Cowboy actor told to pay blonde’s hospital expenses
‘Testimony against girl involves too many men,’ judge sighs, delaying final ruling
…
PAC supports GOP in Vermont race
Boston, Massachusetts (UP) –
Spokesmen for the CIO Political Action Committee said today that their organization was actively supporting U.S. Senator George D. Aiken (R-VT) for reelection, but denied that another Republican senatorial candidate, Massachusetts Governor Leverett Saltonstall, was receiving similar support.
At Burlington, Andrew Jenkins, Vermont state chairman of the CIO-PAC, said his group was backing Senator Aiken “because he is a good man who has done more or less for labor.”
At Boston, a spokesman for Joseph Salerno, regional director of the CIO-PAC, said:
The report that we are supporting Governor Saltonstall is not true. We are violently opposed to his opponent [Democratic Mayor John H. Corcoran of Cambridge] but have not got actively behind the Governor because he has said that, the more he sees of Governor Dewey, the better he likes him.
Support of PAC rejected by union
New York (UP) –
A resolution calling for support of Sidney Hillman’s Political Action Committee was rejected by a three-to-one vote today by Local 39, International Union of Marine and Shipbuilders Workers of America (CIO), which has a membership of about 20,000 employees in the Todd Shipyards, Brooklyn.
The rejection came after the local voted to endorsed President Roosevelt for a fourth term, and after union president Ernest Rudloff warned that a refusal to support the PAC “would hurt labor throughout the country.”
The vote was taken after it was proposed, but not voted upon, to levy union members $1 each for support of PAC activities.
‘Unpreparedness’ laid to New Deal
Bridgeport, Connecticut (UP) –
Rep. Clare Boothe Luce (R-CT) charged last night that America’s war preparedness was hampered until Germany attacked Russia in June 1941, by influential New Dealers and present members of the CIO Political Action Committee “who burp noisily whenever Joseph Stalin gets indigestion.”
“That is one reason why we are taking such a long and bloody time to defeat Germany and Japan today,” she said.
Opening her reelection campaign in industrialized Bridgeport, Connecticut headquarters of the PAC, Mrs. Luce asserted that Bridgeport PAC director Sam Gruber was one of 63 lawyers of the American Peace Mobilization who in 1940 sent telegrams to President Roosevelt and the House Military Affairs Committee calling for defeat of the Selective Service Bill.
Recalling that PAC chairman Sidney Hillman and even President Roosevelt had pledged complete liberation of Poland two years ago, she asked the reason for their “strange silence” about the restoration of a free Poland in the face of Russian opposition now.
Mrs. Luce described her Democratic opponent, Attorney Margaret Connors as a “New Deal rubber stamp” and offered her own record in Congress as evidence she was “neither reactionary nor isolationist.”
Anti-4th-termers to close session
Washington (UP) –
The newly-formed “National Agriculture Committee,” an anti-fourth-term organization headed by Senator Ellison D. “Cotton Ed” Smith (D-SC), prepared to conclude a two-day meeting today and carry to the country its battle cry of “farmers for freedom.”
Senator Smith, defeated recently for renomination to the chamber in which he served 36 years, said the primary objective of the new group was to get out the farm vote for the Republican Dewey-Bricker ticket.
Ralph Moore, former official of the Texas Grange, was elected secretary of the new committee.
Editorial: Worth repeating
President Roosevelt was once Governor of New York. During that period, he was confronted with a proposal for expansion of state powers at the expense of local control of local affairs. This is what he had to say about that proposition:
I cite this as an illustration of the present dangerous tendency to forget a fundamental of American democracy, which rests on the right of a locality to manage its own local affairs; the tendency to encourage concentration of power at the top of a governmental structure, alien to our system and more closely akin to a dictatorship or the central committee of a Communist regime. We have met difficulties before this, and have solved them in accordance with the basic theories of representative democracy. Let us not now pursue the easy road of centralization of authority, lest some day we discover too late that our liberties have disappeared.
Brother, you can say that again!
Background of news –
The Secretary of Labor
By Bertram Benedict
President Roosevelt, in his speech to the Teamsters Union tonight, may have some comment on Governor Dewey’s promise, if elected President, to appoint a bona-fide trade unionist to the Secretary of Labor in his Cabinet.
The Department of Labor was set up in 1913, by an act dividing the Department of Commerce and Labor which had been established in 1903. When the 1913 act was passed, the Republicans were in control of the Senate, the Democrats of the House.
In 1913, the American Federation of Labor had a membership of less than two million, and even with the independent unions such as the railroad brotherhoods, most wage-earners were outside of the unions. It might have seemed unfitting to appoint as Secretary of Labor, to represent all workers, a union official; today, with the unions claiming a total membership of around 15 million, Governor Dewey’s proposal of a union leader as Secretary of Labor seems not unfitting.
For the first Secretary of Labor, President Wilson appointed William B. Wilson of Pennsylvania, born in Scotland. Mr. Wilson had been secretary-treasurer of the United Mine Workers, but had been elected to Congress in 1906, and at the time of his appointment was chairman of the House Labor Committee.
Davis second to hold job
President Harding appointed as the second Secretary of Labor James J. Davis, also from Pennsylvania and also foreign-born (in Wales). Mr. Davis had been an iron puddler for a time in Ellwood, Indiana (Wendell L. Willkie’s hometown), but since 1906 had been director general of the Loyal Order of Moose. So, like Mr. Wilson, he was a former union official who had later become distinguished in other fields.
It seems substantiated that after the 1924 election, President Coolidge offered the position to John L. Lewis, who, as an enrolled Republican, had worked valiantly for the Republican ticket. However, Mr. Coolidge – and President Hoover following him – reappointed Mr. Davis.
Mr. Davis retired in December 1930 after he had been elected Senator from Pennsylvania (his seat is being contested again this year). President Hoover then appointed an out-and-out union man, but one outside of the AFL – William N. Doak, legislative representative of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen.
Miss Perkins, whom President Roosevelt appointed in 1933, was non-unionist, but her work as New York State Industrial Commissioner had received the approbation of the unions.
Secretaries of Commerce
As the Secretary of Labor is supposed to work for the interests of labor, and the Secretary of Agriculture for farmers’ interests, the Secretary of Commerce is supposed to work for the interests of business.
When Woodrow Wilson appointed William B. Wilson as Secretary of Labor in 1913, he appointed another member of Congress, William C. Redfield, Secretary of Commerce. Mr. Redfield was a New York iron manufacturer. But as Commissioner of Public Works in Brooklyn, he had had spats with public utility corporations and moreover had agitated for a lower tariff, so that some conservative business interests considered him not quite “kosher.” He was succeeded in 1919 by Missouri Rep. J. W. Alexander, a lawyer.
Herbert Hoover, long identified with mining activities abroad, served as Secretary of Commerce under Presidents Harding and Coolidge. He appointed in 1929 Robert P. Lamont, a Chicago manufacturer, succeeded in 1932 by Roy D. Chapin, a Detroit auto man.
President Roosevelt’s first Secretary of Commerce was Daniel C. Roper, a lawyer who had been Internal Revenue Commissioner under Mr. Wilson. His successor in 1939, Harry L. Hopkins, was also no businessman. The present Secretary of Commerce, Jesse H. Jones, is an outstanding banker.
Poll: People think war will end in three months
Optimism spurts throughout U.S.
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
…
Brundige: Arsenic, Old Lace delirious farce
Grand plays nephew of lethal ‘Old Dears’ in Stanley film
By Lenore Brundige
…
Millett: Men live their own lives but ‘women are meddlers’
Concentration on own affairs seems to be feminine problem
By Ruth Millett
…
Stokes: Dewey in filmland
By Thomas L. Stokes
Los Angeles, California –
Here is the City of Miracles. Here is the City of the Angels – the lost angels with broken wings and tarnished souls who used to flash across the sky like a flaming bird of paradise, trailing expensive perfume.
Here is the city where the girl who once stood behind the 10-cent store counter, the girl who handed out the hash in Pete’s restaurant, soars to fame and glory, learns how to speak English with a sultry British accent, how to throw a mink coat nonchalantly across her shoulders, how to order about a butler and a covey of maids and a whole battalion of publicity men – all of whom, behind her back, snarl: “That lousy–!”
This is the city of hard-faced women, beautifully dressed, tough of heart. This is the city of slick men on the make. This is the city that lives for a gag and celebrates a new publicity coup as no civilization ever celebrated a major poet.
WPA remembered
This is the city that is up today, was down yesterday. and is afraid it may go broke tomorrow.
This is the city where only yesterday – less than 10 years ago, there were 10,000 women on WPA sewing projects, and as many men on garden projects. They were men and women with soft hands, for they had worked in nicely paneled offices where promoters were promoting. The depression put a sudden stop to all that. One-third of the city’s population was on relief. Yet, out at Santa Anita then, somebody was betting $65,000 a race.
And there was misery among the old folks. Their investments no longer paid dividends, the remittances from the children to whom they left their farms back in the Midwest stopped, for the sons and daughters were caught, too. in the national disaster. Hopefully the old folks marched into old Doc Townsend’s sideshow, for the promise of $200 every month. They got the Townsend habit then. On the California ballot for a referendum vote in the coming election is a proposal for $60 for every person 60 and over – 60 at 60.
All of this, and it is somehow sad to contemplate, is perhaps America – America in miniature.
It all seemed a bit too much for Governor Thomas E. Dewey, though there’s a touch of Hollywood in him.
Dewey ‘the actor’
No suave actor who walks on the stage in one of those dinner-dress English drawing-room comedies ever looked more the part than did he when he strolled down the aisle of a hotel conference room for his daily press conference. He seemed to catch the spirit.
“What is this – Hollywood?” he asked.
Just then, there was a stir at the back, and down the aisle, in a wheelchair, they pushed Lionel Barrymore through the crowd to talk to the candidate. Mr. Barrymore being head of the Hollywood-for-Dewey Committee. That took more time, more picture-taking.
At last, the session could begin. There was a raw edge in the Governor’s voice, when he said: “Have we sobered down to the proportions of a press conference?”
At one time, a Canadian newspaperman jumped up with a question, explaining that he happened to be in town and wanted to take this opportunity to meet the Governor.
“Is there anybody here from China?” the Governor retorted.
And at night, the Republican candidate went out to that monster Coliseum. Ginger Rogers introduced Governor Warren of California, who introduced Governor Dewey.
The Governor rose to the occasion.
He came out for an expansion of the social security program that nearly matches that of the New Deal and also appropriated some features of the CIO program, critical as some other Republicans are being just now about the CIO.
Old Doc Townsend must look to his laurels.
My four years in Hitler’s gray Paree –
Maze of rules made civilian life difficult
Written for the Pittsburgh Press
…
1 Like
A super-super-colossal show –
Hollywood goes all-out at colorful Dewey rally
Flags, bands, cowboys and film stars galore all cavort under technicolored heavens
By Fred Othman, United Press staff writer
Los Angeles Coliseum, Los Angeles, California –
Cecil B. DeMille made a Hollywood production out of the Dewey-for-President rally last night with Indians, live elephants, brass bands, cowboy riders, technicolored heavens – everything but solid marble bathtubs.
The mighty DeMille, who functions as a Republican leader when he is not producing epics, erected an American flag 40 feet tall in back of the stand from which Governor Thomas E. Dewey made his speech, and brought on the elephants.
He only had two pachyderms but he brought them on with a 50-piece band led by a sweater girl in white boots – and not much else.
A colorful scene
While the band marched down the center of the vast stadium, the elephants plodded down the right, and the Indians tramped down the left. DeMille sat in the drivers’ seat and sprayed them all with a million watts in red, white and blue.
He brought on three ministers – a Catholic, an Episcopalian and a rabbi – to lead the prayers, sent Leo Carrillo and assistants galloping the greensward with American flags in their hands, and filtered into the press boxes – to the delight of visiting reporters – such Republicans as Binnie Barnes, Lillian Gish, Virginia Bruce, Ilona Massey, Constance Moore, Ann Sothern, Barbara Stanwyck, Claire Trevor, and many another equally beautiful.
Carrillo rides horse
Carrillo enlivened proceedings by galloping around the stadium on a white horse with a collar made of electric light. With every thump of the horse’s hoofs, Carrillo let her rip with both his trusty six-shooters, while the crowd cheered.
Then came the “Star-Spangled Banner” by the band and a chorus, but without Jeanette MacDonald, who took down with swollen tonsils at the last moment.
After the national anthem, DeMille brought on a Wild West rodeo, led by such favorites of the juvenile audience as Bill Elliott and Monty Montana, who chased the imaginary Indians all over the football field and then obliged with some fancy riding and rope tricks.
Ginger Rogers in fox coat
Richard Dix and Lee Tracy brought their wives to the reporters’ table and asked please could they sit down.
Ginger Rogers arrived in a silver fox coat that made the other feminine Republicans gasp while DeMille brought on Victor “Congressman Throttlebottom” Moore and Bill Gaxton to reenact a skit from their memorable stage success, “Of Thee I Sing.”
By now the stadium was more than three quarters filled, and the audience was having such a good time it didn’t much care whether it had any political speeches or not.
‘All for Dewey’
DeMille and his announcer, Harry Vonzell, sobered the customers momentarily with a brief speech by a Negro attorney, a California farmer and a laboring man, all of whom brought cheers with their predictions that Dewey would be the next President.
Then came Warren Pinney, president of “Democrats for Dewey,” who brought on boos and hisses when he mentioned the New Deal. Next came a plump and handsome housewife, Mrs. Hannah Gustafson, who said the election of Governor Dewey was her only hope of getting her three sons back soon from overseas.
Eddie Bracken brought in a plug for his newest picture when he told the assemblage that the nation would hail its conquering hero, Dewey, in November. David O. Selznick, the producer, said he could see no chance of Governor Dewey losing.
Governor Dewey and his wife rolled into the arena in a cream-colored touring car on which DeMille focused all of his 50 spotlights. The car rolled slowly around the track twice while the crowd cheered and actresses Ruth Hussey and Francis Dee walked down the steps to meet the guests of honor with twin armloads of roses.
Mrs. Dewey wore a purple suit and a fur neckpiece; her husband was clad in a wide smile and a single-breasted gray suit.
They sat down and waited while such Republicans as Patsy Ruth Miller, Bill Bendix, George Brent, Walt Disney, Adolph Menjou, Randolph Scott and Harold Lloyd made two sentence speeches, urging Governor Dewey’s election.
“I am about to see a very tired President go and a very vigorous one come in,” shouted “Throttlebottom” Moore for perhaps the biggest preliminary cheer of the evening.
Address by President Roosevelt
September 23, 1944, 9:30 p.m. EWT
Delivered before the AFL International Teamsters Union, Washington, DC
Broadcast audio:
I am actually four years older – which seems to annoy some people. In fact, millions of us are more than eleven years older than when we started in to clear up the mess that was dumped in our laps in 1933. We all know certain people will make it a practice to depreciate the accomplishments of labor – who even attack labor as unpatriotic.
They keep this up usually for three years and six months. But then, for some strange reason, they change their tune – every four years – just before Election Day.
When votes are at stake, they suddenly discover that they really love labor, and are eager to protect it from its old friends.
I got quite a laugh, for example – and I am sure that you did – when I read this plank in the Republican platform adopted at their national convention in Chicago last July:
The Republican Party accepts the purposes of the National Labor Relations Act, the Wage and Hour Act, the Social Security Act, and all other federal statutes designed to promote and protect the welfare of American working men and women, and we promise a fair and just administration of these laws.
Many of the Republican leaders and Congressmen and candidates, who shouted enthusiastic approval of that plank in that convention hall, would not even recognize these progressive laws if they met them in broad daylight.
Indeed, they have personally spent years of effort and energy – and much money – in fighting every one of those laws in the Congress, in the press and in the courts, ever since this administration began to advocate them and enact them into legislation.
That is a fair example of their insincerity and their inconsistency.
The whole purpose of Republican oratory these days seems to be to switch labels. The object is to persuade the American people that the Democratic Party was responsible for the 1929 crash and depression, and the Republican Party was responsible for all social progress under the New Deal.
Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery – but I am afraid that in this case it is the most obvious common or garden variety of fraud.
There are enlightened, liberal elements in the Republican Party, and they have fought hard and honorably to bring the party up to date and to get it in step with the forward march of American progress. But these liberal elements were not able to drive the old guard Republicans from their entrenched positions.
Can the old guard pass itself off as the New Deal? I think not.
We have all seen many marvelous stunts in the circus, but no performing elephant could turn a handspring without falling flat on his back.
I need not recount to you the centuries of history which have been crowded into these four years since I saw you last.
There were some – in the Congress and out – who raised their voices against our preparations for defense – before and after 1939 – as hysterical warmongering, who cried out against our help to the Allies as provocative and dangerous.
We remember the voices.
They would like to have us forget them now. But in 1940 and 1941 they were loud voices. Happily, they were a minority and – fortunately for ourselves, and for the world – they could not stop America.
There are some politicians who kept their heads buried deep in the sand while the storms of Europe and Asia were headed our way, who said that the Lend-Lease Bill “would bring an end to free government in the United States,” and who said “only hysteria entertains the idea that Germany, Italy or Japan contemplate war upon us.”
These very men are now asking the American people to entrust to them the conduct of our foreign policy and our military policy.
What the Republican leaders are now saying in effect is this:
Oh, just forget what we used to say, we have changed our minds now – we have been reading the public opinion polls about these things, and we now know what the American people want. Don’t leave the task of making the peace to those old men who first urged it, and who have already laid the foundations for it, and who have had to fight all of us, inch by inch, during the last five years to do it – just turn it all over to us. We’ll do it so skillfully – that we won’t lose a single isolationist vote or a single isolationist campaign contribution.
There is one thing I am too old for – I cannot talk out of both sides of my mouth at the same time.
This government welcomes all sincere supporters of the cause of effective world collaboration in the making of a lasting peace. Millions of Republicans all over the nation are with us – and have been with us – in our unshakeable determination to build the solid structure of peace. And they, too, will resent this campaign talk by those who first woke up to the facts of international life a few short months ago –when they began to study the polls of public opinion.
Those who today have the military responsibility for waging this war in all parts of the globe are not helped by the statements of men who, without responsibility and without knowledge of the facts, lecture the chiefs of staff of the United States as to the best means of dividing our armed forces and our military resources between the Atlantic and Pacific, between the Army and the Navy, and among the commanding generals of the different theatres of war.
When I addressed you four years ago, I said:
I know that America will never be disappointed in its expectation that labor will always continue to do its share of the job we now face, and do it patriotically and effectively and unselfishly.
Today we know that America has not been disappointed. In his order of the day, when the Allied armies first landed in Normandy, Gen. Eisenhower said: “Our home fronts have given us overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war.”
I know that there are those labor baiters among the opposition who, instead of calling attention to the achievements of labor in this war, prefer the occasional strikes which have occurred – strikes which have been condemned by every responsible national labor leader – every national leader except one. And that one labor leader, incidentally, is certainly not among my supporters.
Labor baiters forget that, at our peak, American labor and management have turned out airplanes at the rate of 109,000 per year; tanks, 57,000 per year; combat vessels, 573 per year; landing vessels, 31,000 per year; cargo ships, 19 million tons per year, and small arms ammunition, 23 billion rounds per year.
But a strike is news, and generally appears in shrieking headlines – and, of course, they say labor is always to blame. The fact is that, since Pearl Harbor, only one-tenth of one percent of man-hours have been lost by strikes. But even those candidates who burst out in election-year affection for social legislation and for labor in general still think you ought to be good boys and stay out of politics.
And, above all, they hate to see any working man or woman contribute a dollar bill to any wicked political party.
Of course, it is all right for large financiers and industrialists and monopolists to contribute tens of thousands of dollars – but their solicitude for that dollar which the men and women in the ranks of labor contribute is always very touching.
They are, of course, perfectly willing to let you vote – unless you happen to be a soldier or sailor overseas, or a merchant seaman carrying munitions of war. In that case they have made it pretty hard for you to vote – for there are some political candidates who think they may have a chance if only the total vote is small enough.
And while I am on the subject of voting let me urge every American citizen – man and woman – to use your sacred privilege of voting, no matter which candidate you expect to support. Our millions of soldiers and sailors and merchant seamen have been handicapped or prevented from voting by those politicians and candidates who think they stand to lose by such votes. You here at home have the freedom of the ballot. Irrespective of party, you should register and vote this November. That is a matter of good citizenship.
Words come easily, but they do not change the record. You are old enough to remember what things were like for labor in 1932.
You remember the closed banks and the breadlines and the starvation wages; the foreclosures of homes and farms, and the bankruptcies of business; the “Hoovervilles,” and the young men and women of the nation facing a hopeless, jobless future; the closed factories and mines and mills; the ruined and abandoned farms; the stalled railroads and the empty docks; the blank despair of a whole nation – and the utter impotence of our federal government.
You remember the long, hard road, with its gains and its setbacks, which we have traveled together since those days.
Now there are some politicians, of course, who do not remember that far back, and some who remember but find it convenient to forget. But the record is not to be washed away that easily.
The opposition has already imported into this campaign the propaganda technique invented by the dictators abroad. The technique was all set out in Hitler’s book – and it was copied by the aggressors of Italy and Japan.
According to that technique, you should never use a small falsehood; always a big one, for its very fantastic nature will make it more credible – if only you keep repeating it over and over again.
For example, although I rubbed my eyes when I read it, we have been told that it was not a Republican depression, but a Democratic depression from which this nation has been saved – that this administration is responsible for all the suffering and misery that the history books and the American people always thought had been brought about during the twelve ill-fated years when the Republican Party was in power.
Now, there is an old and somewhat lugubrious adage which says: “Never speak of rope in the house of one who has been hanged.”
In the same way, if I were a Republican leader speaking to a mixed audience, the last word in the whole dictionary that I think I would use is that word “depression.”
For another example, I learned – much to my amazement – that the policy of this administration was to keep men in the Army when the war was over, because there might be no jobs for them in civil life.
Why, the very day that this fantastic charge was first made a formal plan for the method of speedy discharge from the Army had already been announced by the War Department – a plan based upon the wishes of the soldiers themselves.
This callous and brazen falsehood about demobilization was an effort to stimulate fear among American mothers, wives and sweethearts. And, incidentally, it was hardly calculated to bolster the morale of our soldiers and sailors and airmen fighting our battles all over the world.
Perhaps the most ridiculous of these campaign falsifications is the one that this administration failed to prepare for the war which was coming. I doubt whether even Goebbels would have tried that one. For even he would never have dared hope that the voters of America had already forgotten that many of the Republican leaders in the Congress and outside the Congress tried to thwart and block nearly every attempt which this administration made to warn our people and to arm this nation. Some of them called our 50,000-airplane program fantastic.
Many of those very same leaders who fought every defense measure we proposed are still in control of the Republican Party, were in control of its national convention in Chicago, and would be in control of the machinery of the Congress and the Republican Party in the event of a Republican victory this fall.
These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks upon me, or my wife, or my sons – they now include my little dog, Fala. Unlike the members of my family, he resents this. Being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers had concocted a story that I had left him behind on an Aleutian island and had sent a destroyer back to find him – at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three or twenty million dollars – his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since.
I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself – such as that old, worm-eaten chestnut that I have represented myself as indispensable. But I think I have a right to object to libelous statements about my dog.
But we all recognize the old technique. The people of this country know the past too well to be deceived into forgetting. Too much is at stake to forget. There are tasks ahead of us which we must now complete with the same will and skill and intelligence and devotion which have already led us so far on the road to victory.
There is the task of finishing victoriously this most terrible of all wars as speedily as possible and with the least cost in lives.
There is the task of setting up international machinery to assure that the peace, once established, will not again be broken.
And there is the task which we face here at home – the task of reconverting our economy from the purposes of war to the purposes of peace.
These peace-building tasks were faced once before, nearly a generation ago. They were botched by a Republican administration. That must not happen this time. We will not let it happen this time.
Fortunately, we do not begin from scratch. Much has been done. Much more is under way. The fruits of victory this time will not be apples to be sold on street corners.
Many months ago, this administration set up the necessary machinery for an orderly peacetime demobilization. The Congress has now passed legislation continuing the agencies needed for demobilization – with additional powers to carry out their functions.
I know that the American people – business and labor and agriculture – have the same will to do for peace what they have done for war. And I know that they can sustain a national income which will assure full production and full employment under our democratic system of private enterprise, with government encouragement and aid whenever and wherever it is necessary.
The keynote of all that we propose to do in reconversion can be found in the one word: “jobs.”
We shall lease or dispose of our government-owned plants and facilities and our surplus war property and land on the basis of how they can best be operated by private enterprise to give jobs to the greatest number.
We shall follow a wage policy which will sustain the purchasing power of labor – for that means more production and more jobs.
The present policies on wages and prices were conceived to serve the needs of the great masses of the people. They stopped inflation. They kept prices on a stable level. Through the demobilization period, policies will be carried out with the same objective in mind – to serve the needs of the great masses of the people.
This is not the time in which men can be forgotten as they were in the Republican catastrophe which we inherited. The returning soldiers, the workers by their machines, the farmers in the field, the miners, the men and women in offices and shops, do not intend to be forgotten.
They know they are not surplus. Because they know that they are America.
We must set targets and objectives for the future which will seem impossible to those who live in and are weighted down by the dead past.
We are even now organizing the logistics of the peace just as Marshall, King, Arnold, MacArthur, Eisenhower and Nimitz are organizing the logistics of this war.
The victory of the American people and their allies in this war will be far more than a victory against fascism and reaction and the dead hand of despotism and of the past.
The victory of the American people and their allies in this war will be a victory for democracy. It will constitute such an affirmation of the strength and power and vitality of government by the people as history has never before witnessed.
With that affirmation of the vitality of democratic government behind us, that demonstration of its resilience and its capacity for decision and for action – with that knowledge of our own strength and power – we move forward with God’s help to the greatest epoch of free achievement by free men the world has ever known or imagined possible.
1 Like
Völkischer Beobachter (September 24, 1944)
‚Politiker‘ ohne Trümpfe
Die Völkertragödie im Norden und Südosten rollt zwangsläufig ab
…
Rosenberg: Der Bolschewismus und die Volkstümer
Von Alfred Rosenberg
Vor einigen Tagen erhielt ich einen Brief, worin darauf hingewiesen war, daß die Nationalsozialistische Partei im Laufe ihrer Kampfzeit den Bolschewismus gleichsam als das heraufsteigende Untermenschentum bezeichnet habe. Nun hätte man Gelegenheit gehabt, die Völker des Ostens bei der Arbeit in Deutschland zu beobachten, und hatte festgestellt, daß sie unter einer zweckentsprechenden Führung sowohl arbeitswillig seien als auch in den Ergebnissen Zufriedenstellendes leisteten. Ob diese beiden Tatsachen nicht einen Widerspruch darstellten und ob sich die Nationalsozialistische Partei in der Beurteilung des Bolschewismus nicht geirrt hätte? Da ich annehmen kann, daß diese Fragen vielleicht viele Volksgenossen beschäftigen, erscheint es mir notwendig, sie zu beantworten.
Im Bolschewismus haben wir es zunächst scheinbar nur mit einem ganz bestimmten weltanschaulichen und sozialpolitischen Programm zu tun, das – vollständig konsequent gesehen – auf Marx zurückgeht, dann von zahllosen jüdischen und sonstigen Agitatoren ausgebaut wurde und im kommunistischen Moskau zur politisch-militärischen Herrschaft gelangt ist. Es besteht kein Zweifel, daß sich nahezu jede These gegen Wurzel und Volkstumsüberlieferung einer jeden europäischen Nation richtet. Alles, was den Völkern aus ihrer Geschichte und ihrem Wesen heraus wert und verehrungswürdig sein mußte, ist von den marxistischen Parteien manchesmal demokratisch verschleiert, dann aber in bolschewistischer Form mit brutaler Offenheit angegriffen und bespien worden, Die Voraussetzung für eine solche Wirksamkeit war, daß manche Staatsformen überlebt schienen und große Menschenmassen in allen Völkern durch das Entstehen von Riesenstädten vielfach die Verbindung mit dem Wurzelboden ihrer Kultur verlören hatten.
Der stets eine Krankheit oder Schwäche witternde jüdische Instinkt der marxistischen Führerschaft hat hier alle Leidenschaften aufzupeitschen sich bemüht und die vorhandene Abneigung gegen bestimmte Formen der Vergangenheit zu einem grundsätzlichen Haß gegen alles Gewesene gewandelt.
Diese Einheit im Kampf gegen den Zarismus zerfiel gleich nach dem Sieg. Es ist dabei durchaus zu unterstreichen, daß der Ruf der Bauern nach „Freiheit und Land“ ursprünglich nicht eine bolschewistische Parole war, sondern die Parole der Sozialrevolutionäre, die ja nach der Wahl 1917 zur stärksten Partei wurden. Inmitten dieser auseinanderlaufenden Willensmeinungen entschied dann der Bolschewismus durch die Übernahme aller vorher zündenden Parolen und durch die alles versprechende Losung für die zurückströmenden Soldaten: die Arbeiter- und Soldatendiktatur.
Die Herrschaft in den großen Industriestädten sicherte das Übergewicht über die widerstrebenden bäuerlichen Gegenden, und es besteht gar kein Zweifel, daß die bolschewistische Bewegung genauso zu wirken begann, wie sie es in Ungarn monatelang tun konnte. Es steht ebenfalls außer Zweifel, daß hier im Laufe der Zeit Dutzende von Millionen verschleppt oder ermordet, daß die der Staatsanschauung des Bolschewismus abgeneigten Bauern ausgerottet oder deportiert wurden und daß der Bolschewismus von Moskau aus genau die gleichen kulturzerstörenden Versuche machte, die er in Deutschland auch durch die KPD proklamiert hat.
Wenn nunmehr nach 25 Jahren Diktatur der Bolschewismus sich in vielen Dingen trotz alledem nicht überall im Leben durchsetzen konnte, so ist das eben der Zähigkeit und Leidensfähigkeit der Volkstümer des Ostens zu verdanken und nicht etwa seinem eigenen Wesen.
Wenn er zum Beispiel früher die Ehe an sich zerstören und das ganze Volk unter kollektivistische Erziehung bringen wollte, so hat er im Laufe der Zeit davon Abstand nehmen müssen, weil eben das primitivste Lebens- und Heimatgefühl einfach nicht auszurotten gewesen ist. Wenn wir die entartete Kunst, die wir, vom Bolschewismus dauernd unterstützt, in Deutschland fanden, in Rußland jetzt nicht antrafen, sondern ganz im Gegenteil sogar die Furcht vor Darstellung des nackten Körpers in Skulpturen, so ist das ebenfalls nicht etwa eine Seite der bolschewistischen Kunstauffassung gewesen, sondern die Durchsetzung des traditionell kirchlich bedingten Empfindens der verschiedenen Volker des Ostens. Diese und andere Zeugnisse zeigten zum Teil überhaupt keinen Versuch einer Revolutionierung in der Kunst, sondern offenbarten geradezu einen spießbürgerlichen Charakter, wie er in Europa etwa bis zur Wende des 20. Jahrhunderts in der kleinbürgerlichen Umwelt zu Hause war.
Wie wir schon vor über 20 Jahren feststellten, ist das, was Marx lehrte, im Wesentlichen nicht eine wirtschaftliche Lehre unter anderen gewesen, sondern eine politisch-rassische Kampfansage gegen das Wesen der europäischen Völker überhaupt. Bei einer Prüfung im Einzelnen erinnern wir uns alle noch an jene Programmpunkte des radikalen Marxismus, der im Deutschen Reichstag und in der jüdisch-bolschewistischen Presse vertreten wurde, und schließlich sind dem unmittelbaren bolschewistischen Ausbruche in der Münchener Räterepublik und in Ungarn doch noch so frisch in Erinnerung, daß sich auch weniger Begabte dieser Dinge noch erinnern müßten.
In beiden Fällen handelte es sich um eine von Juden geführte Unterwelterscheinung, Existenzen, die kaum sonst ein deutsches Auge gesehen hatte, kamen aus den Tiefen der Spelunken und Verbrecherviertel auf die Straßen und bildeten die eigentliche sogenannte erste Rote Garde der bolschewistischen Revolte. Wenn heute in Deutschland noch Fragen entstehen, wie obengenannte, dann müssen sich diese harmlosen Zeitgenossen nur vorstellen, die Münchener Räterepublik und die ungarische Räterepublik hätten tatsächlich gesiegt. Was dann aus dem Deutschen Reich geworden wäre, kann man sich ohne viel Phantasie ausmalen: die biologische Vernichtung aller wirklich kulturtragenden Schichten, die Vernichtung des aktiven, damals jungen Soldatentums, die Terrorherrschaft der Minderwertigsten und die Terrorisierung von Millionen und Millionen, die, unbewaffnet, unfähig gewesen wären, den bewaffneten Bolschewisten Widerstand zu leisten.
Es ist ein Irrtum, wenn man glauben sollte, in dem ehemaligen Rußland sei es anders gewesen. Wir haben bei Betrachtung dieser Entwicklung stets zweierlei Gruppen unterschieden: jene, die aus untermenschlichen oder primitivsten Empfindungen die bolschewistische Auffassung auch klassenkämpferisch bejahten, und die aus der sozialen Verzweiflung heraus Irregeführten, welche sich vielleicht sogar aus phantastisch-idealistischen Motiven der gar nicht verstandenen kommunistischen Bewegung zur Verfügung stellten – und dann die eigentlichen Volkstümer, über die der Bolschewismus entweder zur Herrschaft gelangte oder sich jedenfalls bemühte, zur Herrschaft zu kommen.
Das angefressene und durch Korruption und Krieg zermürbte Zarentum brach unter der Macht dieser Strömungen zusammen. Demokratisches Europäertum wollte die zaristische Diktatur in europäische Formen gebracht wissen, die soziale Bewegung (vertreten durch die Sozialrevolutionäre, die Menschewiken und die Bolschewiken) brachte die Empörung vieler enterbter Proletarier zum Ausbruch, die Losung der Bauern nach Freiheit und Land wurde zur stärksten antreibenden Kraft. Zu allen diesen Mächten gesellten sich dann die nationalistischen Bestrebungen aller jener Völker, die durch den angerosteten Zarenreif noch zusammengehalten worden waren, jetzt aber sich mit allen feindlichen Gruppen verbanden.
Der Bolschewismus war in den Industriestädten zur Herrschaft gelangt, und die Industrialisierung und Technisierung wurde zum Hauptkampfruf des kommunistischen Staates, einerseits, um das doch nicht ganz auszurottende bäuerliche Empfinden durch Landabwanderung in die neu zu errichtenden Industriezentren zu schwächen und damit das Bewusstsein der Kraft des Proletariats zu erhöhen, anderseits, um neben der bolschewistischen Zersetzung innerhalb der europäischen Staaten sich auch für einen kommenden militärischen Überfall auf Europa zu rüsten.
Die Einführung des Traktors in die Landwirtschaft ist deshalb für den Bolschewismus nicht etwa eine Maßnahme zur Hebung der landwirtschaftlichen Erzeugnisse gewesen, sondern eine politisch-militärische Maßnahme. Durch die Herabsetzung des Pferdebestandes wurden die Bauern oder, besser gesagt, die Kolchosarbeiter politisch-sozial abhängig gemacht vom Traktor, und anderseits lernten nun Zehntausende auf diese Weise mit dem Motor umzugehen als Vorbereitung, einen Kampfwagen zu führen.
Daß diese Technisierung eine ungeheure Gefahr bedeutete, habe ich schon in vielen Aufsätzen etwa in den Jahren 1920 bis 1925 dargelegt. Der Bolschewismus, ausgestattet mit aller Staatsmacht, holte sich qualifizierte und von ihm gut bezahlte Ingenieure und Erfinder aus allen europäischen Staaten, sah ihnen ihre Leistungen ab und bemühte sich, sie durch Heranziehung russischer Techniker und Arbeiter nachzuahmen. Neben allen Ausrottungsmaßnahmen und seiner ganzen inneren Kulturfeindschaft hat der Bolschewismus zweifellos auf diesem Gebiete die Neugier nach der modernen Technik in den bisher primitiveren Volkstümern geweckt und tatsächlich einen Eifer entwickelt, der nicht ohne weiteres zu erwarten gewesen ist, aber seine Erklärung eben unter anderem auch in dieser Neugier fand, die dann bei Errichtung des einen oder anderen Werkes geschmeichelt wurde, als ob es sich bei diesem oder jenem Werk um ein nie gesehenes Weltwunder originellster Erfindung des bolschewistischen Regimes handelte.
Da die Sowjetunion nahezu hermetisch von der anderen Welt abgeschlossen war, hat diese Spekulation auch auf altrussische messianische Instinkte ihre Wirkung nicht verfehlt. Als dann schließlich das Jahr 1941 anbrach und die Sowjetpanzer sich zu aber Tausenden an den deutschen Demarkationslinien sammelten, da hat die rote Diktatur die Volkstümer unter härtestem Befehl in den Kampf geschickt, und der russische Soldat, seit Jahrhunderten zu leiden gewohnt, hat trotz bäuerlicher Abneigung gegen den Bolschewismus diesen Krieg doch als Verteidigung seiner Heimat gegenüber einem als brutal hingestellten „Faschismus“ empfunden. Und die sowjetische Agitation hat mit nimmermüder Energie täglich die Pflicht zur Verteidigung der Heimat allen Sowjetbürgern sehr warm verkündet.
Bei Betrachtung dieses gesamten Problems ist also festzustellen, daß die Beurteilung der bolschewistischen Lehre als die Lehre des Untermenschentums heute nach wie vor zu Recht besteht, und was sich in diesen Tagen in Rumänien, Bulgarien und vor allen Dingen in Finnland abspielt, ist ein neuer eindeutiger Beweis dafür. Wenn sich diese bolschewistische Lehre trotz aller Brutalität und Opfer (die in der Sowjetunion in die Dutzende von Millionen Menschen gehen) doch in allen Konsequenzen nicht hat durchsetzen lassen, so spricht das nicht etwa für diesen Bolschewismus, sondern zeigt nur, daß selbst er in diesen Riesenräumen des Ostens gegen Urinstinkte nicht anzukämpfen vermochte und daß bei biologischer Fortentwicklung dieser Völker auch diese größten Tyrannen ihr zerstörendes Werk nicht ganz vollenden konnten.
Angesichts der politischen Entwicklung der letzten 25 Jahre erfasste die Einsicht in den Bolschewismus weite Kreise. Der nationalsozialistische Staatsgedanke ist der entschiedenste Gegensatz zu jener unterweltlichen, alle große Vergangenheit und arteigenes Wesen verspottenden bolschewistischen Lehre, und es versteht sich, daß der Haß gerade gegen das Großdeutsche Reich seitens der gesamten Judenschaft der Welt und damit der Moskauer Diktatoren besonders groß ist. Wenn jetzt das finnische Volk, das an sich weder für Rußland noch die Sowjetunion eine Gefahr darstellte und nur tapfer – jetzt jedoch verraten – um einen bescheidenen Aufbau seiner Heimat kämpfte, der Ausrottung in seinem besten Bestandteil entgegengeht, so ist das eine historische Warnung an das deutsche Volk, das auch, aber stark und bewusst, den Kampf um seine Vergangenheit, Freiheit und Zukunft führt.
Der harmlose Frager des an mich gerichteten Briefes würde bei einem Siege über uns in Deutschland ein Untermenschentum am Werke sehen, wie es schlimmer in der Weltgeschichte nicht dagewesen ist. Die gesamte sadistische jüdische Ober- und Unterwelt würde sich aus der ganzen Welt auf Deutschland stürzen. Ein englischer Lord hat kürzlich sogar den Vorschlag gemacht, die sich bildenden „jüdischen Brigaden“ nach dem Siege als Besatzungseinheit zu uns zu schicken. Die in Deutschland auch selbstverständlich noch vorhandenen kommunistischen Einzelkräfte würden sich summieren, und Verbrecher sowie hasserfüllte Nationalisten aus allen Nachbarländern würden dieses dann ohnmächtige, zerstückelte Deutschland überfluten, um ihm den Todesstoß zu versetzen.
Nach wie vor können wir dabei durchaus unterscheiden zwischen dieser nun einmal bestehenden unterweltlichen Macht und den Millionen Angehörigen der verschiedenen Volkstümer, die, für sich gesehen, oft harmlos und fleißig sein können und unter fester und vernünftiger Führung produktiv in die Gesamtarbeit der europäischen Völker einzusetzen wären. Es besteht also zwischen der nationalsozialistischen negativen Auffassung vom Bolschewismus an sich und der vielleicht positiven Beurteilung der breiten Massen der schaffenden Angehörigen verschiedener Volkstümer gar kein Widerspruch. Diese Volkstümer sind vielmehr das Opfer eines großangelegten internationalen, technisch ausgerüsteten Überfalls geworden, wurden im Laufe von 25 Jahren entnervt, einem Gewaltregime unterworfen, gegen das alle Revolten mit bloßen Fäusten und angesichts der Riesenräume unwirksam blieben. Dieses Gewaltregime steht nunmehr satanisch drohend gegen Europa, gestärkt noch durch die eingefügten, stets wieder angerufenen unausrottbaren Heimatinstinkte.
Daß das Deutsche Reich im Kampf gegen den Bolschewismus auch gezwungen ist, mit allen Werkzeugen des Bolschewismus zu kämpfen – ob sie nun freiwillig oder unfreiwillig in seinem Dienst stehen – ist eine Lebensfrage des deutschen Volkes überhaupt. Die blutige Lehrstunde, die der Bolschewismus heute allen europäischen Völkern in Rumänien, Bulgarien und namentlich in Finnland erteilt, wird vielleicht doch die Kräfte der europäischen Volkstümer, die überhaupt noch ein Dasein mit Volkskultur und nationaler Freiheit erstreben, nachdenklich machen müssen, und wir sind des festen Glaubens, daß auch jene „neutralen“ Demokraten, die mit ihren Zeitungs- und Rundfunkstimmen Finnland den Marsch ins Nichts anrieten, unter der Vorspiegelung, daß das „der Frieden“ sein würde, Angst vor ihren Ratschlägen bekommen.
Ob sich daraus noch eine Tatkraft entwickelt, können wir nicht wissen. Auf jeden Fall wird das deutsche Volk, geführt von der nationalsozialistischen Bewegung, diesen Lebenskampf für sich und Europa durchstehen, in der tiefen Überzeugung, hier einem unausweichbaren Schicksal gegenüberzustehen, dem man sich nicht unterwerfen darf, sondern dass man mit allen Kräften zu meistern hat.