T 0 DR 1 9 4

Forty Years of InterventionismSamuel B. Pettengill

The Hysteria of the HissiansVictor Lasky

Bismarck's Public DebtJohn T. Flynn

The Murder of ScholarshipE. Merrill Root

¢

WhyDon't YouRestoreFaith inPromises

by returning to the

GOLD COIN STANDARD?

Excerpt from Republican\\Monetary Policy" Plank

purse in the hands of the people, who, if dis­pleased with government policy, can redeemcurrency for gold coin. Such action automati­cally halts issuance of inflationary currencywhich shrinks the dollar's purchasing power.

Fortunately, during the last twenty years,American industry has helped to mitigate theeffect of the dollar's shrinking value throughgreater productivity. For example, Kennametal,as a tool material, has tripled the output ofmetal-cutting machinery, and sped extraction ofcoal and other minerals.

But - industry's contribution is not enough.The President, important Cabinet members,Senators, and Congressmen have recognized theneed for the Gold Coin Standard. Why then,should legislative action on it be delayed?

We must lead, not follow, the world back tomorality in money matters. Restoration of theGold Coin Standard will anchor the value of cur­rency to the metal of historically stable worth.Bickering over prices and wages will lessen ...and American industry, of which KennametalInc. is a key enterprise, will be able to plan andproduce with effectiveness and assurance whichis fostered by faith.

One of a series of advertisements published in the public interest by

__---; a donor on a". , , our aim · ',t'b\e go\d basis"

fuUy conve , _____

•

AMERICA'S envied standard of living has beenbuilt by faith in promises-faith in perfomanceby the buyer ... faith in payment by the seller.

When the government, in 1933, abrogatedthe citizen's right to convert his paper moneyinto gold - faith in promises began to fade.Since then there has been a flood of fiat cur­rency. Value of the dollar has declined about60%. Contracts have "escalator" clauses;future planning is guesswork.

Faith in contracts, and in human relationships,can best be restored by returning to a soundmoney system-and the only sound money sys­tem that has ever been successful is the GoldCoin Standard.* It puts control of the public

The right to redeem currencyfor gold will help keep Ameri­ca free. . ask your Senatorsand Congressman to work andvote to restore the Gold CoinStandard Write to The GoldStandard league, latrobe,Pa., for further information.The league is on associationof patriotic citizens joined inthe common cause of restoringa sound monetary system.

GOOD;'iEAR

presents anew kind ofTubeless lire

Standard equipment for

leading '55 cars...costs no more than

a standard tire and tube!

Goodyear has produced a new tire-a tubeless tire-the proud successor to every tire you've everknown or heard about.

After years of research that sought a new ap­proach to the tubeless idea, this tire is now a reality- thanks to the development by Goodyear of anew way of treating tire cord-the exclusive andpatented 3-T process.

The 3-T process makes the new Goodyear Tube­less Super-Cushion the most efficient air containerever made. It permits a new method ofconstructingtire bodies. It lets the great new Tubeless Super­Cushion set new standards of tire performance.

The new Tubeless Super-Cushion gives:

1. Puncture Protection - of a kind never offeredbefore in either standard or tubeless tires.

2. Blowout Protection-providing a greatly in­creased margin of safety.

3. Better Performance-a quieter, smoother,easierride-plus even greater mileage than today'sgreat standard tires.

4. And it combines all these advantages at a rea­sonable price ... no higher than the price of astandard tire and tube.

Perhaps the best proof of these statements is foundin the action of the automobile industry. The newTubeless Super-Cushion will be standard equip­ment on many of the new 1955 cars.

MORE PEOPLE RIDE ON GOODYEAR TIRES THAN ON ANY OTHER KIND I

Super·Cushion, T. M.-The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. Akron 16. Ohio

:~~~q-"--~.'~---'~ p'""",--~., ~-.':y']J.~. ~__, . • ~ ~"!r. .

;" ~~ Two (;axton Books~.~Every Lihertarian Should

- ~ JJlJJR... JlJl.ad£lJ1.ti JlJlJlIlad

Do you know if Yalta was the climaxof a long series of betrayals whichstemmed from ignorance of Soviet aims,strategy and tactics?

BeadTHE YALTA BETRAYAL

G,EORGE A. LUND,BERGG,EO'RGE MORGENSTERNFRED,ERIC R. SAN BORN

II • •• should be in our schools ••• should bein our universities . . • should be read bymillions of citizens./I Willis Ballinger, HumanEvents, Washington, D. C.

CHARLES CALLAN TANSILL

Edited by HARRY ELMER BARNES

A Critical Examination of the Fo·reign Policiesof Presidents Roosevel,t and Truman

Other contrilbutors include such outstanding authori'ties as

Do you know if global meddling has kept America at war?

ReadPERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE

WILLIAM HENRY CHAM,BERLINPERCY L. G:REAVES, JR.WILL,IAM L. NEUMA,NN

An historical essay which synthesizesseemingly separate events into a p,at­tern of tragic failure.

By Felix Wittmer" . .• a hard hitting pamphlet by a man in agood cause angry • • • packs a tremendousnumber of punches a!1d an impressive arrayof facts into 100 pages of text . • . Not contentwith the thorough job of debunk'ing he hasperformed in the text, the author returns veryeffectively to the charge by printing the textsof the Four Freedoms, the Atlantic Charter, andthe Yalta Agreement with a running commen­tary of sharp, penetrating questions which arethemselves indictments/' Wm. Henry Chamber-

"Few books could have been wr'iHen with lin-Chicago Tribvne.greater force and greater precision • • • This II... all the • • • facts . . . objectively andgreat book is a dual atte'mpt· ••• to show how painstdkingly presented • • • it isn't often thatthe United States ~ America, by its policy of we review a book in these columns, and it isinterventionism and' global meddling has made even rarer that we give a book our unqualifiedit possible to transform every bolder quarrel blessing. But this is a book that belongs oninto a world war • • • in every way, and in your library shelf. It will g'ive you all the facts

/I d f II f d h· every sense a great book • • • written with a concern·lng thl·s cruc·lal period in our history,·• • •. compact an u 0 goo t Ings • • • bh • I bl great purpose. Its subject is ·ig, its importance I·t will I·ntroduce you to all the sinister char-t e argu'ment simp y remains unanswera' e." h I

f h II d I d is big and its need at t e present time is a so acte'rs I·n the tr'agic drama. You simply can'tPro esso,r Tomas Ca an ar, Guernsey, Eng an . hbig. Big indeed, is not the, word. T e word really afford to m1iss it • a book that had to be

"A good example of (vigor, courage and inde- is 'tremendous' for 'its task and its purpose are written.1I IEditorial - The National Republic,pendence) is a batch of books recently pub- as stupendous as its achievement is astonishing Washington, D. C.Iished on foreign policy. The most solid of ••• may well be regarded as the Bible of the /I... This short, terse summation of eventsthese is PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL present day political economics of the United leading up the Yalta Conference' ••• showsPEACE ••• a series of sharply critical essays States./I Inclia International Magazine, Bom!bay. the extent of outright communist infiltrationby individuals who, like the editor, Dr. Barnes, into responsible government· posts.. ./1 Reader'scannot he overlooked in any final determination /I••• a courageous book ••• ,makes plain • .. Report, Chricago, III.of the wisdom of a course which has cost us that foreign policy is a devious thing, couched /lHere, in a miracle of concision, is presented,so much in blood and resources over the past in temporizing, bombast, false, promises, fakeries in documented and dramatic form, the origintwo decades. Barnes offers, moreover, a trench- ••• blackma;jJ and pig pen morality ••• The and development of historical mistakes of co.ant essay. on what he calls the 'historical black- documentary references are forbidding in their lossal proportions and appalling consequences."o,ut. • .' 11 Raymond Moley'in 'his syndicated profusion, though nonetheless important.1I Review Burton Rascoe-5yndicated Review.column under the title, "History Reconsidered.1I -Wilmington, Delaware News-Journal. $1.25 at leading bookstores or

$6.00 at leadingi bookstores or postpaid direct from publisher postpaid direct from publisher

Order your copy of IIPerpetual War for Perpetual Peacell and liThe Yalta Betrayalll

today. For free information, send us this check list-

"Harry Elmer 'Barnes was a leader in the move­ment among historians in the 1920's to re­examine the causes of World War I •.• SinceW'orld War II, Barnes and the late Charles A.'Beard have been the most scholarly of thisgroup of writers, called IIrevisionists,1I who haveturned their attention to the causes and, inpart, to the results, of this second great war.The case for revisionism, at its best, can bestudied in • . . PERPETUAL WAR FOR PER­P'ETU'AL PEACE . . ." San Antonio (Texas)Express.

Libertarian BooksCatalog

Fall Catalog

Spring Catalog

Complete Catalog Art Books Folder(Trade List)

Dance Books FolderJuvenile Catalog

Check List of AllAlaskan Books Caxton BooksCircular

(; A X T 0 N 1b)gof CaldweU. Idaho

Printed in U.S.A. by \ViUlon H. Lee Co., Orange, Conn.

Books

Articles

Looking Forward

If you plumb an individualist to the bottom youwill find a religious strain. Not necessarily achurchgoer, but one who roots his thinking inan article of faith. Maybe it's the concept ofnatural rights, maybe it's the doctrine of freewill. Well then, it is quite appropriate for theFREEMAN to inquire, what does formal religionhave to say about individualis,m? The firstanswer to that question comes from ReverendLeopold Braun, A.A. His article, " A CatholicUnderstanding of Individualism," will appearin the November issue. Theologians of otherfaiths will make similar contributions in subse­quent issues.

Willi Schlam,m, who has not appeared in theFREEMAN for a long time, takes issue in Novem­ber with the editor's non-interventionist posi­tion. Balancing his article will be one by DeanRussell. Thaddeus Ashby writes a fanciful no­tion, with a moral, called "America Revisited."... An argument in favor of private roads iscontributed by Justice John E. Mulroney, ofDes Moines, Iowa.... C. P. Ives, of the Balt'i­more Sun, goes to town on the "inquisitorial"argument of those who denounce Congressionalinvestigations of alleged Commuists.... Whatmore is in store for you next ,month is a matterof selection from a mass of manuscripts.

In the issue you are about to read, I call at­tention to the new department, "Washington,D.C."-conducted by my former colleagueFRANK C. HANIGHEN, editor of the Washingtonnewsletter, Human Events. If there is his equalas an analyst of the tre'nd of events in the capi­tal, I do not know of one.

It would be gilding the lily to comment onJOHN T. FLYNN. But I do want to say some­thing about two "reformed" Congressmen whoappear in this number. HOWARD BUFFETT ofOmaha spent four years in the House voting"no" on every appropriation bill that came up;therefore, the political bosses of Nebraska sawno reason for sending him back, to the greatdelight of his family. SAM PETTENGILL oncerepresented an Indiana district in Congress, butfortunately im;munized himself against the "Po_tomac fever" and has since been carrying on thefight for freedom as a lawyer in private. busi­ness. I recommend two of his books, Jefferson,the Forgotten Man, and Smoke Screen.

NICHOLAS NYARADI is now a professor atBradley University. He is a refugee fromHungary, where he served as Finance Ministe'rbefore the Soviets took over the gover'nment.He is best known for his brilliant book, MyRingside Seat in Moscow.

VICTOR LASKY co-authored, with Ralph deToledano, Seeds of Treason, a telling analysisof the case of Alger Hiss, and edited The Amer­ica,n Legion Reader. E. MERRILL ROOT has justfinished a book o'n the methods of the Ieft­wingers on the campuses. It will be, publishedby Devin-Adair. MARION MURPHY, as far as Iknow, has never written for publication before.She describes herself as a secretary.

114

Libertarians

A Monthly

For

FRANK CHODOROVJAMES M. ROGERS

VOL. 5, NO. 4 OiOTOBE,R 1954

EditorBusiness Manager

THB

reeman

Readers Also Write ' .

Forty Years of Interventionism SAMBEL B. PETTENGILL 123Bismarck's Public Debt JOHN T. FLYNN 126Opportunity of a Lifetime NICHOLAS NYARADI 129And the Right Shall Triumph MARION MURPHY 131The Hysteria of the Hissians VICTOR LASKY 133The Murder of Scholarship E. MERRILL ROOT 136The Hiddenest Tax F. A. HARPER 138UMT: The Promise of D,isaster HOWARD BUFFETT 139Caution at Evanston REV. EDMUND A. OPITZ 141

Editorials

Things Are LOQking Up 117"Foreign Affairs" 118Bi-Partisan Spending 118Our Own Dr. John 119In Need of a Definition 120The "Line" on Baseball 120

A Reviewer's Notebook JOHN CHAMBERLAIN 144The Totalitarian State HUBERT MARTIN 145Philosophy and Life BARBARA HARPER KEITH 146Mexican Martyr ROBERT E. KINGSLEY 147How Scientific is "'Social Science"? PAUL JONES 147A .Myth in Oil ~ KARL HESS 148Kremlin Orchestra FREDA UTLEY 148Psychology and Faith JAMES M. ROGERS 149The Income Tax W. M. CURTISS 149

Washington, D. C. . FRANK C. HANIGHEN 121

THE FREEMAN is published monthly. PUlblication Office, Orange, Conn. Editorial andGeneral Offices, Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y. Copyrighted in the United States, 1954,by The Irvington Press l Inc. Leonard E. Read, President; Fred Rogers Fairchild, VicePresident; Claude Robmson, Secretary; ulwrence Fertig, Treasurer; Henry Hazlittand Leo Wolman.Entered as· second class matter at the Post Office at Orange, Conn. Rate!!: Fifty centsthe copy; five dollars a year in the United States; nine dollars for two years; sixdollars a year elsewhere.The editors cannot be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts unless return postage orbetter, a stamped, self-addressed envelope is enclosed. Manuscripts must be typeddouble-spaced.Articles signed with a name, pseudonym (JJr initials do not necessarily repnsent theopinion of the editors.

MID-YEAR EARNINGS UP

feway Sto,res, IncorporatedWorld's Seco,nd Largest Retail Food Concern

R·.eloder1aso wrlT~

"Dynamic Conservartism"I have read the FREEMAN ever sinceit first started, and I think it has cometo be the leading vehicle for the ex­pression of intellectually honest polit­ical and social thought in this cou'n­try.... Have you ever consideredthe ternl "dynamic conservatism" asa description for the people who wantto move forward in all ways exceptthat they don't think the Constitutionshould be scuttled in the process?New York City EDWARD F. CUMMERFORD

A Farmer on SubsidiesFrom the standpoint of self-interest,the farm subsidy idea is as absurd asit is wrong. The United States isgov­erhed on the principle that the majorityprevails. The only safeguard a minorityhas that its rights will not be de­stroyed, is that the majority will beself.,.restrained by moral precepts.

Then if we farmers, a shrinkingminority group, take advantage of ournlomentary disproportionate political

NET SALES GAIN 4.4%

Net sales for the 24 weeks ended June19, 1954 reached a newall-time high of$821,863,404. This was 4.4% higher thannet sales of $787,578,737 in the same1953 period.

NET PROFITS CLIMB

The Company's net profits for the first24 weeks of 1954, after all income taxeswere $6,615,971. This was an increase of$423,039 over a net profit of $6,192,932for the same 24 weeks last year. Includedin the 1953 net profit figures is a returnof $212,885 excess profits taxes.

DIVIDENDS AND EARNINGS

The June 1954 quarterly dividend of 60¢was the 111 th consecutive dividend paidshareholders of Safeway's $5.00 parvalue common stock. After deductingpreferred stock dividends of $680,661,earnings for the 1954 period amoutltedto $1.76 per share of common stock on3,369,521 shares, average number out-

power and demand legalized robbery toour own advantage, we demand actioncontrary to the moral precepts, andthus destroy the only safeguard wehave that our own rights will not beignored by the majority in the future.Neither our p,roperty nor our personalfreedom will be secure.Kansas, Ill. w. B. TABER, JR.

Gangsters Give No ChoiceIn reading the editorial "The Returnof 1940?" (September), it seems to methat you overlook the fact that withgangsters on the loose you are not givena choice of whether or not you'll fight.Whether they be Kaisers or Hitlers orStalins, they ultimately rig the situa­tion to suit their convenience and thenlet you have it. You fight back or yousurrender. Of course it's expensive tofight a war. Of course you get hurtin many ways, but once in a war youhad better win it. . .

We won the last war, and certainlythen messed up the peace by trying todeal with gangsters as you wouldwith Inen of good will. That, however,is sOlnething else. It will have to befaced for what it is. But when theissue reaches the fighting point, wehad better be prepared to fight to win.Milwaukee, Wis. w. S. LEIGHTON

standing during the period. This com­pares with earnings in the same 24 weeksof 1953 of $1.76 from operations, plus7¢ from excess profits taxes recovery re­lating to prior years, or a total of $1.83per share of common stock on 2,874,651shares, average number then outstand­ing. Average number of common sharesoutstanding in 1954 has increased by494,870 shares over the average numberin 1953.

ASSETS AND LIABILITIESof Safeway Stores, Incorporated and allsubsidiaries

June 19, 1954 June 13, 1953Total Net

Assets $165,847,270 $133,623,379Total Current

Assets 246,826,572 * 235,456,511Total Current

Liabilities . 132,778,901 * 148,816,346Book value per share of

Common Stock • . 31.73 29.71

*Rate of current assets to current liabilities asof June 19, 1954 was 1.86 to 1.

Safeway Stores, INCORPORATED

Thought-ProvokingMay I offer you the most thought­provoking statement I have read inyears, taken from a little book, TheTrue Believer by Eric Hoffer (Harper& Bros., 1951)? "Mass movementscan rise and spread without belief ina God, but never without belief in adevil." The Communists are especiallyclever in creating "devils"- WallStreet, the capitalists, "McCarthyism."Lyons, Kans. BEN JONES

The "Liberals" of SmithGratitude to the FREEMAN and AloiseHeath for her witty, informing andrevealing article on Smith College"liberals" (August). It is valuable,and comforting as showing us pro­testing alumnae of some other collegesthat others, too, feel that financialgifts assume a "moral responsibility."

Our experiences are comparable tothose suff,ered by Mrs. Heath and hercommittee. It is shown again that,though self-styled "liberals" call us"authoritarians'," the real slappers­down are always they....Indianapolis, Ind. T. v. P. KRULL

Paternalism?Mr. Dean Russell ("The AmericanBaby Bonus," August) forgets thatour income-tax exemption applies toall dependents closely related, not onlyto children. It is therefore someth~ng

more than a baby bonus: as an admis­sion that at leas,t some claims on ourincome take priority over the State's,it has a significance more than finan­cial. . . .

Mr. Russell seems to suggest thatany interest the State takes in itscitizens is bound ,to be paternalisticor worse. Granted the danger, andthat it is usually realized; but is itnecessarily sinister for the Sta,te, inthe interests of preserving and pro­tecting family life, to foster a climatethat helps it to thrive? ...Pelham, N.Y. NEIL MC CAFFREY, JR.

True, the State will also give you a"bonus" (tax deduction) if you'll takecare of your aged n10ther instead ofthrowing her out in the street. Butlike the similar "baby bonus," this ishardly designed to develop either acharacter or an attitude favorable tothe "preserving and protecting. offamily life." The only way the Statecan foster a climate to help the familysurvive is to leave parents responsiblefor the religion, educ'ation and materialwelfare of their children. Anythingelse elevates the State over the parents.

DEAN RUSSELL

Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.(Continued on page 150)

do you need

SPECIAL PRODUCTS DIVISION

onil;~!

• DESIGN~;>

!i!;':!

• DEVELOPMENT

• ENGINEERING

PRODUCTIONof your product?

• /

CJhompson Products2196 Clarkwood Road • Cleveland 3, Ohio

..

Tapping the Open Hearths at J&L's Pittsburgh Works

JMfJ4 ~ltllUf~STEEL CORPORATION -Pittsourgh

Things Are Looking UpThere wasn't ,much you could do with the nlel'=chandise of freedom, .ten years ago. Even estab­lisnea craftsmen, llke Garet tiarrett, John T. l1'lynnand Albert Jay Nock, found little outlet for their·wares. Publishers and editors, being sound busi­nessrnen, were stocKing up un lllal1U.~Cr.lp(;s tnat.·proved" the German people to be inherently eVl1,

vn apologetics for the ~ovIet system, on "studies"that .glurH1ed the New Veal. ~conomlsts whodemonstrated, with tables, that AmerIca hadacruevea tne ·'maLure e\;VHViHY, anu LHac (;ne onlythIng left to do was to control and regulate it,were dOIng' a land-office bUSIness; and tnere wasan open aoor at puollshing houses for pbilosopherswho mocked the doctrIne 01 natural rlgnts and allthInKing based on it. For freeaom, tnere SImplywasn't a market.

So 1 starLeu a paper oimy own. It was hardgOIng, of course, but I did find three thousandfreeuom-starved customers.

One day, Albert Jay bounced into my office andlaid on ,my desk a packet of pamphlets, beamInglike a mIner who had Just found a nugget of puregOld. Some had come to hIm from the BrlushSocIety of IndividualIsts; they told of what social­ism nad done to Britons who never would be slaves.More astoundIng were a couple of titles that spokeof pure freedom, all wool and a yard wide, and theimprint saId that the publisher,s were, of all people,the Chamber of Commerce, Los Angeles, Calif­fornia. To understand his enthusiasm and myastonIshment, you must understand that there wasat that time no current literature of freedom, andthat if you wanted to read on the subject you hadto dig up and dust off books of ancient vintage.

Could it be that these pamphlets were an omenof better times to come7 We so hoped, but hardlybelieved. Freedom is a staple in the market ofhuman values, and though it has its ups and downs,there is always a latent demand for it. But adecade ago it seemed to many of us that it hadgone plumb out of style, forever. A few entre­preneurs did not think so-like the British Societyand the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.

Others opened up shop. About the time I startedmy paper, a newspaperinan in WashIngton,. FrankC. Hanighen, brought out a modest weekly news­letter called Human Events; it concentrated on theskulduggery in government. A couple of years latercame Plain Talk, telling the truth about Com­munists, that they were not the fine people ourofficials made them out to be, but were rather abunch of conspirators bent on doing away withfreedom all over the world. Out in Los Angelesthere was an outfit called Spiritual Mobilization,fighting the collectivism creeping into the churches,and pretty soon they put out a monthly called

Faith and Freedom. A similar endeavor, calledChristian Economtcs, poppeu up in New York.

Things were looking up. Individuals and organ­izations and FoundatIons were iSSUIng more andmore pamphlets stressing the dangers to theAmerican tradition, business houses began punmAing for free enterprise in their house organs anuin paid newspaper advertisements. To top theseliterary ventures, there emerged during this periodthree commercial publishers, headed by dedicatedmen, who would risk putting out books for whichthere had previously been no market at all.

Seven years ago I got the lowdown on themiracle of the Chamber of Commerce pamphletsNock had brought in. It was not the C. of C. that,vas responsible for them at all, as I had suspected.It is always a man, an individual, that does thethings for which an organization gets credit. Inthis case it was the general manager, named Leon­ard E. Read. By this time he had come to New Yorkto do bigger things in his chosen line, and presentlyhe had an establishment called the Foundation forEconomic Education. He manned it with economistsand writers, who have since been flooding thefreedom market. To his other portfolios, Read re­cently added that of publisher of the FREEMAN.

In view of the seemingly solid entrenchment ofsoC'ialism in politics, religion and education, theachievement of these intrepid peddlers of free­dom during the past ten years ·off,ers Iittle tocrow about. They haven't grown rich at it, to besure, and they haven't created a mass demand forfreedom. But they have been keeping on displaya line of goods that is gall and wormwood to thepower-mad Socialists, and as a consequence thereare in this country an increasing number of artic­ulate and accomplished merchants of freedom, witha corresponding increase in trade.

Freedom without a literature is like health with­out food. It just cannot be. To be sure, the yearn­ing for freedom is deep in the hearts of men,even the slaves of the Soviets. But the yearningcan turn into hard, numb despair if the faith uponwhich freedom thrives is not revivified from timeto time by reference to its philosophy. It is notwithout reason that the Communists do away withwriters on freedom when they conquer a country,or that they suppress its literature.

Therefore, the very volume, if not the quality,of literature that arose from the arid desert of1944 is something to be thankful for. Things arelooking up. The Socialists have had their own wayin the political arena, but in the intellectual fieldthey are meeting more and more opposition. Andwhen there is a wider knowledge of the meaningof freedom, and an uncompromising desire for it,political action-,-if ,it is needed-will come.

OCTOBER 1954 117

"L7

• A,a·"rorelgn .' LJJ01rSJudging by the.' slew of ,rav'iew copies received inthis office, it must be de rigeur for a publisher toput out at least one book on "foreign affairs" everyseason. If your business compels you to dip intothese books, you can't help wondering who readsthem and, particularly, who buys them. They arecompletely devoid of literary entertainment; thestyle is invar,iably that of a cub reporter and the"facts" they relate are nothing but the garbageyou expect to find in any can of politics. Their in­formative value ,is practically nil, since in everycaS'e the "inside story" of the country visited iswhat the reporter wanted to beUeve of it beforehe went there. It is always pro or con, and some­where in the book, usually the last chapter, thereis a "something ought to be done about it"-byour government, with our money, of course.

Once ina while, a publisher will invest his ownmoney in one of thes'e books and hope to recoup bythe sale of copies. Such honest merchandising, how­ever, is rare. In most cases the books are subsidized,directly or indirectly; a tax-free Foundation orsom'e person with an axe to grind will underwr,itethe expenses of the "investigator," or will agreeto buy enough copies of the book to cover manu­facturing costs; sometimes the sale of reprintrights to a magazine guarantees the publisheragainst loss .. The United States government has onoccasion bailed out a publisher by the purchase ofmany copies for propaganda purposes.

That is to say, these "foreign affairs" books arenot put out to satisfy a demand, but are, rather,foisted on the public. The sponsors, and the writers,have a purpose which ,is in no way related to ,litera­ture. The purpose is to influence thought, to createan "attitude" favorable to their particular preju­dices ; and their prejudices fall into three generalcategories: pro-eommunism, anti-communism orpro-one-worldism. All one· needs to do to learn whatthe book is about is to read the blurb on the jacketand ascertain which prejudice is being promoted;that is what the reviewers do.

'To what extent thes'e books have influencedthought in this country it would be difficult to say.But it is a certainty that they have given aid andcomfort to our Washington interventionists, andthat is true whether the books are pro-communist,anti-communist or pro-one-worldist. 'Taken as awhole, they serve to bolster arguments for sendingour wealth abroad, for bivouacingour soldiers onforeign soil, for attempting to impos,e our cultureon people who haven't asked for it. I have read adozen or so of these books, and glanced at thejackets of others, and nowhere hav'e I found anysupport for the sensible proposition that it wouldbe to the best interest of this country to keep outof the internal affairs of the rest of the world. Thecrusading spirit is in all of them.

J18 THE FREEMAN

My forced reading of this slush has had the ef­fect of confirming my·· own prejudice, that asapeople ·and as a nation we would be on safer groundif we left "foreign affairs" where they belong, withforeigners; they are in 'better 'position to know thefacts. Nor have we brought our internal affairs tosuch perfection that we can hire out as experts.And as for assuming that our culture is so superiorthat we owe it to other peoples to force it on them,that is nothing but a mischievous conceit ; everynation that indulged it got into trouble.

Which brings me to the "foreign affairs" articlesthat appear in the FREEMAN.' We receive a spate ofsuch manuscripts every month, and select for pub­lication only those that drive home the point thatAmerica would be better .off if it let other peoplealone.

Bi-Partisan SpendingThe present political campaign had hardly begunbefore a signal went up that a debate over thepolicy of interventionism would be "off limits."Democratic leader Adlai Stevenson wrote a letterto the head of the French government in whichhe asserted that the American people are solidlybehind EDC. This, of .course, wa,s pure balderdash;many Americans do not even know what the initialsstand for, many more haven't the slightest interestin this proposed entente, and still more wish thatwe were not involved in it. But the point is thatthe leader of the Democratic Party sent the letteronly after he had cleared it with the RepublicanSecretary of State. It had no effect on the French,who subsequently repudiated EDC,but it did shutthe mouths of Democratic (and Republican) candi­dates who may be opposed to our meddling in theaffairs of foreign nations. It was a "bi-partisan"letter.

The rationale of bi-partisanship is that in ourrelations with foreign governments. we must pre­sent a united front; just as a man and wife whoare at one another's throats must get togetherwhen confronted by an outsider. This submergenceof differences of opinion makes sense when ournational existence is threatened-or, perhaps, whenwe are engaged in grabbing off a piece of realestate held by another government. The secondreason is ruled out in the present instance by theinsistence of our government that it has no im­perialistic designs. As for the "defense" argumentfor interventionism, even the military are dividedon the value of an army in Europe in case we goto war with Russia; and only a vivid imaginationcan equate our far-flung libraries, an integral ofour foreign policy, with national security. The ra­tionale is not quite convincing.

Our present enthusiasm for bi-partisanship be..gan during the regime of Franklin Roosevelt.

Woodrow Wilson got it going during World WarOne, but the fire died down when hostilities ceased,and interventionism died with it~ During the nexttwenty years there was no need for bi-partisanship,for the country was determined to stay clear offoreign entanglements. So strong was this anti­interventionist spirit that nothing less than aPearl Harbor could dislodge it. Since then, inter­ventionism has been copper-riveted into our foreignpolicy, and hi-partisanship has become a politicalaxiom.

If we go back to the burgeoning of bi-partisan­ship in Roosevelt's time, we find an explanation forthis ph~nomenon. We must keep in mind thatRoosevelt, an avowed isolationist in his first term,was confronted with a depression on his taking of­fice; also, that he had embraced the Keynesiannotion that we could spend ourselves out of thiseconomic hell. By 1937 the spending had not donewhat it was supposed to do, and Mr. Roosevelt'seconomic advisers opined that it had failed becausehe had not spent enough. Up to that time most ofthe spending had been done at home. The idea thenoccurred to somebody, maybe Roosevelt himself,that the volume and rapidity of spending could beincreased if foreign ventures were undertaken.Maybe war was not at first contemplated, but itis a fact that a government cannot spend moreon any other enterprise.

During the war the country prospered as it al­ways does during war. Much of the lavishly spenttax-money found its way into the coffers of in­dustrialists and bankers, and even into the payenvelopes of workers. A good time was had by a11­excepting, of course, the soldiers and the mourners.

After the war there was no inclination to stopthe spending spree, and Truman obliged all goodDemocrats and all bad Republicans by continuingthe policy of his predecessor; his economic and polit­ical advisers came to his aid with bigger and morecostly interventionist schemes. There was somecriticism of the schemes, in detail, but no criticislnof the spending they entailed. Everybody was forit. Hence, it became politically "unrealistic" to op­pose the so-called foreign policy of the government.For the same reason, Eisenhower's crusades enjoybi-partisan support.

What goes by the name of "foreign policy" isin fact only an implementation of the Keynesiannotion that we can spend ourselves into economicheaven. It is domestic in origin, and, though itsorigin is lost in the maze of bureaucratic abacada­bra, the fact is that any 'Suggestion for the abandon­ment of this "foreign policy" is Inet with thespecter of depression; not depression in othercountries, but depression at home. Whatever "rea­sons" were or are advanced for U,NRRA, theMarshall Plan, Point Four, or the vast expendi­tures in spurious "defense," the taproot of suchprograms is feaT of unemploYlnent, idle capita.l andunrest. Out "foreign policy" is quite domestic.

To be sure, this was always so. In pr,e-Roos·e­veltian times, the business of our government, inits relations with other nations, was to seek marketsfor our products, collect our bills, or hoodwinkforeigners iblo giving our nationals some specialprivilege in their areas. Another motif in thathistoric pattern was the use of military force forthe purpose of protecting our shores. In any case,"foreign policy" was domestic in its orientation.So it is now. The difference between the old and thenew "foreign policy" is that in former times ourgovernment aimed to wangle advantages for usfrom other peoples, while now it is intent on wast­ing our substance on foreigners, "for our good."

OUT Own Dr. JohnAn analysis of the "strange" case of Dr. OttoJohn, chief of security of the Bonn governmentwho defected to the Communists in East Ger­many, comes to us from a European reporter. Itthrows light on the bungling inherent in theAllied occupation of Germany.

Dr. John, so goes the analysis, held his hn­portant post not because of any fitness for it,nor because Chancellor Adenauer held him inesteem. He was appointed at the "suggestion"of the British government, concurred in byAmerican and French authorities. He had in­gratiated himself with the British during the'war when, after his escape from Hitler's Ger­many, he rendered excellent service as a broad­caster of British propaganda. He was unquestion­ably anti-nazi, but not anti-communist, in hissympathies, and the British thought they couldtrust him in the planned denazification program.

Dr. John did not have the confidence of theBonn government. He was not a Communist, butthere was evidence that he maintained friendlycontact with Communists. This alone was enoughto raise doubts as to his reliability. During hissix weeks visit to this country, shortly beforehis defection, American authorities were also un­favorably impressed. At any rate, it now seemscertain that if Adenauer had had a free hand,Dr. John would have been ousted from the sen­sitive post long ago. He held it only because ofthe dependency of the Bonn government on theAllied command. His tenure became increasinglyinsecure as the Allies showed more and moresigns of granting autonomy to West Germany.

That is about all there .is to the "strange"case of Dr. John. Along with the subsequentdefection of another member of the Bonn bureauc­racy, it underlines the fact that this so-calledGerman government is riddled with Allied stooges,whos.e first loyalty is to "job security." TheBonn .. govel"nment has the weakness of eve117

sateIIite government.

OCTOBER 1954 119

One cannot get the "line" properly in the metro­politan newspapers. These publications are stillunder the handicap of bourgeois thinking; theireditors feel impelled to pay some attention tofacts. That makes their reporting somewhat devia­tionist. Only. a paper like the Daily Worker isdemocratically uninhibited, and therefore can makethe facts fit the "line." One must read it to getthe proper and current point of view on ev'ents,to get the "low-down" on how to think about things.The "capitalistic" press is still unreliable.

Being a baseball, enthusiast, I turned one day tothe sports column of the Daily Worker, and thereI learned which team a good "democrat" shouldroot for. CThis was before the pennant race wasdecided.) As among the Giants, the Braves, theDodgers and the Indians, the "line" was undecided.But it was quite clear on the Yankees; since thereare no Negroes on this team, it is "undemocratic"and therefore beneath contempt. Hurrah forCleveland!

erty produced in this country every year, by thetax method. To that 'extent, the lawmakers are ina~reement with communism, and so are the citi"zens who find no fault with this confiscation ofprivate property.

Another tenet of communism is that the individ­ual has no inherent rights which the State, or themajori,ty of the voters, may not abrogate. Howmany Americans are of the same conviction?Many of our professors of political science, even ofphilosophy and theology, pooh-pooh the concept ofnatural rights, and in that respect line themselvesup with communism. Logically, they must hold tothe communistic doctrine of individual servility tothe State. H,ence, for instance, they find no faultw,ith conscription, which is a blatant violation ofthe right of the individual to Uf,e. And how manyconscripts, or their parents, take exception to thepractice-on principle?

'That the individual is a product of his env,iron- f!ment, nothing else, is the keystone of all commu-j.)nist thought. The State, by controlling his environ- ~1ment, can make, of him what it wdlls. Many advo­cates of Christianity are of the same persuasion,and go to some lengths to equate the teachings ofChrist with those of Marx. Will the law make thembelieve otherwise?

And so, going right down the line, the creedof communism will be found to cont3linmuch thatthe majority of Americans has learned to accept;some of it has been congealed in American law,American tradition, American behavior. The newlaw does not, cannot, eradicate that part of com­munism from our mores. Only an intellectual re­volution can.

I.n Need of a DefinitionEverybody hates a Communist. Or so it wouldseem, judging from the unanimous vote of Congressmaking anA'merican communicant of· the faith anoutlaw. Even if we admit that the Congressmenvoted as they did for pol,itical reasons, and with­out regard for the enforceability of the law, theiraction must be regarded as a recognition of thegeneral antipathy toward Communists and com­munism. 'The. people condemn both.

But, ,even before President Eisenhower had af­fixed his signature to the bill, people began point­ing out the difficulties it would face in the courts,merely for lack of a definition. Just exactly whatis a Communist? And how does one define the de­tested religion? Under communistic jurisprudencethis matter of definition would not be a problemsince the courts can fit one to any given set offacts; under our system of law, however, the ac­cused must know what act of transgression he isbeing tried for, and exactly.

If a Communist is one who actively espousesthe cause of Mosco\v, the now recognized thoughundeclared enemy of our country, then evidence ofan act of espionage or overt su:bversion wHl beenough to make the law effective. All that the lawdoes is to make. the de facto cold war de jure· thatis, Congress has officially named an enem~ andput our security officers on guard. One might callit a semi-peacetime law against treason, with sanc­tions that approximate those that apply dur,ing ac­tual war.

So far, so good. But a Com'munist is not nec­essarily an adherent or agent of Moscow. He mightbe an admirer of the Soviet system, might strive tointroduce it into this country, and yet be opposedto the Kremlin regime; a Communist could be aloyal soldier of America in an open war with theSoviet Union. He simply believes that communismis superior to freedom. Indeed, a Communist mayinsist that what obtains in Russia is a perversionof his religion, and may urge its adoption here inwhat he considers its pure form. Will the law ap­ply to him? Will it change his mind? Will it pre­vent him from seeking converts? Will it stop himfrom writing books extolling the glories of com­munism, or teaching its tenets in our schools? Thelaw does not make faith a crime. We have not gotaround to that.

When you exa:mine the basic tenet of this faith,you find that many Americans who hate commu­nism are in agreement with it. That basic tenet isthat private prope~ty is a sin; therefore, all prop­erty should be communized, and title vested in theState. Many Congressmen who voted for the anti­communist law are on record as favoring the en~

forced communization of a considerable amount ofprivate property. To begin with, they have consis­tently voted to communize one-third of all the prop-

120 THE FREEMAN

The "T· ".LIne on Baseball

Washington, D. C. By }1{ANK C. HANIGHEN

People who wonder why our foreign policy con­tinues on its disastrous course, with new Redareas appearing on the map every month, andwhy so many collectivist policies survive, can find

answers in the continuing power over policiesof the Washington bureaucracy. The words "NewDeal holdover," which disturbed conservativesat the outset of the Eisenhower Administration,seem to have gone out of currency in recentmonths. It is as if Congress and the people haveapparently given up and unhappily recognizethe fact that the bureaucracy remains overwhelm­ingly New Deal; as if there's no hope of gettingthe "liberals" on the pay roll out of the govern­ment. Since the bureaucrats shape policies farmore than people out in the country realize, andthe high-level Secretaries and Administrators areoften the captives of the little functionaries whoknow how to draft the executive orders and pro­posed legislation, this situation throws muchlight on why the policies of the GOP Administra­tion are what they are.

Almost every day, some further evidence alongthis line is uncovered. Over a year. ago in HumanEvents, this writer made a study of the class­ified telephone book of the State Department,July 1953 issue, comparing it with the Novem­ber 1952 issue when Acheson still held sway asSecretary of State. The roster of division chiefsand staffs showed virtually the same personnelin both books. This corresponded with the pictureas key members of Congress saw it-"We have todo business with the very same officials as underthe Acheson regime," they would say.

This year, in July, the direetory failed to ap­pear on time. However, after Congress adjourned,a new edition of the little book was published;the bureaucracy apparently felt it safe to revealthe facts, once the troublesome legislators hadscattered. Again, the set-up was revealed as stillvirtually the same in personnel. Plus ga change,plus c'est la meme chose. The officials whohatched the Yalta and Potsdam agreements con­tinue to run the show.

This goes for almost any new Administrator,no matter how well-intentioned he may be. (Weshould except Ezra Benson, who knew so muchabout the workings of the Department of Agri­culture that he was able to put over his pro­gram despite the "holdovers.") Just now, thereis discussion as to whether the new Under Sec­retary of State, Herbert IIoover, Jr., will submitto the holdovers' policies or will precipitatea hot intramural· fight. Opinion veers to the lat­ter view-that the nevv lTnder Secretary is a"chip off the old block."

It is true, as Senator lIarry Byrd hopefully

points out, that the bureaucracy has been re­duced. Last figures for the fiscal year 1954, endedJune 30, show that the federal payroll had2,333,894 civilians on it, compared with 2,469,640 atthe end of fiscal 1953, a modest reduction of105,746. Also, it is true that the President cour­ageously vetoed the pay bill. But he followedthis up by approving the "fringe benefit" billfor federal workers and gave out an order giv­ing permanent status to 400,000 "indefinite sta­tus" workers. How many of these are actuallyFair Deal appointees has not been computed.The New Deal Republican Washington Postgreets Eisenhower's move with warm approval.Those here who realize how precious is civilservice status to federalworkers-"permanent"jobs-believe that the refusal of a pay raise hasbeen agreeably cushioned by this move.

The very atmosphere of the nation's capitalbetrays its bureaucratic bias. Visitors to Wash­ington eannot help but note the voluminous ci­vil-service columns in the newspapers, contain­ing bright news of new jobs for federal workers,new reclassifications (a means of promotion),shifts in the bureaucratic structure, etc. That'sfor the rank and file. For the upper level, onecan note the lively society columns in the papers.The salons of Georgetown give eclat and stim­ulation to those retired businessmen and well­off unemployed lawyers who seek distinction andan "interesting" life in federal service.

And those upper-level officials, too, "continue."The other day I asked a triend about the houseadjoining hers in Georgetown. A son of one ofthe country's wealthiest families owns it. He"v,as sent off as Ambassador to pursue procon­sular duties in a far-off land, and rented hisplace to Harold Stassen, a familiar figure inWashington for a long time and one who alltoo obviously aspires to the highest seat. Now,my friend informs me, Mr. Stassen has movedon to another house and her neighbor is at pres­ent Mr. Struve Hensel, key figure of the DefenseDepartment in the McCarthy hearings. Mr. Hen­sel, prominent New York businessman, is prac­tically a "cliff dweller," since he adorned thebureaucracy here during the Democratic regime.Plus ga change. ..

It is small wonder, therefore, that Washingtonis anti-McCarthy, anti-New Deal and opposed tochanging the bureaucratic guard. And, since po­litical appointees and Administrators move inand out frequently, it is the bureaucracy thatstays on and largely runs the Great Show.

-x. '* '*rfhe election season has considerably muted

the investigations. I mean the real investigations,

OCTOBER 1954 121

which are norrnally the legislative body's con­stitutional duty in checking up 011 the branchvvhich the benighted Founding Fathers deemedthe Legislature's creature and inferior, the Ex­ecutive branch. The investigation of the investi­gators, of course, is going on at present-whichis another vvay of describing the "muzzling ofJoe McCarthy."

For it is not only McCarthy's delving into thepresence of subversives in the Executive armwhich is stopped. We know of one subcommitteevvhose mission \vasfar different frOlTI that ofMcCarthy and had nothing to do with huntingsubversives at all. Its staff had planned a thump­ing good expose, which might have started re­form of policies in one Department. Now staffpeople inform me that their project has beendiscarded on orders of the Republican chairman,because it might c,ause trouble to the prosecu­tion of the GOP election campaign.

The muffling of anything suggestive of dis­cord in the ruling party is part and parcel ofthe campaign strategy of the Republican Na­tional Committee. This strategy is naturallybased on a "build-up" of the personality ofPresident Eisenhower. Certainly, one fact shouldbe determined by the election-the extent andsolidity of Eisenhower's popularity. If the GOPin November retains majorities in both I-Iouses,all praise will go to Ike.

It is recalled that Senator Taft broke thepost-election happiness in November 1952 witha very factual reminder. He pointed out that,while Eisenhower had \von a stunning victoryin the electoral college, his victory was not apopular landslide. Eisenho\ver had a popularmajority of 55 per cent, but the big landslidesof election history-Harding's, Coolidge's, Frank­lin D. Roosevelt's-were well above 60 per cent.Taft, conscious of the thin majority in Congress,was seeking to warn his party of the dangers ofinternal discord and the necessity of making thenew Administration representative of all shadesof GOP opinion. The McCarthy controversy andthe evident discontent in the conservative wingof the GOP indicates that the White House hasfallen short of Taft's recommendations. The at­tempt by some New Jersey Republic;ans to getSenatorial candidate Clifford Case (hand-pickedby the White House) to withdraw from the raceand to replace him by a "unity" candidate offersadditional evidence of trouble brewing.

Hence the White House attemptr late in August,to placate the party conservatives. Thus, Presi­dent Eisenhower chose former President I-IerbertHoover, bell-wether. of the conservatives, for a com­panion on a much publicized fishing trip. Thus, also,the Republican National Committee selected forits meeting place last month Cincinnati, Taft'shome town. One discordant note was sounded byGOP- Representative Gordon Scherer, from a Cin-

122 THE FREEMAN

cinnati congressional district. He made a point ofremarking that he had not had a campaig-n picturetaken with President Eisenhower, had not .re­quested such and disapproved of the whole idea.He said that such a performance might imply thathe would "toe the line"-and that he would notpromise to do.

* -x- ·x-

Much praise is awarded the Administrationfor its reduction in taxes. But not as much isbeing said about its performance on appropri­ations, notably the foreign aid funds requestedand voted. At a time when M. Mendes-Franceand Sir Winston Churchill show little coopera­tion with our proposed policies, Americans maybe rather surprised at the magnitude of ourforeign generosity. The foreign aid bill was ap­proxilnately $5 billion. But one prominent con­servative member of Congress privately gave ushis estimate: that foreign spending actuallymight total more than $8 billion.

In truth, there are no accurate figures com­piled and made public. But the foreign aid bill,it is pointed out, does not include what we aregiving to the United Nations and other inter­national organizations; nor the $2 billion which\ve are to give to Japan for defense, the $300million for food sent abroad, the $700 millionto be used to enable foreign nations to buy ourgovernment-owned agricultural commodities atlow prices (with the American taxpayer makingup the difference between those and the marketprices), etc., etc. Many people will be surprised toknow that despite France's rejection of EDC, weare obligated to continue to payout taxpayers'dollars to the French government. In this year'smoney bill was more than $10 billion of un­expended American funds for abroad. The Ad­ministration insisted on inclusion of this despitethe objections of many members of Congress.The interesting fact is that the cut-off date formilitary aid to France was set at July 1, 1953,and the French government can still draw onus for funds to the extent of $1.9 billion (not usedup to July 1, 1953). And Italy, it seems, is similarlyon the cuff for $900 million.

On Capitol Hill, there was not a little sym­pathy for the emphatic pronouncement of Sena­tor Langer on the subject of the Mutual SecurityAct. The Senator from North Dakota expressedhimself on the subject of our spending abroadin a minority report of the Senate JudiciaryCommittee on July 13. Calling mutual aid a"fraud," Langer said: "It seems to me furtherthat there are currents here which run deeperthan men perceive, and that when these terribletimes are reduced to the dry dust of history,there will appear to be very little real differencebetween the world strategies espoused by fo1"=mer Secretary of State Acheson and those fol~

lo,ved by his present successor Mr. Dulles."

Forty Years of Interventionismfly SJ.t\MIJI~L B. 1)_E'rT~:NGILl,

Samuel B. Pettengill

"War-after all, what is it that the people get?Why-widows, taxes, wooden legs and debt."

For forty years vast and pompous promises havebeen made by the drumbeaters of "collective secur­ity" and "indivisible peace." Every major promisenlade by them-Wilson, Roosevelt and Truman­is now in default of payment. Let us add Willkie,the evangelist of "one worldism," and Dewey, whowould make the same promises under new manage­ment.

'Consider the record. World War One was to make"the world safe for democracy." How safe is theworld for it, even here? It was "a war to end war."Do you remember that slogan? We got rid of theKaiser, the H'apsburgs and the Romanovs. Whomdid we get? We got Hitler and Mussolini. Then wefought World War Two. W,e were promised fourfreedoms and the Atlantic Charter. But where iseven one completely secure freedom today? Certain­ly not freedom of the press, with book and maga­zine publishers afraid to print material favorableto America's historic foreignpoUcy established byWashington, J eff·erson and Monroe. And where isfreedom from fear, of the A-bomb and H-bomb, orfreedom from conscription for our youth?

We got rid of Hitler and MussoUni. And whomdid we get? Stalin, of whom a Presjdent of theUni,ted States said, "I like old Joe." We also gotHiss', "red herrings," Malenkov and l\tIao Tse-tung.

For the broken promises of World War One, thepoliticians and propagandists claimed the Americanpeople were at fault in not ratifying the League ofNations. "We broke the heart of the world." Theyused that excuse until they had waded us throughthe next ,big blood· hath. The Amer-ican people-trusting souls-thengave the global politicians theUnited Nations: all they had askedfor, heaped up and running over.Only two dissenting votes. Surelythe politicians would make goodnow! Well, look at the "United" Na­tions. As you do so, think of Wash­ington's Farewell Address, that"There can be DO greater errorthan to expect or calculate uponreal favors from nation to nation.It is an illusion which experiencemust cure, which a just prideought to discard."

In order to· make ,sure thatwe would never break the world's

heart again, we invited the United Nationsto make their home with us. This, certain­1y' was the final proof of a "good neighbor." Wefurnished Vishinsky and Malik with a soundingboard. They used it to get world attention to theirvenomous propaganda. We invited Chinese Com­munists to use it to indict us as bloody butchersbefore the world. We even pay the bulk of thebills of this outfit, with its ten thousand bureau­crats drawing snug tax-free salaries plus specialallowances, benefits, limousines and chauffeurs.They have created vast "projects," sev,en hundredof them; more than a billion dollars has gone downthese various rat holes.

So sure were our leaders that sixty nations, withconflicting economic inter'ests and no commonstandards, would unite for peace, that SecretaryHull proclaimed: "We have seen the last of thebalance of power."

Like a blind Samson, we totally destroy,ed thebalance of power in both Europe and Asia. We de­creed that the two nations, Germany and Japan,which have good reason to prevent Soviet expan­sion, and the power to do so without our help,could not even keep a regiment of soldier,s. "Un­conditional surrender." Churchill agreed to itagainst his judgment because he had to keep ongood terms with Roosevelt. Americans ,by the mil­lions, and a Congress gone cr'aven, accepted what­ever Roosevelt and Truman said as gospel truth.So we forced down Japan's throat a constitutionproviding that she should never have an army. Weforgot that in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905American public opinion was all •on the side ofJapan. At that time we had a President who did

not think it wise to let Russia gettoo strong in the Pacific.

Now what? Having defaulted ontheir promises of peace, our lead­ers propose to rearm our recentfoes as our noble allies againstour recent noble ally, the "peace­loving democracy" behind the IronCurtain. Having spent billions todestroy German and Japanese fac­tories, they taxed us billions forrehabilitation. ,Not because theyhad blundered, these great leaderB.Perish the thought! They revisedour national policy, they said, be­cause good old Joe had broken hispromises. But Joe, and Lenin be-­fore him, had repeatedly said in

OCTOBER 1954 123

WrItlng that no promIse they made would meana thing if it was to their interest to break it.

Against every warning sign, Roosevelt recog­nized the Communists in 1933 and gave them worldprestige. He drove through all the stop lightserected by Wilson, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover.Even after Stalin had r'aped Finland and made hisdeal with Hitler, our leaders accepted Joe as afriend to be trusted. And they drank his potentvodka at Yalta, Teheran, Moscow and Potsdam.

False Prophecies

Let us look at some of these promissory notes,now in default. Franklin D. Roosevelt said on De­cember 9, 1941, "We are· going to win the war andwe are going to win the peace that follows." Whatpeace? If peace is what we fight wars for, theSpanish American War was the last we won. Hesaid on January 20, 1941, "Democracy is not lost.

. We sense it spreading on every continent." Isnot Asia a continent?

A provision of the Atlantic Charter, agreed toby good old Joe in 1941, stated that the countrieswhich signed "seek no aggrandizement, territorialor otherwise." We sought no territorial aggran­dizement, but we gave it our blessing.

On June 14, 1949, Trygve Lie, Secretary Gen­eral of the United Nations, said, "N'o war of im­portance will be ever started while the GeneralAssembly is in session because an aggressor justcould not get away with it." This prophecy wasmade one year before the Korean War broke outwhile the General Assembly was in ses,sion. AndHarry S. Truman on June 10, 1950, exactly twoweeks before the Korean War, avowed, "We arecloser to world peace now than at any time in thelast three years." Secretary of State Dean Achesonpredicted on June 26, 1951, "'The reaction to theattack on Korea ..• has reduced the likelihood offurther ,.'creeping aggressions." Then came aggres­sion in Indo...ChinaI

After forty years of demonstrated failure it isdifficult to understand why these pontifical gentle­men should be listened to. Indeed, there was con­siderable popular :enthusiasm for the third crusadein Korea-a war unconstitutionally begun, pusil­lanimously fought and ignominiously concluded.

'There were plenty of moral cowards all theseyears, but the people as a whole were caught in atrap. Facts wer'e withheld; the truth was manipu­lated in ways they knew nothing of. They had be­come the victims ofa great new force, ominous forfreedom-Executive propaganda blown big by theradio, the screen and TV.

Moreover, a psychological war was conductedagainst them by their own leaders. The patriotismof' those who questioned the word of Stalin, or thewisdom of "unconditional surrender," or even thefolly of abandoning our historic policy of neutral­ity, w'as not only called in question; it was smear'ed.

124 THE FREEMAN

President Roosevelt said in January 1945, for ex­ample, "There are here and there. evil and .. baselessrumors against the Russians. When you examinethese rumors closely, you will observe that ever;yone of them bears the same trademark--made inGermany."

Even after the fighting stopped, this war againstthe spirit of free inquiry was continued by GeneralGeorge Mar,shall, Secretary of Defense, when hesaid in October 1950, "The time for differences ofopinion should shortly reach an end. The time fordebate draws to a close." This was when we werebeing told that we probably faced twenty to fortyyears or more of the s,ame.

The number who will face psychological terror­ism is small. As Washington said in his FarewellAddress:

Real patriots, who may resist the intrigues of thefavorite, are liable to become suspected and odious;while its tools and dupes usurp the applause andconfidence of the people, to surrender their interests.

However, the Aluerican people have never provedthey were full-time dupes, as Lincoln said. Thenation-wide support given the Bricker Amendmentmay evidence a turning of the tide. The approach­ing bankruptcy of the for,eign policy of global in­terventionism is dimly foreseen by Secretary ofState Dulles, who has glimpsed the possible needof an "agonizing reappraisal" of these grandioseventures. "'The bl'ack tide of events," which Presi­dent Eisenhower mentioned in his speech of April16, 1953, has been a persuasive teacher in theschool of experience, in whichev'en fools may learn.

Our Incalculable Losses

It is high time for thi,s agonIZIng reappraisal.Whether the world would be' better off today if wehad let the Kaiser and the British settle their dif­ferences over foreign markets and African colonies,or if we had let Hitler and Stalin fight themselvesto exhaustion, or had let Asiatics fight Asiatics forAsian iron and coal and rice, cannot, of course, bedemonstrated. It is enough to ask whether the worldcould be worse off today if we had stayed at homeand adhered to the teachings of Washington, J effer­son and Monroe. Does anyone now see a glimpse of .far-off light in the black labyrinth through whichforty years of interventionism have taken us?

The military mind shrugs off these failures as a"calculated risk" that went wrong. But a gold starmother wants to know what was wrong with thecalculations.

More than blood and treasure has been lost..,Wehave lost friendship, respect and honor in this gameof power politics. We betrayed our own ally, Poland(whose defense was given by England and .Franceas the reason for entering the war) in order toappease good old Joe. Then we secretly bribed Joewith pieces of China to break his nonaggression

treaty with Japan. We sent Marshall to China toforce their government to put Joe's gangsters intheir cabinet and military command. We drovelIirohito out of China, then asked Stalin to come in.

To carve up the real estate ofa conquered foeis as old as history. But to carve up two braveallies who had made cruel sacrifices on our side,to do this in both cases without their knowledge orconsent, and over their desperate protests as soonas the fncts leaked out, is a deed of shame. It isthe worst blot on the honor of the flag since theRepublic was born. Yet the "bipartisan" brigade ofbumbling big-wigs merely shrug their shoulders.With national honor they have nothing to do.

Since we have broken the unspoken faith thatknits comrades-in-arms together and violated themost sacred obligations of brave men, is it anywonder that the word of the United States govern­ment is now questioned throughout the world?Having eliminated Germany and Japan as a balanceof power against Russia's age-old expansionism,now poisoned with the black death of atheistic com­munism, we bolster up Tito's communism as ournew ally against Moscow's communism. With novalid plan for peace except naked power politics, wejoin up with every gangster with a bodyguard.

Secret Agreements

Caught in the spider webs of countless treatiesand secret executive agreements, we have lost ourindependence of action. A French premier told usthat, "Since the United States and France are asso­ciates under the North Atlantic Pact, Washingtonis obligated to support the Paris government in allits foreign policies. We eannotbe allies on onehand and adversaries on the other." Hence we havebeen the unhappy supporters of European colonial­ism in Africa and Asia against a new tide of na­tionalism Isweeping over the colored races as itswept over our shores in 1776.

For more than a century American sympathieswere alw1ays with the little people struggling to befree from foreign landlords-Ireland, South Amer­ica, the Boers, Cuba and other lands. We have nowbecome the "foreign devils" to millions of yellow,brown and black men, whose confidence, trust, tradeand good will we once enjoyed. In the Middle Eastwe are losing the friendship of a quarter billionanti-Communist Mohammedans.

Interventionism and one-worldism have put uson the wrong side of history. They have caused usto betray the ideas and ideals that once gave aradiant meaning to the word HAmerica" throughoutthe world.

How do you explain Plymouth Rock, Valley Forgethe Declaration of Independence, the Constitutionand the Statue of Liberty? Why did men and wom­ell, pouring across the Atlantic from the Old World,kneel to kiss this blessed soil? What did they seek?Freedom from crushing taxes, the "goosestep," one-

man government, military conscription, a "soldieron the back of every peasant," the civil above themilitary branch of government. They did not comehere to rebuild for their children the very thingsfrom which they fled.

Now ~e are facing a deadly threat to our verysurvival asa nation. So we are told. I don't agree.I believe that any objective study of the militaryand industrial potential of this country versusRussia shows that Malenkov is the manager of aminor league team and knows it. That Russia canconquer America on the North American Continentis to me utterly fantastic, unless the bankruptcy ofour economy and of our ideals first rots us fromwithin. I recall that when good old Joe was fightingon only one front, and Hitler on three fronts, Joecame close to defeat by a nation with half his pop­ulation and natural resources, and w,as saved onlyby our help-eleven billion dollars worth-plus ourown and British pressure on the Western front.

Without Real Allies

Having destroyed the balance of power in bothEurope and Asia, and having betrayed our ownallies, we now face the Moscow gang without asingle ally in the world that can or will fight unlesswe arm it, finance it, and fill its armies. with moreyoung Americans. And will our "allies" fight then?

What should be. done? One thing seems very ad­visable. It is to sober off. Get over this inter­nationalist drunk. Free ourselves from the "herdmind," this psychic epidemic we have been through,whipped up by propaganda. Stop discharging or"breakIng" all patriots in the armed services ordiplomatic corps who question the edicts of thePentagon, the "United" Nations, or the WhiteHouse. I mean men like MacArthur, n'enfield,Wedemeyer, Mark Clark, Herbert Hoover, GeneralRobert E. Wood. When you eliminate honest crit­icism of government, you insure an inferior prod­uct. That is surely what we have had.

Let us have this agonizing reappraisal now, be­fore we get deeper into the quicksand. Noone willsave America except Americans who put their owncountry first.

Unele Sam has no uncle!

Back Number Wanted

llave you a copy of the FREE,MAN forJune 2., 1952? Are you willing to part withit? A. subscriber is eager to get it., and ourreserve supply of this number is exhausted.Fifty cents plus postage will be paid forany copy of this issue in good condition.

Please send with your name and address to:

Editor., the FREEMANIrvington-on-Hudson., N.Y.

OCTOBER 1954 125

Bismarck's Public DebtBy JOHN T. FLYNN

John T. Flynn

Since Mr. Eisenhower has com­pleted his tour of duty 'with twosessions of Congress, it is, I sug­gest, in order to ask where he isgoing, what he is up to and whatar.,e his plans for us here in Amer­ica.· At the moment his mind seemsto be \occupied with grave problemsof 'world order, the salvation ofEurope, the taming of the Redgiant, and the reduction of Asiato order and peac,e. As this is .acommission of appalling dimen­sions, it very naturally takes muchof his tim,e. But, after all, whatabout this little patch of land calledthe United States?

There is some perplexity in thepublic mind at what seems a curious resemblance,on many points, in the Washington of today to theWashington of Messrs. Roosevelt and Truman. In­deed, many good people who wish the Administra­tion well are surprised at some startling pointsof r,esemblance to· that strange and confused mon­strosity known as the New Deal. We will, I sus­pect, stray far from the truth if we surrenderto these suspicions. The truth about the' Washing­ton of today is in fact very much more startling,and it is difficult to escape the feeling that Mr.Eisenhower himself does not realize it. The truthis that just as the Washington of Roosevelt andTruman found the model for its weird adventuresin socialist· Britain, the Washington of Eisenhowerhas gone back far more than half a century forits model. .

'The President does not imitate the Socialists asthe Roosevelt N'ew Deal did. On the contrary, heseeks to compete with them with a curious coHee..tivism of his own. He' may think he is merchan­dising something quite new. But, strange as itmay ,seem, Mr. Eisenhower's present course re­sembles not so much the socialist advances inBritain as the curious and reactionary collectivismof Bismarck in the new German empire seventyyears ago.

Bismarck faced the socialist threat of his dayas it grew in power in the German states, and hefinally succeeded in getting the Socialist Party assuch outlawed. But this was not enough. 'Thepreachings of Marx and Babel and Liebknecht hadstimulated the appetites of the German masses.Bismarck perceived this and. having crippled thesocialist leaders for the moment, he proceeded to

take over, one by one, a formidabl~

collection of socialist objectives. Heproposed to conquer socialism bytaking over much of its program andclaimIng the credit for it. He didnot conceive of his program associalism. He merely took over acollectlon of its gadgets as extra­added-equipment to the capItalistsystem. Some of the program'sapOlogists called it State Capltalhim.

Early in his regime, Bismarckput through various forms of "wel­fare" le~islation-compensation in­surance, old-age pensions, sicknessinsurance. The federal governmentand the constituent German statesbegan taking over and operating

railroads, mines, forests, telegraph and telephonesystems and even certaIn inuu:;trlalenterprises.This was done in order that the states might havethe profit rather than the private owners. BIsmarcksought to induce the German states to permit theempire to take over the railroads. They refused,but he took over the railroads of Prussia. He alDledat a monopoly of tobacco and spirits. This was notlabeled socialistic. The objective was to provide thegovernment with revenue.

The ultimate shape of this experiment was tocommit the federal State to a policy of State­operated industries for revenue, "welfare" measuresto mollify the masses, militarism to create jobs,and continuous public debt to pay the deficitsarising out of the military institutions of theempire. This indeed did make jobs, but it also madeunforeseen problems.

Unprofitable Adventures

The extent to which the federal government andthe various German states depended on revenuesfrom their State-operated enterprises may be judgedfrom some figures published in France in 1909. Thecombined revenues of the federal government andthe German states were 9,656,000,000 francs. Butonly 3,887,000,000 francs-a little over one-third­were derived from taxes, while 5,769,000,000 werecollected from public enterprises. D,espite this,however, the federal government was never able topay its bills. What is more, these adventures inState socialism did not solve the problem of em­ployment,. I do not recall coming across the slogan,"jobs for all," in the records of those t,imes, but

126 THE FREEMAN

this is what Bismarck and his successors were aim­ing at through Stat'e action. But they could notachieve that goal by operating purely industrialenterprises.

The project which achieved this aim, however,was at hand and was used to the limit. This wasthe institution of militarism-universal militaryservice. No greater mistake could be made by criticsof Germany than to suppose that her conscriptforces were a purely military institution. It is alsoa mistake to suppose that conscription was thebright particular love of the old Junker aristocrats.The officers' corps was always a haven for the sonsof the German aristocracy. But when universalmilitary service was instituted, there were notenough noblemen's sons to go around. Competentyouth of all degrees penetrated the officer,s' corpsand-as the nobles viewed it-tended to debase it.The Junkers favored a large army, but not a con­script army on the Bismarckian model. Universalmilitary training was the creature and pet of bigand great areas of little business-the farmers,for instance.

All this, of course, was the handiwork of a grimold pragmatist whose business it was to make Ger­many powerful, keep her people employed and, atthe same time, take some of the fire and energyout of the rising socialist movement. While Bis­marck saw it as a purely practical measure of gov­ernment, there was no lack of luminous souls evenat court who openly avowed their socialist leanings.The American of today should not be surprisadthat one of the busiest promoters of socialism wasthe Kaiser's court physician. Dr. Stocker, who be­came the center of a cult called, for some reason,imperial socialism. These incandescent souls wereeverywhere-in business, the church, at court andin the press---.;as they are in America today.

Socialism without the Label

In the United States at the present time thereis a powerful socialist movement which does notuse the label socialist. It supports something itcalls the planned economy. It has captured themachinery and the greater part of the DemocraticParty and a large sector of the Republican Party.The avowed Socialists support it, and the Com­munists add their mite in numbers, plus the veryefficient and powerful aid based on their intelligentr,evolutionary experience.

Thus in Am'erica in 1954 we see what invadedGermany from 1870 to 1914-a rash of socialistmovements of various shades, a rising sens'e of dis­content produced by the gaudy promises socialismm'ade to the masses, and a government greatly har­ried by certain pinkish souls in its ranks, as wellas by the problem of jobs for all and welfare forall stimulated by socialist preachers.

At the center of all these' minin~ int,erests andHisms," the ruthlessly pragmatic Bismarck played

his role of leader and master by using all sortsof groups and factions for his purposes. Bismarckw~s no Socialist. But he was a master politician.His business was to govern--toretain power. Andin the Germany of the last century the rising tideof social discontent was something every practicalstatesman had to take into account. In meetingthis problem, Bismarck put first emphasis on keep­ing people employed and business prosperous, and inkeeping the disturbed poorer classes happy by lim­ited forms of State "welfare." This he conceivedto be the surest guarantee against the ultimatetriumph of socialism.

The Military Mind

This is the problem which confronts the Presi­dent of the United States today. He is not a Social­ist. But he cannot resist the fascination of certainforms of socialist "welfare" and the intense influ­ence of the proletarian vote. And being first andforemost a military man-indeed a military manand little else-his imagination is captured by therole of the military in his scheme of things. Likethe Junkers of old Prussia, he not only loves themilitary world but he perceives its immense role insustaining the prosperity of the country. In Bis­marck's Germany, universal military service tookgreat numbers of men out of the ranks of labor.But it had a secondary effect. In 1907, for instance.there were 633,000 men in the armed services; butit is estimated there were 1,800,000 employed inwar industries, not counting the streams of govern­ment payments which flowed to farmers who pro­vided horses and their fodder, as well as food forthe huge military establishments. Universal mili­tary training became Germany's biggest industry.

It was, of course, support,edalmost wholly byborrowed funds. At the end of the Franco-PrussianWar, Germany ~onected a four-billion-mark indem­nity from France, which disposed of all her wardebt. But, with UM'T, Germany resumed her marchinto debt. In 1871 her debt was zero. In 1885 itwas nearly three billion marks. In 1909 it was wellover four billion. The debt bedeviled every budget.The finance minister said that ev,ery governmentpolicy in the empire had become entangled in theproblem of the continuing defiC'its. Her collectiveenterpris·es-both federal and state-and her socialservices added to the deficits. The total debt of fed­eral and local governments in 1909 was over 24billion marks, and that debt became the knottiestand most alarming problem of Germany.

Mr. Eisenhower's interests have not been in thefield of social revolution or political economy. Hecertainly does not have any affinity for our com­munist enemy at home or abroad, and he is uneasyin the presence of certain socialist experiments inthis country. But, like the old Junkers, he is per­fectly willing to support socialist experimentswhich take on the appearance of humanitarian

OCTOBER 1954 127

The Central Evils

'The Number One issue in the, United States to­day is the question of debt and taxes-inextricablyentangled not in mere socialistic experiments, butin those two fatal evils: (1) militarism and itshandmaidens-international adventures and thevast military outlays involved, and (2) "welfare"splurges of the federal government to please nu­merous groups of voters-social security, farmers'subsidies, handouts to all sorts'ofgroups, public

To this, of course, must be added the interest onthe public debt-now $273 billion. The interest is$6,525,000,000, making a total of more than $61billion spent by' the government in wages, salaries,materials, and interest on loans, all directly or in­directly associated with our military institutions­$61 billion on militarism and only $9 billion on allthe other activities of government. This is theracket on which Bismarck built the prosperity ofGermany in' the last century. This is the racket onwhich the New Deal and Mr. Eisenhower's Admin­istration' are building our insane prosperity today-a prosperity which beQ'ins to exhibit a certainpallor as of approaching illness.

projects. He is for federal sickness and old-agebenefits, unemploym,ent insurance, health insur­ance, aids to education, housing and a rash of sim­ilar experiments. These adventures capture the sup­port of vast numbers of so-called underprivilegedvoters.

At the moment, taxes levied for welfare purposesactually exceed by billions the sums paid out-theresult of a fraudulent gimmick inserted in the lawsby the Roosevelt Administration on the pretense ofcreating reserves, which so-called "reserves" arepromptly spent by the government for all sorts ofthings unconnected with welfare. And they have apowerful vote-get'ting value which Bismarck saw~

and which Eisenhower also can see.'The case of militarism-to which Mr. Eisen­

hower now wishes to add the institution of uni­versal military training permanently-is easilymeasured here. Bismarck's militarism was "pea­nuts" compared with ours. The expenditures by theUnited' States government in the year ending June30, 1954, were $70,902,000,000.. The Department ofDefense, including the Army, All" Force and Navy.,expended roughly $40 billion, while another $7 bil­lion was spent on materials, atomic energy and theMutual Security Agency----a total of $48,720,000,­000. But there are other auxiliary activities-ourinterna'tional and veterans' interests. The full totalis:

Booklets' on InflationJohn Flynn's article calls to mind two booklets,among others, worth reading on this inflationdanger.

The first is by Pelatiah Webster, a wise but little-'known patriot who is credited by James Madisonand others with first having advocated the constitu­tional convention. The inflation which in his dayhad made money "not worth a continental" finallymoved· him, in 1780, to use strong and wise wordsin telling the story of these tragic mistakes. Inan essay recently· brought. to light, Webster triedto. tell mankind how to avoid in the future thefiscal suffering his countrymen had brought uponthemselves.

In· the other, F. A. Harper explains why inflationoccurs, and how the inflators have changed theirtechnique over the years. Only by knowing thiscan we prevent inflation. Once it has been allowedto happen, inflation is like a severed limb in thatthen it is too late for a cure. The author explainshow economic justice results only from free ex­change, and why problems which have led repeatedlyto inflation during nearly four thousand years ofknown governmental interference can be solvedonly by free exchange. What is the sole causeof surpluses or shortages? The answer is givenon page 19 of this booklet in the form of a simplechart.

These booklets are "Not Worth A Continental,"by Pelatiah Webster; and "Inflation," by F. A.Harper~ Single copies may be obtained free ofcharge from

The Foundation for Economic EducationIrvington-on.Hudson, New York

housing, federal aid to education, public electricpower, and a large variety of gifts to deservingvoters.

And at the root. of all are two central evils. Oneis the income-tax system which enables the govern­ment to take a cut on every man's wages, salariesand profits, and the system of public debt whichnow engulfs us in an interest charge of eighteenmillion dollars a day-both of which m'ake possiblethe orgy of spending and wast,eand the invasionof the private affairs of the citizens. Mr. Eisen­hower is willing to use these two evil weapons tothe limit to engage in vast· international activities,invi;ting wars on various continents, and to promotewelfare for vote-getting purposes at home-boon­doggling in the U. S. and globaloney all over themap.

All this is supposed to be something new. It isjust about as new as the ambitions and follies ofBis,marck eighty years ago, which have wreckedthe German people twice in a century.

54,547,000,000

$48,720.000,0001,637000.0004,190,000,000

Military and allied servicesOther international activities .Veterans' services .

128 THE FREEMAN

Opportunity of a Lifetime

By NICHOLAS NYARADIIt is America's opportunity to curb Moscow's warpotential by restricting exports to Iron Curtaincountries, says Hungary's former Finance Minister.

N icho las N yaradi

Why Moscow Does Not Want War

exports to Russia and her Europeansatellites amounted to 340 milliondollars in 1947; in 1952 the totalwas roughly one million dollars.It should be kept in mind that in1947 Czechoslovakia and Hungarywere not yet Soviet satellites, andthat some of the 340 million dollarsworth from the United States wentto these two countries.

Somewhat offsetting this blow tothe Soviet economy has been an in­crease of exports from westernEurope to the Soviet orbit. In1953, this business amounted to478 million dollars-about 50 percent of the 1938 volume, as com­pared with the American drop ofone per cent of its 1947 volume.

against trade with the Soviet orbit. Not only wasMoscow deprived of this long list of strategiccommodities from America, ,but most of the Euro­pean countries, though somewhat reluctantly, prom­ised to refrain from trade in these items withRussia. Soviet productive machinery was thusseriously impaired. In 1947 and 1948 I was en­gaged in economic negotiations on behalf of Hun­gary with several top officials of the Soviet gov­ernment-including three members of the SovietPolitburo. My observations during this long stayin Moscow, in every sector of Soviet life, as wellas the impression I gained from personal contactswith these top Soviet officials, all pointed to thebasic weakness of the Soviet economy.

The Soviet leaders-who are much more realisticthan HitIer or Mussolini ever were-know very wellthat an all-out war would be suicidal for them,that the ISoviet economy would not be able to sup­port indefinitely the burden. I venture to say thatthe only reason we are not yet in a shooting warwith Russia is not the American superiority innuclear weapons, nor the somewhat theoreticalcommon stand of the West against Communist ag­gression, but simply the basic and inherent weak­ness of the Soviet economic system. 'To this weak­ness America has contributed by its restrictions onexports.

American

There is an old saying that some customers don'tlet you sleep, and others don't let you eat. Thosewho don't let you eat will pay their bills, to besure, but they won't let you have a profit. Theother kind doesn't haggle over the price, but thelikelihood of their paying the bill when it come~

due is none too good.The saying is applicable to the problem of the

world's chancelleries these days: Shall the Westdo business with the Soviet bloc? The problemcomes in the wake of the Geneva Conference. TheCommunists hold forth good promise of payment(in gold) for what they buy, and they will buymuch, but can we sleep well, knowing to what usethey will put their purchases?

In March 1948, when the government of theUnited States first imposed a ban on the exporta­tion of strategic materials to Communist countries,I was still the Finance Minister of Hungary, fight­ing a losing battle against the Bolshevization ofmy country. It was gratifying to observe the ef­fects of this embargo on the Soviet war machine.The nondelivery of badly needed spare parts forAmerican machinery and equipment-lavished onRussia under the Lend-Lease program-seriouslyaffected the Soviet war production program; thesudden shortage of imported ball bearings, preci­sion instruments, non-ferrous metals and othervital commodities had the effect almost of a gen­eral strike. Hungarian factories, for instance,which were being forced to turn out locomotivesfor Russia as war reparations, had to shut downfor several monthsbec~use of theshortage of ball bear,ings. (Todaythe Communist orbit is able toturn out the amount of high­quality steel needed to make ballbearings. Between 1948 and 1952,however, the Soviets had to relyfor their supply on smugglers, op­erating mostly through Germanyand Austria.)

Before I fled Hungary, late in1948, I had already seen thecrippling effect of the Americanexport ban on the Soviet economy.This ban was made even more ef­fective three years later throughthe enactment of the "Battle Act,"containing iron-clad measures

OCTOBER 1954 129

Great Britain, which is most vociferous in askingfor the relaxation of trade restrictions with Rus­sia, has had the lion's share of this business.

The Geneva Conference fostered a feeling inmany countries that "peaceful coexistence" withthe Communist world can be made possible by anexpansion of trade relations with it. Soviet prop­aganda has engendered that feeling, and the urgefor profits has helped the propaganda. Unfortu­nately, few outside America realize that "coexis­tence" is, as Senator Knowland put it, like lockinga man in a cage witha man-eating tiger. Manyof our Western friends seem willing to feed thistiger the -calories and vitamins of increased East­West trade, so that its muscles may become strongerand its teeth sharper for the time when it decidesto bite off the hand that so generously fed it.

More and more, our friends and allies insist thatincrease in the volume of East-West trade wouldnot only improve the economy of the West, butwould result in easing the present world tensions,as the Soviet people, benefiting from this trade,'would be less inclined toward war. It is not" freetrade with the Soviets that they propose, but anarrowing of the list of forbidden strategic ma­terials.Malenkov is for that, too.

The danger of this proposal lies in the fact thatit is difficult to draw an exact line between "stra­tegic" and "nonstrategic" items. A cannon is, ofcourse, strategic; but what about textile machinery,which can turn out fabrics for women's blouses aswell as for military uniforms? In the case of Rus­sia, there simply "ain't no such animal" as non­strategic goods. Russia is a hug'e military camp,where everything is geared toward war-production.Glass and wood, [or instance, are certainly non­strategic items. But they can ,be used to framepictures of Malenkov, to be hung on the walls ofbarracks so as to raise the 'morale of Russian sol­diers, and thus might have "strategic" value.

China Supplied via Russia

There is also a dangerous illusion that Com­munist China would be excluded from increasedEast...West trade relations. (Direct trade withChina is now ruled out, because the U.N. hasbranded it an aggressor nation.) There is noreason for believing that goods from the West go­ing to the Soviets would not show up in Red China.

The most alluring, and therefore the most dan­gerous,argument for increasing East-West tradeis that it would alleviate the present internationaltension and stop "war hysteria." I am afraid thatjust the opposite of this would be ,true.

Maleilkov's main reason for wanting more tradewith the West is that the Soviet economy is crackingas ,a consequence of the Stalinian policy of disre­garding the ele,mentary needs of the people. About80 per cent of the iSov:iet industrial output stillgoes either directly for war production, or indirect-

130 THE FREEMAN

ly into heavy industriialexpansion; hence the :Rus­sian people "enjoy" today the lowest standard ofIiving in the world. If Malenkov could better thisstandard of living 'by importing German bicycles,British television sets and Italian oranges, he wouldbe able to create the illusion of plenty in the Russianmind. This, in my opinion, would certainly notlead the Russian people to appreciate the ,blessingsof peace. On the -contrary, Malenkov would have thebacking of a relatively satisfied Russian people ifhe decided to start a war. The strongest deterrenttoa Soviet attack at the present time· lis the dis­satisfaction of the people.

Gold, hut not Goods

'There are perhaps only two serious argumentswhich seem to favor expansion of trade with theCommunist world. 'The first is that if we sell toRussia, she will have to s'ell us, sending us com­modities (manganese ore, for instance) which weneed. This might and might not be true. Beingfamiliar with Soviet foreign trade policies, I be­lieve that Moscow will agree to p.ay for importswith nonstrategic commodities only. Or it mightchoose to pay ,in gold, rather than with goods, asit is doing now. This might improve temporarilythe balance-of-payments position of certain West­ern countries, but the drain on Russia's gold re­serve would not weaken Moscow's war potential.

In the structure of the ,Soviet economy, gold haRpractically no importance : it serves only one pur­pose, to pay for needed goods from abroad, other­wise not obtainable. (Sovi'eteconomists regard ~old

very much as early colonizers looked upon beadf;and cheap glassware in their deals with primitivenatives.)

The Soviets' position in this connection is veryclear. They can get everything they want fromtheir satellite ,countries without p,aying with gol(~

for these deliveries. On the other hand, in caseof an all-out war the world market would be closeC'to them by an allied blockade; and the gold wouldbe useless to them. 80 why not buy from the Westas long as these markets are open to them, payinp.rwith the trinkets which the West values so highly?'

The 'second argument carries more weight thanthe first one. ISince the United States is u,nwilling'to lovler her own tariff barriers so as to increasetrade with her f:dends and allies, these countriesare forced to look for markets in the communistpart of the world. This is a sound argument, al­though it comes from Europeans' who favor tariffsagainst American goods even higher than thoselevied against European goods by Am,erica. Wheth­er this impasse can be resolved or ,not, there i~

a pr,inciple that runs like this: "Security and pros~

perity, but security 'first/'Finally, we should not forget that in th.e West

certain moral principles loom larger. One of thesei.s that we are opposed to involuntary servitude

and concentration camps. How can :tree people eatSoviet canned crabmeat, wear Soviet export furs.or live in houses constructed from Soviet lumber,when they know that these commodities are stainedwith the blood and sweat of millions of unfortunateslave laborers?

And what explanation could I, for instance, giveto my unhappy Hungarian people, if their Com­munist masters suddenly began displaying in gov­ernment-owned shops the West-German appliances,I talian sewing machines and Japanese textiles ac­quired by an increase in "nonstrategic" trade withthe West? What a terrible disillusion this wouldbe for the enslaved peoples of the vast Soviet em­pire! And all this at a time when the Voice ofA'merica and Radio Free Europe are loudly assur-

ing these oppressed nations that the fcree worldhas not forgotten them! How can the captive peoplesbelieve these solemn assurances when they seethat the free world is more interested in doingbusiness with their Communist overlords than inplanning for their liberation?

The Soviet economy is desperately weak; andthe control of the Kremlin on its peoples is ,in pro­portion to that economy's strength. If we capitalizeon this fact, we will take advantage of the op­portunity of a lifetime. Not only can we preventWorld War Three by keeping up our pressure onthis crumbling economic system, but we can winthe cold war without firing a single shot. All ,\veneed do lis to refuse to trade with the Soviets andto bring pressure on our allies to do likewise.

And the Right Shall TriumphBy MARION MURPIIY

The story began in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Alocal Girl Scout leader had invited Robert LeFevre,news director of WFT,L-\TV, to address their adultgroup. The subject was left to his own discretion.Subsequently, howe'ver, other leaders hinted ratherbroadly that whatever he talked about he must notbe critical of the United Nations. That idea hadnot occurred to him, but he found the limitationirksome. He refused to let himself be gagged, andthe speech was cancelled.

The incident aroused his curiosity, and LeFevrebegan investigating. He found the clue to the gagput on him in the 1953 handbook of the Girl Scoutsof America. This n1anual for Girl Scout groupswas liberally sprinkled with propaganda for theU. N. Comparing this edition with the one issuedin 1940,LeFevre found that the difference betweenthe two consisted not only in the influx of U. N.propaganda, but also in the lessening of emphasison the Constitut'ion of the United States and theBill of Rights.

He had a bear by the tail and would not, orcould not, let go. He drafted a letter. Paying duehomage to the work of the Girl Scout movement, hepointed out what had happened to the official hand­book between 1940 and 1953: namely, that theAmerican tradition had been minimized and aone-world ideology had been emphasized. For ex­ample, he called attention to the warm praise, inthe 1953 book, for the Universal Declaration ofTIuman Rights and the glib pronouncement" thatit was uverymuch like our own Bill of Rights";the vital discrepancies between the two documentswere not mentioned.

The letter, signed by LeFevre and Noran E.

Kersta, general manager of WF'TL-TV, declaredthat in view of the facts the station would notconsider it advisabl'e to promote an organization"supporHng many controversial and questionablesocialized schemes, including world government."Copies of the mimeographed letter were sent farand wide, to individuals and publications, and thusbegan a fight in which a man of principle suc­cessfully prevailed over the insidious forces ofcollectivism.

Parents Demand Action

A condensation of the letter appeared in HumanEvents, a Washington newsletter, under the title"Even the Girl Scouts." Nearly 25,000 reprintsof the article were ordered by hundreds of readers,mostly fathers and mothers who were shocked atthe revelation, and in most cases the orders wereaccompanied by letters declaring that somethingshould be done about it. Something was. Theofficials of the Girl Scout organization were in­undated with copies of the article.

In April, the president of the Girl Scout organ­ization circulated a letter to all Girl Scout councilpresidents alerting them to "an attack on GirlScouting" and calling for unquaUfied support ofthe handbook. But the pressure from parentsmounted.

A former Girl Scout councHpresident wrotethe national headquarten: "Have been carefullyanalyzing all the open chargee by RobertLe­Fevre.. J admit these charges re handbook to 'betrue."

An ex~Girl Scout leader in California told htnv

OC'TOBER 1954 131

she and several others had resigned from theorganization because their complaints to nationalheadquarters about the collectivist infiltration hadbeen ignored.

A Girl Scout leader wrote that she used the 1953handbook with discrimination, stressed only thoseparts which promoted Americanism and ignoredother sections.

The Jefferson County (Alabama) Girl ScoutCouncil adopted a resolution urging the inclusionof the Constitution, the Declaration of Indepen­dence and the Bill of Rights in all future handbooks,and requesting the national headquarters to useonly· "factual material. . .and that the expressionof opinions therein be avoided."

A Chicago lawyer reported that he had refusedto renew his usual subscription, 'even though thesolicitor was one of his major clients.

A congressman wrote, "I have confirmed muchof the information you give by my own reading...This element in America does not miss any betsin its effort to put over its propaganda."

Congressmen Com,ment

A rash of comment concerning the Girl Scoutsbroke out in the Congressional Record in July. Onthe eighth, Congressman Timothy P. Sheehan readLeFevre's article "Even the Girl Scouts." On thetwelfth, Congressman Edgar A. Jones inserted anarticle by B. J. Grigsby, editor-publisher of theSpoon River Journal, urging a revision of the hand­book. Also on the twelfth, an article eulogizing GirlScouting as "One Answer to Communism," by Mrs.Lillian M.Gilbreth, was introduced by Congress­man Robert W. K'ean. On the twenty-sixth, Con­gressman Charles B. Brownson called attention TO

the LeFevre article and inserted a rebuttal byMr. John Burkhart.

The battle raged. On August 6 the AmericanLegion's Illinois Department approved a resolutioncensuring the Girl Scout organization and recom­mending that the Legion withdraw support untilsuch time as the Girl Scouts "restore the time­honored and historic ideas in its teaching to Amer­ican youth."

An outstanding community leader wrote LeFevr(~

that he had been too vigorous in his attack. TheGirl Scout national headquarters circulated thisletter in an effort to counteract the mountingcriticism. LeFevre took cognizance of this defenseby circulating data concerning un-American in­filtration that he had acquired since the releaseof his first letter. Included in this data wasthe outright endorsement in an official· Girl Scoutpublication in 1953 of The First Book of Negroes.by Langston Hughes. This author, listed in theGirl Scout Leader as "a distinguished man of let­ters," is the author of the vitriolic poem "GoodbyeChrist," in which Marx and Stalin are eulogiz·edand Christ blasphemed. Hughes has been cited

132 THE FREEMAN

officially over seventy times for his un-Americanactivities. LeFevre .also pointed out that, in 1949;an official publication of the Girl Scouts had 'en­couraged young girls to write to the AmericanCouncil, Institute of Pacific Relations, for sourcematerial. The IPR was later cited as a communistfront by a congressional committee.

Not long after this. one-man campaign started,it was rumored that a revision of the handbook wasbeing considered. In May, the public relationsdirector of the Girl Scouts went on record to theeffect that the statement in the handbook concern­ing the Declaration of Human Rights "is in thenature of editorial comment about a controversia1

issue, and this will be changed in the next revisionof the handbook." On July 27 Congressman Shee­han announced that Mrs. Roy F. Layton, the na­tional .president of the Girl Scouts, had advisedhim that the 19,53 edition of the handbook is nowundergoing a major revision. The CongressionalRecord of that date carries the statement of Mrs.Layton, promising a corrected handbook, available'this fall.

It is a certainty that .many American mothersand fathers who never looked at a Girl Scouthandbook are anxiously waiting for the new edition.Thanks are due to Bob LeFevre, who provedIngersoll's dictum· that "one man in the right willfinally get to be a majority." And he, did it withoutan organization.

Who Got It?

A recent report to Congress on "foreign aid" re­veals for the first time that $9.4 billion of ourtax money was spent on military items sent toother countries for "mutual defense," from .October1949 through June 30, 1954. The items are asfollows:

Artillery ammunition 45,000,000 roundsSmall arms and machine gun

ammunition 1,500,000,000 roundsRifles, pistols, machine guns 2,000,000 piecesMotor transport vehicles 188,,497 unitsTanks and combat vehicles 34,733 unitsArtillery pieces (including atomic

cannon, etc.) ~ .' 34,802 unitsNaval vessels " 784 shipsElectronic .and signal equipment (including

radar, etc.) ~ 127,403 units

What countries got this, mountain of materielis .not stated. Why is the: information withheld?Will we learn the facts only after we have capturedsome of this stuff in the, next war and find theimprint '~made in. Anlerica"? Or perhaps somebullet imbedded in the body of a conscript will tellus more about our present "defense" policy.

The Hysteria of

the Hissians

A reporter also returns to the scene of the crinle.So, when the newspapers announced recently thatAlger Hiss was soon to be released from prison, Istarted rummaging through my clippings and cor­respondence on the case I had covered six yearsago. And again I experienced the wonderment Ithen had felt over the hysteria of intelligent, up­standing Americans when Whittaker Chambersfirst testified publicly that Hiss had been his palin the Red underground.

On the morning the Chambers testimony washeadlined, James F. Green of the U.S. Mission tothe United Nations wrote Hiss that he was "dis­mayed and angry," adding that he could "hardlybelieve that anyone can take such outrageousallegations seriously." He offered his services asa "character witness."

At the offices of the .Carnegie Corporation ofNew York, there was considerable consternation;Hiss was a respected colleague. The usually mild­mannered Charles Dollard, president of the giantFoundation, must have been enraged when hewrote Hiss; "Your peers have confidence in youwhich is not to be undermined by the recklesscharges of an hysterical renegade. . . ."

In Baltimore, attorney Stewart Brown, who hadknown Hiss and his brother Donald for sometwenty years, dashed off a letter to the editor ofthe Sun (sending a copy to Hiss). Describinghimself as a "Jeffersonian Democrat who haspublicly opposed much of the New Deal," Browninsisted that "I know that there is not theslightest shadow of disloyalty" in the lIiss brothers."Neither is a Communist or a fellow-traveler....The greatest threat to our liberties at home isnot the Communist underground, but the activitiesof the vicious redbaiters who will stop at nothingin order to hit the headlines.... The real traitorsare the snide Congressmen and others willing toexploit the uncorroborated testimony of an ex­Communist for their own personal advantage."

In Philadelphia, Lawrence· M. C. Smith, whomHiss described as a "wealthy Philadelphia lawyer/',vired the House Committee: "I regret that yourcommittee is proving itself as great an enemy ofdemocracy, by its methods, as the evil it tries toexpose. I'm shocked at the perversion of yourpower and function to character assassination in

Victor Lasky

staging irresponsible attacks on outstanding Amer­ican citizens such as Alger Hiss..."

In a letter to Dr. James T. Shotwell, historianat the Carnegie Endowment, Clarence E. Pickett,executive secretary of the American FriendsService Committee, urged Shotwell to inform theEndowment's trustees of the "high regard inwhich Alger Hiss is held by some of us who haveknown and worked \vith him..."

Chambers' Sanity Questioned

Several days later Hiss appeared before theHouse Committee to dramatically deny Chambers'charge. With him was his "long-time friend,"Joseph F. Johnston, a Birmingham attorney, de­scribed by Hiss as "the son of Forney Johnston,leading conservative corporation and railroadlawyer in the South." Johnston, writing to JohnFoster Dulles, then chairman of the board ofthe Carnegie Endowment, described Hiss' testi­mony as of such "obvious integrity" and "soconvincing" that the congresslnen were "left withonly the question as to Chambers' motive. . ."

Johnston later called on Representative CarterlVIanasco of Alabama, who "not only wholeheartedlyconfirmed my own reaction," but reported thatseveral committee members "felt that the burden ofsuspicion had been fully transferred to Chambers."At a meeting with Alabama congressmen, "severalof whom had expressed conviction of Alger'sveracity," Johnston said that when "the inevitablequestion as to Chambers' motive" came up, "Isuggested assuming his sanity, the only logicalexplanation would be he is still a Comnlunist anddesired to impugn innocent victims to discreditthe whole investigation into underground Com­munism."

Johnston, enclosing a copy of his letter to Dulles,v/rote Hiss that 'everything looked ,bright. Sobright, in fact, that in Washington, Ewing Cockrell;of the United States Federation of Justice, wroteHiss "strongly suggesting that you file affidavit

OCTOBER 1954 133

with the District Attorney here charging Chamberswith perjury and do so as quickly as possible. . ."

Many strangers wrote to Hiss, sending himgood wishes~Some of the letters were hopeful.Cal B. Spaeth, dean of the 'Stanford Law School,wrote that "the reports of your testimony, thene~spaper and radio criticism of the committee'shandling of the investigation, and the peteringout of the entire business, combine to indicatethat the charges are a thing of· the past..."

All this transpired six years ago, long beforethe Communists had shrewdly developed "Mc­Carthyism" into The Supreme Issue of OurTimes. The outcries about our diminishing civilliberties, the demands for the crippling of congres­sional investigation, had begun long before theadvent of "'M,cCarthyism."

Hiss Smeared., Wrote Dr. Bunche

Take the letter Dr. Ralph Bunche sent to Hiss'in mid-1948. The United Nations executive wrotethat he was "stunned by this utterly shamelessattempt to smear your good name. Though youhave been grievously wronged, I have full con­fidence in your complete vindication. . ."

The Bunche letter was one of more than sixtywritten in August 1948, following Chambers' ap­pearance in Washington. Mimeographed, they werecirculated in an apparent effort to prove Hiss in­nocent by association: how could he be guilty whenhe had such fine friends?

Asked, following Hiss' conviction, whether hestill would write a similar letter, Dr. Bunche re­plied, "'I have no intention of making any state­ment whatsoever on any aspect of the Hiss case."But Dr. Bunche is not so reticent when it comesto assailing "witch hunts," as when he savagelyattacked the Jenner Internal Securitv Subcommit­tee for its fruitful probe of U. S~ Reds and spiesemployed by the U. N.

The correspondence is remarkable for manyreasons. It points up, for one thing, one of themost striking phenomena of our times: the wayoutstanding Americans, liberals and even conserva­tives, will leap, without thinking, to the defense.of anyone accused of subversion. Conversely, theletters show the -incredible bitterness of otherwisebalanced Americans toward ·ex-Communists.

For example, D. F. Fleming, professor of politicalscience at Vanderbilt University, dashed off a noteto Hiss asking "who is ,behind" Chambers. HI earn­estly hope you never stop until he is convicted ofperjury," he added. William A. Mac'Rae, Jr., aFlorida attorney, described as "a member of theJ oint Chiefs. of Staff group of able young officers,"hoped that 'RiBS "will do everything within yourpower to discredit Chambers... " Charles S. Moore,described as the "leading elder statesman of theN'ew Jersey bar,"wrote that "Chambers may be aparanoiac."

134 TIlE FREEMAW

At any rate, when during World War Two agroup of crackpots were brought to trial for con­spiring to aid Nazi Germany, no prominent personsrushed to their defense. No presidents of giganticFoundations wept over their predicament. Therewere universal cheers when the FB:I smashed theGerman-American Nazi Bund, Hitler's comic imita­tion of the Kremlin's exceedingly more dangerousU. S. Communist Party.

Yet an outstanding American like R. MeAllisterLloyd, president of the Teachers Insurance andAnnuity Association, took time from his vacationto write to Hiss sympathizing with him over the"awful ordeal for you and Mrs. Hiss," enclosing acopy of a letter he had sent to Governor Thomas E.Dewey. "As a lawyer," he wrote Dewey, "you areno doubt disgusted with the way the Committeehas disregarded the civil rights of citizens and hasruined the reputations and careers of honest publicservants such as Harry White and Alger Hiss with­out proper trial and due legal protection. . . I hopewhen you are President you will exert your influ­ence to see that such un-American activities asthe Committee on Un-Am·erican Activities areeliminated."

ISenator Herbert Lehman, who includes "Jenneri­tis" as well as "McCarthyism" among the evilsafflicting mankind, claims that he has fought com­munism all his adult life, "years before McCarthyhad ever even acknowledged a communist threat...." But modesty must have kept him from pub­licizing it heretofore. As long ago as 1941, whenhe was Governor of New York, Lehman was edi­torially assailed in, of all places, the N ew YorkTimes, for "deliberately slashing the appropriationfor the Rapp-Coudert legislative committee invesH­gating subversive activities in the schools." TheGovernor's action was "greatly to be regretted,"said the Times, since it "is bound to encouragesuibversiveelements. . .'~

In a letter to Hiss, Lehman wrote of his "com­pleteconfidence in your loyalty ... and ... I knowthat under no conceivable circumstances could youfan to safeguard the interests of your country."

How They Feel Today

D'id those who wrote to Hiss in 1948, lateraccept his guilt? In response to an inquiry fromthis reporter, a few have indicated changed views.Devereaux C. Josephs, president of the New YorkLif'e Insurance Company, for example, stated that"my confidence was misplaced in this case." He hadwritten Hiss on August 4, 1948, declaring that hecould not believe Chambers' "irresponsible accusa­tions [which] have upset me a great deal. .."

Similarly, Robert B. Stewart, dean of the. Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, concluded

he had been wrong in writing Hiss of his "deepconc,ern" at the "scandalous goings-on ,in Wash­ington and the ridiculous charges." Stewart, who

had served with IIiss in the State Department,wrote that, "in view of evidence brought out insuhsequent eourt testimony, aIle could not,o!course, writ6 the same letter at a later date."

Charles Symington, a' New York industrial con".sultant who had written Hiss of his "shock" and"disgust" at such "reckless and unsubstantiatedcharges against a. citizen of your standing," de­clared that he fully accepted the decision of thecourts, which "thoroughly investigated the matterand obviously came to a different conclusion thanI did."

Professor R. Courant, head of New York Uni­versity's mathematics department, wrote, "eventhough I feel that the case had not been fullyclarified, I could not possibly write the same lettertoday." He had written to Hiss "to express myfeelings of friendship and confidence."

Cabot Coville, a foreign service officer withwhom Hiss had worked in the State Department'sFar East Division, had written from Tokyo onAugust 14, 1948, to congratulate him on his "han­dling of the matter before the House Committee...The charge against no person has so clearly andfully indicated tome the absurdity of the wholeproceedings. . ." Asked whether he still wouldwrite a similar letter, now that Hiss had beengiven his day in court, Coville replied:

"The United States is fortunate in the care ofits judicial process. I like it and like to help sup­port it. When it is faced with the delicate andimportant :matter of weighing the case against aman, I am sure it expects a readiness on my partto impart any pertinent testimony which directknowledge gives me, whichever side of the caseit happens to fall upon... My answer to yourquestion, Mr. Lasky, is therefore in the affirma­tive."

Others were not as frank. They either replied,like Dr. Bunche, that they had no comment, orthey took the tack of the then Secretary of State,Dean Acheson, that "the case is closed." This wasthe position taken by Harding F. Bancroft of theState Department's Office of United NationsAffairs, who on August 6, 1948, had termed Whit­taker Chambers a "malevolent crackpot [whose]slander [is] given such importance without ade­quate means of refutation."

Another arguing "the case would seem to beclosed" was former Assistant Secretary of StateFrancis B. Sayre, Alger's boss at the time Algerwas stealing State Department documents. Mr.Sayre had originally written Hiss that he was"distressed and keenly regretful that you are ,beingsubjected to these unfair and totally unjust ac­cusations," adding a comment heard every timesecurity and loyalty risks are kicked out of cushygovernment jobs: ItI fear it is the price that allof us must be prepared to pay for offering our livesin the public service. • :'

Two 'who had upheld Hiss got huffy with this

reporter. Professor E.M. ,Morgan, a law professorat Vanderbilt University, had written Hiss thatHthe character assassination of that cursed com~

mittee and its, reckless witnesses arouses nothingbut wrath on the part of all decent people." Replyingto this reporter's query, Dr. Morgan declared, "Iknow something of your writings, and I am onthat account unwilling to have you publish any­thing that I have written."

H. H. F'isher, chairman of the Hoover Instituteand Library at Stanford University, had writtenHiss of his "distress" over "this shocking and dis­reputable business in Washington..•. I wish therewas something I could do about it." To a query,Fisher wired: "I hope that if I ever get into badtrouble some friend will write me the kind of letterI wrote Alger Hiss."

A Prominent Clergyman's View

The noted clergyman, Anson Phelps Stokes,wrote Charles Dollard, president of the CarnegieCorporation, in 1948, that he was "distressed aboutall the trouble Alger Hiss is having..." Dr. Stokesthen said it was entirely possible, in view of thefriendly relations between the U.S. and Russia,"that it might have been part of Mr. Hiss' dutiesas an officer of the government to cultivatefriendly personal relations with prominent Rus­sians." He pointed out that leading Republicansand Democrats "stood for the cultivation of SovietM

American friendship at the time."In replying to this reporter, Dr. Stokes de­

clared, "As to your question whether I would writethe same letter today, I would say that it wouldapparently need some modification in statement. Iwas surprised and grieved that Mr. Hiss was un­Rble to convince the jury of his innocence, but no\vthat he has been found guilty by a competent juryin a trial before an honorable and experiencedjudge, I must accept the verdict unless and untilit has been overruled as the result of new evi­dence."

About a $core of others who had written lettersexpressing confidence in Hiss, or disgust withChambers or bitterness toward the congressionalinvestigating committee, failed to respond to thisreporter's query as to how they felt about thecase after Hiss' conviction. Understandably, ofcourse. They are all people of some standing inthe community and probably prefer that their errorin judgment be forgotten.

But why do such men, of unquestionable loyalty,become hysterical over every attempt to exposethe communist conspiracy in our midst? Why arethey so eager to deny its existence? It must bebecause the very thought of treason, especially inhigh places, is revolting; and it is more flatteringto their patriotism to say it is not so. Yet thisvery nobility of mind makes them easy prey for theconspiracy-as the Hiss cas'e demonstrated.

OCTOBER 1954 135

The Murder of ScholarshipBy E. MEIlRILL R001'

E. Merrill Root

Dr. Edward U. Condon, presidentof the American Association forthe Advancement of Science, once"commended young Americans whoshowed an interest in commUniSlTIin the mid-thirties. That interestin communism," he said, was "asign of a good inquiring mind."

W,as it? A "good inquiring mind"is undoubtedly a prerequisite ofunderstanding, and is the primaryrequirement of scholarship. Butthat begs the question. Is "interestin communism", he said, was "agood inquiring mind," or is it themark of those students and reputedscholars who have rejected truthand accepted what they propose toinquire into? The first postulate of any form ofcollectivism-of which communism Is only the mostvirulent-is that only that is truth which serves"society." Thus, the objective of scholarship-tofind truth-is negated, and any continued "interestin communism" indicates that the inquirer hasaccepted a postulate that makes scholarship im­possible.

We have some evidence, from the mouths of thosewho have taken an "interest in communism," toprove the point. Our first witness is Dr. JosephWortis.

To see Dr. Wortis whole, turn to the congres­sional document, "Subversive Influence in the Ed­ucational Process," July 17, 1953, pp. 25-26. Dr.Wortis has taught in the Jefferson School of SocialScience (cited by the Attorney General as an ad­junct of the Communist Party) ; he has also taughtin Johns Hopkins (1938-1939) and the MedicalSchool of New York University (1946-1953). He is"a leading psychiatrist who has trained manyyoung psychiatrists." And he has written a bookcalled Soviet Psychiatry. Before the congressionalcommittee, Dr. Wortis "boasted that 10,000 copieshad been printed, that it is now in its second print­ing and had been hailed by leading medical jour­nals as a 'valuable source of factual material.' "

What sort of scholarship lay behind Soviet Psy­chiatry? As reported by the congressional commit­tee, Dr. Michael Mischenko, who had been professorof psychiatry in the Soviet Ukraine from 1929 to1944, testified under oath to "inaccuracies and out­right propaganda" in the book: .it is, he testified,an unscholarly book. Dr. Wortis himself, claimingthe privilege of the Fifth Amendment, refused to

say whether he was or was not aCommunist when he wrote thebook; but, under oath and in perilof perj ury, he admitted to the com­lnittee that he "had never visitedthe Soviet Union or the institu­tions he had so glowingly de­scribed." Truth? Bcholarship?

Or take, for example, Dr. GeneWelHish, Professor of Anthropol­ogy in Columbia University from1937 to 1952. On Thursday, Sep­tember 25, 1952, she was· called be­fore a congressional committee toexplain her charges, made publiclyina lecture before a large audiencein New York City, that she had"documentary evidence" that the

United States had engaged in mass disseminationof germs over N'orth Korea. Dr. Weltfish quibbledand zigzagged under the questioning: she deniedthis, she evaded that. But the press had reportedher accusations verbatim, and members of heraudience testified to having heard her make heraccusations. She had made publicly the mostheinous charges agains:t her. country's honor-andcharges which are the favorite cliches of propa­ganda used by the Communist Party the worldover. Such accusations, one would suppose, must bebased upon the solidest evidence if they convincedone who claimed to be a scientist. What was herevidence?

Logic and Dr. Weltfish

Dr. Weltfish had been told of this evidence byMr. Albert Kahn (who for years has been an apolo­gist for the Soviet Union). She had met Mr. I{ahn"on and off in a formal capacity. . ... I met himon the le'(~ture platform." Where had she met him?"·This I couldn't possibly reconstruct." How longhad she known him? "I wouldn't be able to say."Yet such casual, indiscriminate acquaintance hadso impressed her that when Mr. Kahn suggestedthat she telephone a "Reverend Dr. Endicott" inCanada, to find proof that America had engaged ingerm warfare, she immediately did so.

Dr. Endicott was a retired missionary fron1China, who strangely had never been persecuted bythe usurping regime, but had been allowed peace­fully to leave while his fellow-missionaries werebeing imprisoned, tortured, or (delightful abstrac­tion !) "liquidated." Dr. Weltfish had never known

136 THE FREEMAN

Dr. Endicott personally. She had never met himface to face; never examined critically his"proofs"; never questioned the political affiliationsof the man. She had merely talked with him a fevvmoments on the telephone, and then accepted affi­davits which he sent her by mail. Thus she waswilling to base her accusations against the UnitedStates upon the suggestion of a man she had metonly casually (she said); on a telephone conversa­tion 'with a missionary she did not know (shesaid); and on an affidavit that she subjected tono critical scrutiny.

I quote from the publishe drecord of the congres-sional committee (September 25, 1953):

Senator Ferguson: Well, do you have any evidencethat the United States Government has ever usedin the Korean War any germ warfare?Jl,fiss Weltfish: I would have no way to have suchevidence.Mr. lVlorris: Well, Dr. Weltfish, did you, on June 5,1952, present as an exhibit an affidavit by Dr. JamesEndicott, a former Christian missionary in China?Jl;liss Weltfish: I presented it to the press.Mr. M01'"ris: Did that affidavit say that the Anleri­cans had used a large leaflet bomb for the dissemi­nation of insects and a small porcelain type bombfor the spreading of germs?Miss Weltfish: As I do not have before me what theaffidavit said, I do not know. It seems to me thatit was not so much material that was in the affidavit.What w,as material to me was, as I pointed out inmy first release, that Dr. James Endicott was a manof conscience, a Christian missionary, and what hefelt he had seen [sic] was of SOllle hnportance topay attention to...•Senator Ferguson: Where did you get this state­ment?Miss Weltfish: From Canada.Senator Ferguson: And did you believe it?Miss Weltfish: I had no way of telling whether tobelieve it or not.

Here, under the intellectual micros'Cope, is anexample of the effect of collectivism upon scholar­ship. Dr. Weltfish has at least a page of affiliationswith various fronts; she refused, claiming the priv­ilege of the Fifth Amendment, to affirm or to denycommunist affiliation; she has spoken and workedfor collectivism in the world. It is clear that adesire to serve collectivism, and not any objective,factual proof, l~d her to swallow whole the silly 01·

shabby affidavit of Dr. Endicott. Her clutching atsuch a bubble of proof, that broke in her hands intosour suds, can be explained only by realizing thatshe wanted to believe it.

Fact, logic, truth? What do they matter whenweighed against "social amelioration"? Thus themilitant will of the collectivist subverts the in­exorable laws of reason, sabotaging truth in orderto bring about a utility supposedly superior totruth. Thus not only the pure Communist, but eventhe fellow-traveler and dupe, and too often eventhe gentlest "liberal" Fabians, will succumb to thewill-to-believe and will, sooner or later, regardtruth as simply the most convenient lie.

A third example of the way in which allegiance

to collectivism subverts truth and betrays scholar­ship will round out the pattern. Igor Bogolepoy,formerly a high official in the Communist Societyfor Cultural Relations between the Soviet Unionand Foreign Countries (known as V'OKS), drivenby his reason and conscience to flee the tyrannythat is enslaving the Russian people, took refuge inAmerica where he became a fighter for their free­dom. Bogolepov was summoned before the McCar­ran Committee, investigating the Institute of Pa­cific Relations, and became a mighty aid to truth.('See the Hearings on the Institute of Pacific Rela­,tions, Part 13, especially pages 4509-4510.)

The Webbs Used Soviet Handouts

Eogolepov tells, from personal first-hand knowl­edge, what happened to schol&rship in England andAmerica when collectivist professors and writerssold their birthright for a mess of collectivist pot­tage. The fanl0us Beatrice and Sidney Webb in Eng­land, for example, accepted handouts from the Com­rnunis,t Office of Propaganda and simply translatedthem verbatim into the supposedly scholarly pagesof their two-volume work on Russia.

Said Bogolepov:

The materials of this work were actually given bythe Soviet Foreign Office.... They had only toremake a little bit the English text, a little bitcriticizing, but in its general trend the bulk of thernaterial was prepared for them in the Soviet For-eign Office and I participated myself in partof this work Concerning the very humanitarianway of Soviet detention camps and jails . . . [thematerial] was written by the Soviet secret policeitself.

According to Bogolepov, American scholars wereequally naive-or, shall we say, collaborative? OfProfessor Frederick L. Schuman (Williams Col­lege) and his widely acclaimed, widely used, widelypervasive and persuasive Soviet Politics at Homeand A broad, Bogolepov had interesting testimony.

1IIr. Bogolepov: He wrote a book which in my opinionis full of nonsense.Senator Ferguson: Outside of its being nonsense,what was it on?Jfr. Bogolepov: It was very important nonsense be­cause, if you learned the wrong things about theSoviet Union, your thoughts are also wrong. Thatwas the idea, to sell nonsense to the foreign news­papers.Senator Ferguson: Can you give us any idea whatwas in the book?lv.lr. Bogolepov: All right. For example, this book byFrederick Schuman stated that the unfriendly atti­tude of the Soviet Union toward the Western Worldwas not caused by Communist doctrine or any otherconsideration on the part of the Soviet leaders them­selves, but it was caused by Western interventionduring the civil war.... If you compare Schuman'sbook with the corresponding page of the official His­tory of the Commu'nist Party of the Soviet Union,you will very easily recognize that they say the samething. Frederick Schuman got his ideas from theSoviet propaganda.

OCTOBER 1954 137

!-iel'e is testimony before a committee of theCongress of 'the United States, given under oatht>y o.Q.e who knew at first hand" According to thistestimony, material handed out by the propagandaagencies of a police state was accepted by writersand scholars (there were others, too, -cited in Bogo-­lepov'g testimony) in England and America. Thesewriters and scholars presented these propagandahandouts as their own research; and-as its widedissemination and acceptance proves-their workwas uncritically accepted by other American schol­ars and foisted as objective upon unsuspectingAmerican students.

Yet, '"interest in communism" is declared by Dr.Condon to be "a sign of a good inquiring mind."

The intellectual' sin is not the presentation ofmaterial favorable to the Soviet Union. The be­trayal of scholarship lies in the fact that the Webbsor Professor Schuman do not declare their source.but present slanted material as if it were theirown careful research. If they had openly said: "Inow present to you material given me by the offi­cial Soviet government. I believe it is so, and Ihave carefully checked it. But, I frankly say, it isthe official Soviet version," who would object? Wecould examine it with the salt of skepticism. Butthey present their material as if it were the fruitof their own research and their own thinking. Whydo minds like the Webbs or Professor Schuman dothis? Is it not simply because, as men passionatelyconvinced of collectivism as the way, the truth andthe life, they think that the end of advancing itjustifies treason to truth? Whatever the motivation,such subversion of scholarship is the death ofscholarship.

Profe8sor Schuman himself reveals the collecti­vist motivation. In his book he say,s (p. 24) thatthe Communists "had to preach and practice hatredand cruelty," that they had to "commit or condoneinjustice." Why? As "a sometimes necessary meansto a greater end." They had to revert to the cul­tural lag of slave camps, because "they were dedi­cated to love and brotherhood" . . . because they"were passionately committed to the democraticgospel." And so, naturally, a scholar "dedicated tolove and brotherhood" and "passionately committedto the democratic gospel" cannot let a little thinglike truth stand in the way.

And Professor Schuman does not let truth standin the way: it is expedient that truth should perishthat the "people" may live. Thus Stalin and hiscommissars (says Professor Sehuman on page198), "displayed no bloodthirsty passion to exter­minate opponents, but on the contrary acted withremarkable patience and toleration in an effort toconciliate and reconvert the dissenters." 0, shadesof Zinoviev and Leon Trotsky, take comfort: it wasonly an example of Stalin's "remarkable patienceand toleration" and his "effort to conciliate a.ndreconvert the dissenters"!

Truth? Scholarship? "Inquiring mind"?

138 THE FREEMAN

The Hiddellest Ta,xHe asked me: HWhy do you say that I am beingtaxed whenever the government debt is increased-=-by what you call the inflation tax?" Since he isa learned libertarian author, this convinced methat the inflation tax must be the most hiddenof all our taxes.

First, anything is a tax that takes money fromthe people for support of government. The pro­perty tax is a direct and open form. Others areless visible, and even the victims of the inflationtax deny its being a tax at all.

The people must somehow pay for all govern-,ment spending. A small part comes from a directcharge to the user, as when you buy a postagestamp. The major part comes from various ac­knowledged taxes like property and income taxes.But when all these fail to suffice and there isstill an "unbalanced budget," the government makesnew money to pay the balance.

When a private citizen makes new money tosolve his budgetary problem he is called a counter­feiter and dubbed R'scoundrel, legally and socially.But when the goverhment does it, we call it "de­ficit financing" by a "public servant." Both arealike in that the government, like the counter­feiter, can then pay its bills without producingsomething and selling it. It produces new moneyinstead, which acquires buying power by robbingit from money already in existence. The newmoney means. more money; there are no' moregoods; prices go up; a dollar buys less and isrobbed of buying power.

It is this loss of buying power of the old dollarsthat is the inflation tax. I am indifferent whetherthe government takes ten cents of my dollar, orlets me keep my dollar and takes away ten percent of its buying power through dilution of themoney by the inflation tax. Both take, by com­pulsion, an equal amount of money in the sense,of buying power, to pay' the costs of government.That is the meaning of taxation.

Why are we so easily fooled by it? It is be­caus.e we think of dollars instead of their buyingpower. And also, the tax receipt in tHe case ofthe infl·ation tax is called a government bond ornote. On this particular form of tax receipt,the government promises to pay us back our taxat some future date-with interest! Other peoplewill buy that promise, and so we call it an assetor investment. It makes us believe that we havearranged to postpone payment of the tax.

If taxes could in this way be postponed, whynot let's postpone all of them forever? 'V"hy notmake all .our tax receipts salable in the sameway? We are fools not to do this completely, ifit can be done at all. But if it can't be done,we are merely fooling ourselves in denying that itis a tax-the inflation tax. F. A. HARPER

UMT: The Promiseof DisasterBy HOWARD BUFFETT

"You can do everything with bayonets, Sire, butsit on them." When Talleyrand so warned Napoleon,be could not have been thinking of the bill forUniversal Military Training 'which Congress willwrestle with next January. Yet the point hestressed in his unique way is applicable: an armyis trained to do something, and you cannot foreverprevent it from doing that for which it is trained.UMT .is no exception.

When this bill comes up, the pros will preambleit with a list of national dangers from which,presumably, only U,M'T can save us. That has be­come standard procedure \vith these indefatigablemilitarists. But they beg the question. W,ill peace­time conscription provide protection against theperils they picture, or will it not rather lead usto disaster as it has led every country that triedit?

The first major country to embrace peacetimeconscription as a national policy was France, in1792. Defense was theexcus'e for the creation ofthis conscript army, but conquest was the use toV/hich it was put. Waterloo followed, as a matterof course, and the policy was dropped. Napoleon IIIreturned to it, also for purposes of defense, butthe conscript armies of France seemed unable toavoid attack or prevent invasion-three times inless than a hundred years. And France, the origin­ator of the policy, is now a weak, second-ratepower. Cause and effect?

'Germany took to peacetime conscription in 1814,for defense, of course. It got a full measure ofmilitarism instead, and not the security its conscriptarmy was supposed to provide. The political his­tory of the German Reich can be summarized infour words: conscription, militarism, conquest,disaster.

Japan adopted peacetime conscription in 1873,and that country also took the road of militarism,aggressive war, defeat and disaster. Nor was itdifferent with Italy, where conscription and itsconsequences drowned out the song and laughter ofits peace-loving people; here too the sequence ofevents was costly militarism, then imperialisticventures, then defeat and disaster.

Russia as a n&tion has not yet hit the nadtr thatother consc-xipt nations hav,e come to, but the'rsars, who emulated the French pattern, certainly

Howard Buffett

found their slave armies no protection againsteither attack or defeat. And those Americans whoare plugging for UMT as a defense measure, mighttake a look at Article 132 of the Soviet Constitu­tion: "Universal Military Serviee is law. Militaryservice in the Armed Forces of the U.S.S.R. is anhonorable duty of the U.S.S.R." Can it be said thatthe U.S.S.R. is dedicated to preserving the peace?And as for protecting the nation from attack,Article 132 did not do so in 1941; and there isa grave question whether this Article or the helpreceived from two non-conscript nations saved thenation from disaster.

The ArnlY Is a Bureaucracy

The record of these nations offers soberingevidence that peacetime conscription, always ad­vocated as an instrument of negative protection,always becomes an instrument of positive aggres­sion; that it brings in its wake militarism, con­quest, and ultimately defeat and disaster. Theseeds of this sequence are imbedded in the Armyitself.

It must be remembered that the Army is abureaucracy, and that the first objective of abureaucracy is s,elf-preservation. The second isexpansion. Both objectives prosper in proportionto the widening of its activities. In the case of theArmy, generals must have soldiers to command;and the more soldiers, the more generals. Sincepeacetime volunteering never produces enoughsoldiers for enough generals, conscription is thesolution of this bureaucratic problem.

But peacetime conscription runs counter to theinterests of the people, who are everywhere peace­loving; that is, life to them means the making ofa living and the raising of a family. Army serviceinterferes with both of these primordial impulses,and they naturally shun it. Also, since the Armyrepresents pure waste, and .therefore costs whichthe people- must bQar, their attitude toward it r$none too kindly.

OCTOBER 1954 139

To overcome this resistance to their purposes,the Army, aided and abetted by civilians who standto prosper by militarism, turns to the propagandaof fear. If the people can be convinced that the"enemy is at the city gates," that their homes andthe.ir families are in imminent danger of beingviolated, then they will submit to the indignityof involuntary servitude. In this respect, the ad­vocates of UMT are in a better position thanNapoleon, who did not have the use of radio,television and monstrous printing presses.

Just by way of documentation, there is extanta military order promulgated by the Japaneseauthorities when they found apathy among theirconscripts, and probably among the civilians: "Tomake a good soldier, there must always be an im­mediate enemy. He must be led to believe that thisenemy may strike today. He must be convincedthat the enemy is prepared to annihilate ourcountry at the first opportunity." The "enemy"was the United States.

Global Police Action

The case for UMT is improved not only· by theexistence of an enemy, but by the fact that heis all over the world, and that to contain himwe must have soldiers everywhere. The globalpolicing action we are engaged in, for defensepurposes only, calls for an army of 2,500,000potential fighters at all times. And that meansc.onscription as a fixed national policy.

But, as every general knows, the "morale" of anarmy deteriorates unless it can be put to the jobfor which it prepared. The "morale" of the peoplealso suffers from the constant drain on theirpocketbooks, to say nothing of their anxiety forthe sons taken from the fireside. A deteriorating"morale" consists of restlessness arising from dis­satisfaction and annoyance. Something must bedone to overcome this emotional reaction to mili­tarism.

The Army is in far better position than anyother bureaucracy to counteract a deteriorating"morale." The other bureaucracies must resort tohandouts or promises of good things to come; theArmy has an "incident" up its sleeve. If it hasn'tone qUIte ready, the Foreign Office, which alwayscollaborates with or dominates the Army, can beobliging. ..I.'\.ctual fighting has a way of improving"morale."

The case of Japan in 1931 illustrates the point.The civilian government was being hounded by thepeople to reduce the burden of military expenses.The country was suffering from depression. TheArmy and the civilian government responded to thecomplaints by maneuvering a war incident in Man­churia, and the national "morale" was improved.

.so it has always been.· Proponents of UMT saythat the record of the other countries that wentin for conscription does not apply to the United

140 THE FREEMAN

States. vVe are a peace-loving nation, entirelyfree of imperialistic ambitions, and need theconscript army for the sole purpose of safeguard­ing our national existence. It ,is inconceivablethat the Army would maneuver us into war forreasons of "morale."

Perhaps so. But a few figures make us wonder.In 1939 our national security expenses were justover a billion and a quarter. In 1953 they cameto over 52 billions, an increase of 4,100 per cent.A billion dollars a week of spending money createsa potent political power, one that cannot be dis­counted too easily. Not only is the bureaucracyinterested in its continuance, but also a host ofpeople whose economic condition depends on therace to war.

To be sure, the U.S.S.R. is a threat to our nation.But is conscription the protection we need or willit not rather bring in its wake a more seriousthreat? That is the question that the advocatesof UMT have not yet satisfactorily answered.Twenty years ago, Germany, Italy and Japan,neighbors of communism, were similarly terrifiedby it and acceded to the militaristic demands oftheir rulers. What happened to these countries?

It is still true that you can do everything with'bayonets except sit on them.

The Fine Print"Bigger Benefits for 75 Million People," screamthe headlines. The S3rd Congress amended thesocial security system to allow "more money fornearly everybody." Then in the body of the mainreport follow the glamorous details of the pumped­up pensions and bigger benefits.

But what of the fine print at the bottom of thepage? One line of it explains that, beginningin 1955, the ·social security tax will be $168 ona $4,200 yearly wage; that the tax will rise to$210 a year on such a wage by 1960; and then workon up to $336 a year by 1975-unless the presentplan is changed again. So it isn't something fornothing at all for the young man who still hasthirty or forty years of "covered .employment"between now and his sixty-fifth birthday.

Elsewhere in the fine print, or between the lines,one discovers that every promised boost of one percent in social security benefits represents anaccrued liability of $2 billion. And some actuariesestimate that the 83rd Congress raised benefitsby 30 per cent! If so, $60 billion has just beenadded to the burden of federal debt to be bornehy the folks who worry about growing old. Thispromise, of course, is not backed by bonds; so itwon't appear officially as part of the federal deficit.

The promise hits the headlines, and in the fineprint is the cost. PAUL Ii. POIROT

Caution at EvanstonBy REV. EDMUND A. O'PITZ

Evanston will no doubt go on being the suburbof Chicago, but it is now also ,a landmark inChristendom. It takes place with Edinburgh, Ox­ford, Stockholm, Lausanne, Madras, Lucknowand Amsterdam as a focal point in the effortsof ecclesiasts to find ways in which churchescan work together.

The Second Assembly of the World Council ofChurches held session in Evanston during thelast two weeks of August; 1,600 delegates, ac­credited visitors and consultants from forty­eight countries attended the meetings. There werealso seve'll hundred pres's, radio and televisionrepresentatives. A staff of three hundred andfifty handled the promotion and publicity, thetranslating, the mimeographing and the thousandsof details that go w'ith an operation of this size.

What was said at Evanston was heard 'roundthe world. With the help of one hundred andfifty telephones and sixteen teletype machines in­stalled especially for the occasion, the men andwomen of the press filed an average of onehundred thousand words of copy a day. The As­sembly was captured on thousands of feet ofdocumentary film.

No one could complain about not being keptbusy. In addition to the plenary sessions, therewas a well-planned program for the delegatesand another for the ac'credited visitors. Therewere meetings of six sections to hammer outreports. There were two press sessions a day,and a morning and evening service of worship.After the official close each night, informal dis­cussion and debate went on until the coffeehouses turned OUlt their lights at various hoursafter midnight. Evanston is a dry town, andsome of the European churchmen were heardto complain that the human being is just notconstructed so thwt he can keep up this sortof thing on coffee!

Evanston was a big and expensive operation.But what did it come to, besides size?

Among other results, some of which are in­calculable at this time, Evanston produced sixpapers and a Message. For the past four yearssix study commissions have been seeking to shedsome light on the problems confronting the con­temporary Church in six fields: 1) Faith andOrder-HOur Oneness in Christ and Our Dis­unity as Churches," 2) Evangelism.,-"The Mis=sion of the Church to Those outside Her Life,"

Social Questions-"The Responsible Societyin a World Perspective/' 4) International Affairs

Rev. Edmund A. Opitz

-"Chvis1tians in the Struggle for World Com­munity," 5) Intergroup Relations- "The ChurchAmid Racial and Ethnic Tensions," 6) The Laity-"The Christian in His Vocation." A seventhcommission prepared a long statem'ent on theEvanston theme, "Christ-The Hope of the World."

Each of these reports runs to nearly twentythousand words. Further meetings produced aworking paper from each of the reports. Evans­ton also issued a Message to the churches. Whatthe churches do with these reports and theMess.age will be left for them individually .todetermine, and until the churches take some ac­tion the work of Evanston will be incomplete.All one can do at the moment is to take thereports at face value.

Social questions have occupied a prominentplace in the ecumenical movement. One of theearly mottoes was "Doctrine divides, but serv­ice unites." The kind of service the modern worldwants is social service, and it wants it throughthe good offices of the State; the social thinkersin the ecumenical movement think along thesame lines. An official of the World Council ofChurches, wrHing the preface to an official com­pilation entitled "Ecumenical Documents onChurch and Society" says, "One of the majorforces which has drawn and held the Churchestogether in the ecumenical movement has beenthe necessity of their uniting in thought and ac­tion on the vast political, economic and socialproblems of the modern world. A very large partof the energy of the movement has in turn been di­rected toward seeking together as Christiansways of meeting the challenge of human socialdisorder."

Human social disorder was no less challengingat Evanston than it was at Amsterdam, say,but the official statements now are much morecautious than they were six years ago. The Re­sponsible Society now has a place for a sectorof private enterprise, the price system and thebusinessman, along with a large sector for State

OCTOBER 1954

intervention. One of the preliminary reports con­~aine9 thi~ sentence; "Many Socialists in westernEurope, now realize the importance of the private~e~ctQr of the economy and the nece$sity for th~

energetic, enterprising ,and expert businessman,as well as being aware of the needs for stateaction to be decentralized . . . and adaptable."

The Evanston repo]}t on the Responsible Societybears witness to the fact that the significance ofthe events of the six years since Amsterdam hasnot been lost on theologians. The ecumenical so­cial thinkers seem to have kept pace with de­velopments in secular thought and have aban­doned theoretical socialism for the simple reasonthat it has been found unworkable, if not un­thinkable. In any event, the present report sayswhat it has to say in a less antagonistic mannerthan the earlier one.

Less Stridency

In addition to the sobeI~ing effect of the eventsof the immediate past, two other factors havecontributed to soften the earlier stridency ofthe social actionists. The first of these is theEvanston theme itself,centering around theSecond Coming of Christ; the other is the par­ticipation of theologians from behind the IronCurtain in the ecumenical movement.

The socialistic emphasis in religion took itsrise in a period of "muscular Christianity," whentheologians were going to usher in the Kingdomof Heaven on earth by eliminating poverty andgiving everybody an education. A churchmanwho still maintains the "this-worldly" hope whichprevailed a generation ago, wrote recently, "Forme the welfare state par excellence is the King­dom of Heaven." Once this would have beenconsidered a typical expression of the Christianhope, but no longer. The catastrophe of WorldWar One pulled the rug from under part ofthe prevailing optimis,m, but some churchmencarried on in the old vein by stuffing themselvesfull of moonshine about the virtues of socialismand communism. One would almost conclude,upon reading certain rhapsodical accounts, thatsome of these people believed that a communistcell had its counterpart in the early church andthat Joe Stalin was a Fifth Amendment Christian!But now there is disillusionment, and with ita revival of ideas about the end of the world andthe imminent reappearance of the Lord.

The opening keynote speech at Evanston wasdelivered by Professor Edmund Schlink, of thetheological faculty at Heidelberg University. Hesaid, "For those who hope in Christ . . . thetumult of this world is a sure sign of Christ'scoming~ ~ ." This point of view represents agrowing emphasis in. ~ntempo.rary religious.thought, Q,s,pecially in Europe. One result of this.mphasls is a relaxation of interest in. social

142 TJIE FR.EEMAN

uplift; it is impossible to arouse much enthu­siasm for a Five Year Plan among a peoplewho believe that Christ will appear Hi four 1

Several churchmen from behind the Iron Cur~

tain were at Evanston. One of these, BishopJanos Peter of Hungary, was a Inember of thegroup which drew up the paper on the Respon­sible Society. In one of his appearances, BishopPeter declared that the Church "is not boundup with any social system, but serves the Lordindependently of the changes in the social sys­tem." There is some truth in this remark, but italso has the earmarks of an attempt to make avirtue out of necessity. The Church in Hungaryhas to ride out a storm; it lives on sufferanceunder a regime which would not take kindly toefforts to throw the Churc1h's weight around inthe political arena after the manner of theAmerican social actionists. In these circumstan­ces, the Church lays emphasis on ritual and avoidsthings which carry political overtones.

Tlhis being the situation of certain memberchurches of the World Council, it would havebeen unseemly for a declaration to come out ofEvanston urging ,the churches to shape them­selves into political power blocs. Thus the suc­cess of the Communists in several countries ofEurope has, in a left-handed sort of way,clamped a lid on our local political actionists.

The term coined at Amsterdam, "ResponsibleSociety," has become a trademark of ecclesiasti­cal social thought. The concept boils down to this:society should be so organized that its politicalagency, the State, will see to it that no onefalls below a minimum standard of housing,wages, education and medical care. This is theWelfare State idea. In a sense, the report amountsto an endorsement of the Welfare State, but theendorsement is hedged by a warning that "Wenever make an idol of any social cause, in­stitution, or system. . . Christians are calledto live responsibly . . . in any society, evenwithin the most unfavorable social structure."

It is impossible to know precisely what makingan idol out of any social cause means to thosevvho wrote the report, because there has beena lot of idol making in the social actionist camp.As evidence, one might cite the once-popularold slogan, "Christianity is the religion of w'hichsocialism is the practice." It is well that thosein this tradition should do some idol smashing,but they have not yet stopped worshipping someof the broken pieces. They still press for socialremedies which cannot be put into operation un­less political power is obtained to force the rem­edies on those who hold other convictions aboutvvhat is good for society. Also, they act as if toraise questions about the Responsible Societyconcept is t.o commit lese tnAj est-e~

A good example of this is. to be fDltnd in thepreliminary study. The co-ehairman of the study

commission declared; "NO\V there has developed, 1.n our Protestant churc;hes a very extreme type

ot· indivIdualism. which wants to ,go back toa;llabsolutely unreconstructedeapitalism." This ir..responsible statement lacks eharity and under­standing, but it is not untypical of the set ofmind which is so sure of its inside track to theDeity that it cannot but regard opposition asof the devil.

No Guidance on Statism

The State plays a large role in the ResponsibleSociety:

While the State is sometimes the enemy of free­dom, under many circumstances the State is theonly instrument which can make freedom possiblefor large sectors of the population. . . . Whennecessary in the public interest, the State mustintervene to prevent any center of economic or socialpower which represents partial interest from be­coming stronger than itself,for the State alone hasthe power and the authority under God to act astrustee for society as a whole.

When the private sector of the economy actsout of selfish interest and the State acts altru­istically for society as a whole, it is not difficultto see which is to be given first place!

How do we know when the State is an enemyof freedom? If, when this happens, we' are en­titled to say that the State has gone too far,we are entitled to ask: How far is far enough?Is there anything in Christianity which providescriteria which help us determine the place andfunctions of the State in society? The reportoffers no guidance on this point. It does saythat we shouldn't make an idol out of the State,and it asserts that "no one form of governmenthas a universal claim on Christians"; but thislabors the obvious.

The Church has survived many changes in theforms of government, and it lives today underseveral conflicting varieties. In the past, manychurchmen have yielded to the temptation ofbeing monarc'hists under a monarchy, republicansin a republic, oligarchs under an oligarchy, and soon. But just as the Church got itself comfortablyhitched to one of these wagons, the horse died !Thelesson is that the Church shouldn't seek a preferen­tial position in the State. But one cannot logicallyinfer from this that there are not some formsof government more out of harmony withChristian principles than others. And it is plaus­ible to assume that there is a form of govern­ment which is theoretically more in harmony withChristian principles than other forms of gov­ernment.

If one regards government as an instrument ormeans of effecting certain kinds of relationshipsbetween men, then these relationships must bejudged by the standard which Christianity saysshould guide men in their dealings with oneanother. This standard is the love commandment.

I-Iere is a criterion to pla~T the role of ~vereBt

to 'Our moral strivinga. Evan though 'eV-8ry kiiW,Of human relatlonship~xhibitg'shortoo111ingswhe-nme,asured by this 'standard, 'Christia;rrs do re&lg­nize it as being universcally binding on them. Itis a standard that applies to the human relation­ships which result from political action.

Political action is indubitably coercive. Whenthis fact is recognized, the choice of politicalforms narrows down to two. On the one hand,we may choose a scheme which uses politicalpower to put the energies of the bulk of menat the disposal of the few who wield politicalpower. This involves the use of the threat ofcoercion to make some men in some degree thecreatures of other men. On the other hand, po­litical action may be theoretically limited to therestraint of those who injure their fellows. Whichof these alternate political forms measures upmore nearly to the Christian moral standard:"Love thy neighbor as thyself 1" It is true thatthe idea of limited government falls short ofbeing Utopian, but among the kind of creatureshuman beings are it does give as much weight tothe love commandment as is possible in thepolitical arena.

The rise of communism receives some atten­tion in the report. Communism is regarded asa threat to any responsible society, but thegrowth of communism "is a judgment upon ourmodern societies generally for past or presentindifferences to social justice, in which theChurch is also involved." One of the dangersin the present situation is "the temptation tosuccumb to to anti-communist hysteria and thedanger of a self-righteous assurance concerningthe political and social systems of the West."The report contains no warning about the dan­gers of hysterical anti-anti-communism.

One might sum the matter up by saying ofthis report,· and of the other five: It is all fa­miliar stuff. The active work of the ecumenicalmovement has been in the hands of men wholive on that level of society where the intel­lectual fads and fancies flow fastest, and thesepeople talk among themselves in terms mostsoothing to each other. The ecumenical move­ment has not got down to the grass roots. Thisfact has often been lamented, and it was lament­ed again at Evanston by Dr. S. M. Cavert, as­sociate secretary for the U.S.A. of the WorldCouncil of Churches. He said, "We must franklyadmit that the average church member does notsee far beyond his denominational boundary oreven his parish. . . This is the most disturbingweakness in the ecumenical movement."

This may be disturbing, but there is one thingmore disturbing still: that the ecumenical move­ment so far has produced so little that wouldprovide the average churchman with an incentiveto step across his local boundaries.

OCTOBER 1954 143

By JOHN C'HAMBERLAIN

A Reviewer's Notebook

In the Dark Ages the Christianmonks kept alive the flickering flameof individualistic Western values.Today, although there are as yetno visible signs that the scientificfruits of Western values are disap­pearing, we are threatened with anew Dark Age, a collapse of thevery philosophy of freedom thathas mad~ scientific advance pos­sible. Where are the latter-daycounterparts of the monks who readAristotle along with Christiantheory and so kept the intellectualbases of Western civilization alive?Quite definitely they are not in theuniversities, which seem wedded toa relativism that weakens the searchfor truth by its very doubt thateternal laws are discernible, partic­ularly as they relate to society. Ifthere is any latter-day equivalent,on a secular plane, of the medievalmonasteries, it is to be found atIrvington-on-.Hudson, where a de­voted economic evang'elist namedLeonard E. Read runs somethingcalled the Foundation for EconomicEducation.

This FQundation for EconomicEducation is really far more thanthat; it is also a Foundation forGeneral Inquiry into the Nature ofMan. It disdains the mere collectionand correlation of statistics. Openthe envelopes containing its digni­fied releases and you will find noinductive studies of demand curves,no factual demonstrations of the in­flationary effect of Federal Reservepolicy, no chartings of the progressof real wages in the garment in­dustry. The Foundation for Eco­nomic Education is distinctly not tobe confused with such pragmaticout:fits as the National IndustrialConference Board or the Bureau forEconomic Research. What Mr.Read's organization does is to re­gardeconomics as a branch ofmorals, of ethics. It studies economiclaw in the wider setting of naturallaw. The analogy to the monastery

144 THE FREEMAN

applies with quite obvious forceto Mr. Read's staff of "economists,"for they are really men of thespirit who would hate communism,socialism or any variant of collec­tivism even if it were to be provedmore efficient than capitalism andits attendant values of free choice.

In conducting their search fortruth, Mr. Read's staff build onthe traditional individualistic valuesof Christianity and 'Graeco-,Romanculture. The essays that come fromthe Irvington-on-Hudson sanctuaryinvariably begin with the "self­evident" truths of the FoundingFathers, that all men are equal inthe sight of God and have inalien­able rights to life, liberty, propertyand the pursuit of happiness. Thislatest book-length product of theFoundation is ,ljZs8ays~oJl,_,l:iib.J~_rLH"~·,..Volume II (442---pp~-~ I~vington-on-

Hudson: The Foundation for Eco­nomic Education. $2.50 cloth; $1.50paper). Edited by Mr. Read, it con­tains many of the admirable philo­sophical discourses of the Foundationstaff-essays by F. A. Harper onsuch topics as "Gaining the FreelVlarket," by Dean Russell ("MyFreedom Depends on Yours," etc.),by Russell J. Clinchy ("Two Pathsto Collectivism") and by Mr. Readhimself ("Combating Statism"). Italso contains essays by outsiderswhich have been· deemed worth pre­serving by the Foundation's staff.

The modern reader, who has beentrained to think in terms of .athousand-and-one exceptions to "gen­eral" rules, might be somewhatflabbergasted by the doctrinal purityof Mr. Read and his colleagues. Inthis day of high tax brackets, offederal and state budgets that takealmost a third of the national in­come, of State aid to virtually every­body and his grandmother, it mayseem a trifle Quixotic to be arguingin rigidly pure terms that wouldhave seemed quite logical to HerbertSpencer a hundred years ago..Mr.

Read and his staff push their anti­Statism to such unqualified limitsthat they o~ten seem like Sisyphustrying to' get that rock up the ever­impossible hill. EssaY8 on Liber.t·yis resolutely against any and allgovernment activity that involvestaking the substance of one citizento support or aid another. The TVAidea gets no mercy here. The tax­supported government school isanathema. Price-fixing, even in timeof total war, is regarded as a perver­sion of justice. Conscription for thearmed forces is anti-freedom, andtherefore immoral. And the naturaldeduction from Essays on Libertyis that roads, hospitals and soil re­search should be left in private hands.

Since I am pro-freedom, I agreewholeheartedly with Mr. Read's gen­eral position. But is it ,effective in

John Chamberlain

1954 to push the doctrine of anti­Statism without recourse to theliterary values of irony, sarcasm,humor, parody and occasional birch­ing of the specific sinners who arebusy committing the sins which Mr.Read deplores? Mr. Read dislikes"personalities," preferring to stickto abstract argument. He. rightlysays it is not important to make aplay to reach the "masses." But evento reach i\.~P.~t}a,y ~?C}{'S "savingremnant"~~ihvolves-'~·tIH~ specific at-tention-getting use of logicallyextraneous deviees. Nock's own writ­ings are a case in point. Nock wasfully as convinced as Mr. Read that"masses" do not count in movingthe world. But Nock was never con­temptuous of the virtues of style,

humor, ridicule and all the otherthings needed to lure even the mostliterate man's eye to the printedpage.

What r am trying to say is this:IEssuys on Liberty is wonderful stuff,but it isn't presented in a form torivet the attention of the collegestudent, the law school professor,the editorial writer. For that, alibertarian Henry L. Mencken isneeded. ArgumeiifTs 'fiiie~ .but notuntil the whole armanlent of literarypresentation, from poetry to clown­ing, is brought to the service of thelibertarian movement will "ve makea beginning at saving the "savingremnant."[The above review is reprinted byperm'ission fro11t Classic Features,43.~

Broadway, New York 13, The Lit­erary Journal, E. M. Ca8e, editor]

Since writing the review of Essayson Liberty which is reprinted above,I have had some correspondencewith the gentle F. A., or "Baldy,"IIarper of' the Foundation for Eco­nomic Education staff. Dr. Harperis an eloquent and persuasive enemyof "logically extraneous" literarydevices: his feeling is 'that irony,invective, sarcasm and parody leadto unfair and clouded judgm,ents.With Dr. Harper reason and logicare everything. I must hasten' topoint out that I, too, believe in theultimate triumph of logic: I wouldhardly have chosen to make myliving by writing if I did not. Butlogic often needs a prod; it oftenneeds help from those whose pro­fessional skills are devoted to what,might be called the "creation ofperspective."

Jonathan Swift knew this; so didFinley Peter Dunne's Mr. Dooley.Finley Peter Dunne was utterly un­fair to Theodore Roosevelt when hespoke of the latter's Rough Riderexploits as accomplished "alone inCubia," but no'body who reads "Mr.Dooley" on the subject of the chargeat San Juan Hill would ever makethe mistake of overlooking TeddyRoosevelt's faults of theatricalism.The truth would seem to be thatirony, burlesque and such are neededto open the road for logic: oftenone cannot s,ee the truth until theemotional desire not to see it has

been destroyed or punctured bysomething that shows the ineongru­i ty of the reigning falsehood.

Logic should tell anyone that col­lectivism outrages the nature of theindividual. Unfortunately, logic hasnot been able to combat the fashion­able rage for all sorts of Fabianand Marxian heresies. The collec­tivist fashion has dominated theliterary scene for at least a quarterof a century. Collectivisnl has notwon its literary victories by argu­ment: it has won them by makingpeople feel that it is demode, oldhat, even "Neanderthal" and "trog­10dytic," to believe in the primacyof the individual, or in the doctrineof natural rights. The Communistsdid not put over the fashion, butthey encouraged it; and by theirsuperiority at literary politics theyhave succeeded in destroying thereputations of those who have op­posed the spread of the idea that"rights" are the gift of the State.

The way the Communists workedin the background to influence andcontrol the various Fabian groupsin the thirties forms the substanceof John Dos Passos' new novel,illost Likely to Succeed (310 pp.New York: Prentice-'Hall, $3.50).Mr. Dos Passos' "hero" is a play­wright who caught the fashionabledisease of proletarianism quite earlyin his career. The play\vright, JedMorris, has a phenomenal rise inHolly\vood as a script writer. He wasnot a Communist at the start, butthe Communists see to it that hisreputation depends on the "move­ment." Bit by bit, Jed Morris iscaught in the toils. In the end heis forced to, become a party memberas the price of his continued fash­ionable success.

Mr. Dos Passos' novel is strictly"naturalistic" in its surface mani­festations. But the "naturalism" isoveremphasized for reasons whichhave to do ,vith contemporaryliterary warfare: "good" is sub­ordinated to "evil" for the purposeof underscoring a parable. JedMorris is a despicable worm by allnl0ral standards---'but Mr. DosPassos' point is that nl0ral stand­ards no longer prevail in literarycircles dominated by collectivistfashions. What Most Likely to Suc-

ceed shows is that, in a collectivistage, the worst elements gravitate tothe top of all po'wer-wielding bodies.

For purposes of enduring fictionMr. Dos Passos' n1ethod has itsdrawbacks : Most Likely to Succeed'would have been a better novel ifit had portrayed the noble fightwhich such anti-Communists asIVlorrie Ryskind, Adolphe Menj auand Jim McGuinness waged againstthe comrades and the fellow-travelersof Hollywood. And it is quite possiblethat Most Likely to Succeed wouldalso have been better propaganda ifnobility had been accorded a chanceiIi its pages. But the grisly natureof the literary power game is mostadequately brought out by the DosPassos method of showing how thecommissars make use of weaklingswho depend on literary fashion forspiritual and economic sustenance.

The question is: how to replacea bad-or collectivist-fashion witha good libertarian fashion. Logic willplay its role in changing the literaryclimate. But it is my firm beliefthat not until collectivists becomea subject for laughter and for scornwill logic have its chance with theyoung, ,vho live by imitation.

The Totalitarian StateTotalitarianism, edited with an

introduction by Carl J. Friedrich.386 pp. Cambridge: Harvard Uni­versity Press. $6.50

This book is a collection of nine­teen (out of a total of twenty-one)papers which were read at a con­ference held by the AmericanAcademy of Ar,ts and Sciences lastyear, and a record of the discussionsto which they gave rise. Althoughthe papers are of unequal value,they are all stimulating, some bytheir merits, others by their defects.The defects spring mainly from anunwillingness to define totalitarian­ism and an inability to distinguishbetween its essential and accidentalfea'tures. Several of the contributorsdesire to see in it something that isunique and peculiar to our Hme.That leads them to stress the depend­ence of contemporary totalitarian­ism on modern technology and to

OCTOB'ER 1954 145

forget that totalitarianism is funda­llteuta.lly a problem of human char~

~er,'lnd th~t the 'question at what+'otaJita:da.J.a ~e logIcally take$.pYecedenee over what makes thenlefficient.

Mr. George Kennan, for instance,who read the introduetory paperand who believes that there are nobetter examples of totalitarianismthan Germany and Russ'ia, makesthe startling admission that "Never,as it seems to me in retrospect, did\ve foreign service officers have occa­sion to systematize what "ve knewabout the regimes of those countries,to attempt the general assessmentof that sort of power .from thestandpoint of its place in historyand its relations to our civiliz'ationas a whole." N'evertheless, when hewas told "by well-informed peoplethat all the essential features ofSoviet communism could, be observedin certain aneient oriental despot­isms," he "would be inclined todoubt that this could be whollytrue ... because of the importanceof the technological component inthe totalitarian system as we knowit today."

This lack of a systematic attemptto grasp the inwardness of total­itarianismand this clinging to ex­ternals explains perhaps why wefared so badly in our dealings withthe Soviets. If, instead of rejectinga potentially profitable line of inquiryfor the sake of a difference whichmight or might not be significant,our foreign service officers had madean effort to draw upon all the avail­able past and present experiencein an attempt to understand total­itarianism and to develop ways ofcoping with it effectively, the inter­national outlook today moight be lessglum.

Fortunately, one of the contribu­tors, Mr. N. S. Timasheff, has madea systematic and successful attemptto define totaUtarianism. He seesits basic trait in the unlimited ex­tension of State functions and de­clares that "a society is totalitarianif the number of the auxiliary func­tions of the State (i.e., of Stateactivities other than those concernedwith the conduct of foreign affairsand the maintenance of law andorder) is so high that almost all

146 THE FREEMAN

hUluan activities are regulated byit."

,Mr. Tim,ashefl's de1ilti:tion was, onthe whole,' disregarded ln the dis­eussions that followed. For the im..plication is that the antidote tototalitarianism is liberalism whichtries to restrict State activity toits logical minimum. This, of course,runs counter to the craze for Stateintervention to which even pro­fessed anti-totaHtarians have suc­cumbed.

Still, many judicious observationswere made in the cours'e of theconference. A signi.ficant point whichemerged in various disguises wasthat arbitrariness and absence ofthe rule of law are essentials oftotalitarianism. This was broughtout mainly in connection with therole of terror, but ought to be bornein mind by all those who want tobelieve that some kind of reliancecan be plaeed upon agreements con­cluded" with totalitarian govern­l"Ylents. HUBERT MARTIN

Philosophy and LifeThe Spirit of Philosophy, by Marc us

Long. 300 pp. New York: W. W.Norton & Company. $4.00.

Marcus Long's new book is whatone might callan enjoyable experi­ence in reading philosophy. Writtenin a refreshing and almost narrativestyle, with a minimum of technicallanguage, it will interest the lay­man as well as the beginning stu­dent.

Philosophy can no longer be con­sidered an abstract intellectual gameentirely divorced from one's dailylife, and Long is successful in show­ing its applicability to actual prob­lems. Even one's allegiance to a spe­cific political system assumes ac­ceptance of certain basic philosophicconcepts concerning man, his free­dom and law. Every position onetakes' on social, political or economicissues has its basis ultimately inthe principles of one of the philo­sophic disciplines.

As an introduction to philosoph~·

this book is meant to stimulate aquestioning attitude rather than togive final answers. By this' approach

the author furthers wnat he con­siders the true spirit of philosophy,the free and vational examinatiQ,tlof unquestioned assumptions. He be..lieves that philosophy no more thanscience can claim certainty, becausethe goal of infallible truth can beapproached but never reached byman. The kind of skepticism foundin science is also needed in philo­sophy, Long thinks, in order to com­bat the dogmatisms and supersti­tions that bar progress today. Byskepticism Long means not cynicismbut open-mindedness.

The author covers most of thebasic proble,ms of philosophy, in­cluding space, time, substance, valueand God.. In doing so he gives thereader something of a history ofphilosophy by discussing the posi­tions of the outstanding men ineach area. Beginning with Plato andAristotle, he traces problems up tothe ,present time and shows theirsignificance to contemporary issues.

Like many philosophers, Longfeels that, with philosophy as withscience, there can be no contradic­tions in a sound system.' For ex­ample, one cannot logically hold thephilosophic view of free will, 'andthen in community affairs support atheory that juvenile delinquency isentirely the result of social circum­stances. Environment may be re­sponsible to some extent for the be­haviorof children; but if one is toargue for freedom of the will, hemust admit that children, as freehuman beings, are responsible tosome extent for their actions. Free­dom, as Long points out, is deter­minism; but it is a self-determinismwhich is neither mechanism norcaprice. Freedom means that eachman is responsible for his actionsbecause of his faculty for makingdecis.ions independently of his en­vironment. What he does is of last­ing consequence, ,not just a choice offleeting importance.

A philosophic system must be apersonal production. The most anyauthor or teacher 'can do is to stimu­late another person's thought. It isonly by satisfying his own intel­lectual curiosity, not by acceptingwhat someone else has said is so,that man can fj,nd answers to hisproblems. BARBARA HARPER KEITH

How Scientific Is "Social Science"?

Mexican MartyrPadre Pr~ by Fanchon Roye~ 248

pp. New York: P. J. Kenedy andSons. $3.50

Visitors to present-day Mexico areoften impressed by the great num­ber of incredibly lavish and beauti­ful churches to be found amidsthumble and relatively inaccessibletowns, as well as in the greaturban centers. What they may notreflect upon are the scarcity ofCatholic priests, the disappearanceof traditional religious processionsin public places, and the totalabsence of religious schools. Someknowledge of the historic back­ground of these phenomena-thefateful events immediately follow­ing 1926 when Mexico's politicosand the Church fought a titanicand bloody struggle-is needed tounderstand the place which FatherPro occupies in the history of theeatholic Church in Mexico.

The book is a semi-novelizedaccount of the brief career of agallant Jesuit who offered his lifein defense of the Church's right tominister openly to the spiritualneeds of the Mexican people.Catholic opposition to the corruptCalles regime had led to the en­forcement and implementation ofanti-reHg-ious provisions of theConstitution of 1917, which hadhitherto been ignored by generalconsent. Foreign-born clergymenwere banished, religious elementaryschools closed, and Mexican priestsforced to register or go into hidingto continue their ministrations.

This is the background-howeversketchily drawn here-which Fan­chon Royer fails to give the reader.Instead, one is treated to more thana· hundred pages of inconsequentialanecdotes about Padre Pro's boy­hood and family life. In fact, notuntil its final third does the bookcome to life as we follow hisclandestine activities to bringspiritual comfort and material as­sistance to thousands who remainedfaithful to their religion and churchin adversity.

An abortive attempt on the lifeof President-elect Obregon by mem­bers of the Catholic Defense

League, in which Father Pro wasnot remotely implicated, providedan excuse for his summary ex­ecution without charge or trial.The account of the courageous andforgiving way in which he faceda firing squad (to which photog­raphers and newspapermen hadbeen invited as though it were acircus performance) provides stir­ring but revolting reading.

It is not too ungenerous to re­mark that Mrs. Royer is a specialpleader for the Catholic cause. Assuch, she presents a convincing

Social Problems and Scientism, byA. H. Hobbs. 413 pp. Harrisburg,Pa.: The Stackpole Company.$4.75

In a previous book, The Claims ofSociology, Dr. Hobbs, an associateprofessor of sociology at the Uni­versity of Pennsylvania, analyzed129 textbooks generally used insocial science courses since 1925. Itwas an important piece of work,since it exposed to public view thedismal mishmash of collectivist no­tions that has conditioned the mindsof millions of young Americans inhigh schools and colleges.

The preface to this book says:"I shall try to point out that it isno accident that the recommendedsolutions to a wide variety of per­sonal and social problems centeraround moral relativity, interna­tionalism, economic determinism,governmental collectivism, pacif­ism, and a grouping of other beliefswhich constitute what .is currentlycalled liberalism. ... My purpose isto show that such beliefs are notbased on scientifically validatedtheories. Whatever they may be, theyare not science."

Dr. Hobbs, a sound sociologisthimself, is not attacldng eithersociology or science w,ithin theirlimits. What he wants to demolishis the pretentious claims of thesocial engineers. In nine closely rea­sonedand tightly documented chap­ters, he does a devastating job on

picture of an admirable man whomay some day be canonized as theMexican workers' saint. However,it would have been a greater serv­ice to her cause had she placedthe life of Padre Pro within theframework of the struggle betweenChurch and State. For only in thatway can the reader appreciate thefull implications of his life, whichsurely have pertinence at a timewhen religion is being persecutedin many parts of the world in thename of the omnipotent State.

ROBERT E. KINGSLEY

the prophets of statism. The re­medies they propose for crime and"juvenile delinquency" may be goodthings in thems·elves, or they maynot, but the fact remains that theydo not work and have not worked.By any true scientific standard theyare failures.

In this country and in England,"social gains" over the past twentyyears have not reduced 'crime in theslightest. On the contrary, the num­ber of arrests doubled. Sex crimeswere up 150 per cent, and so wasdrug addiction. ",Offenses againstfamily and children (nonsupport,negleet, etc.) resulted in an increaseof more than 400 per cent," Dr.Hobbs notes. His recommendation ,is"to look at the data yourself andcome to your own cqnclusions aboutthe 'splendid progres~ we are mak­ing as we use the new scientificknowledg·e of human behavior tocombat crime.' "

Dr. Hobbs has pointed out, con­cerning the most widely used in­troductory text in the field (Ogburnand Nimkoff's Sociology) : "In theiroverdrawn endeavor to conv.ince theirreaders that sociology is really scien­tific they designate vague hypothesesas scientific laws, confuse facts withgeneralizations, dignify projectionsby calling them scientific predictions,and compare the collection of statis­tical data with the laboratorymethod."

The immense influence of thesociological myth, as distinguished

OCTOBER 1954 147

from· sociology, needs no demonstra­tion. Yet its practitioners are un­easy, sensing the a'bsence in theirfield of the rigidly controlled con­ditions at the command of the phys­ical and natural scientists who donot have to work with such ungrate­ful material as human beings. It maybe this envy of the true scientificworker that ·makes so many socialscientists yearn for the completelycontrolled totalitarian society. There,indeed, interesting experiments arepossible, as in the butcheries ofBuchenwald and the madness ofMaidenek. PAUL JONES

A Myth in OilThe Growth of Integrated Oil Com­

panies, by John G. McLean andRobert Wm. Haigh. 728 pp. Bos­ton: Division of Research, Har­vard Business School. $12.00

There ls, apparently, no limit tothe flow of propagandistic gasseswhich are 'capable of being geIi­erated by collectivist smokepotswhen lit comes to the job of obscur­ing simple truths .about complex in­dustries. One pf the most complexand certainly one of the most ofteno:bscured is the. petroleum industry.Here, the super-planners hint andeven openly say, is an industrygrown so monopolistic that it shouldbe, not a private but a ,state mon­opoly. :They say that ,the oil tycoonshave driven away competitors" andgreedily grab up 'every componentof the industry that "the Httle man"possibly could own. Well, the oil in­dustry is big. And the p~anners are

, plain liars.At last, an.d fortunately not from

the ,industryitself~ there is strik­ing and documented proof and il­lustration of just how the "big" oilcompanies got that way, and why.

First of all, this massive, but noteye-straining volume lays to rest thebiggest myth of all: that oil com­panies extend their holdings (to buyup drilling companies, refineries.service stations, etc.) in anatmos­phere of no competition. Intensecompetition, in strict fact, 'is whyoil companies, -as they grow, mustgrow into all fields of the industry.

148 THE FREEMAN

A merchandising company whichmust sell hundreds of thousands ofbarrels of oil to meet competitioncannot risk tardy supply and there­f ore, say, starts its own drilling orrefining. Or, a producer Who sees agreat flow from his wells might bewell advdsed to have proper retailoutlets of his own to dispose of it.But at each end of the process thereis a single objective: competition.

Today there is another factor:cost. Refineries can cost from $20 to$30 million. Who could put up suchsums if not assured of (integrat­ing "backward") a steady supplyfrom wens or (integrating "for­ward") constant wholesaling and re­tailing facilities? This by no meanssqueezes out the lone operator, thesmall beginner with big plans. TheMcLean .. and Haigh study showsthat although "integrated" com­panies hold 93 per cent of thisnation's refining ,capacity, and betterthan 80 per cent of its various typesof pipelines, they own only 35 percent of all producing wells, 7 percent of all drilling equipment, and51 per cent of the service stations.And, ev~n in the big integratedfields, the planners forget, the com­petition only gets stiffer as the com­pany expands.

,summing· it all up, McClean andHaigh,· professors who worked underHarvard's graduate business schoolin making their study, put thegrowth of integration into a pic­ture of natural law:

The series of changes or steps bywhich the oil companies have con­tinually shaped and reshaped theirstructures is closely akin to thatwhich may be found at workthroughout the entire world of liv­ing organisms. Living organismsare continually making a progres­sive adaptation to the physical en­vironments in which they exist. Asnew cO'nditions emerge, organismswhich fail to make the necessaryadaptations inevitably suffer a com­petitive disadvantage in nature'sstruggle for survival and, in somecases, gradually become extinct. So,too, . it is in the economic world;

,and business corporations must con­tinually alter their structures andseek new adaptations ·to the reali­ties' of'. their surroundings .if theyare, to rellJ.ain·· strong and. vigorousand able to withstand the relentlesspressure of business competition.

For the oil companies, this bookshows, the challenge of competitioncontinuaIly is being accepted andmet. The big and threatening chal­lenge, actually, is from the statistswho would end that competition.

KARL HESS

Kremlin OrchestraBrainwashing and Senator Mc­

Carthy, by Joseph Z. Kornfeder.With an introduction by Archi­bald B. Roosevelt. 18 pp. Alliance,Inc., 400 East 9 'St., New York 9,N. Y. $.25

My concern for the reputation of theFord Foundation leads me to offerits directors some free· Ipublic rela­tions counsel. In order to refutethe damaging allegations madeagainst them at· the Reece Commit­tee hearings, let them· promote themass distribution of Joe Kornfeder'spamphlet. Only a· paltry sum wouldbe required, because Brainwashingand Senator Mc'Carthy is so wellwritten, illuminating and easy to un­derstand that it would sell itself if itcould be enabled to penetrate thebarriers put up against effectiveanti-communist literature, and be onsale in every drug store and bookshop.

In spite of its title, the pamphletcone-erns Senator McCarthy only in­sofar as the attacks on him affordan outstanding example of how ahard core of American Communists,at the center, is able to utilize con­centric ;circles of fellow-travelersand sympathizers, Socialists, liberalsand dupes, for the purpose of smear­ing or destroying Soviet Russia'senemies, and to praise and promotethose who serve her 'interests. Itdemonstrates how Americans whothink thems:elves loyal have been sosuccessfully brainwashed by the con­stant repetition offals·ehoods thatthey become the unconscious instru­ments of the Kremlin's psychologicaland political warfare. Using thesimile of an orchestra in which theperformers hear only their ownthemes, the author shows how issuessuch as the Rosenberg case or "Me­Carthyism," are "orchestrated" forthe various instruments, to produce

a stupendous communist symphonyin which discords are harmonized.Archibald Roosevelt picks up thissimile in a brilliant introduction:

The Kremlin conductor, who isconducting the orchestra for dis­integration of the United States isvery skillful, indeed. He uses therespectable citizens o'n the boardsof the foundations. He uses the re­spectable owners and editors of thegreat ne,wspapers throughout thecountry; teachers in the collegesand the schools, sponsors of radioprograms, and the fine men andwomen who belong to the laborunions, in order to form one largedestructive symphony of politicalwarfare.

By serving to each his own "cupof tea," the Communists utilize thevarious hopes and fears, prejudicesand emotions of multitudes of peopleto serve their aims, which might hedescribed as the destruction ofAmerica by auto-suggestion.

By falsely equating "McCarthy­ism" with fascism the Communistshave skillfully played upon the "pub­lic psychosis" created by the war andtwo decades of agitation againstfascism, which now stands as thesymbol of "almost anything repre­hensible" or illiberal. And here theCommunists profit enormously fromthe false thesis sold to us long agoby the New Dealers, namely thatcapitalism develops into fascism,whereas ,communism, in spite of 'itspresent tyrannical pr,actic,es, will de­velop into a better form of "de­mocracy" than our own. Althoughthe majority of Americans no longerbelieve that communism is "progres­sive" (and ,even some of our "liberal"intelligentsia now have theirdoubts) , they have not y,et ridthemselves of the guilt complex en­gendered by the New Deal mis­representation of fascis,mas a capi-talist dictatorship. '

'Mr. Kornfeder describes the day­to-day work of the Communists asconsisting of calls for the advocacyof frustrating and defeating poli­cies; separation of the masses fromthe leadership; smear agitationagainst leaders and institutions; theprevention of strong leadership oreffective policies-in a word, "psy­chological sabotage."

Joe Kornfeder was at one time a

member of the Anglo-Americansecretariat of the Comintern. Hehas long been a dedicated and mosteffective anti-Communist, whose in­timate knowledge of the methods andaims of the enemy in our midst isequalled only by his capacity forlucid exposition. FREDA UTLEY

Psychology and FaithThe Need to Believe, The Psychol­

ogy of Religion, by MortimerOstow and Ben-Ami Scharfstein.159 pp. New York: InternationalUnivers!ities Press, Inc. $3.00

Like the young man who watched hismother-in-law drive his new car overa precipice, people with strong fixedreligious beliefs may read this bookwith mixed emotions. They'll like itfor the way it stresses the impor­tance of a good reasonable faith(and who does not think his faithis reasonable?); they will dislike itbecause it may point up some aspectsof their faith as manifestations of apsychosiis.

There is even part of the bookwritten just for me. In the firstchapter, paragraph one, it says:"Books of essentially psychiatric in­erest are more often assigned forreview to nonprofessionals than tomen of the field." Nonetheless, othernonprofessionals will enjoy this dis­cussion of the union between psy­choanalysis and religion in a verynontechnical way.

It has been difficult for reallysincere persons to utilize the heal­ing to be found in 'both the religiousand psychiatric fields. Extremists oneither side have seen to that. It'sgood to see this professional recogni­tion of the need to believe in re­ligion, and to see it coming from theother side.

"It is not hard to theorize on theeffect of religiousness on mentalhealth. 'Religion is specifically di­rected against guilt and depression,and unless it takes a pathologicalturn, one would expect the devoutto suffer less from psychic diseasesthat' are marked by guilt and depres­sion." By such a statement theauthors do not overlook the ways inwhich religious faith might lead one

to a substitutIon of fantasies forreason. They also supply reasonableevidence to the effect that there isno reasonable evidence proving onereligious group to 'be in possessionof the best medicine for the pre­vention of juvenile delinquency, adultcrime or other troublesome socialproblems. "'There is no form ot be­lief that fits men in general; someare better off as Catholics, some asProtestants, some as Hindus. But tobe a conscious unbeliever-a stateof mind also motivated by irrationalforces-is to ,invite psychic dis­aster."

Not recommended for people whotake their relig,ious convictions soseriously that an examination ofthem in some form of laboratoryproves distasteful.

JAMES M. ROGERS

The Income TaxMan to Man, by Bernard N. Ward,

C.P.A. 346 pp. Caldwell, Idaho:the Caxton Printers, Ltd. $4.00

This book is about the income tax.The author doesn't like it. He says:HNo good citizen, haviing substan­tial knowledge of the effects of thislaw upon the morals of our people,will suffer its continued existence."Then he proceeds, in some detail, tooffer this substantial knowledge.

Bernard N.Ward speaks fromthirty years of experience as a certi­fied publ,ic accountant in the BayCity area of Michigan. From per­sonal knowledge, he offers case his­tories showing how the income taxhas resulted in shocking injustice,fraud and evasion of the law.

Man to Man is a timely book,what with the recent major revisionof the nation's tax laws by Con­gress. One ,cannot help being sym­pathetic with those charged withthe administration /of our tax laws.

Any book reviewed in this Book Section(or any other current book) supplied byreturn mail. You pay only the bookstorep'rice. We pay the posta'ge, anywhere inthe world. Catalogue on request."HE BOOKMAILER, Box 101, New York 16

OCTOBER 1954 149

We can applaud their efforts to plugleaks, to streamline collection pro­cedures and remove some of the in­justices. However, after readingWard's book, you will probably con­clude with him that nothing shortof the complete elimination of thegraduated income tax will reallysolve those problems.

The way in which the State raisesits revenue is important, of course.But even more important is theamount which the governmentspends. Any government which at­tempts to contis,cate one third of anation's annual production, whichwe have been doing in this countryfor many years now, is certain torun .into difficulties with its citizens.People simply resent giving up thatmuch of their income and deviseall sorts of ways to avoid it. Buta government has power and can bedesperate. If a progressive incometax is denied it, there are othervvays.

During the French Revolution,,vhen the government was heavilyin debt and running a large defieit,the p~inting presses were started.True, the people were led to believethat their paper money was backedby the confiscated Church lands. Inmodern times, the printing presses

have run in Germany, followingWorld War One, and more recentlyin China, in Greece, and in Hungary.The insatiable appetite of a hungryState will be fed one way or another.The basic problem is keeping thisappetite within bounds.

Man to Man is a companion pieceto Frank Chodorov's The IncomeTax: Root of All Evil, reviewedin the FREEMAN for May 31, 1954.In a little over one hundred pagesChodorov challenges the income tax,from a philosophic basis. Wardshows how it has worked in prac­tice. From either approach, the re-,sult lis the same. The tax is im-.moral and evil. Quite aside from itseconomic consequences, which alonewould convict .it, the income tax hascreated a citizenry of cheaters,chiselers and informers.

What is the solution? BothChodorov and Ward suggest therepeal of the Sixteenth Amendment\vhich legalized the federal incometax. Chodorov argues that this woulddry up the federal revenue and re-,turn competition in government tothe several states, where our Found­ing Fathers placed it. Ward offersa substitute tax which would perm.itthe federal government to continueto hog the tax dollar.

w. M. CURTISS

READERS ALSO WRITE

(Continued fr01n page 114)

HalrdingCollege RecommendedIn answer to the very interesting ar­ticle by F. A. Harper (August), may Ihighly recommend Harding College atSearcy, Arkansas, as a place to exposeJunior to the philosophy of freedom?

Dr. George S. Benson, its distin­guished President, would no doubt feeldiffident about making such a boldstatement. But as a retired Generalofficer of the Army, lastly as the As­sistant Chief of Finance, and now ex­executive assistant of Dr. Benson, I cansupport the view of many industrialleaders as to the merit of HardingCollege.

In connection with the Army ROTCprogram, I visited a great many col­leges throughout the United States,and I ca'n assure you that I have neverfound any college or university so dedi­cated to the teachings of our Found­ing Fathers from the standpoint ofChristian patriotism, as I have foundhere. It has a devoted faculty andstaff with high academic principles,a'nd a hard-working and sincere stu­dent body. It is e,minently successfulin its purpose of developing a solidfoundation of intellectual, physical andspiritual values upon which studentsmay build us·efuland happy lives.

WILLIAM P. CAMPBELL

Brig Gen., U.S. A nny, Ret.Searcy, Ark.

Send for a Free Copy of

The Source of Rights

By FRANK CHODOROV

.Editor of

the FREEMAN

The Foundation for Economic EducationIrvington-on-Hudson, New York

150 THE FREEMAN

Pro-SociaHs,m SeenIn the Business Branch of the Indian­apolis Public Library, I had occasionto read an article "Socialism" in the1953 Encyclopedia of the SocialSciences. The article was written byOscar Jaszi, and it is to me 100 percent pro international socialism. Thisset of books will be widely read bystudents in our colleges. . . .Greenwood, Ind. J. C. CUTRELL

Rep. Shaf,er as AuthorReaders of the New York Times obit­uary (August 18) in me'mory of thelate Representative Paul W. Shafer ofMichigan' were not reminded of hisstudy of the subversive movement in thepublic schools. In addition to his activ­ities as la'wyer, judge and legislator,he was also co-author with John Snowof The Turning of the Tides, pub­lished in 1953 (The Long House, Inc.,P. O. Box 1103, Grand Central Annex,New York 17, N. Y.), which doc­umented in considerable detail thegrowth of anti-ca1pitalist se'ntimentinfluencing so many of our schoolteachers today.Dobbs Ferry, N. Y. BETTINA BIEN

Food Store ... 1954(if there were no trucks!) Know

what's missing from this picture? This is

the way your favorite food store would look

at opening hour ... if trucks stopped rolling!

No bread ... no meat ... no milk ... no

sweets. No food for your family ... on those

shelves or on the shelves of any other store

in town.

Yes, trucks, motor trucks ... are missing

from that picture.

One important measure of transportation

service is tons hauled. The startling truth is

that trucks haul 77 percent of total tons

shipped. Behind everything you buy are

trucks ... doing their important jobs mov­

ing raw materials, helping in manufactur­

ing, and of course moving goods to stores of

all kinds. Hardware stores, grocery stores,

department stores, laundries ... all depend

on trucks and good, well-maintained roads

on which to assure dependable delivery. So

then, trucks influence your life ... for the

better . . . many times every day.

The modern up-to-date food store you

visit has arrived on the American scene ...

by truck!

BROUGHT ITI

AMERICAN

TRUCKING

INDUSTRYWashington 6, D. C.

Iili This advertisement sponsored by

It INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER COMPANYbuilders of International Trucks

Pro·fessor Edmund P. LearnedHarvard Graduate School of Business Administration-,writes on

The Truth AboutGasoline Prices

I n these days of high prices it seems as if every­thing we buy costs at least twice as much as it

used to. That's why it's encouraging to tell you abouta commodity which, outside of increased taxes,actually costs little more than it did in 1925. I'mtal~ing about today's gasoline.

It is very important to note that the consumerowes this favorable price situation to one basic fac­tor-the healthy struggle for competitive advantageamong all U. S. oil companies and gasoline dealers.

I can demonstrate how this competition works bya study made of a typical midwestern oil company.This company was considered a price leader becauseof its dominant market position. Yet in Ohio aloneits products were in active competition with thebrands of 7 large national companies, 5 smaller butwell established regional companies and the privatebrands of jobbers and large retailers.

The company's retail prices were the result ofkeen local competition. Except for differences incustomer services or unusual locations, prices out ofline with competition caused loss of trade. From thesocial point of view, retail prices in Ohio weresound. Consumers had ample opportunity to choosebetween varying elements of price, service and qual­ity. Their choice determined the volume of businessfor the dealer and the supplying company. New orold firms were free to try any combination of appealsto attract new business. Even the biggest marketerhad to meet competitive prices. And price leader­ship-in the sense of ability to set prices at will-wasimpossible. If, as rarely happened, a price was estab­lished that was not justified by economic forces,some competitor always brought it down.

Consider the effect of this competition since gaso­line taxes were first introduced. The first state gaso­line tax was enacted in 1919. Last year, in 50 repre­sentative American cities, federal, state, and localgasoline taxes amounted to 71;2 cents that had to

be included in the price paid by consumers. Never­theless, management ingenuity contrived to keepthe actual advance in price to consumers down to3yz cents. This is an outstanding record in view ofthe general increases in wages and higher costs ofcrude oil.

This same competitive force among oil companieshas resulted in the 50% gasoline improvement since1925. The research and engineering efforts of theoil companies supported by the improved designsof automobile engines, have produced gasoline sopowerful that today 2 gall"'--ls do the work that 3used to do in 1925.

Edmund P. Learned, professor of Business Administrationat the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administrationis the author of a study on the pricing of gasoline by amidwestern oil company. This study, considered to be aclassic on the gasoline price question, was published in theHarvard Business Review and is the basis for this article.

This is one of a series of reports by outstanding Americans who were invited by TheAmerican Petroleum Institute to examine the job being done by the U.S. oil industry.

This page is presented for your information by Sun Oil Company, Philadelphia 3, Pe;"'nsylvania.