WilliamHeard Kilpatrick, the eminent philosopher ofProgressive education, to a provocative boil. In aletter to the New York Times Dr. KHprutrick objects to the Regents' idea as something that"promises to be hurtfully divisive among religiousgroups while it destructively threatens the basicAmerican doctrine of the separation of churchand state."

The main point of Dr. Kilpatrick's letter issomething that calls for both serious discussionand a wary tread. For it is perfectly true that anyelaborate religious program imposed on the public schools by a majority of the population mightinvolve a disastrous slur on the rights of the minority. It can be argued with cogency that noBuddhist should be taxed to put a Protestant Christian in charge of the religious "intensification"of a Buddhist child. Pursued to its logical conclusion, of course, the question of separation ofchurch and state rays out into the equally basicquestion of separation of school and state. Schooling implies learning to discriminate between

values, which brings one quickly into the area ofphilosophy and religion. This, however, is not apoint to be argued here. For better or worse, theUnited States has a long tradition of "free compulsory" public education, and the tradition isnot going to be uprooted overnight. Since theAmerican school system is obviously here to stayfor a while, the practical problem is how to makethe public school student aware of the claims ofreligion without setting Catholic against Protestant, Baptist against Unitarian, Deist againstFundamentalist, or agnostic against believer.

Our own proposal in this matter is simple: letthe public school authorities set ten minutes asideeach day for silent meditation. The ten minuteperiod might, of course, be utilized for daydreaming or the plotting of mischief by a certain typeof child. To forestall or at least to minimize thispossible eventuality, parents of school childrenshould be asked to help determine the use andcontent of the period of silent meditation by serious preliminary discussion with the child at home.

A second part of our proposed solution of aknotty problem is this : let the study of Biblicalliterature be made mandatory in the public schoolsas a practical matter of historical orientation,just as a study of American history is now mandatory. A study of Old and New Testaments canbe justified even to agnostics, for no one canunderstand the origins of Western values in general or the American political system in particular without some knowledge of Biblical scripture.The Western view of man, whether Catholic orProtestant, is a derivative from the gospels, andno child in a Western school should escape exposure to the literature which is at the root of hishistorical being.

Our ideas about silent meditation and the compulsory teaching of Biblical literature as part ofthe Western tradition could hardly be objected toby Dr. Kilpatrick on philosophical grounds. Afterall, we are not insisting on "inculcation"; the agnostic student could utilize the period of meditation to reflect upon the wonders of science or thecolor of the autumn leaves. And the student ofBiblical literature would be free to reject theidea of the divinity of Christ if his parents hadso conditioned his mind.

It might be a problem, of course, to win Dr.Kilpatrick to the idea of presenting any course ona compulsory basis. As a student of the learningprocess, Dr. Kilpatrick has discovered that noone can really learn anything that he is not inwardly prepared to accept. There is a certainshrewdness to this observation. The trouble withthe more doctrinaire type of Progressive educator,however, is that he discounts the role of trainedrepetition in providing students with the tools, asdistinct from the meaningful content, of education. Dr. Kilpatrick argues that mere repetitionin school of the· daily pledge of allegiance to theflag of the American Republic is not preciselycalculated to instil either patriotism or the rever-

FEBRUARY 25, 1952 327

ence for the Creator that is mentioned in theliterature of the Founding Fathers.

Says Dr. Kilpatrick:

Instead of "I pledge allegiance" we find the children writing: "I pejur legons," "I plaig alegins,""I pledge a legion," "I pledge the Legen to theflag." Instead of "to the Republic for which itstands" we find: "to the Republicans," "to publicfor witches stand," "to the republic for Rich canstands." Instead of "one nation indivisible" wefind "one country invisable," "one country inavisable," "one nason in a fesible." Instead of "libertyand justice" they write: "with liberty and jesters,""off liberty just for all," "with liberty and jeststraws."

And Dr. Kilpatrick goes on to mention the boywho included among the Ten Commandments "Iam the Lord thy God in vain."

Dr. Kilpatrick's collection of student malapropisms and boners is most amusing. But theparent who has children of school age might beforgiven if he were to turn the joke against Dr.Kilpatrick. "If Dr. Kilpatrick's samples are representative of student spelling," so .the parentmight say, "then what in the devil is the matterwith modern education?" Has a generation ofDeweyism and Kilpatrickism resulted in nothingbetter than a pupil who is willing to "pledge thelegion," or to insist on "jest straws" when it isjustice that is needed?

Surely something is amiss somewhere. Eitherwe have produced a generation of school teacherswho habitually slur the English tongue, or wehave turned out a generation of students whon~ed exposure to a simple daily drill in spelling.

It may be true that no pupil will get verymuch out of an Oath of Allegiance to the flag ifhe is not "inwardly prepared" to accept it. But itoccurs to us that if the pupil were to be drilledin spelling out the pledge of allegiance eachmorning, as part of the process of mastering someof the basic tools of writing, "inward preparation"for the love of one's country might follow eventually as an uncalculated byproduct of a disciplined approach to one of the Three R's.

MSA-A Second Ch,ance?'

MARSHALL Plan Aid, alias ECA, has belen officially pronounced dead by a special coroner,

Ambassador William H. Draper, Jr., on his recentarrival in Paris. Mr. Draper, an administrator ofrare integrity and considerable ability, was dispatched to Europe to inspire a new chapter ofAmerican interference in European affairs-theactivities of the Mutual Security Agency. Andthis, we should like to think, may give the United'States a second chance to inject a modicum ofsanity into its relations with the Old World.

The late ECA, wholly apart from its questionable economic results, was an unmitigated politi..

328 the FREEMAN

cal failure. As an attempt at purchasing politicalfriendship Marshall Aid was an unparalleled flop-not because there were any strings attached toit, but because there were none: far from beingswept off their feet by such an avalanche of generosity, Europeans never stopped suspecting agift of fifteen billion dollars offered without anydemand for compensation.

The sane course, and the only one understand-·able to the hardheaded denizens of the cynicalOld World, would have been to extend our aid onan honest and strict take-it-or-Ieave-it basisavailable to anyone, but only to anyone, who was\villing to embrace, together with the Americanbillions, those fundamental economic principlesTvvhich had made such a sizeable gift possible inthe first place. Instead, ECA (which soon founditself staffed with all those Keynesians, NewDealers and One-Worlders whom the outbreak ofpeace had rendered unemployable at home) administered its funds as if the American taxpayer,in a fit of lunacy, had decided to finance every lastEuropean scheme of "economic and social reform." ECA, more truly than the popular vote ofwar-exhausted and confused Europeans, was responsible for the survival of crackpot governments which have retarded Europe's organic rehabilitation by several crucial years: they alllived on gratuitously granted ECA billions.

The Mutual Security Act, by which Congresshas for the first time defined the purpose ofAmerican aid to Europe, could at last stop thatfools' merry-go-round. Additional American aid toforeign countries will be given, so states the preamble of the Act, only "to strengthen the mutualsecurity and individual and collective defenses ofthe free world, and to develop their resources inthe interest of their security and independenceand the national interests of the United States."This is clear and cleansing language. If Congresshad shaken off Mr. Acheson's reins a few yearssooner, and had beaten such excellent sense intothe ECA boys while some of the fifteen billionswere still around, the free world might have beenspared a few precious years of crippling crisis.

These years, of course, are irretrievably lost.But Congress at last has learned the lesson, andby its sage action may have purchased for thiscountry that rare thing-a second chance. Fromhere on, nothing but brazen contempt for the lawof the land could make our representatives abroadcontinue the discredited policies of ECA. Fromhere on, the newly established MSA is under theunmistakable mandate to grant American aid onlyto friends of the United States, and to deny itunequivocally whenever an applicant rejects theunequivocal conditions of any future Americangift. MSA"s new European boss can be trusted toabide by the Act's explicit intent. But the qualityof his success will depend on the speed with whichhe can cure his operating staff of the malignantECA traditions..

Here Comes a BureauBy RO,BERT E,. COULSON

Does a costly Federal Bureau, planning for civiliancomfort in case of bombing attacks, promise a realcivil defense? Mr. Coulson, who is the Mayor ofWaukegan, Illinois, thinks not. In this article h~

tells what civil defense is at present, and what itshould be.

ITHIN the last two years a new governmentactivity has purchased its first thousandtypewriters and employed the first thousand

members of its staff. Almost unnoticed, it has obtained authoriity to tax and spend several hundredmillion dollars annually in every city and state andin its national office. Its leaders admit that this isonly the beginning.

No one seems to be greatly interested in this activity as a part of the bureaucracy. We complainof the cost and size of gov,ernment, and in our economy drives we try to whittle away at the bignesswhich even now threatens to engulf us. Meanwhilethe new program has dev'eloped without any criticism or evaluation. In another year it will have avested interest in our tax dollars, and it will behere to stay. The offices are being rented, the enlployeesare being classified, and 'the mimeographmachines are rolling. The camel has his nose underthe tent.

Like all other bureaus, this one began as a smallguidance and advisory section. It was formed toserve the people, not to be an evil thing. There waspopular demand for the service, and popular clamorfor the government to assume leadership.

Now, like all bureaus, this one has discoveredthat the local efforts are not uniform, and that thesmaller governments are not always prompt andneat in the preparation of their progress reports.lit has begun its efforts to "coordinate the local activities." Soon it will start prodding the communities which lag behind, urging each city to lookenviously at the progress made by its neighbor.Naturally, many sincere people will become convinced that greater Federal control is needed tomake the program uniform and efficient. No fairminded person will be able to resist :the arithmetical proof of this. Piece by piece and bit by bit thecentral bureau will pick up theobliga,tions onwhich some local governments will default fromtime to :time.

This is our last chance to look at the programcold-bloodedly. Another thousand employees, another set of public appropriations, and it will betoo late.

Ata recent conference of Illinois mayors I metthe regional, state and national coordinators forcivil defense. I saw samples of their leaflets, mimeo-

graphed releases, catalogues of special equipmentand organizational charts. I listened to reports ofcommittees, administrators, field agents and conferences, and heard suggestions for the expansionof each and the multiplication of all. I learned that"the people are angry that so little has been done";and I learned that the civil defense program isgoing to be a permanent part of all our planningfor as long as there is international tension. Ourcity plans to levy a new and additional tax oftwenty-five cents per person annually for civil defense. So are thousands of other cities and so arethe states. Perhaps it is already too late to ask,"What is civiI defense?"

'Civil Defense de Luxe

Civil defense might mean the use of civilians inthe common defense; or it might mean the use ofour common resources to protecit civilians. Whichis it? Which have we asked for, and which are wegetting? I suggest that the decision has been madefor us, and that we are committed to the lattermeaning of the phrase, although we are sometimesencouraged to pre;tend otherwise.

In the designs and drawings of individual bombshelters there is a shelf for the portable radio,storage space for beans and bandaids, and a strongdoor to keep out the noise and the danger. There isno reference to the family shotgun, and no suggestion that an ,extra box of shells be stored next tothe extra supply of orange juice. There are nofiring slits in the shelter.

In all the pounds of mobilization literature thereis no description of how Ito make a grenade, how toorganize a partisan group at the community level,or how to kill an enemy paratrooper. There is noplan to make revolvers available to the householdershiding in their basements, no signal for proceduresin case of a purported surrender, and no design ordeadline for counter-revolution in case of partialoccupation.

Our civil defense program, then, will consistlargely of a plan for individual decontaminationplus property salvage. The people of Waukeganwill combat the foe with strong soap and hot sudsywater, geiger counters and heavy mittens, sandbags, beans and spare batteries for the portableradio. Ninety per cent of us plan to watch fromour basement windows while the military fellowsdo the defending.

Our bureaus will conduct classes in group hidingon signal, cowering in concert and shutting oureyes in unison. We will practice getting under thebed fast and without bruises. After the need fordefense is over and someone else has repelled the

FEBRUARY 251 1952 329

enemy, the bur1eau will teach us to find lost, children faster, test the purity of our drinking water,and direct motor traffic away from the big fires.

This is quite a luxurious program for civiliancomfort. Only a society as rich as ours could evencontemplate bearing its cost. Other great empireswhich have tried to substitute comfort for defenselearned that if nine citiz'ens run to their burrowsthe tenth man does not fight very eagerly. Thesoldier is not inspired to face the foe bravely if helearns that the rest of the folks are busy boilingwater for their personal decontamination.

However, let us assume that this fact can beconcealed by calling the comfort program a defenseprogram, and that our soldiers will not realize thattheir taxes are being spent to prepare leaflets illustrating the various methods of getting under abed. We should, even so, be interested in learninghow great a civilian load we can carry, what ourcompetitors are doing and what the estimated return on our investment will be. This program willbe costly, it will be nation-wide and it will be permanent. If we identify the program accurately,then we can fit it into its proper place in our economy. Then we shall know how much of our substance we can spend on earplugs, sirens andflashlights. Let us face the brutal facts of life.

What. Civil Defense Should Be

Brutal fact number one is that none of our proposed antagonists are going to handicap themselves, their people or their economies with anyplan for personal isolation, safety or comfort. Tothem, total war means just that, and they willspend no money training people to hide from it.

It may be that this nation is so far superior inproductivity that we can carry Ithis mat,tr,ess on ourbacks and still outrace the enemy ; but if the raceis close it is possible that our defea,t will be broughtabout by our excess of precautions to avoid distressto civilians. We should make this gamble if themajority wish to do so, but the program should beidentified as an additional burden on the defenseeffort, a liability rather than an asseit.

Brutal fact number two is that this sort of civildefense prograpl is not going to frighten anyenemy as much as :true civil defense would. Theknowledge that we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars annually in the pr,eparation ofhiding places may encourage him to growl occasionally just to keep us from our jobs.

Brutal fact number thre,e is that all our moneyand all our :effort will accomplish only a degree ofpartial salvage. Consider, for ,example, our civil defense program for an atom bomb attack on ourcities. If a billion dollars is spent in Chicago forwhistles, sirens, helmets and the other mattresses,and if a bomb stri~es Chicago, some buildings willburn, some children will be separated from theirparents, some time will elapse before the drinkingwater is safe, and so forth. If not a single cent isso spent in preparation, and the same bomb is

330 the FREEMAN

dropped on the city, some buildings will not burn,some children will survive and the water will become potable after some time. A civilian comfortprogram will not change the picture from black towhi1te, but only from one shade of gray to a lightershade of gray; and in order to obtain even thisbenefit we must provide the mattr1essing for allcities, since we do not knovv which cities will bebombed.

During the last war, many of us had a chance to~ee the effects of heavy bonlbardment on a citywhich had no program, and compare these with theeffects on a city which had good preparation. TakeNanking or Warsaw as examples of the one, andLondon or Berlin as ,examples of the other, and observe how the law of diminishing returns appliesto civil defense and salvage programs.

Now certainly every city should have a disasterplan. It should have em,ergencyequipment and communications, a source of volunteer manpower, atraffic control program, liaison with the charitableand relief ag,encies, working agr:eements with itsneighboring ci,ties and a known chain of responsibility and command. 'The plan should be flexibleenough to serve the area in case of floods, trainwrecks, fires-and bombing attacks.

But should there be, on top of this, a specialatom bomb reassurance bureau with brancheseverywhere permanently established, and involvinganother huge fixed item of annual overhead? Admitting that this is good politics, is it healthy forthe country to pretend to its cHizens that moneywill insulate them from the horrors of total war?Gan we Intimidate our 'enemies by waving ourbudget at them?

I don't know that I speak for the citizens ofWaukegan, since this whole program has developedwithout discussion or appraisal. I hope that ourcity will continue to develop a cheap, comprehensivedisasiter plan, using our local resources and beingprepared to share with our neighbors as needed.Then I hope that we shall have the courage to develop a real civil defense program which will useour people for the defense of their homes. I hopethat this program will be designed around propercost figures and damage estimates. I suggest, thatwe go without insurance in all cases where the costof the insurance is greater than the value of theproperty insured.

The knowledge tha,t this is our civil defense program, and that all of our people are willing to faceup to their responsibilities in a total war, will beagreater deterrent to war than all the strong soapsand gas masks we can buy.

American know-ho·w is unmatched anywhere exceptin the field of diplomacy.

The State Department moves in mysterious ways,its blunders to perform. EDMUND J. KIEFER

Decline of the American RepublicBy GARE~r GARRETT

Like Rome before us, we are changing internallyfrom Republic to Empire.

WE HAVE crossed the boundary that lies between Republic and Empire. If you askwhen, the answer is that you can not make

a single s'troke between day and night. The precisemoment does not matter. There was no painted signto say, "You now are entering Imperium." Yet itwas a very old road and the voice of history "vassaying: "Whether you know it or not, ,the act ofcrossing n1ay be irreversible." And now, not farahead, is a sign that reads: "No U Turns."

If you say there were no frightening omens, thatis true. The political foundations did not quake;,the graves of the Fathers did not fly open; theConstitution did not Itear itself up. If you saypeople did not will it, that also is true. But if yousay therefore it has not happened, then you havebeen so long bemused by words that your mindwill not believe what the ,eye can see, even as in thejungle the terrified primitive, on meeting the lion,importunes magie by saying to himself, "He is notthere."

That a republic may vanish is an elementaryschoolbook fact.

T'he Roman Republic passed into the Roman Empire, and yet never could a Roman citizen have said,"That was yesterday." Nor is the historian, withall ,the advantages of perspective, able to place thatmomentous event at any ,exaet point on the dial oftime. 'The Republic had a long unhappy twilight. Itis agreed tha;t the Empire began with Augus,tusCa,esar. Several before him had played emperor andwere destroyed. The first who might have beencalled emperor in fact was Julius Ca,esar, who pret'ended not to want the crown and once publicly declined it. Whether he feared more the displeasureof the Roman populace or the daggers of .the republicans is unknown. In his dreams he may havebeen seeing a bloodstained toga. His murder soonafterward was a desperate act of the dying republican tradition, and perfectly futile.

His heir was Oc'tavian, and it was a very bloodybusiness, yet neither did Octavian call hilnself emperor. On the contrary, he was most eareful to observe the old legal forms. He restored the Senate.Later he m,ade believe to restore the Republic, andcaused coins to be sitruck in commemoration of thatevent. Having acquired by universal consent, as heafterward wrote, "complete dominion over everything, both by land and sea," he made a long andartful speech to the Senate, and ended it by saying:"And now I giV'e back the Republic into your keeping. The laws, the troops, the treasury, the prov-

inces, are all restor,ed 'to you. May you guard themworthily."

The response of the Senate was to crown himwith oak leaves, plant laurel trees at his gate andname him Augustus. After that he reigned formore than forty years and when he died the bonesof the Republic were buried with him.

"The personality of a monarch," says Stobart,"had been thrust almost surreptitiously into theframe of a r,epublican constitution.... The establishment of the Empire was such a delicate andequivocal act that it has been open to various interpreitations ever since. Probably in the clever mindof Augus1tus it was intended to be equivocal fromthe first."

W HAT Augustus Caesar did was to demonstratea proposition found in Aristotle's "Politics,"

one that he must have known by heart, namely this:

People do not easily change, but love their ownancient clistorns; and it is by small degrees onlythat one thing takes the place of another; so thatthe ancient laws will remain, while the power willbe in the hands of those who have brought abouta revolution in the state.

Revolution within the form.There is no comfort in history for those who put

their faith in forms; who think :there is safeguardin words inscribed on parchment, preserved in aglass case, r,eproduced in facsimile and hauled toand fro on a Freedom Train.

Let it be current history. How much does theyounger half of this generation reflect upon thefaCit that in its own time a complete revolution hastaken place in the r1ela:tions between governmentand people? It may be doubted that one eollegestudent in a thousand could ,even sta'te it clearly.

The first article of our inherited tradition, implicit in American thought from the beginninguntil a few years ago, was this: Government is theresponsibility of a self-governing people.

That doctrine has been swept away; only theelders remember it. Now, in. the name of democracy, i,t is accepted as a political fact that peopleare the responsibility of government.

The forms of republican .government survive;the character of the state has changed.

Forn1erly the people supported government andset limits to it and minded their own lives. Nowthey pay for unlimited government, whether theywant it or not, and the governm,ent minds theirlives-looking itO how they arie fed and clothed andhoused; how they provide for their old age; howthe national income, which is the product of theirown labor, shall be divided among them; how theyshall buy and sell; how long and how hard and

FEBRUARY 25, 1952 331

under what conditions they shall work, and howequity shall be maintained between the buyers offood who dw,ell in ,'the cities and the producers offood who live on the soil. For the last nam'ed purpose it resorts to a system of subsidi,es, penaltiesand compulsions, ,and assumes with mediieval wisdom to fix the just price.

This is the Welfare State. It rose suddenlywithin the form. It is legal because the SupremeCourt says it is. The Supreme Court once said noand then changed its mind and said yes, becausemeanwhile the President who was the architectof the Welfare State had appointed to the SupremeCourt bench men who believed in it. The founderswho wrote the Constitution could no more haveimagined a Welfare State rising by sanction ofits words than they could have imagined a monarchy; and yet the Constitution did not have tobe changed. It had only to be reinterpreted in oneclause-the clause that reads: "The Congressshall have power to lay and collect taxes, impostsand excises to pay its debts and provide for common defense and welfare of the United States."

"We are under a Constitution," said Chi,ef Justice Hughes, "but the Constitution is what thejudges say it is."

The President nam,es the members of the Supreme Court, with the advice and cons,ent of theSenate. lit follows that if the President and a majority of the 8ena:te happen to want a WelfareState, or any other innovation, and if, happily fortheir design, death and old age create s'everal vacancies on ithe bench so that they may pack theCourt with like-minded men, the Constitution becomes, indeed, a rubberoid instrument.

THE EXTENT to which the original prec,epts andintentions of Cons'titutional, representative,

limited governm,ent, in the republican form, havebeen eroded away by argument and dialectic is aseparate subject, long and ominous, and belongs toa treatise on political science. The one facit now tobe emphasized is that when the process of erosionhas gone on until there is no saying what the supreme law of the land is at a giv,en time, then theConstitution begins to be flout,ed by Executive will,with something like impunity. The instances maynot be crucial at firs:t and all the more dangerousfor that reason. As one is condoned, another follows, and they become progressive.

To outsmart the Constitution and to circumventits restraints became a popular exercise of the artof gov,ernment in the Roos'evelt regime. In defenseof his attempt to pack the Supreme Court withsocial-minded judges aft,er several of his New Deallaws had be,en declared unconstitutional, PresidentRoosevelt wrot,e: "The reactionary members of theCourt had appa~ently determined to r,emain on thebench for as long as life continued-for the solepurpose of blocking any program of reform."

Among the millions who at the time applaudedthat statement of contempt there were very few, ifthere was indeed one, who would not have been

332 the FREEMAN

frightened by a revelation of the logical sequel.They believ,ed, as everyone else did, that there wasone thing a President could never do. Ther,e wasone sentence of the Constitution that could not fall,so long as the Riepublic lived.

The Constitution says: "The Congress shallhave power to declare war." That, therefore, wasthe one thing no President could do. By his ownwill he could not declare war. Only Congresscould declare war, and Congress could be trustednever to do it but by will of the people-or so theybelieved. No man could make it for them.

Even if you think that President Roos'evelt gotthe country into World War II, thwt was not thesame thing. For a declaration of war he went toCongriess-after the Japanese had attacked PearlHarbor. H,e may hav,e wanted it, he may haveplanned it; and yet the Constitution forbade himto declare war and he dared not do it.

Nine years later a much w,eaker Pr,esident did.

A FTER Pr,esident Truman, alone and without,either the consent or knowledge of Congress,

had declared war on the Kor,ean ,aggressor, 7000miles away, Congriess condoned his usurpation ofHs ,exclusive Constitutional power. Mor,e than that,his political supporters in Congress argued that inthe modern case that sentience in the Constitutionconferring upon Congress the sole power to declare war was obsolete.

Mark you, the words had not been eras,ed; theystill existed in form. Only they had become obsolete. And why obsolete? Because now war may begin suddenly, with bombs falling out of the sky,and w,e might perish while waiting for Gongress todeclare war.

The r'easoning is puerile. The Kor,ean war, whichmade the precedent, did not begin that way; secondly, Congress was in session at the time, so thatthe delay could not have been more than a fewhours, provided Congr,ess had been willing to declare war; and, thirdly, the President as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forees of the Republic may in a l,egal manner act defensively before adeclaration of war has been made. It is bound tobe made if the nation has been attacked.

Mr. Truman's suppor1ters argued that in theKor,ean instance his act was defensive and therefor,e within his powers as Commander-in-Chief. Inthat case, to make it Constitutional, he was l,egallyobliged to ask Congress for a declaration of waraf,terward. This he nev,er did. For a w'eiek Congressrelied upon the papers for news of the country'sentry into war; then the President caned a few ofits .leaders ;to the White Hous,e and told them whathe had done. A year la:ter Congress was still debating wheither or nort the country was at war, ina legal, Cons1titutional sensle.

A fiew months later Mr. Truman sent Am'ericantroops to Europe to join an int,ernational army, anddid it not only without a law, without even consulting Congress, butchaHeng,ed the power of Congress to stop him. Congr,ess made all of the neces-

· sary sounds of .anger and then poulticed i,ts dignitywith a resolution saying the President's actionwas all right for that one time, since anyho'w ithad been· taken, but that hereafter Congresswould expect to be consulted.

At that time the Foreign Relations Committee ofthe Senate asked the State Department to set forthin writing what might be called the position ofEX!ecutive Government. The Sta,te Departmentobligingly responded with a document entitled,"Powers of the President to Send Troops Outsideof the United States-Prepared for the use of thejoint committe,e made up of the Committee on Foreign Relations and the Committee on the ArmedForces of the Senate, February 28, 1951."

This document, in the year circa 2950, will be aprecious find for any historian who may be tryingthen to trace the departing footprints of the vanished American R,epublic. For the informa,tion ofthe Uni1t,ed S~tatles Senate it said (CongressionalRecord, M·arch 20, 1951, p 2745) : "A,s this discussion of the respective powers of the President and

Congress has made clear, Constitutional doctrinehas been largely moulded by practical necessities.Use of the Congressional power to declare war,for example, has fallen into abeyance becausewars are no longer declared in advance."

Caesar might have said it to the Roman Senate.If Consti,tutional doctrine is moulded by necessity,what is a written Constitution for?

Thus an argument that seemed at first to restupon puerile reasoning turned out to be deep andcunning. The immediate use of it was to defendthe unconstitutional Korean precedent, namely, theresort to war as an act of the President's ownwill. Yet i,t was not invented for that purposealone. It stands as a forecast of executive intentions, a manifestation of the eX!ecutive mind, mortalchallenge to the parliamentary principle.

Tihe simple question is: Whos·e hand shall con,trol the instrument of war?

It is late to ask. It m.ay be too late, for when thehand of the Republic begins ~to relax another handis already putting itself forth.

Corruption as a Campaign IssueBy .A. A. IMBERMAN

What effect will a campaign centered on corruptionin government have upon the "common man" groupthat makes up 65 per cent of the nation? A publicrelations counsel answers this question on the basisof studies his firm has made.

T HE FEDERAL peccadillos to date indicatesome considerable corruption in our Federalmachine. The count .at this writing is some

thing lik:e this:Nineteen men have been convicted land s'ent to

jail. These include three members of Congressformer R'epr,es'entative May (D., Ky.), involved ina munitions scandal, and Representatives BrehmCR., 0.), and Thomas CR., N. J.), involved in kickback scandals. M.ay and Thomas s,erved prison sentences, and Brehm drew a fine and a suspendedjail sentence. Others convicted include nine taxagents, a postal employee, an army officer, a fiveper center and two pro-Truman Democrats inMississippi, involved in job selling.

Sixteen persons are under indictment. Theseinclude ten internal revenue employees, four persons involved in Reconstruction Finance Corporation scandals, one influence peddler and one AirForce procurement officer.

At least 138 employees have been dismissed.These included 113 employe,es of the Bureau of Internal R,evenue, 17 of the Army Signal Corps, fourRFC officials, one draft board chairman, one Department of Agriculture official, one Federal

Housing official and one official of the Departmentof Justice-T. Lamar Caudle.

Twelve persons have resigned. Thesie include thefour top officials of Ithe Bureau of Internal Revenue-Commissioner George J. Schoeneman, DeputyCommissioner Carroll E. M,ealey, Assistant Commissioner Daniel A. Bolich and General CounselCharles Oliphant. William J. Boyle, chairman ofthe D'emocratic National Committ'ee, resigned whenhe came under fire in the RFC scandal.

8ev,en White Housle staff m,embers have been involved in scandals: Major General Harry Vaughanaccepted and distributed home freezers, includingone ito Mrs. Truman and one to Chief Justice Vinson. Wallac-e Gr.aham, White House physician, wascaught dealing in the grain mark:et; Whi'te HouseSecretary Matt Connelly accepted gifts from persons s-e,eking influence; Donald Dawson, WhiteHouse administrative .assisitant, aceepted board andlodging from ·an RFC borrower, as did CharlesMaylon, a Whilt,e House counsel. Mrs. Lor,ettaYoung, White House stenographer, resigned overthe matter of her acceptance ofa royal pastel minkcoait· from an attorney with RFC cli:ents. David K.Niles, White House administrrutiv,e assisltant, resigned just before his name was linked with thatof a tax coHector under indictm,ent in Boston.

Several Republican soothsayers with whom Ihavre 'talked reeentlyar,e confident Ithat "the people"are inflamed against this r'evealed corruption, andthat a strong campaign hacking away at the D,emocratic graft in Washington would result in a surge

FEBRUARY 25, 1952 333

of rag'e and the 'election of a Republican President.I heg to diss,ent, and suggest that if the GOP

cent,ers its ,ey,e-rolling around the corruption issue,it will find i,ts candidat'e dragged to the politicalmorgue the morning ,after ,election day.

Results ofa Gallup Poll rel'eased lat'e in December proclaimed :thart 45 per cent of the "Americanpublic" beHeves corruption in government would bejust as great, whichev,er party were in power. Isthis cynicism accurat,e? My public relations firmhas direc.t,ed a large number of public opinionstudies-osome of which cut deeper than the Galluppolls. Our findings would indicatle the polls' grossunderesitima1tion of· the American :tolerance for corruption in government. American voters, at leastin their -commonest inc.arnation, will sputter andcough behind their hands when political corruptionis mentioned. But de,ep down, f,ew of rthem reallymo~n over such uncouth behavior in office. As faras the rnajority of vOlt,ers are concerned, ,a campaignagains;t corruption in government would have aboutas much glow and gusto ,as an outcry against Euclidian g,eometry.

I CITE from the imm,enseaccumulation of knownfacts about political corruption. From 1902 to

1924, Charl,es Francis Murphy-a former saloonkeeper-inhabited ,the throne of Tammany Hall.When by God's will in 1924 he was r,emov,ed to theempyrean ,above, he l'ef;ta fortune of $2,000,000,which is a sizeable sum of money for .a barkeep toaccumulate. It took the Seabury inv,es'tigartion toshake public confidence in Tammany, and not theperiennial whoops of corruption from the Rlepublicans. Roosevelt's anathema on Tammany and hisrefusal to grant it any F'ederal patronagebec.auseof its opposi1tion at the 1932 Democratic NationalConvention, -palsi,ed the Tammany startesm:en s,tillmorle. But it was the entrance of Jos,eph V. ("HolyJoe") Mc:K:ee into the New York City mayoraltycampaign of 1933 which finally split the Democratic vote and led 'to LaGuardia's def1eat of MayorJohn P. O'Bri'en (who had belen rushed in to finishJimmy Wal~er's 'term). Senator Kefauver's recentcomments on the role played by Frank Costello inNew York Ciity politics would indicat'e that sinceLaGuardia's demise New York City has continuedto dabbl'e in corruption. That this has r,eally enrag,ed N,e"v YorkJers is difficult to ,establish, or atleast my ,agents have been unable to establish it.

Do you find New J1ersey sweeter? Consider thecas,e of Boss Frank Hague. For 25 ye,ars he preyedupon Hudson County with a dilig,ence rarelyequalled anywher:e in the country, making J ers,eyCity "the house and sanctuary of the nation's biggest book horse racing betting syndicate," as oner,eport phrased it. The hold of the Hague machineon J ers,ey City, onc,e undisput,ed, is now somewhatweakened, but time and other political leaders havebe,en r,esponsible rather than any animosity of thevot,ers.

"Jim" Curley, form,er governor, three timesmayor, ,ex-alderman, miember of Congress and ex-

334 the FREEMAN

conviClt, is still performing his prodigies in Boston,albeit behind the seenes. It :took another rival tounhors'e him-not a na!tiv,e revoU. Ev,en at that,Curl,ey s:till has one leg up on the horse. '

Nered I mention the lofty fidelity of the el1ectorateto the Ed Crump machine in M,emphis, :to the Yarious Long factions in Louisiana, to the lat'e ThomaseJ. Pendergast's org,anizartion in Kiansas City andMissouri, or to the powerful Kelly-Nash machinein Chicago (which Jake Arv1ey now plays like apianola) ? I could pile up morie evidenc,es, but theyare unnec:essary.

Glancing at the history of graft and corruptionin the major eenters and in the mor,e r,emote par,tsof Ithe Republic, I leave it to ,any fair man to find aclear insrtanee wherle Ithe elec!toralte was unduly enraged by poUtical shenanigans and turned the election day artillery on Ithe rascals. The ,el,ectorate inAm,erie-a has nev,er shown any high capacity forbeing alarmed oVler political corruption, although ilthas occasionally shown some restlessness. I do notlay this down as an immutabl'e principle to shakeJthe pious; I merely ciitle ilt as a rea,sonabl1e deduction from our poliitical history.

I N THE many public opinion studi,es my firm hasmade-by polls and proj,ective itechniques-ilt has

becom,e clearly ,evident that with ,the bulk of thepopula:tion, political corruption is nothing to become inflamed about, ,ev,en while the boys are in thefront lines. By bulk of popula1tion I mean proprietors of businesses v,alued at $500 to $5000, stenographers, .bookke,epers, rural mail clerks, r.ailroadticket ag,ents, sal'es people in drygoods stores, hardware sal,esmen,beauty shop operators, telephoneoperators, faatory for,em'en,el'ectricians, plumbers,carpenters, "vartchmakers (who may own Ithe:ir ownsmall shops), timekeepers, linesmen, radio vepairmen, medium-skill workers, dry cleaners, butchers,sheriffs, railway ,engine,ers and conductors, barbers,firemen, practical nurses, poUc,em,en, cooks in restaurants, bartenders, taxi and truck drivers, gasstation attendants, waitresses, 'most members ofskilled ,and slemi-skilled unions, e!tc.~and of course,their spouses. Thesle peopl,e constiltut,e about 65 percent of the nation, and (following Warner andLunt in "The Social Life of a Modern Communiity")we shall designate them as the Common Man group.

For this tr,emendous Common Man group, politicsplays a curious role. WhBe !the typical businessmansees government as an ,ag'ency primarily for adminis,t'ering public aff,airs, he also regards iit assomething foreign to him, as indifferent and perhapsantagonisitic to his comfort, safe:tyand happiness, and capable of harassing and looting him.T'he Common Man, on the other hand, s,eres government primarily ,as an instrumrentality for gettingsomething for someone. Often he believes the government is run by .the "Big Boys" to help thems'elv'es-L'e., Big Business. When the Common Mangrows lyrical over gov,ernment, he means that it ismaking life l,ess -complex for himei,ther by providing him with comforts, or by solving som,e of his

problems, or by giving him ,a job relieved from thestrain of performance demanded by private industry.

Where ·we have found the Common Man seemingly shedding tears ov,er newspaper disclosures ofcorruption and graft, we almost ahvays have foundconjoined the feeling that if somehow he had knownabout such finagling in advance and could haveprofited thereby, he might have had no objection.

I pvoc1eed to a crass example. Last y,ear when the(Democratic) Chicago Sun-Times suddenly yankedthe veil from the new Congress S:tr,eet highwayplan and disclosed that nlany parcels of propertycondemned for the routle w1ere owned by Jake Arvey, the Delllocratic boss, my firm was engaged inseveral consumer-attitude studies in Chicago. Wewere able to use one questionnair1e referring to :thepropriety of a political boss's profiting by advanceknowledg,e of the route to be taken by the proposedhighw.ay, and we were also able to dvedge unguarded sentiment on the same situation by use ofa simple proj,ective test. While the direct queSitionnaire lelici,ted gentlemanly horror and a pulling oflong faces at the disguised s,teal, the indiI~ect projective returns overwhelmingly revealed admiration for the feat, and a sort of yearning to be ina similar position.

Above the level of the Gommon Man group, theresponses to the projective tests were mixed, andwhile there was fairly clear and inc,essant indignation against the whole deal, the sentiment was notas uniform as one might wish. At least, not asuniform as yours and mine.

Similarly, almost ,ev,ery municipal res1earch I,eague,viII attest to :the Common Man's disinclination tohave his stomach turned or his heart bro~en byevidences of corruption and graft. True, a fewhardy souls band together for such protests, butusually they are subsidized by large propertyowners to shoot the fireworks.

I s THERE, then, no hope for a campaign hitting atnational corruption? It is obvious to most people

who have ever devoted prayer or laborious thoughtto governmental problems, that corruption andgraft multiply as government compl!exity increases.As soon as new ta~es .ave levied, as new r1estraintsare legalized, as new holds and grappl,es are invented by mien in control of government, som'e citizens will ,offer to buy back their fre,edom, and somepolitical officeholders will :try ito us,e Ithe new restraints to their priva:te advantagle. EVlery time wehave a new gris,t of laws-whether local, state ornational-setting up ne,v legal extortions andchicaneries, some officeholders may be dependedupon to use them with an eye to self-interest, andno amount of nursing, supervision or policing isapt to hold them within reasonable limits forlong. Unless, of course, you believe that men ingovernment are animated by a lofty and impeccable morality-a belief characteristic of professional people and clerics.

While the Common Man in our socIety has lUtle

feeling against political corruption and rarelyprays for honest men in government, he does havepositive feelings about restraints. As a citizen, heoften chafes under the closed shop and the law\vhich forces him into such a situation; he doesn'tlike the check-off, despite what union businessagents cry; he thinks the restraints of wage control are idiotic; he resents high taxes and withholding taxes; he is bewildered by the Administration's give-away program of money and materialsp.articularly ·when, apparently without reason,Washington withholds materials from his factoryand affects his Job unhappily; he looks askance atlegislation drafting him or his children into thearm'ed services for a conflict whose rationale is notevident to him. These are real resltvaints for himthey immediately affect his home, his family andhis job---.and hence tak!e on a vast impor,tance.

The denunciation of graft and corruption willnot move him, since the reformer's itch is not contagious on the Common Man level. But denunciation of the hobbl'es which irk him-and which areresponsible for grafit and eorruption-would findhim sympathe:tic, if laid out before him in language, associations and stereotypes which he accepts. A national campaign promising Ito ease himof these restraints would find him wi,th his eyes andears glued to the TV and hi,s heart going pjJtJter-pat.

What Senator Said This?(The answer is printed upside down at the bottomof the page.)

I am aware, Mr. President, that in pursuance ofthis campaign of vilification and attempted intimidation, requests from various individuals andcertain organizations have been submitted to theSenate for my expulsion from this body, and thatsuch requests have been referred to and considered by one of the committees of the Senate.... Neither the clamor of the mob nor the voiceof power will ever turn me by the breadth of ahair from the course I mark out for myself, guidedby such knowledge as I can obtain and controlledand directed by a solemn conviction of right andduty....

The mandate seems to have gone forth to thesovereign people of this country that they mustbe silent while those things are being done bytheir government ·which most vitally concern theirwell-being, their happiness, and their lives....It appears to be the purpose of those conductingthis campaign to throw the country into a stateof terror, to coerce public opinion, to stifle criticism, and suppress discussion of the great issuesinvolved in this war.

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FEBRUARY 25, 1952 335

Baloney •In Beef ControlsBy LEWIS NORDYKE

AMARILLO, TEXAS

OUT IN Wyoming, a cattleman rode into aclearing and saw an enraged bull attemptingto close the career of a cowboy who had be

come separated from his horse. Head down andnostrils snorting mad foam, the bull charged. Thecowboy dived into a convenient recess in the ground,and the bull plunged across the hole. The cowboyleaped out,and on came the bull, madder than ever,and back into the hole dropped the bow-legged boy.

The cattleman watched this strange thing happen half a dozen times. Then he shouted, "Whydon't you just stay in the hole?"

Leaping out again, the cowboy yelled, "There's abear in that hole!"

In its attempts to control the price and supply ofbeef, the United States Government has played bothbull and bear, with the producer and consumercaught in the unbeautiful position of the in-and-outcowpuncher.

Some high Washington officials have told cattlemen of my acquaintance that beef control is a political football that has to be played; that workersand city-dwellers, who make up large voting blocs,have demanded relief from rising food costs andthat a stab at beef price reduction through controlssounds pretty good. Anyone who buys beef at current' prices is apt to squirm, but the truth is thatcontrols have never failed to endanger the nation'ssupply of. red meat.

In the days of the OPA of World War II, therewere plenty of cattle, but, as housewives will remember, practically bare meat counters. By the endof that era, 86 per cent of our beef was being distributed by black marketeers at illegally highprices. In early 1951 an Office of Price Stabilization order to roll back and fix prices on live animalscaused a temporary beef famine at a time whenthe nation had a record number of beef animals,and only Congressional action headed off a sustained period of shortage.

It would be fine in this time of inflation to buybeef at a bargain, but that can't be. The price ofrange land has increased from six to ten times sincethe war years; it costs four times as much to hirea cowboy, and the expense of everything else connected with beef production has shot upward. Yetthis is not the main reason controls won't work.

The basic cause is the vast difference betweencattle and beef. There are two ways to increase thebeef supply. One is to produce more cattle, and theother is to put more weight on the existing beefanimals. @~'

Due to the gestation and growing periods, ittakes time to increase the cattle population, andthe present number of beef animals-91 million on

336 the F'REEMAN

the nation's ranches and six million farms-is justabout all the grass will support. If the number isto be increased substantially (it will go up to 95million by January 1, 1953, according to Department of Agriculture estimates), there mus,t be developed some method of sustaining more cattle peracre. Of course any improvement-in numbers, inmore effective use of grass, in quality of beef-willcome from competition and the opportunity to earna profit; that has been the case since the beef business had its first boom in. the days of the TexasRepublic more than 100 years ago.

I T IS the claim ofOPS that control is necessaryto fight inflation and to assure an adequate sup

ply of beef. On the other hand, cattlemen contendthat controls upset the historic, and complicated,method of producing beef and therefore cause beefshortages. There ,are other factors in this controversy-the black marketeer, the American appetitefor high-quality beef, the seasonal nature of themarketing of grass-fed animals. But let's trail asteak from a ranch in the Texas Panhandle to theki;tchen of ,a bonerm,a~er who lives in Cheslt,er,P1einnsylvania.

In comparatively recent years the cow countryhas spread into the pine thickets and cotton patchesof eastern Texas and across state lines and theMississippi into the Old South. Every state raisesbeef cattle, but the traditional Western range,where the beef business started with the leatherylonghorn, is still the main producer, and the TexasPanhandle is typical of that country. Here theranches range in size from the 800,000 acres of theMatador Ranch down to the lot of the barnyardcowman.

Let's take a modest-sized ranch, which we shallcall the Bar Nothing, since the first thing ·anyonewith a cow wants is a brand. The Bar Nothing hasgood grade Herefords, built up by keeping topheifers and using purebred bulls. Except in thewinter, the cattle live on the short grass. Duringsevere weather they are fed high protein concentrates, such as cottons'eed or soybean cake or meal,and these are fairly expensive. The calves come inthe spring. The calf we have in mind arrived onesunny morning when the hills had a heavy greencast. By the time he was strong enough to standand nuzzle his first meal, he was worth $75 to $100.

Except for castration, vaccination and branding,our white-faced calf isn't bothered for a long while.In his second fall he is rounded up and shipped outto a feed lot in the Corn Belt. He's what is knownas a coming-two, and let's say he weighs 600pounds-weight gained from the short grass andmaybe some sustaining nibbles of cake or meal in

his one winter. He finds himself in the new home,the fe,ed lot, and what a wonderful life it is! Thegolden grain is stacked before him, and all he hasto do is eat. After gaining 300 pounds he is sent toChicago, where the Belt Line bripgs him to the endof his trail.

Our calf now weighs 900 pouhds and will makechoice eating. H'e goes through the packing house,and from there to the distributor and the supermarket, including one out on the Baltimore Pike,where the boilermaker buys his sirloin for Sundaydinner. In his life, our calf has been owned by theBar Nothing, the cattle feeder, the packer, the distributor, the supermarket-and a thick piece ofhim by the boilermaker.

When fresh from the pasture of the Panhandlein the early fall, our calf could have gone to theslaughter instead of the feed lot, but he would havebeen much lighter-the sort of beef known asgrass-fed, and unacceptable in quality to the armedforces or to the average supermarket shopper. Besides, it would have taken a calf and a half to produce as much weight lalS our oneanim,al obliginglydid on :£ered.

This range-to-feeder-to-processor method is theway nearly all our beef gets to the consumer. Butthere is this other way. In the fall, just before severe winter weather, there's a run at the big markets, such as Chicago, Kansas City and Omaha.The grass-fed steers are marketed at that time because they have the full weight that grass can givethem, and when the range is browned by frost thegrass can not .sustain that weight.

The bulk of the grass-fat cattle hit the marketwithin a month or two in the fall, and that's thecrop for the year. Except for comparatively smallherds coming off the winter wheat in Texa.s, Oklahoma and Kansas in the spring, and some grassersoff the pastures of Southern states and Californiain May and June, there will be no more slaughtercattle from the range until the next f.all.

If there were no feeding, practically all our beefsupply would hit the market at one time, creatinga jam that our stockyards and packers, with theirprocessing and storage plants, simply could nothandle. The slaughter-quality range cattle have togo to market in the fall. Therefore, there could beno month-by-month distribution of quality beefwithout the feeder system. If it takes 90,000,000beef cattle to supply us through this feeder system,it would certainly require 30,000,000 more withonly grass. It is doubtful whether our range andfarms, with chance of drought considered, couldsupport so many cattle; and at best the beef wouldlack quality.

I T WAS the demand for better and better beef thatled to the historic feeder development in beef

production. The beef business started in Texas inthe 1830s, and by the end of the Civil War Texasstockmen were driving cattle over long trails tomore populous markets. In 1867 the trails fromTexas across Red River and the Indian nations to

Abilene, Kansas, were opened, and from that railhead longhorn steaks were shipped all over the nation to test the cutting edge of dinner knives.

Longhorn beef, compared with today's product,was little better than boot leather, but it was theonly beef available in quantity. Aggressive stockmen commenced breeding for beef of better flavorand easier to chew. By 1885 there was practicallyno demand fora grass-fed Texas steer in the mainmarkets, and a rancher couldn't produce on hisrange and ship to Chicago a three-to-four-year-oldanimal and sell him at a profit.

In the early 1880s John V. Farwell, a noted Chicago merchant, and his brother, U. S. SenatorCharles B. Farwell, came into possession of the nation's largest ranch-a spread 200 miles long and27 miles wide in the Texas Panhandle. They builtthe Texas capitol in exchange for the land, an even3,000,000 acres. With the help of British capital,they started stocking this province-sized ranch in1885, buying only the best quality range stuff,which still contained some longhorn blood andtoughness. They marketed their first beeves off thisvirgin range in 1888 in Chicago, and lost money oneveryone. The consumer was demanding, and buying, better beef. Despite the fact that the Farwellshad the biggest ranch in the country, the bestequipped and the highest quality range animals,they had to lease a vast range in Montana and trailtheir steers there for two additional years of grazing. Nearly all the major Texas ranchers had toobtain "northern range" for finishing beef.

But new competition soon ended this era. Farmers in the Corn Belt had grain which they wantedto convert into money, and they found a market byfeeding it to beef cattle. Eventually a majority ofranchmen had to turn to this feeder system, andthere came forth our method of producing goodbeef on a year-round basis.

AT THIS point, the logical question of any budgetbusted consumer is: "Well, why does this

feeder system make it impossible for the government to control the price of beef?"

When ceilings on live animals, and rationing, became effective in World War II, the production ofgood beef almost ceased. Within a little while thefeed lots were empty, and poor grade grass animalswent to the slaughter. This cut the supply, for thepotential beef that feed could have put on our cattle was forever lost. So instead of assuring an adequate supply, control created a shortage.

The feeders were forced out of business. Theywork on a long-range plan based only on supplyand demand. Moreover, the feeder operates on aclose margin; he risks the money he pays for cattle,and he risks his feed. If he doe,sn't get a good gainin the weight of the cattle he feeds and also ahigher price per pound than he paid for the cattle,he loses money. The average feeder who has beenlong in the business can reckon the possible supplyand demand-hinged on the supply and price offeed-but he has no idea what bureaucratic whim

FEBRUARY 25, 1952 337

the morning paper will report. There may be asudden change in regulations.

When, in the early part of 1951, the OPS an··nounced an immediate rollback and two future ones,the trade in feeder animals stopped with a jolt.Feeders feared a long period of sudden .changes inregulation-a time when they would have to depend on Washington rather than their "cow sense."Overnight, everyone in the business was jittery.No one knew what to do, so nothing was done.Within a few weeks the stockyards were empty,and the supply of stored beef dwindled swiftly. Weactually had a beef shortage in 1951, although thenation had a record beef cattle population.

The OPS order included a quota system underwhich a slaughterer could buy only so much beefdaily. T'he resulting turmoil-a beef shortage andthe -closing of small packing houses across thecountry-brought Congressional action. The ButlerHope Amendment to the Defense Production Actoutlawed the quota system. The OPS, thus spankedby Congress, announced that the two future rollbacks would not be made. Gradually the jitterspassed, the feed lots filled, and by early winter of1951 beef production was back on schedule.

When the feeder, with practically no hope ofprofit, quits business, the nation has to go back tograss-fed beef. This means that at least one-thirdof the potential beef is lost, and in lush times, whenpeople are able to buy a lot of beef, it also means ashortage.

Then, with the arrogance of a successful thief,out rides the black marketeer. He buys beeves,slaughters them and peddles his meat to individualsand to crooked retail outlets. He may be a "littleboy" dealing with only a few steers, or he may bea big-time operator. With the traditional systemshot to pieces and the clamor for beef ringingangrily, the ranchman may unwittingly sell to theblack-marketeer and the patriotic housewife mayunknowingly deal with him, for he is everywhere.

Ray Willoughby of San Angelo, Texas, presidentof the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers A8sociation, in testifying before the U. S. HouseCommittee on Agriculture on May 18, 1951, said:

Unless memories are extremely short-lived, it canbe recalled what happened during the time of thelate, unlamented OPA. You will recall the incontrovertible evidence given to you from manysources showing the disruption in the distributionof beef. Surely you will recall that dralnatic, nevercontradicted evidence which showed 86 per cent ofthe beef of this country was being marketed outside legal channels.

A plentiful supply of beef has always been thebest price control, and the only curb to the blackmarketeer. The consumer, by his demand and ability to pay, sets the price. The rancher, the feederand the processor are well aware of that fact.

In Washington, where corn-fed roast beef tastesas good as it does in Chester or anywhere else,bureau officials should take a look at past experiences and stop dishing up political hash.

338 theF'REEMAN

WHEN my husband ... came home from his firstmeeting with Mr. Stalin in Tehran, he told us

he sensed a great suspicion on :the part of the Marshal but formal relations wer;ealways polite. Hefelt no warmith of understanding or of normal intercourse. My husband determined to bend everyeffort to breaking these suspicions down, a,nd decided Ithat the way:to do itt was to live up to everypromise made by both the United StatleiS land GrelatBritain, which both of us were able to do beforethe Yalta meeting. At Y,alta my husband felt theatmosphere had somewhat cleaved, and he did s,ayhe wa,sabl,e to get a 'smile from Stalin.

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, McCall's, February 1952

I hav'e never been able to unders,tand what a Communist front organization is.

DOROTHY PARKER, quoted in Holly..wood Daily Variety, June 10, 1949

The Russians can damage their own power to attract people who look to them for sympathy. In1946 they decided that, all things considered, theyhad better pull their troops out of Manchuria. Theywere not sure that An1erica would respond to thisgesture . . . so they played safe. Advance agents ofthe Chinese Communists were already in Manchuria,eager to take over the great industries builtup by the Japanese. They were sure they couldswing it. The Russians were not so sure. They wereafraid that Manchuria, if· its industries were left agoing concern, might be turned into an Americanstronghold on the doorstep of Siberia, so theygutted the factories of Manchuria as they withdrew.

OWEN LATTIMORE, "The Situation in Asia," 1949

When I(nights Were Bold

If the United 8ta,tes ever again stoops to expedientsto avoid the difficult decisions that come withleadership, the heavy burdens tha:t come with defense, we shall once more run Ithe dangers of allhalf-way measures and waste our sitrength and conscience as a weathervane ralther than a force. If wecringe from the neclessity of mee:ting issues boldlywith principle, resolution and strength, then weshall simply hurtle along from crisis to crisis, improvising with expedients, seeking inoffensive solutions, drugging the nation with an illusion of security which under those conditions can not exist.

GENERAL OMAR BRADLEY, address art Longmeadow, Mass. on Memorial Day, 1948

The Freeman invites contributions to this column, and willpay $2 for each quotation published. If an item is sent in bymore than one person, the one from whom it is first receivedwill be paid. To facilitate verification, the sender should givethe title of the periodical or book from which the item istaken, 'with, the exact date if the sou,rce is a Periodical andthe publication year and page. number if it is a book.Quotations should be brief. They can not be returned oracknowledged. . THE EDITORS

Let's Ostracize CommunistsBy EUGENE LYONS

H E'S A gentle sort, with a sensitive consci,enceand a fussy concern for (the purity of his lib

eral heritage. Though I didn't relish the role ofnloral arbit,er when he explained his dilemnla, thenote of distress in his voice cut off my prot,ests.His probl,em turned out to he trivial in itself, yetit bears recounting for its implications.

My fri,end, it appeared, had ,accepted a dinnerinvitation at the hom,e of "a nice old lady," andnow, a't the last mom'ent, he discover,ed that theguest of honor would be a notorious fellow-traveler,an aDtist active on 'endless Stalinoid frlOnts. Theprospect of breaking bread with a Muscovitestooge was repugnant to him, but he hated to hurthis politically naive hos:tess. Be,sides, he worriedwhether withdrawal from the engagement mightnot be "bigoted" and "intolerant" on his part.

"W·ell," I said, thinking out loud, "suppos1e youhad faced a similar test some years -ago, with anotorious HHler ,agent as the naive old lady's guestof honor. Suppose you had been asked to help entertain Fritz Kuhn or someone like him-"

"By Jove, you'r,e right!" my fri,end int,errupt,ed."Ther'e would have been no probl,em if a Nazi wereinvolved, and there shouldn't be in the case of aCommunist! "

Unconsciously he had aC0epted a doubl,e standardof social and moral behavior-one for brown totalitarians, another for the red breed. A moment'sawareness was ,enough ,to show up the illogic ofthis attitude. The myth that Communists are"som'ehow" less reprehensible than Nazis and Fascis,ts, nurtured by decades of propaganda and liberal self-delusion, is so thin and dryrotted that itturns to dust under the first finger-prod of logic.

All of us know peoplie who profess abhorrence ofcommunism but continue to associate with iitsagents and g,erm-carri,ers. Some of them, in fact,pride themselves on their broad-mindedness inconsorting with fifth columnists whose "views"they despise. Like our self-righteous Secretary ofState, they are too noble to turn their backs onfriends arid acquaintances merely because thesehappen to be dedicated enemies of freedom andhuman decency.

Men and women who would hav,e be,en outragedby the very idea of maintaining amiable social r,elations with members of the German-AmericanBund have no scruples -about dining ,and cocktailingand chat'ting with miembers of Stalin's assortedBunds. The pro-Nazi writer or prof'essor or businessman knew-or was soon helped to know--thathe must pay for his ugly obs,ession by exclusionfrom dec,ent democratic society, but his Communistcounterpart still finds open doors to democraticperiodicals, discussion forums, social ga'therings.

I believe :ther:e should bean 'end to this debasing"toleranoe." It s,eems to me much too late in the

day for making excus·es for the camp followers ofthe criminal Kremlin gang, let alone outright Communists. In the earlier years of the Bolshevik "experiment" it made some sens'e to allow for ignorance, for confusion, for innocent collaboration withhorror. But this is 1952, the thirty-fifth year ofthe squalid, sadistic sltory. The ,evil thing has swallowed half of Europe and most of Asia and ismaking war on fre,e men eVlerywhere in the lit,eralKor,ean s'ense. Surely the margins for doubt aboutthe nature of the Communist abomination wereerased long ago.

EVEN AT the risk of being "unfair" to a few innocent cretins vvho still accept Moscow's slo

gans at face value, the time has come to ostracizeCommunists of all degr,e,es. They should be cut offas fully, as demonsitratively, as uncompromisinglyas decent people used to cut off Nazis and still cutoff the mor'e obnoxious and identifiable kleagles ofrace hatred. Thos·e who choose to ride Stalin'sbloody wave of the future should be treated conspicuously as moral outlaws and social untouchabl'es. They must he marked with 'the stigma ofshared guilt for every crime, deception and brutality cOlnpounded by Bolshevism from 1917 todate.

I t used to be sma~t Ito be vaguely pro-Soviet.The mink-lined tobacco roads from Park Avenue toBeverly Hills, the penthouse proletariat, theswimming-pool peasantry played at revolution andpaid generously into Party coffers for the privilege. It was a species of intellectual social climbing. The Communists found this useful and lucrative for their schemes, and the cumulative mischief has left permanent scars on American life.It has polluted the thinking and crippled the emotions of a generation.

Communism has ceased to be fashionable. Forthe most part Park Avenue and Hollywood haveretreated to more natural and less hideous stupidities. But that is not enough. The giving of aidand comfort to Stalinism in any form must bemade positively shameful. Association with theKremlin's causes and catchwords and obscenitiesmust be identified for what ilt is: proof of moraldepravity and mental driveling.

Let's ostracize Communists and their fellowtravelers. In the context of the current worldcrisis they can no longer be given the benefit ofthe doubt but must be clearly labeled as traitors-not merely to their own country but to the human race and to freedom itself.

Creed and GreedFREE MAN: P'HRceCOMMUNIST: Piece

after peaceafter piece

after peace. . . .CASMI STEFFIN

FEBRUARY·25, 1952 339

How To Defend Free EnterpriseBy WALTER SULZBACH

An economist asks why the arguments in fav01~ ofeconomic liberty have so far failed to 1~everse the~vorld trend toward more interventionism.

IN THE United States as elsewhere propagandain favor of free enterprise has, in general,failed. Its supporters stand for an excellent

cause. They have substantial funds at their disposal. But they have been unable to reverse theuniversal trend toward economic intervention andcontrols. Even the Republicans in this countryand the Conservatives in Britain are not liberalsin the sense of Adam Smith, Jefferson, or Cobden.All they promise is that they will achieve thegoals of the welfare state more cheaply and efficiently than the parties with which they compete.

If only a small part of the energy and moneyspent for free enterprise propaganda were devotedto investigating the causes of its failure, many disappointments might be avoided. The following reflections do not pretend to cover the whole problem. Their purpose is to initiate a discussion.

The first mistake of current free-enterprisepropaganda is made on the ideological level. Wespeak too much of the "liberty" lost through controls, forgetting that, although the cry for libertyhas been responsible for all revolutions of oppressed nations against their oppressors, it hashad little significance in the realm of social movements. As Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out morethan a century ago, it is equality, not liberty, thatthe people in a democracy are most eager toachieve. The principal motive behind the FrenchRevolution, said Napoleon, was vanity and notthe lust for liberty. He was referring to the bitterresentment of the French people against the economic and political privileges of the aristocracyand the clergy. It is no coincidence that in manycountries the people are quite willing to liveunder dictatorship and to forego their liberties.Only recently the Brazilians voted their formerdictator into the presidency in an honest election.But never and nowhere have the masses voted foran aristocracy of birth or wealth.

Economic equality means in the first placeequal access to the chances and pleasures of life.The minimum demand is for social security andfull employment. Since well over half of the working population in industrially advanced countrieshave the status of employees, few people aim ateventually running enterprises of their own. Employees believe that free enterprise is only remotely, if at all, their concern.

To be sure, liberty has not lost all its appeal. Buteconomic interventionism is not felt to be an encroachment on individual liberty. The worker "vho

340 the FREEMAN

can find no employer willing to pay him the legalminimum wage does not usually blame the law forhis misfortune. He blames the avarice of the employers; and he will not be convinced otherwise.

Not long ago a lively discussion took place onthe question whether or not socialism and economic interventionism frustrate the functioningof political democracy. In the opinion of thiswriter they will do so in the long run, even thoughthe historical experience at this time available cannot be used to substantiate the liberal assumption; for the labor parties in Britain, Australia,Norway and other democratic countries have not,when they held office, misused their power inorder to stifle freedom of thought and discussionor to prevent elections in which they might bedefeated. The connection, if any, between democracy and free enterprise appears more obviouswhen the question is put the other way round. Ifwe ask whether political democracy underminesthe free-enterprise system, the answer is definitely yes. Wherever there has been universal suffrage, organized economic pressure groups havebeen able to influence legislation; and the idea ofthe welfare state has proved well-nigh invincible.In the United States no party can win that doesnot promise privileges to the farmers and organized labor. Big Business and the banks canmarshal only very few votes; and the consumersare not organized.

Free enterprise will never make headway aslong as its supporters ignore the psychologicalfoundations of democracy.

The second obstacle to be considered is not ofan ideological and quasi-permanent but of atransitory political nature. Ours is at present nota peace but an armament economy. In what Herbert Spencer, himself a staunch liberal, called the"industrial type of society," a great measure oflaissez faire produces good wages, good profits,and the highest attainable national income. InSpencer's "militant type of society," which coversour present set-up, these achievements are notthe foremost purpose of national policy. America'smain concern for the time being is security; andin a period of intense rearmament our governmentis bound to be the biggest buyer of many basiccommodities. It can't help drafting potential laborers into the armed forces, and interfering withthe location of new industrial plants with thepurpose of insuring their immunity from attack.Providing for an ample supply of consumers'goods and the sound investment of private savings is of secondary importance.

The traditional arguments in favor of free enterprise which were valid for Britain around 1900and for the United States around 1925 have a

somewhat theoretical significance at the presentjuncture; for it is unlikely that when our ends arechanged the means used to achieve them 'will remain unaffected. Free 'en:terpris'e propaganda whichignores the present international situation may becompared to a program for the professional education of teen-aged males at a time when practically all of them ave liabl'e ,to be drafted as soldiers.

Thirdly, the liberal school is a hundredfoldright when it insists that all attempts to interferewith the distribution of the national product infavor of "labor" or "agriculture" or "small business," are doomed to failure. When the laborunions force the wages of their members up beyond equilibrium level there will be unemployment. When a government guarantees minimumprices to farmers, they will produce more thanthey can sell and the authorities will have to buya part of their product. Maximum prices inducethe producers to restrict their activities and bringabout black markets. Tariffs for the purpose ofhampering imports cut down exports as well. Andso it goes through the whole economy. The "functional" distribution of income, as provided by themarket economy (i.e. distribution as among capital, labor and "risk-taking"), stubbornly resists allattempts by governments to remould it.

But in a democracy the voters demand whatthey call "economic justice"; and they will notchange their minds merely because the textbookson economics join issue with them. Here is another point where free-enterprise propaganda hasbeen one-sided and unrealistic. For aside from the"functional" there is what the economists callthe "personal" distribution among individuals."Personal" distribution reflects income regardlessof its sources. It tells us how much A,B,C, etc.earn in terms of dollars.

Now there can be no doubt whatever that governments may take a hand in personal redistribution without inviting unwelcome secondary results, as long as they don't go too far. When someworkers have to be paid more than they are worthto their employers, other workers will find it moredifficult to be hired. But if public funds are usedto keep starving paupers alive some one else willnot have to starve instead. The state can organizerelief; and no one wants the poor to perish. Thequestion how generous relief should be and howmuch public money should be spent for social security, education, and so forth does not involveany principle. It is a matter of degree. Liberalsneed not be told that the tax burden, particularlyin the field of progressive income and estate taxes,can reach a measure where it stifles savings, initiative, and new investments and will lead to outright socialism. They should stress that pointtime and again. But at the same time they shouldnot ignore the basic fact that concessions to thedemocratic demand for security do ,;not necessarily conflict with the ideas of private propertyand free competition; and they should not alienatethe support of classes which may be won over to

the cause, provided that cause is explained in alanguage to which the people will listen.

The radical rejection of even a small measureof personal redistribution is particularly dangerous in times when the most simple-minded areaware that the thing can be done. If we can spend$60 billion on armaments it stands to reason thatin more normal times we can spend at least a partof that sum for the poor, or the aged, or the young,or any other group we are willing to support.

SINCE the ideological arguments of the supporters of free enterprise have had little ef

fect in the past and will presumably fare no better in the foreseeable future, and since periods ofrearmament and war are anyhow not propitiousfor an extension of laissez faire, what can be salvaged and restored of free enterprise at this juncture should be supported not by attempting toconvince all the peropl'e burt by organizing somepeople, namely those whose immediate interestsare involved. This should be done first for thepurpose of abolishing those governmental subsidies and investments which go back to the NewDeal and have long lost their usefulness, if theyever had any; and, secondly, for the purpose ofhalting inflation.

The principle of price "parity" benefits thefarmers, formerly bankrupt but by now highlyprosperous. At the same time it is a heavy burdenon everyone else. It should be abandoned as soonas possible. The same applies to our silver-purchase policy. The liquidation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation is overdue.

Our "parity" farm policy is a drain on theTreasury and on every consumer. The housewivesin the cities, if they ever read a paper, are awareof the fact that it is they who pay for the prosperity of the farmers. They and their husbandsknow everything the economists are able to tellthem. But they don't mind. They do nothing aboutit. For the farmers are organized, and consequently get what they want. The consumers,though they are by far the majority, are not organized and therefore can be exploited.

The same holds true for inflation, next to warthe greatest enemy of free enterprise. The resultsof both, war and inflation, are obscured by theshort-run prosperity which they produce. Butaside from the misery it inflicts on those who havetrusted the stability of the national currency, inflation is so dangerous because it deprives allprices, wages, and investment figures of their truemeaning and significance. It protects enterpriseswhich should not be entitled to expand or evento exist; and it permits governments to spend vastsums without adequate budget controls.

Yet inflation is never an economic necessity. Itis a political expedient; for if governments canappropriate purchasing power by taking it awayfrom the people who have cash and checking accounts or hold claims defined in terms of the national money unit, they might as well levy taxes

FEBRUARY 25, 1952 341

in a regular way on the earners of incomes, thebuyers of commodities, the owners of real estate,etc. A sound system of taxation is at least an attempt to let social justice prevail; whereas inflation is a method of irresponsible expropriationwhich, more than anything else, undermines themeaning and justification of the principle of private property. Governments are well aware thatthe victims of inflation are wont to suffer silently.History records many revolutions of the debtorclasses. The creditors, who have been far morefrequently dispossessed, have never revolted.

Only a handful of individuals and corporationsin this country have a stake in silver mining; butthis small minority has organized its interests. Ithas promoted the silver lobby and has become animportant factor in our monetary policy. It is almost unbelievable that the people whose interestsare tied to cheap food prices or the preservationof the purchasing power of the dollar are not organized as political pressure groups, and therefore wield no influence. Everyone is a consumer;and millions of Americans hold life insurancepolicies, bonds, mortgages, or saving accountsand are thus on the losing side as long as inflation goes on and prices continue to rise. It shouldbe easy to organize the consumers, particularlythose who live in towns and cities, as well as thepast and present victims of inflation.

The pressure of these two classes, consumers andcreditors, might well prove irresistible. The victims of interventionism should be able to achievefor free enterprise by political action what arguments and statistics have failed to accomplish.

Fro,m Our ReadersNIore Ahout Our Function

The editorial in your issue of December 31, "TheFunction of the Freeman," was in my opinionconciliatory beyond the call of duty.

The majority of the American people supportneither the domestic policy of the New and FairDeals nor the foreign policy that led us to Yaltaand Teheran and into the land war in Korea. Atthe last Presidential election only a fourth of thequalified electorate gave positive support to thesepolicies.

'Yet our country is still ruled by a comparatively small group of self-styled progressive intellectuals. This clique controls almost all theimportant media of communication and education. It controls the tremendous Federal appa..ratus of political propaganda, costing hundredsof millions of the taxpayers' money. It sets thedominant tone in the editorial offices of our newspapers and magazines, in the legitimate theater,in the movie industry, in radio and in television.Its partisans misuse our schools, especially theuniversities, to indoctrinate the rising generation

342 the FREEMAN

with the ideas of government omnipotence, allaround planning, socialism and communism.

It is true that some minor results have alreadybeen attained in the fight against this leftistbigotry. The overt coddling of Communists andfellow-travelers by Federal authorities has beendiscontinued. It is unlikely that the official machine will again dare to shield traitors as it didpersistently until a few years ago.

This initial success is certainly hopeful, but itis only a first step. The Administration continuesits inflationary policies and its endeavors to usethe people's dissatisfaction with the inevitableconsequences of inflation as a pretext for increasing controls. If the present financial policy is notabandoned very soon, an economic catastrophe ofunprecedented gravity may result. Then thespokesmen for "progressivism" will put the blameon capitalism, whose operation they have sabotaged by every means available. They will try tointerpret the failure of their own absurd schemesas the collapse of the market economy which hasprovided the average American with the higheststandard of living in history. And they will tryto persuade people that only the adoption of fullregimentation of every aspect of the citizen's lifeand work can bring salvation.

What is needed to frustrate this combinationof folly and deceit is an enlightened public opinion. It is necessary to counteract the incessantpropaganda of the "liberal" intellectuals; to explode the fallacies of their tenets; and to give theyouth of America, whose minds have been misguided by teachers and textbooks, an opportunityto recognize fully the benefits which they derivefrom the American system of economic freedom,representative government and civil rights.

This is the function of a journal of opinion likethe Freeman. It must combat the superstitious belief that the coming of socialism is inevitable. Itmust restore confidence in the future of freedom.It must encourage those who have refused to letthemselves be deluded by the harbingers of bondage. It must win back to the cause of freedom thosewho have fallen victim to the collectivist slogans.It must raise its voice in favor of the philosophy oftrue liberalism, and expose the counterfeit "liberalism" of those who try to sell dictatorship and oppression under the specious label of democracy.New York City M. L.

"A Notable Service"

In the short time since our subscription, started Ihave been very much impressed by the high andstimulating quality of the writing and thinkingthat goes into your publication. You are doing anotable service, and those of us who admire independence and forthright opinion hope that you willcontinue to find the means to keep going.

CLAYTON HOAGLAND, EditorialDirector, Institute of Economic

New York City Affairs. New York University

Manners, Arts and MoralsNotes on the Entertainment Industries

By WILLIAM S. SCHLAMM

NEXT TO "Point of No Return," Mr. John vanDruten's "I Am A Camera" has been generally welcomed as this season's greatest

dramatic hit on Broadway. It is the story of aBritish girl who, under the pretext of being awhore, is one. An anemic subject, one would think,yet even such meager dramatic material the playwright (just as the author of "Point of No Return") had to rent from a novelist's warehouse.There is, it seems, considerably more inventivenessin the frigidaire business than in our theater. AllMr. van Druten has contributed to an old noveletteby Christopher Isherwood, aside from a routinefitting job for stage dummies, are a few cleverlines of dialogue and loans from other authorsMolnar, for instance. (The structural joke of the"new play"--the professional probl'ems of a writerdiscussed on the stage, and used for driving theplot's motor-is from "The Play's The Thing.")

Christopher Isherwood's melancholy sketches ofBritish youngsters who, vaguely bothered by weirdsigns in the sky, are killing time in Berlin whilethe Nazis are getting ready for quite another kindof killing, remain memorable not,es of a sensitivereport,er. Writ1ten in the early thirties, these "Berlin Stories" reflected, honestly and authentically,the moral fatigue of a generation which did notwant to hear the first rumbles of the hellquake and,for that reason, made sophisticated noises of dissipation. Oh yes, :there was also among them thatsilly British girl, Sally Bowles, who, with herrather touching Anglo-Saxon lack of talent for thedistinc;tly Gallic vocation, dabbled a bit in sexualwickedness.

And so it cam,e about that Mr. van Druten, apparently in a desperate search for material fit totickle 'a frivolous :audience, recalled thosle "BerlinStories." Off went the complexities of Mr. Isherwood's distr'essed prose, his Itr,embling premonitionsof unthinkable horror, his r,emorse over a generation's lazy heart. On camle a few of Mr. van Druten's famously ,elegant single-entendres-and thereit was, that v,eritabl,e triumph of the trade: a bedroom faree for debutantes.

What made things ,even worse was lVlr. van Drut,en's appallingly bad taste in retaining, of allthings, Isherwood's compassionate recollection oftwo bewilder,ed Jewish lambs, about to be slaughtered. In the "B'erlin Stories," written almosttwenty years ago, this anticipation of the gaschamber was a credit to Isherwood's moral sensitivity. Used on Broadway, in 1951, as a sort oftragic relief in a dirty story, Mr. van Druten'scounterpoint referenee to six million future corpses

is the most offensive gimmick in his altogetheroffensive off-color play.

I shall not deny that I ,enjoyed watching MissJulie Harris, who plays Sally Bowles with all the'wickedness a Smith undergraduate could muster.Even the limitations of her register add, in thisparticular case, to Miss Harris's succ,ess: as she issimulating ,anywiay, her single-pitched manneri,sm,sustained for an entire evening, is this time instyl'e. But my enjoyment lof the iactwould have beengreater if it had been shown at a stag party.

For, shock as it may my f'ellow intellectuals, Iadmit that filthy language ,embarrasses me in thepresence of ladies. But what embarrass,ed me evenmore was that hundr'eds of well-attired and visiblyniee women in the audience, many a girl freshmanamong them, seemed to find the joke utterly, utterlydelightful. Why ladies, when gather,ed in hundreds,should ,enjoy ,the sort of languag.e any thre,e of themwould resent in the relative privacy of a drawingroom, has been often discussed by mass-psychologists, who contend that the individual's moral andesthetic standards get lost in the herd. This, iftrue, is sad, particularly when it comels to ladie's\vho, if they were smart, would keep out of herds.

T HERE ARE, of course, exceptions to that widelyneglected rule. For instance, mixied company did

not bother me at all when I saw "Top Banana," amusical which stars Phil Silvlers and his expertteam of funnymen. 8erv,ed a la burlesque, smut, itseems, becomes aseptic. The secret of 'old-fashionedburlesque is its unconscious tact in presenting theoff-color gag without the slightest literary pretension, without intellectual rationale or psychologicalmotivation. It is puye sruut. When performed notfor a kick but for a laugh, strip-tease strikes meas unobj'ectionable. T'her,e are, it g,eems, only twotasteful ways of discussing sex (a notoriously privateaffair) in public: either to cont,emplarte thesuperiority of an inexorable force (Le. to immerseoneself in tragedy); or to show the stupid s,elfimportanc,e of crude appetites for what it is--excruciatingly ludicrous. Mr. van Druten could domuch worse than engage in a study of the two hilarious and completely disarming knockouts in"Top Banana": one, a kind of Koechel-listing ofall the classical burlesque gags, presented by theshow's funnymen with terrific speed in front ofthe curtain; and two, the elopement scene to\vards the end which, I \vant to report in the jargon of the trade, made me roll in the aisle.

But gratitude for a few gr,eatly appreciatedlaughs must not sidetrack a critic from assessing

FEBRUARY 25, 1952 343

the Broadway disaster as a whole. In the followingaccount of all productions curr,ently to be seen onBroadway (except for the straight musicals andSir Lawrence Olivier's British guest company), Ihave attempted to separate the quintessence ofeach play's dramatic material:

"Affairs of State": a statesman's educationthrough and for slex.

"Anna Christie": a prostitute, sent downhill byrape, has difficulties in r,ecapturing pure love.

"Come of Ag,e": a r,eincarnat'ed unkissled boypoet ~eC'eives an ,exasperating s,ex education from awoman twic'e his ag'e.

"D'esire Under the Elms": spieed by murder,adult,ery and other family contacts, s,ex r,ela,tionscan be tough in New England.

"Gigi" : two old cocottes have unexpected troublein training a girl for the oldest profession.

"I Am A Camera" :as said· ,above, the sltory of aBritish girl who, under the pretext of being awhor,e, is one.

"Point of No Return": a suburbanite has doubtsabout the m'eaning of his career but, egged on byhis wife, keeps going.

"R'emains 'To Be Seen": even an illiterate girl,slet against a comical background of mystery, canexude gamy Hex appeal.

"Stalag 17" : coarseness, comedy and t'ensions ina corral of sex-starved prisoners of war.

"The Constant Wifre": a cool woman coolly def'ends her unfaHhful husband and ,then goes coollyoff on an 'extramarital binge.

"The Fourpost1er" : snapshots of ,a marriagetaken around the title-bed.

"The Moon Is Blue": a civiliz'ed lecher can getto first bas'e-but not beyond-with a dangerouslyinquisitive girl.

"The Shri~e": to ;escape a mental institution, anunbalanced man has to ,aceept a lifre term with hisvampive ofa wife.

I N OTHER words, of the thirt'e,en "l'egitimate". Broadway dramas, ten are entirely focused onthe tribulations of. s'ex, while the r'emaining three("Point of No Return," "Stalag 17" and "TheShrik,e") handle sex quite rthovoughly, ,and not atall tan~entially, but at least in some cont'ext withother motivations of human behavior.

The nine Broadway musicals, of course, are asfrankly disvobed as musicals haVre eVlery right itohe (though some of them use that ancient lic,enseto the na~ed hilt, and might have embarrass'ed theMinsky brothers). As to Olivi,er's productions, theyare impeccably tasteful exhibits of mature Britishtheater art, including the choioe of playwrights.But in the context of this critical 'essay I can nothelp noticing Olivi'er's (subconscious, I am sure)flair for Broadway's present obsession: he pickedthe indubitably s'exiest play of leach, Shakespeareand Shaw, a double feature which an unscrupulous advance man might easily have billed underthe combined title "Up In Cleopatra's Room."

Lest I be misunderstood, I want to go on record

344' the F'REEMAN

that I count the female form, and the desires itfrequently arouses, among the least disputable suceess'es of Creation. Furthermo~e, having r,eceivedmy 'early ,education in the proximity of SigmundFreud, I have always belen willing to grant that sexis her'e to stay. But not necessarily on Broadway!Andc,ertainly not to such total lexclusion of everything else! I am, to clarify my position beyond anypossible mistake, so unr,eservledly in favor of s,exthat I rally to its defense against the catastrophicconsequenees of literary inflation. A flew morle sleasons such as this, and the sensitive segment of theaudi,enee, sex-satiart'ed beyond endurance, will patronizie bootlegged showings of "Uncle Tom'sCabin"-a distinct calamity, not only because thatplay is rather poor, but mainly because sex, if inhal'ed in ~easonably spaced dosages, has exquisitestage possibilities.

For the most s'erious quarrJel I havle, retrospectively, with the Minsky brothers is precisely overrtheir underdev1eloped SlenSre of quantitative discrimination: nudity, in the singula.r quite often attractive, levok!es in the plural ,a cumulative di,sgust. Thisbrings me, in a conte~t I would have deemed unthinkable only a few ylearsago, to the Sunday edition of the New York Times, in whos,e columns,the other Sunday, I counted 73 pictuves of whatcorsetieres and Hollywood oensors so mode,stly call"cleavage." I must repol"tt thalt,characteristically, I:enjoyed that bit of statistical rlesearch much lessthan I first thought I would. This may merelyprove that I am neither young enough nor oldenough for peeking; but Mr. Sulzberger, I trus:t,does not rleally want to discount the large group ofpotential readers betw1elen the ag'e of puberty andthat of slenility. Nor can he, surely, be happy withthe fact that his paper could iSO readily be miista~en,

by some who can not understand EngHsh, for atr,ade organ of the AmeriCian corset 'industry.

There may have been ra time-s.ay, thirty yearsago-when public contemplation of anatomicalfacts and physical tensions ~equired courage anddes,erv,ed patronage. But what courage does it take,and what patronage does it desrerve today, whenchastity is consider'ed a chariacter ,deflect, monogamy moronic, and ,a lady is ,expected to blush onlyov,er her deplorable ,allergy to dirty jokes? In suchan ,era, one can be sure, Pvofessor Freud, werle hestill around, would most ,earnestly pvescribe ahealthy dosage of repression, on medical as wellas on ,esthetic grounds.

As a doctor, he would advise against a total surrender to constantly provoked drives-a surrenderwhich necessarily ends in idiocy. And being thecivilized child of a civiliz'edcentury, the Professor,who thought he had located the roots of civilization in the r,epression of elementary physic,al urges,l,eft also never ,a doubt that he consideI"ied thegame, all in all, well worth the candle. A perusalof the current 22 Broadway offerings, I am afraid,would send him off in a fit of remorseful contrition for a flood of cultural debauchery he haddecidedly not willed, to a medieval monastery.

REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOKBy JOHN CHAMBERLAIN

In his "Eisenhower: The Man and the Symbol"(Harper, $2.50) John Gunther conclusively proves,that Ike is :to be lik!ed. W,e learn, ,a great deal aboutthe particulari,tie,s of Ik!e's lik!eable exterior personality fvom the Gunther m!ethod of reporting,which establishes Dwight David Eisenhower as anexcellent bridge player, a good amateur cook, agolfer of pal.'lts, :a painter who ranks a little belowWinston Churchill, and a reader whose tastes runto violently gaudy pulp Westerns. We also learn agood deal about Ik!e's Abilene, Kansas, childhood,though this COll,es second-hand, by way of otherbooks about Ike. The high points of Ike's own"Crusade in Europe" are also well presented byMr. Gunther. But as to Ike's ideas, which mightmake him less likeable to certain people if theywere kno,vn, Mr. Gunther proves a very unsatisfactory cicerone. John Gunther may have no difficulty getting inside whole continents, but he hasnot managed really to get "inside Ike" at all.

Since Mr. Gunther has the equipment to be afirst-rate reporter, should one ascribe his failureto a period which does not reward journalists fordigging behind official facades? (I know the onlytime I ,ever got ,a real news be,at-which was onIthe cont,ents of the 1944 Marshall letter to TomDewey warning him to keep the truth about PearlHarbor out of the poHtical campaign-I was lookedupon as a sort of mor,al lreper for some monthstherreafter.) Whatever the ,answer to this questionof the lack of reward for digging, it remains truethat Mr. Gunther just hasn't dug hard enough, ortalked with ,enough peopl,e, or probed his subjectfor revealing attitudes on specific matters. MaybeMr. Gunther couldn't have done any better underthe peculiar circumsitanc,es of the looming politicalcampaign: Eis1enhower hasn't wanrbed to talk in advance ofa suve sign fvom the firmament (or maybeMr. Gallup), land his frirendsand even his enemiesmay wish to remain under wraps until after theNew Hampshire primaries. But the fact that Mr.Gunther may have been hamper1ed by circumst,ancesdoes not help answer the questions that still mustbe asked of Eisenhow,er before the Republican conv'ention next June.

Mr. Gunther does indeed tell us something aboutIke's views on both £oreignand domestic maltters.But the views on foreign policy, as 'Ou.tlined here,are rudimelllt,ary and far from profound,. As forIke's domestic philosophy (it is generally "conservative" in its drift), the .statements quoted by

Gunther lack the sort of amplitude and seasoningtha:t would 'enable a reader to know how the manmight behave in certain situations. Mr. Guntherref,ers to ,speeches in which Eisenhower has attacked the idea of Federal aid to education, or decri'ed the search for an "illusory" s,ecurity at theexpense of initiative and self-reliance, or warnedagainst the "dang,er" that m,ay aris1e from "toogreat a concentration of finance." It is good toknow where Eis1enhower stands on some of thesethings, ,even good :to know ,thart he may bea sort of~Kansas POPUliSit in finance, but, as Mr. Guntherhims-elf says, "probably his chief defect, both ingeneral and as a Presidential candidate, is lackof definition."

Mr. Gunther quotes Eisenhower as exclaiming:"If only 'a man can havecour,ag'e ,enough to itakethe leadership of the middle." But the "middle," inour time, is anywhere ,the collectivists and WelfareStatists choose by their words and activity to placeiit. Tfhe t,echnique of controlling the wher,eabouts ofthe "middle" is as 'easy as it is infalliblre. Ifa leftist wants, let us say, two billion dollar's for a givenprojeCit, he can 'establish his figure as the "middle"figure by the simpl,e expedi,en:t of asking for fourbillion. The sort of thinking that Eisenhower haspresumably done about "leadership of the m'iddle"naerely proV1ok!es Ithe left to double its demands inquest of 'a "compromis1e" ithrut will give it preciselywha,t it w,ants.

Mr. Gunther notes, in Eisenhower, the seeming"lack" ofa "fi~ed body of coherent philosophicalbelief." But if he truly feels that "lack of defini:tion," and "lack of depth," are Eislenhow,er's chiefdefects as a Pr1esidential candidalte, why didn't hepress his subject into efforts at definition? A trulyfirs:t-rlate reporter of the old school-an AlvaJohnston, fore~amp1e-would have hacked awayalt Ithis until he had ,either 'elicited som1ething orproved :to his own satisfacltion tha,t /there w,as littleto be had. In the latter event it would not necessarily he ,established thart no "defini,tion" to Eis'enhow'er ,exists. A man can hold detailed beHefs andsttill }{;e,ep mum for his own reasons. But the reporter who can't get answers to searching and, yes,impertinent questions from a public figure at leastshould know that he must get out the gumshoes'and go to work collecting and cross-checking thesitut,emenrts of friends and enemies of that figure.The trouble with Mr. Gunther is that he hasn'tgiven the gumshoes a try. He has evidently dis-

fEBRUARY 25, 1952 345

dained talking wilth I~e's presumed enemies, probably on the theory that it would contaminate hin1,to be seen in company of ,anyione who might conceivably turn up in a "MacArlthur-McCormickMcCarthy Axis." (Incidentally, the ,almoslt universal assumption Ithat a journalist should mingle onlywith a Socially Approv,ed Bet is ,a measure of whathas happened to journalism in our shallow and benight,ed ,era.)

A victim of "liberal" preconceptions, which makeiit impossibl,e Lor him to think ,about the "int,erior"facing-1east-facing-wesrt posi/tion of Russi,a on theglobe with the cold p~ecisionof ,an F. A. Voigt ora Sir Halford Mackinder, Mr. Gunther is certainlynot the man to di,scover for us whelther Eis,enhowerreally believe,s the world is ~ound. S.talin's ownwriltings on Asia and the colonial quesrtion ,arepretty good r,eason' for thinking ,that the Bolsheviksare "Asia FiI"st'er,s." Thi,s does not mean thatEurope should not be defended ,against ithe possibiHty that the Russians will become "EuropeFirs,ters" overnight, or that Eisenhow'er is wrongabout the urg:ency of cr,eating a European Army.But it does mean that Eisenhower should be questioned-and questioned ~elentlessly-abouthis feel-

ings relative to the Marshall-Acheson policy in theFar East. Tlo their credit both D,ew'ey .and Stass'enhave shown their awareness that Russia can fighta:t will on any front she chooses,and that undueconcentration on Europe might lose us Asia, orvice versa. But 'as ito Eisenhower's world perspective weare still in ;the dark. Perhaps even less iskno,vn about the broader aspects of his foreignpolicy than about his domes:tic ideas.

Mr. Gunther's failure to tackle the most important questions :about Ihis subJect is all the moreglaring when one considers his pages about Ei,slenhower as Pre,sident of Columbia University. Mr.Gunther shows a fine awareness of what variousfactions thought of Eisenhower on MorningsideHeights. He shows no comparable avvareness ofwhat larger factions in Ithe outer world think ofEisenhower as a soldier and statesman-to-be. Hetells us :thalt Eisenhower has his doubts about thevlisdom of the Yalta and Potsdam decisions. Butwhether Eisenhower thinks the pressur,e of fifthcolumn infiltration played any pafit in sofltening usup for y,alta isa subject which Mr. Gunther doesnot explore. No douht he would consider it "McCarthyism" 'even to m,ention the matter.

OUR ENEMY, THE STATE: ARE-REVIEWBy CECIL PALMER

Our Enemy, the State, by Albert Jay Nock. Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers. $2.50

For m,any mOfie y.ears than I now care to revive inmy memory, I hav,e publicly land priva!tely proclaimed that there are at least three outstandingbooks in the English language which, if they hadbeen read as widely and thoughtfully as they deserve to be, might have spafied the world much ofits present m'i,sfortune1s. The booJ<js I hav,e in mind'are Milton's "Areopagitica," Mill's "On Liberty,"and Spencer's "Man versus the S:ta~te."

The lamps of liberty are going out, one by one,throughout the whole world. Indeed, this wideningdarkness is the supr,eme human :tragedy of the agein which we live. In our desire to flirt wi,th knowledge, we have jilt,ed wisdom. Ther,e is only one endto this illicit kissing of the ephemeral-a stubborn,stupid unwillingness to embrace Ithe eternal. Moralrot is ,eating away:the v,ery roots of individualism,and thereby desitroying the ,soul of man at the fearful price of granting secular exaltation to a soulless State.

From now onwards I, for one, intend :to add afourth book to the! jewel,ed necklace of libertarianliterature. "Our Enemy, the State," by the late Albert Jay Nock, is given this higoh precedence in myhumblees:timation because it ha,s, in common wirth

346 the FREEMAN

,the classics I have mentioned, all ,thos,e qualities ofclear thinking, objective presentation and lucid exposition which distinguish the wise philosopherfrom !the mer,ely intellectual' pamphl,e.teer. The onewrites for all eternity: the other for the movingmoment that must inevitably pass away.

Superficially, one of the grimmesit paradoxes ofthe twentieth century is the emergence of the atombomb at a time when it is painfully evident thatthe ov,erwhelming majoriity of mankind is afflictedwith delayed adolescence. Substantially, however,it is perhaps nOit a paradox art all. May it not bethat the univ,ersaHty of the adolescence and thesplitting of the atom are pat't,erned in the naturallaw of cause and ,effect? Is ilt unlikely that we havebelen inflicted with the super-scientific bomb because we have refused Ito grow up and because wehave faHedto cherish and honor the spiritualbounty of our inheritance?

Albert Jay Nack obviously absorbed every wordof Herbert Spencer's masterpi,ece and, having doneso, his own mighty pen began wher,e Spencer leftoff. Nock's pr,escienee is uncanny. R'eading his bookin this Year of Grace, 1952, it is difficult to realizethat it was written in 1935. It reads like contemporary journalism, but with this tremendous difference: it is written in prose of such majesty andsimple beauty that it will rank" for all time" as im-

perishabl,e li:ter~tu)}e. Furthermo~e, it stat,es a caseagainst Statism that is as fearless and provocativea,s iit is profound and unchaHenge:able.

The State, as Nock impHes over and over again,is merely the politicians' dreams conle true. It ispolitical conjuring, whe)}eby "all Ithe peopl,e all thetime"a)}e invit,ed ·to beHev,e )that the State and Government a)}e one ,and the same thing. The truth is,of course, that whereas Government has its rootsin soci'erty, the Sit~te is a parasitical, malignantg)}owth ithat sleeks to destroy society by bribery,corruption and compulsion.

"Our Enemy, the Stat,e," ,as Ithe very tiUe emphasizes, warns levery ithinking man and woman toremember thait the price of hum,an liberty is eternal vigilance. It stresses, also, that liberty, unlikejustic1e, is not a right. It is an attitude of mind,and a beatitude of the soul. This v'ery g)}ea!t bookr,eminds us that the Sitrut,e is at on0e a mYlthand aterrible reality. It is a myth in the sense that ithas no validity outside the twisted, crooked mentalities of totali:tarians. It is also a ~eality in thes,ens,e tha,t, whenev1er it is allowed ;to usurp thethrone of Government, it not only commandeersthe power thrut corrupts but, in order to give finality :to its ascendancy, iit musrtacquiI~e for itself,and for itself alone, the absolute power that corrupts ,absolutely.

Albert Jay Nock made the point that history divorced from political economy is a story withoutbackground. The pves,ent wrilter v,enrtuves the ,assiertion that political economy divorced from historyis about as utilitarian as a teapot without a spout.

The gre,at value of Nock's diagnosis of S:t~tism,

and all its impIicaltions, is that iltestabIishes apregnant matrimonial alliance between philosophical history and poli:tical science. We ,aveabl,e, therefol'e, to see ithe ,eViolUitions and rlevolUitions of human understanding, and misunderstanding, in perspectiv,e. In other words, the author ,enables us tocontemplate objectively the State's progressive efforts to subjugate society. Statism is politicalideology, seeking outlets in the body politic whereby it can subtly transmute social power into Statepower. Communism, socialism, fascism, and all theother left-wing ideological variations, are the outward and visible signs of this inward and s:ecularinfiltration.

Herber,t Spencer invited his genera:tion to recognize the natural antagonisms that must exist between man, as man, and the State, as master. Nockwas able to extend and widen the invitation for hisown day and generrution. Much that Spencler conceived in creative and prophetic intuition, Nocksaw with his own ,eyes as contempor.ary phenomena.But, lik!e Speneer, he too r,einforc,ed his fine scholarship with intuitive "second sight" into the future.

It is impossible to read this burning, passionateessay on the Sta;t,eas tyrant without r1ealizing thatman himself is all too f~equently his own wors,tenemy.

lit would be bad ,enough if we m,e~ely admitted

that man is in dang,er of selling his soul for a messof political pottage, in terms of the ,so-caned Welfare State. Unhappily, truth demands the unequivocal admission that man is, today, showing toomany signs of his guilty willingness to give hissoul away, in blind obedience to a State masquerading as Father Christmas.

I could wish ithalt a thousand millionaires wouldpool their petty cash in support of a literary crusade dynamically inspired wi!th the will and purposeto make this dead man's masterpiece a living monument in the land of his birth, and beyond.

"Our Enemy, the State" should be in the hands,and in the minds, of the new and rising generationwhich is being so cleverly and so wic~edly s'educ.edby power-drunk S:tate idolators. lit is a book whichoff'ers inspired guidance to ;those who have ventured off the known way, only to find themselves in·a jungle of frus:tr.aition and perplexity. Above all,it is a sineere, honest, cour,ag:eousand finely documented liberitarian approach to the urg,ent spiritual,social and ,economic probliems which beHet us, andwhich mankind must resolve if declining civilization is to escape total eclipse.

POPULAR FRONiTISMThe Yenan Way, by Eudocio Ravines. New York:

Scribner. $3.00

What is most valuable about this better-thanaverag,e ,ex-Communisit aurtobiography is its informed itracing 'of the levolution of the PopularFront formula that Lattimore· & Co. sold to General Marshall, as a re-Bulrt of which the l,art:ter triedto pressure Chiang Kai-shek into a coalition government wilth the Chinese Communis!t8. M.ao TSletung's cynical adaptation of the formula bee-arneknown as the y,enan W.ay.

In 1934,at the urg,ency of Stalin, Ravines saysthat he interviewed Mao, Li Li Shan land otherChinese Comintern agents in Moscow, althoughther'e .appears to be -Bom,e doubt that Mao was inMoscow in 1934. Mao, who according to Ravinesexuded adulation of Stalin, had thiis to say ,aboutthe Popular Front technique:

The greatest talent in this work, comrade, is neverto be associated with failure. Never to defend theweak even w'hen he is right. Never to attack thepillager. of the treasury, if he is the owner of agreat fortress. He might crush you and there isno use being a martyr. . . . Let them get rich today. Very soon we can expropriate everything.The more help they get from us in their pillage,the more positions they will let us take and occupy.. . . These are not the ideas of Mao. These areweak echoes of the clairvoyance of our distinguished and meritorious comrade Stalin....

Ravines s,ays Ithalt he found Ithe Yenan Waytrago amargo-a bitter draught. BUit he sw,allowedit and soon was applying the formula with notablesuccess in Chile. His Communist faith had beenshaken but not broken by what he saw of the Great

FE'BRUARY25, 1952 347

Purge that followed the Kirov assassination, andby the abysmal pOVierty of the Russian maisses. Hewas further disillusioned by his ,experienc,e of' theSpanish Civil W:ar, where he saw Comin1Jern ag,entsliving high while soldi'ers ,and pe:a,sants sltarved anddied; wher,e Soviet ,armam1ents werle tri'ed outand snatched ,away if ,they proved succ,e,ssful;where the vain and sadisltic General Li.s,ter shot adozen brave men mel"iely to cov,er up his own blunders ,and def,e:ats.

But Ravines did not br,eak finally wi:th the P:artyuntil the 8talin-Hi:tl:er pact.

A professional journalist with fictional leanings,Ravines fr,equentlyachi'eves eloquent and incisivepassages like this picture of the Communist millenium:

And afterwards, Pierre? Subjugation of the peoples by Stalin'$ methods, NKVD brigades in everycountry, every party, every little ghost-government. Inventions of deviations to right and to leftas an excuse for the assassination of leaders, officials and any man who has a mind of his own.The transformation of the world into a concentration camp like Russia ... the policeman the highest human type . . . the spy an example to theworld's youth ... the cultivated men of Europeand America down to the level of the Russian,stupefied with terror.

A Peruvian, Ravine.s wri:tes now from his thirdexHe, in Mexico. He describes the Peruvian radical,Haya de la Torre, ,as a vain land ruthless adventurer, and de la Torre's APRA as a terroristic conspiracy which has frequently allied itself withcommunism.

JAMES RORTY

THE EPIC' FALTERSClosing the Ring, by Winston S. Churchill. Boston:'

Houghton Mifflin. $6.00

The fifth volume of Prime Minister Churchill's extensive personal history of "The Second World War"requires little general introduction for those whohave read the first four volumes. The vividness, lucidity, stage-minded pauses and dramatic presentation so characteristic of the Churchill style are stillapparent. But the point of diminishing returns hasbeen reached,even for these admirable qualities.Mr. Churchill strives mightily to continue the epicmood, with the heroes duly enumerated and eulogized. But the only logical literary outcome of thismood would be the triumph of the forces of goodover evil. In spite of Mr. Churchill's efforts to explain ,everything satisfactorily, we know that thiswas not the result. The war's real ,end was tragedy,inconsistency and failure in its major purpose: theextinction of despotism and the establishment . ofpeace on 'earth.

The incongruity of the situation forces the readerto examine more critically the actions of our heroes-the three Caesars-with the result that, in thedocuments presented, their reputations come offmore and more tarnished.

348 the' FREEMAN

There is something deeply disturbing to one'sconfidence in the insight of the Western leaderswhen one reads about the mediaeval ceremony ofpresenting a specially designed Crusader's swordto Stalin at Teheran (pp. 363-4). Should the defense of Stalingrad, gallant -as it may have been, besufficient to drown out the pagan strains of the "Internationale"-and the atheism and slavery practiced in its name? There is something equally disturbing in the lack of discussion between the twoWestern heroes (Roosevelt and Churchill) on thepossible bad faith of their comrade-in-arms, and inthe Churchillian epigram "gaily" ending the formalconference at Teheran: "Truth is so precious thatshe should always be attended by a bodyguard oflies" (p. 383).

For those who recall the great and noble principles of the Atlantic Charter and the Four Freedoms (the self-determination of peoples, the sovereign rights and self-government, and the pledge ofno territorial changes without freely expressed consent by the peoples concerned), it is indeed disappointing- to find less than fifty words out of some180,000 devoted to the principles which took America into the war. The sole reference by Mr. Churchill occurs in a letter of instructions to ForeignMinister Anthony Eden in October 1943:

We reaffirm the principles of the Atlantic Charter,noting that Russia's accession thereto is based uponthe frontiers of June 22, 1941. We also take noteof the historic frontier of Russia before the twowars of aggression waged by Germany in 1914 and1939 (p. 283).

Within this very paragraph is contained the Allied assent to the annexation and enslavement ofthe people of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, East Finland, East Poland, Bessarabia and Bukovina in violation of the principles in the Charter. This paragraph marked the death of the Charter-eventhough the corpse was paraded, for propagandapurposes, for some time before it was interred. Theclanking chains of its ghost are audible as one turnsthese pages, despite the obvious attempts to lay itto rest.

There are many points which Churchill fails toclarify adequately-at least for the historian. Oneof these relates to his strategy of the "soft underbelly of Europe." Its high purpose was to placeAmerican and British forces in the heart of easternEurope, thus forestalling formation of Communistpuppet states. Although the contemporaneous material quoted by Churchill would indicate that heargued strenuously for a drive into the DanubeValley and an attack in the Aegean and the Adriatic, he denies it:

The reader . . . must not be misled by a chancephrase here and there into thinking ... that Icontemplated a campaign by armies operating inthe Balkan peninsula. These are legends. Neverhad such a wish entered my mind (p. 254).

This denial of any desire for "mass invasion ofthe Balkans, or a large-scale campaign in the eastern Mediterranean" is repeated at page 344. Chur-

chill also urged and even attempted, with Britishtroops, to occupy the islands of the Aegean. Whatpurpose this could have had except for further action in the Balkans is hard to see. And Churchill'scontemporary memoranda are rife with such sentences as:

. . • The utmost efforts should be put forth to organize the attack upon the Germans throughoutthe Balkan peninsula ... (p. 136).

I believe •.. that the Italian and Balkan peninsulas are militarily and politically united, and thatit is really one theatre with which we have to deal(p. 210).

[To Eden in Moscow] You should find out whatthe Russians really feel about the Balkans.•.. Itmay be that for political reasons the Russianswould not want us to develop large scale Balkanstrategy (p. 286).

[To General Alexander] ... If we can get hold ofthe mouth of the Adriatic so as to be able to runeven a few ships into Dalmatian or Greek ports,the whole of the Western Balkans might flare up(p. 464).

Not only are there many other similar quotationswithin Churchill's own writings, but his advocacyof the eastern Mediterranean strategy has been described by Admiral Leahy ("I Was There," p. 162),by Sherwood ("Roosevelt and Hopkins," p. 747),by Hull ("M1emoiris of Cordell Hull," pp. 1368-9), byGeneral John R. Deane ("The Strange Alliance,"p. 41ff), and by Elliott Roosevelt-to mention onlya few.

I t may be that Elliott Roosevelt's "As He Saw It"is responsible for Churchill's denial seven yearsafter. The President's son showed little or no respect for Churchill who, he said,

was of the opinion that we should contrive ourentry into Europe in such a way as to meet theRed Army in central Europe, so that Britain'ssphere of influence might be maintained as fareast as possible. ["As He Saw It," p. 93].

Whatever esteem Churchill may have had forFranklin Roosevelt obviously did not extend to hisson. The account of the dinner given by Stalin atT'eheran makes it clear to the reader that Churchillconsidered Elliott a boor and a nuisance (pp. 373-4) .The opinion, of course, is expressed in more politelanguage, but the meaning is clear.

Nevertheless, it is difficult to see the reason forChurchill's denial of his ,eastern Mediterraneanstrategy. In this strategy he held the vital conceptthat war was for political consequence, not alonemere military victory. The narrower concept, unfortunately, typifies the limited purpose of hisAmerican allies. In "Closing The Ring," and evenmore so in succeeding volumes, Churchill will besadly in need of evidence to establish his greaterforesight toward building a new world from thewreckage of the war.

In other places problems with the Soviets aretouched upon and the reader's interest stimulated-only to be left hanging. On May 4, 1944, forexample, Churchill wrote Eden asking for a onepage paper setting forth "the brute issues between

us and the Soviet Government which are developingin Italy, in Rumania, in Bulgaria, and above all inGreece" (p. 708). He even questioned whether theBritish Ambassador should be recalled for consultation, and asked Eden to consult with Harriman.But there is nothing to tell the reader what, ifanything, came forth from the Foreign Secretary.Certainly these ideas were not pursued at Teheranand Yalta.

To the historian, too, the Churchill history appears lopsided. The student is frustrated by the factthat he must accept what Roosevelt said and wroteonly from Churchill's account of it. The correspondence between the two has never been publishedalthough, by Churchill's own statement, Rooseveltsent him over 1500 communications. It is strange,indeed, that an Englishman alone has access to thismaterial which is denied to Americans. The American historian must rely on such scraps of. information about Roosevelt's communications as Mr. Churchill cares to give. He may be grateful for thescraps, but he is scarcely convinced that they embrace the whole story.

There is much, however, for which the historianmust give credit to Churchill. The vital, secretunderstandings took place at Teheran and are nowconfirmed. In "Closing The Ring," the BritishPrime Minister is honest in their statement. Amongthem were Russia's promise to join the war in theFar East after the defeat of Germany, a promise togive the Soviets "warm water ports" in Europeand the Far East (meaning Manchuria), a promiseto support Communist Tito instead of Mihailovichin Yugoslavia,a tacit understanding to support theRussian annexation of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia,Bu~ovina, Bessarabia, the partition of Finland andPoland with Russian annexation of the eastern segments (shades of "no aggrandizement, territorialor otherwise" I), an understanding to support ape~iphery of governm1ents "friendly to Russia" onher boundaries, and an understanding that Germany would be dismembered and fragmented afterIthe wlar ,ended.

Those who remember Mr. Roosevelt's speech toCongress after his return will recall his denial thatthere were any "secret political agreements" at Teheran. Churchill's ample and illuminating accountof the "unconditional surrender" of Italy certainlycarries the conviction that there were undertones ofgrants for surrender, despite Roosevelt's prior pronouncementat Casablanca. For instance, recognizing the position of the Royal family in the ItalianGovernment and accepting the government headedby Marshal Badoglio do not exemplify "unconditional" in the same sense as it was applied to Germany.

Mr. Churchill has provided some vivid accountsof battles and campaigns. He has confirmed the surmised processes of top-level diplomacy during theperiod. But these echo in hollow mockery againstthe current background of world events.

ARTHUR KEMP

FE:BRUARY 25, 1952 349

BRAZILIAN PA,NORAMATime and The Wind, by Erico Verissimo. Trans

lated by L. L. Barrett. New Yark : Macmillan.$4.95

This latest panoramic epic from the pen of Brazil'sbest known novelist could almost be advertised asthe historical novel to end historical novels. It isthe full jumbo size, guaranteed to outlast all competitors by a month at least. Brazil is a big countryand judging by Verissimo's efforts, intends to yieldnothing to her Yankee sister, no matter what Anthony may be adverse and regardless of how manycompetitors may have gone with the wind. We havehere some 620 pages, covering a period from 1745to 1895 and presenting a rich gallery of characters,ranging from the primitive cowboy to the sicklyand decadent provincial lady of leisure.

The work has many virtues, not the least of whichis precisely this procession of sharply drawn fleshand blood characters. Unforgettable is the swashbuckling Captain Rodrigo, always ready for loveand combat, uneasy and unhappy when neither isavailable; picturesque is old Fandango, a stockfigure of the cowboy that, with very slight changesof Cosltum,e, would be r'ecognizable in Texas of fiftyyears ago; but best of all are the women, particularly the inarticulate, long-suff.ering, passionateAna Terra and the durable Bibiana, arresting as ayoung girl, almost terrifying as she grows into oldage. The action, too, is lively; it could hardly failto be since it must cover a hundred and fifty yearsof history in a period when history in the WesternHemi,spherie'w1as moving on with r,apidand violentinrtensi:ty.

We see the frontier town of Santa Fe in theprovince of Rio Grande do SuI grow from a handfulof huts to a thriving provincial city, gathering momentum in spite of civil and foreign wars, misgovernment and natural calamities, following a patternwhich Europeans may marvel at but which we inNorth America will find familiar enough. Indeed,one of the fascinating aspects of the novel for theAmerican reader is the revelation of a cultural pattern strikingly similar to our own. Any NorthAmerican with the slightest interest in his ovvncountry's history must read this novel with a growing sense of kinship, for the Latin settlers of SouthAmerica, though they brought from Europe a tradition different from ours (and the difference is notto be minimized), yet by force of circumstances,by the nature of things, have had the same readjustments to make, the same problems to face.Without intending to prove it (nor indeed to proveanything, for the only "thesis" of the novel is itsimplicit patriotism) Verissimo demonstrates clearly that there is such a thing as "the American" asdistinquished from the European, and that hemispheric solidarity is culturally a greater truththan many of us realize.

A novel of this extent, one might almost say expanse, is a story of a people more than of people,and it speaks well for Verissimo's skill that he can

350 the FREEMAN

make his characters stand up against the background of time and events that he portrays. Evenso, from a purely artistic point of view, the personalities might have more impact if the novel hadbeen broken into a trilogy and published with ayear's interval between the parts. The author hashimself felt the need of some synthesizing machinery, and hence has told his tale in a series offlashbacks, a device he has used in earlier novels.It does serve in a way to keep time within bounds,but many readers will find it distracting ratherthan helpful. But this, if it be a fault, is a relatively small one compared to so many virtues. Verissimo writes with enthusiasm, professional masteryand a sense of the poetry of his subject, all of whichcomes through in L. L. Barrett's fine translation. Apity there's no map; this is the kind of novel thatneeds one. THOMAS G. BERGIN

MARRIED TO C'HICAGOChicago: City on the Make, by Nelson Algren.

New York: Doubleday. $1.50

If Mr. Algren could have managed to be a bit dispassionate about his Chicago, this would have beena better and a less arresting book. But to ask Mr.Algren to be dispassionate about Chicago wouldbe tantamount to asking a man to be indifferent toa wife who has got under his skin.

Mr. Algren is married to Chicago, and it is oneof those "until death do us part" affairs. Both hismind and heart are involved and it keeps him permanently stirred up. Her blowsy charm, her gaudyvitality, her brash gallantry, have set him runninga gamut which not only never stops hut whichgathers speed. Here it all is: passion, irritation,lyricism, anger, admiration plus an occasional degringolade into something bordering on sentimentality. Right off he states his case: "O'nce you'vecome to be a part of this particular patch, you'llnever love another. Like loving a woman with abroken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies.But never a lovely so reaL"

A sense of humor would help, but Mr. Algren,I'm afraid, isn't blessed with one. If he had been,he would either have settled down before this orgot a divorce. And he further complicates thingsby not only hanging on to his illusion but addingnew facets to it. He says:

If you've tried New York for size and put in astint of Paris, lived long enough in New Orleansto get the feel of the docks and belonged to oldIVlarseilles awhile, if the streets of Naples havewarmed you and those of London chilled you, ifyou've seen the terrible green-grey African lightmoving low over the Sahara or even passedthrough Cincinnati, then Chicago is yours andyou can say it and make it stick.

He is pr,oud of her. She can tell a policemanwhere to go and at the same ,time cradle a r:enaissance in her lap. A fighter's girl and a wrirter'sgirl. "An October sort of ciity ,even in the spring.

With somebody's 'washing always whipping insmoky October colors off the third floor rear."

A city that is all things to all men. She embracesthem ,all with debonair impalitialiitY-jthe Indianskinning traders, Dwight L. Moody, Robert J. Ing'ersoll, Dreiser, Bill Thompson, Sandburg, Caponeand the vVhitle Sox. She has ,everything excep,t as'ensle of proportion. This is why Nelson Algren isso well endow,ed to he her biogr'apher. Within hislimitations of temperament he has done a good job.

ALIX DU POY

THE GREAT' ADVERSARYThe Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah

Arendt. New York: Harcourt, Brace. $6.75

Limitations of space make impossible the detailedtreatment which Hannah Arendt's profoundlypenetrating study deserves. Her brilliant attemptto discover the roots of totalitarianism in certainaspects of nineteenth-century imperialism andanti-Semitism may be open to serious question,but her insight into the nature of totalitarian ruleis nothing short of revelation. With that revelation this review will be exclusively concerned.

The normal world of COlumon sense and historicexperience provides no guides for an understanding of totalitarianism. Most resemblances are superficial, those which are genuine are without significance, and all are misleading. The Kremlin hasno ideology in the sense in which that term iscommonly understood. It is in fact neither socialist, Marxist, Leninist, communist nor collectivist.A lifetime devoted to the study of these sociological theories does not equip either the student orthe devoted Party member to predict the courseof Soviet strategy or action a day in advance.These are determined solely by Stalin and thePolitburo, and are directed, undeviatingly, towarda single objective-complete control of the humanrace.

This goal is not merely one deliberate choiceamong several possible alternatives. It is a congenital necessity because it is an inescapable consequence of the basic assumption upon which thetotalitarian regime is built. That assumption, orrather heresy, is the conviction that man has unlimited pO'wers, that through the machinery of organization nothing is impossible and everythingcan be achieved, and that man can create a socialorder from which unpredictability has beenwholly banished. All Soviet activity is a manifestation of this fundamental belief.

Soviet expansionism is unmotivated by the traditional goals of empire. The prewar Russian domain is sufficiently rich and diversified in materialresources to absorb, in their exploitation and development, all the energies of the Russians forat least a century. But as long as there exist communities uncontrolled by the Kremlin, elements ofunpredictability-and hence of danger to the totalitarian regime-remain. Complete domination

of the globe offers the only assurance of beingable always to direct the "course of humanevents."

Similarly, econon1ic considerations, despite aprofessed thoroughgoing materialism, are entirelysubordinate; where they are emphasized, it issolely as instruments for the extension of control.Thus, the enforced collectivization of the earlythirties was not primarily the result of any genuine belief in the economic superiority of collectivefarming. Under the New Economic Policy, immediately prior thereto, the peasants had begun todevelop interests and social relations and structures which threatened to acquire an independentand autonomous life of their own. These had tobe crushed, and were, at a cost of 5,000,000 lives.Even more striking is the complete physical neglect of concentration camp prisoners. This immense reservoir of potential slave labor could beused to produce more than it would cost to maintain it in good working condition. What is knownof these camps indicates that no attempt is madeto utilize this labor-power economically, as anyrationally profit-minded slave owner would do.

The attempt to eliminate the unpredictabilitywhich underlies human existence becomes, as itmust, an attempt to destroy man's capacity forspontaneity which is the essence of his nature. Itis precisely because of this spontaneity that man,as we have known him through history, is neverwholly predictable, is always potentially capableof creating novelty. This potentiality is a constantthreat to the permanence of totalitarian rule. Theareas behind the Iron Curtain are an immenseprison in which the Kremlin performs its experimentsin destroying spontaneity and creating anew species-the wholly predictable human animal. The concentration camps are the specializedlaboratories, their inmates the selected guineapigs, and their MVD jailers the fantastic experimenters hitherto known solely through the novelsof H. G. Wells and his successors, or in the science fiction of the pulp magazines.

Only by a minutely detailed paraphrase wouldit be possible to indicate the really miraculousachievement of this book. Hannah Arendt has unerringly gathered all the truly significant evidence to sustain her thesis that unbelievable fantasy has become the incredible reality of a largesegment of the world. By means of a series ofintuitive and imaginative insights which are thefruit of an almost fanatical intellectual passion(what T. S. Eliot has called thinking with thesenses) she has illuminated a phenomenon of ourage which is unique in history and as dangerousto the survival of civilized humanity as the machinations of the Devil are to the salvation of thesinner. Everybody should read this book, particularly our leaders, for it is their incomprehension,their blind ineptitude, yes, their partial acceptance of the fundamental heresy, which rendersus so helpless before the onslaught of the greatAdversary. MICHAEL J. BERNSTEIN

FE'BRUARY 25, 1952 351

Below are listed the titles of some of the outstanding features that have appeared in the FREEMAN. Reprints of these articles are available in limitedquantities for distribution to your friends and associates. Each of them dealswith a vital issue in American life. The editors feel that these articlesindicate the quality of the information and criticism the FREEMAN undertakes to provide for its readers.

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REBELLION IN THE POTATO FIELDS

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mNFLAT'ON: THREAT TO FREEDOM

OUR SHRINKING DOLLAR

A. A. Imberman

Stanley High

Oliver Carlson

Leo Wolman

L. Albert Hahn

Don Knowlton

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L. Albert Hahn

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DID MARSHALL PROLONG THE PACIFIC WAR?This 16-page pamphlet, containing a reprint of two articles by Forrest Davis,casts new light on the continuation of the, war with Japan during a timewhen every indication pointed to an already defeated enemy. Single copy70 cents, 12 copies for $1.00.

COULD EISENHOWER WIN?Thousands of copie,s of Lawrence R. Brown's penetrating FREEM'AN articleare making leading Republicans think more clearly in re.fation to the 1952election. This fine article has been reprinted in the Congressional Recordand is MUST reading for appraising issues and candidates ;n 1952. Singlecopy 10 cents, 12 copies for $1.00.

TWO REPORTS BY GEORGE E. SOKOLSKYIn these reports Mr. Sokolsky strips the excess wordage from the testimonyon General MacArthur's dismissal. "Out of Their Own Mouths: The Betrayalof Free China" (16 pages) and "Prelude to Disaster: The Dismissal ofGeneral MacArthur" (12 pages) together form a serious indictment through their own words - of the men who have shaped our Far Easternpolicy. Either reprint: single copy 10 cents, 12 copies f~r $1.00.

tDept. R-2240 Madison AvenueNew York 16, New York

DECLINE OF THE REPUBLIC

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