Discusses economic setup facing United States after the war
Editor, The Pittsburgh Press:
Many persons are asking the question: What kind of an economic setup are we liable to have in this country after the war? Perhaps we can get a hint at post-war New Dealism if we will take seemingly unrelated facts and piece them together.
About a year before Henry Wallace took office as Secretary of Agriculture, he addressed a state gathering of Protestant preachers of different denominations, meeting in annual convention. He discussed the relations of organized religions and economics from a historical standpoint. The Des Moines Register quoted him as saying:
Protestantism has reached its fruition. There will be a new religion or new religious idea born that will take charge of distribution as the early Christian Church did.
After he took office as Secretary of Agriculture, he told groups of preachers, that:
…the program of the New Deal is the program of Christ.
It is known to students of the New Testament who also understand economic theories, that the early Christians practiced what we are calling “economic democracy,” which is a college word for the consumer cooperative movement begun nearly a hundred years ago by the “Rochdale Pioneers” and which spread to Denmark, Norway, Sweden and other western nations of Europe, and which Kagawa of Japan started in his country under the theological name of “the Kingdom of God movement.” He discussed his movement in many cities of the U.S. some years ago.
But laws passed in this country since the New Dealers have gone into office indicate that by their “economic democracy” (a term frequently used by the President) farmers will be put into “economic democracy” and receive loans. They will have to “walk the straight and narrow way” in crop control as recent wheat quotas indicate.
The case for the city consumers can best be visualized in this way: Suppose the consumers of Pittsburgh were to “elect” retailers throughout the city just as they now elect public officials. Then throw all their trade to the successful “candidates” on condition those retailers went into the consumer cooperative plan and shared the profits with the customers.
What would that do to the unsuccessful candidates? Well, plans have been made for “relief” for them as now enjoyed by PWA workers and direct “reliefers.”
With the New Dealers ready to make loans to farmers and consumers in the cities and take mortgages on “stocks and evidences of indebtedness” (see the “not for pecuniary profits” law passed in July 1937 by Illinois legislature) it will be easy to “plow under” some of the surplus distributors.
Note to preachers, newspaper publishers, etc.: Prepare to change your religion.
CHAS. MAYNE
Mt. Pleasant, PA
Road to spiritual, economic ruin being taken by U.S., he says
Editor, The Pittsburgh Press:
In contemplating all of these New Orders, New Deals, New Eras, and the other political and economic comedies which have been exhumed from the mouldering ash-heaps of history, one finds that they lack novelty – that they are merely the same old reactionary attempts to inveigle and force the people into submitting to the mailed fist of the centralized state, whether the state means rule of dictator, emperor, military clique, or the harsh hand of a political bureaucracy upheld by a rabble favored by bread and circuses so long as the credit for the future can be utilized.
Dress up the propaganda as they may, such sloganized programs as Mr. Wilson’s “14 points,” the “four freedoms” of Mr. Roosevelt, or the “eight points” of Mr. Roosevelt and Churchill, are merely piously uttered window decorations, so evidently impossible of practical achievement that their quasi-serious promulgation illustrates vividly the intellectual degradation of times such as these.
Two thousand years ago, our western civilization received a certain “10 points,” known as the Ten Commandments. Ordinarily one might almost infer that a positive ethic so well based and so well inculcated, generation to generation, would become instinctive in humanity. Unfortunately it is not so.
Today the individual in the state, of high or low degree, requires more policing than ever; internationally we have a world-holocaust wherein one set of thieving junkers are aligned against another set who did their burglarizing early.
Realistically, inasmuch as the mass of human beings who make up nations have failed to digest and accept a socially necessary “10 point” ethic after 2,000 years of reiterated spiritual urging it would seem that force, after all, is the only arbiter – a natural assumption based upon its necessity even in handling domestic milieus.
So, at the bottom, we find that it is we, the people, who are responsible for our present world condition. It is our own fault. We know the ethic, and if we ignore it and chose to follow false prophets, whom we well realize are definitely wrong, both in domestic and international dealings and leadership, our fate is our own responsibility and ours alone. Those who suffer and die in Europe today made their own destiny. We of America will also cash the tickets we purchased aforetime.
We have failed, and still summarily refuse to remember that free civilization is a byproduct of the acquired art of voluntary subjugation and discipline of animalistic and evil inheritances in the individual human. This is a direct negation of the paranoiac philosophy of the 18th century which, under the hysterical ideologies of Rousseau and his ilk, has finally blossomed into the social savagery and “horde democracy” of the 20th century darkness.
We Americans are on our way again – along the self-same emotional road we traveled before – saying “democracy” though underneath it all is the motif of world-command and imperialism. It is a ruined route which has no spiritual and (even if we are materialistic) no economic payoff in the long run. It is, however, a partial rationalization of the herd impulse of humanity which yearns to force mass subservience to specific pattern. Emerson in his “New England Reformers” castigates our American phobia in this regard. Russia’s 20-year attempt to blast her Bolshevism into Germany, England and America is an example of the same attitude, and Germany’s forcible démarche against Europe is another.
ALBERT J. COOK
3619 Forbes St.
Expected squawks but not filmland screams
Editor, The Pittsburgh Press:
It was to be expected that the Hollywood crowd, who had been laboring for months before the present war began to condition the American people for participation in the conflict, would let a squawk if any attempt was made by the Congress to inquire into the motives behind the belligerency of the movie magnates. But the public was hardly prepared for the violent screams that have issued from the citadel of the magnates with the preliminary probing of the Senate subcommittee.
Willkie croaked “illegality,” and even your Parry gal gushes her two-cents-worth of injured innocence; but it remained for Congressman Emanuel Celler, New York City, to amuse the customers with his charge that the Senate investigation of the picture industry is unconstitutional and an infringement of the right of free speech.
It is strange indeed, that Congressman Celler, a vociferous interventionist, should suddenly become so concerned about the Constitution. He did not so much as emit a squeak over the destroyer deal and the occupation of Iceland, and he certainly had his blinders and ear-muffs on when the Churchill-Roosevelt conference was announced. And where, oh where was this champion of the handiwork of the Founding Fathers the other day when the President declared war?
Mr. Celler bewails the fact that four of the five members of the investigating committee are isolationists; well, that gives the interventionists one. And that is one more than the isolationists have in the entire Executive Branch of the Government and the Supreme Court.
Undoubtedly the public will get an ear full before the committee gets through, and how the folks are going to enjoy it. For the American people have not quite forgotten the Congressional investigations of the propaganda that got us into the last war, after the war was over; nor have they quite forgotten how our dear allies laughed up their sleeves at the gullibility of Americans, which was revealed in books written by the perpetrators of our folly to the amusement of the whole world after that war was over. This time the people demand that Congress investigate before we get into the war, and the current Senate subcommittee may be depended upon to comply, simply and honestly, with the wishes of the American people.
JOHN H. DARR
Ligonier, PA
Discusses appreciation of democratic principle
Editor, The Pittsburgh Press:
I am an American.
This sentiment is inspiring. It brings before us avenues of thought which give sublime reasons why we proclaim it in song. Many of us do not value our franchise as highly as we should. Only the soldiers and the sailors or veterans, who pledge their lives, the fortunes and sacred honor to uphold and defend the principles of our democracy, fully understand its import. America is a typical earthy paradise, where we have inherited its blessings, can share with those who may yet come to our shores, if permitted to enter.
Our forefathers, when they landed on these shores, left behind them the isms which shackled liberty and which have brought the old world into war, trial, tribulations and sorrow. The framers of our Constitution had this in mind when they wrote into its preamble, “We, the People,” making every citizen a sovereign in his own right. Yes, we believe all the Americas have the same hope. Let us perpetuate and observe American Day.
S. D. RUMBAUGH
7845 Susquehanna St.
U.S. must not default on task that confronts it, he states
Editor, The Pittsburgh Press:
There is only one way to win a war and that is to fight it. With all due respect to England, Russia and China and the rest, this is Uncle Sam’s job – a job we cannot afford to neglect nor default on.
America is democracy. Which means simply that here we believe that people count for more than things. Every Tom, Dick and Harry in America knows the causes of this war; that it is not of our own choosing; that we covet neither territory, nor possessions nor the rights of any other nation or its place in the sun.
But we know deep in our hearts that unless we crush the brutal fantasy of Hitlerism and his Axis partners we in this generation will lose not only our heritage as free men in a free land but will be betraying our trust to our children and our children’s children. Betraying them into a living death, into a world of slavery and a hell on earth.
This is no time for academic discussion of whether we shall go to war or not go to war. There is no other course open to us, either as men or as citizens of America. Consecration to this task can only come from the soul of America, if we are to put our backs and hearts and souls into this fight.
This is not the last world war. This is not speculation or imagining. This is now vital, far reaching and with tremendous consequences – if we fail or falter or hesitate.
War is inevitable, definite, sure. But unless we hoist the white flag over America there never will be any other flag but Old Glory over this great land of ours, nor anything but freedom of body, mind and soul for ourselves and our posterity.
It is no time for half-hearted measures nor for mouldy, vapid utterances that have and can have no other effects than betrayal of America and all that we stand for. Peace cannot be had by wishing for it and permitting ourselves to be blinded against actual aggressions against our nation, against our beliefs and rights. This is a time for high courage, deep resolves and supreme faith in ourselves, our fellow men and in God; and time for those who cannot fight for America to at least cease to fight against it, or come out and tell us what they are really fighting for. No matter what their protestations, the only results they are getting is aid to Hitler, by hampering and holding out false hopes which neither they nor anyone else can fulfill.
Neither the people, nor Congress or the President can vote for peace. Make up your minds, America, it has got to be won by hard, cruel, relentless fighting against our enemies and by warm, understanding and sympathetic help to our friends.
L. S. ADAMS
216 Hastings St.
He find Church failing to take clear stand on issue of war
Editor, The Pittsburgh Press:
I have sent the following letter to Dr. Stuart N. Hutchison, pastor of the East Liberty Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh:
My dear Sir:
Have just read your address, “Preaching in an Age of Confusion,” as published in the Princeton Seminary Bulletin. Much of it is instructive and inspiring. But, with all due respect for yourself and the learned audience, there are two statements (on Page 17) that merit comment and protest. They are:
The Church has never spoken clearly on the subject of war.
…and:
The Kingdom of God can never come until war ends and the power of men is free to build the City of God.
Now the Church, including our Presbyterian Church, may not have spoken clearly but, judging by its thunderous anti-war resolutions and papal bulls during the last two decades, the lack of that clarity was made up for by presumptuous assertions and noisy war denunciations. As for the Church’s own opinion regarding war, we were not left in the dark; the lack of clearness and authority was in evidence only when one noted how such opinions constantly ignored or misinterpreted the war teachings of the Bible, of Christ Himself, of history as a whole and of that Divine world government wherein “struggle and strife” have from time immemorial played the leading role in all grades of life.
A warless, though confessedly, a wicked world was a concept of mental mirage so openly and defiantly contradictory to the verdicts of all these four authorities that churchmen need not have wondered at the resultant mental and moral confusion. It seemed to many of us nothing but an arrogant attempt to superimpose the modernistic, sugary, wishful thinking of hilarious optimists upon the groom facts and but a smoke screen wherewith to hide challenging realities.
Whenever Jesus speaks of war, warriors or war weapons, as He does again and again in the Gospels, it is only too clear that He and our would-be world remoulding Omar Khayyams are as far apart as was He and the ease-loving, responsibility-evading Epicureans. And when our churchly pacifists interpret His words to Peter:
All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.
…as applying to all wars and warriors, it becomes obvious that they honor their pet fantasy vastly more than their professed Master – since that interpretation designates Him as the champion liar of all time.
No, the Church hasn’t spoken clearly on this subject – and isn’t going to until her leaders quit their silly flirtations with their wishfully veneered falsehoods. And one of these cart-before-the-horse theories is that second of your statements:
The Kingdom of God can never come until war ends and the power of men is free to build the City of God.
For the old prophet asserts:
There is no peace for the wicked, saith my God.
…and:
The word of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and confidence forever.
And it was Christ who asked:
Can men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?
He didn’t think they could. Our self-conceited pacifists maintain they can, they think they wrap the world in the blanket of peace no matter how lacking that world may be in “righteousness.”
So it seems to any reverent Bible student that it is pacifism that is anti-Christian, not war! For if there ever has been any “freedoms,” political or religious, gained apart from war and bloodshed, as well as retained thereby, history fails to record it!
The trouble with our Epicurean pacifist churchmen is that they are so dopey with their theories that they have lost the mental and moral ability to distinguish between just and unjust wars, between victims and murderous aggressors, between a patriotic Christian Chiang Kai-shek and brutal Japanese bandits. Hence when tested as at present, their professions of “Christian brotherhood” vanish into thin smoke. To save their own perfumed skins our hide-saving churchmen have adopted that haughty isolationism that smells too strongly of rancid Cainism to have any claim to the “heroic spirit of Christ!” Feathering her own honey nest, the Church has had no time or zeal for converting the world to “righteousness.” But having failed there she is now all enthusiasm for the grand theory that really conversion isn’t needed; to build a city of God our soft-handed churchmen must first of all have a nice, Utopian, wholly peaceful world in which to strut around leisurely while probably waiting for the angels to do the actual work.
GREG MacGREGOR
San Diego, Cal.
He points out conflict in Mrs. Parry’s mind
Editor, The Pittsburgh Press:
I note in your Sept. 18 issue that there were letters from Robert Glenn Tyson, protesting against Mrs. Parry’s attack on the Roosevelts, inspired by the visit of Eleanor Roosevelt here, and one by Rody Ruttenbusch in reply to her wonder at the vote for Judge Musmanno.
I read the one on the Roosevelts, and though I have always liked her columns as long as she stuck to the stuff she could write, and still do, at the time I read only one word came to me that would express my reaction, and that was “mean.”
She listed a number of sons of very prominent citizens, among them General Pershing, who have sons in the army as simple privates, while all of the sons of the President have commissions. I am not arguing on that, but did take time to write to Washington on the one son of General Pershing, and was told that he was a businessman in New York City and never had been in the service. I did not check the others.
She wrote to the effect that Mrs. Roosevelt was untouched by the troubles and problems of the poor. Her fighting for them has drawn much of the criticism aimed at her.
I remember her column in 1936 following the Roosevelt mass meeting at Forbes Field. I think that the Republicans had one at the Garden same night. She ventured among our hordes after leaving the Garden, and I remember that after she escaped and went home, she said she gazed liong at the stars to purify herself. She seems these days to have a conflict going on inside of her, between her natural inherited patriotism coming from her Daughters of the American Revolution blood, her hatred of Hitler and his works, and her devotion to the Republican Party, which apparently, if not now doing the work of Hitler at Washington, at least is not hurting him.
AUSTIN ROWELL
336 4th Ave.
‘Pernicious propaganda’ seen aiding confusion
Editor, The Pittsburgh Press:
Under the Constitution there are two prominent privileges, namely: “Freedom of speech and liberty of the press,” which are constantly exploited and overemphasized. The radio commentators frequently make wild and extravagant statements, which are seldom justified by the facts, or substantiated at a later date. All radio announcers simply read printed bulletins. They are not responsible for the circulation of false information. They cannot be sued for damages, like a responsible business concern, which is compelled by ethical practice to adhere to the strict truth. The correction of erroneous statements at a later date is seldom heard by all the people, who listened to the original misstatements.
The records show there are few papers printed on Sunday. For that reason, Sunday is a field day for insidious reports. Is it not possible to stop the printing and circulating of alarming stories, which keep our people in a state of fear and suspense? The principal function of a good newspaper is the printing of the news. By referring to Webster’s Dictionary, we find the following definition of the word “news”:
Information of what has recently happened.
Large headlines, startling statements and exaggerated reports never serve any good purpose. What we need is calm and unbiased judgment to enable us to solve the daily problems with which we are confronted. Nothing is gained by the spread of pernicious propaganda.
The marvelous response of the nation in the recent aluminum drive proves conclusively just what we can do, if we are approached in a fair and candid manner. We are a God-fearing, patriotic and peace-loving nation, but we hate like the devil to be tricked and deceived by misleading statements.
What we need in these trying times is the inspiration and help of friendly public and private cooperation to encourage the splendid efforts of a united nation to destroy forever tyranny and oppression throughout the entire world.
JOHN C. KELLEY
Mrs. Parry’s criticism of First Lady scored
Editor, The Pittsburgh Press:
Mrs. Parry is rambling again. This time she berates Mrs. Roosevelt.
I’m sure that when Mrs. Roosevelt was raising her brood she didn’t imagine that someday she would be the wife of the President of the U.S. Now that she is and is making a success of it, it doesn’t warrant our making disparaging remarks about her.
Those names that she listed, with the exception of General Pershing, are privates and may be working their wiles in a new way now. Who among us, with so many sons to give, is as courageous as Eleanor? She has the courage of her convictions. Her husband is a true Navy man. More of her relatives were, I am sure, Army men and her sons are following in their footsteps.
Mrs. Parry has one son and one daughter and although I do not know her personally I know all about her children due to her discussing their doings in her column. I’m sure if her son enters the war he, too, will be other than a private due to her maneuverings. I say a woman should stick to her knitting. I never did approve of woman suffrage.
Women are so catty and Mrs. Parry is a sure-fire example of it. She should confine her opinions to photography or how her maid is doing.
MRS. JOHN R. McKENNA
4915 Broad St.