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Dr. David Seabury, February 23, 1947
“If American husbands were not so dull and stupid, American women would not be so possessive with their sons and, as a result, tend to make neurotics out of them.
“The American husband, in presenting his wife after a day of business and golf, say “Meet the wife,” as if she were an institution instead of a charming woman whom he married to love.
“The American women has to love and be loved by someone, and so she becomes too possessive of her boy. The American husband makes no effeort to make himself interesting to his wife.”
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May 15, 1947
“The American people must think as a democracy in order to live as a democracy. We don’t like to think about it, but we are required to make up our minds to get along with other people, if it is worth the effort. If we do not take the trouble, the world is headed for destruction.”
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Professor Max Lerner, October 26 1941
“The Americ First Committee is openly using every technique of the Nazi propaganda lords. Those techniques are anti-Semitic, anti-capitalistic, antilabor, antiliberal, and anti-Bristish. We are witnessing the increasingly open use of those techniques by what is becoming in this country an increasingly open Fascist movement. The United States needs to enter the war, not alone for American material interests but for the sake of humanity and human liberties.”
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Dr. Albert E. Wiggam, December 26, 1943
“People should have their britdays forgotten as soon as they are born. Classifying people according to their age makes many a man and woman feel and look old.
“Eskimos have the right idea about age. No Eskimo knows his age. Once when a psychologist asked an Eskimo chief to estimate how old he thought he was, the Eskimo asked, ‘Why should I want to know how old I am?’
“Altogether too much emphasis is placed on the age of the other chap. The learning ability of an average mind does not decrease with age. With age, mental speed decrease as mental power increases. And in the end, increase of mental power offsets the decrease of mental speed.”
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Thomas mann, October 17, 1943
“A new humanism and a world community of mutual dependence and responsibility for which the American Bill of Rights will serve as a model will be the outcome of the present international struggle.
“Revolution can rehabilitate Germany. The Nazis’ monstrous attempt at world domination is approaching its end. Fascism is a sickness of the times and no country is free. Let us hope German universalism would be helped to find its place.”
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Rev. Grancis X. Talbot, march 23, 1941
“Our liberty could be lost through some external power such as aggression, as it has in European countires. It might be lost, again, by the reckless granting of power to one branch of government, particularly the executive branch. Such a concession would inevitably lead to bureaucracy and eventually create a dictator.
“Our liberty could also be lost by the ambition of certain groups who wish to centralize power. Intolerance on the part of the general populace would be still another liberty destroyer, while a fifth cause would be cowardice and dear on the part of leaders of the opposition or minority party.
“But we most certainly will lose it if we lose the spirit of democracy through apathy, supineness, and ignorance.”
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Rockwell Kent, January 25, 1942
“The proper canvases for American artists now are the sides of silos, barns, and billboards – every blank space should proclaim, ‘Wake up, America.’ If are can’t help in the promotion of victory, then let’s forget art. But if art can function to stir up morale, then let art be brought into service. So far we have completely neglected the arts.
“Posters are needed to show American people what they are fighting for and to inspire them to a love of democracy. Such poster could be turned out best by the WPA art projects, but Washington red tape is holding up the program.”
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Stuart Chase, November 30, 1941
“America’s danger from the Axis is not military or economic; it’s political. Democracy will lose only if we don’t beat the Axis in providing the good life for our people. Our thoughts must turn to giving to our country, not taking away; and if we do, our hemisphere will be impregnable.
“Some intelligent economic planning can head off an economic catastrophe after the war. If we can keep prosperous making ‘howitzers’, we can stay prosperous making homes for our folks. And even people with low IQs are going ot be able to figure that out. If one forgets the manmade conventions of money and finance and concentrates on manpower, materials, energy, horsepower, and plant, there is no reason for any postwar trouble at all.
“Waste of the land is national suicide.’ We need militant conservationists who will be angered at blackened forests, slaughtered game, billboards in open country, and gullied hillsides.
“Floods must be controlled Pollution, dirt, and slums must be cleared away. We cannot longer tolerate such inguries to our country.”
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Louis Bromfield, November 23, 1941
“Revolution brings about quicker change at the cost of considerable sacrifice, where as evolution traditionally leaves undesirable traces of the ages from which it emerges. Democracy in the United States and communism in Russia are moving from opposite poles toward the solution of problems that individuals in both countries heartily want solved. A more ideal form of government will come from the trial and error through which both governments are passing in this period of emergency.
“After the present war is over, the United States will find it essential to participate in a ‘new world union,’ if for no other reason than that its agricultural products and industries will be needed to reconstruct the social order. After that, the United States will have to continue its new relationship to the rest of the world in order to protect its interests.
“Being well off is the worst thing that can happen to a democracy. There has been no such thing as honest prosperity in the United States since the Civil War; we merely have had a succession of boom periods.
“Greed and waste are two of the most pressing problems confronting the United States. National optimism regarding the country’s resources is carried to the point where those resources are threatened.”
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William Patrick Hitler, October 29, 1939
“I am shocked when I hear Roman Catholics in America say we need another Hitler over here. It is because they haven’t been a Germany and don’t realize that Hitler has thrown priests into jail. He is playing with the Catholic Church as a cat wth a mouse.
“Germany is exhausted, is on starvation rations today, ad cannot survive more than nine months of warfare. Hitler in 1932 could have loced up the whole German army and the people would have cheered him. The German people gave Hitler a black check – and Hitler filled it out.”
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Thomas Mann, March 8, 1939
“Democracy is the political expression of Christianity on earth. Democracy is the greatest conservation power on earth, but it must return, to a certain extent, to a philosophy that embraces a will to resist evil, to defend all that good in civilization. Democracy is a proof of the spirituality of Christianity and obth will survive together – Christianity and democracy.”
“National Socialism is the most radical, the most unrestricted revolution the world has ever seen, it is the revolution of unprincipled force, or spiritual nihilism, of absolute cynicism. It is the lust for degeneration of men and ideas. Morally, its force is directed toward the extermination of civilization. It is an assault of Christianity.”
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David Seabury, January 15, 1939
“The populace of this country, living at a fast pace and under tremendous pressure, will be without a sane person in 200 years. People in this country are in a constant state of jitters.
‘’Increasing divorce, insanity, neurosis, and nervous breakdowns are multiplying year after year. Our present standard of living is so irrational that annually, almost as many people enter asylums as colleges. Most of us are guilty of ‘grasshopper thinking’ – not pausing long enough on one subject before we attempt another.”
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Alexandre Fesdozovitche Kerensky, march 9, 1938
“Democracy, if it is to survive in the modern world, must transform its structure to suit the needs of the times and must listen to the new classes that are clamoring for power. Today it is the turn of the laboring masses to rise to political consciousness. The old democracies must be strong enough to make bold political and social reforms. Equality must be not only political but social.
“The success of totalitarian ideologies does not lie in their own strength. It lies in the weakness and distortions of our democracies. Democracy must be dynamic.
“All dictatorships use force and violence. Force as a law of life is incompatible with mankind’s normal evolution. Mussolini is nothing but a brilliant imitator, the pupil of Lenin. Lenin is father and teacher of all modern disasters. They resemble each other in one essential point – their attitude toward democracy; their hatred of civial and political rights and religious freedom. Violence is the fundamental method of all totalitarian states.
“The principle of isolation is an illusion – and a dangerous delusion. In our modern world, doctrines and ideas ignore all physical frontires. It is not enough to feel sure and invulnerable in our own democracy. It is necessary to participate in the common struggle of world democracy.”
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Count Raoul de Roussy de Sales vs. Dr. Helgo W. Culemann
March 21, 1937
Count Raoul de Roussy de Sales – YES: “That National Socialism challenges the world is evidenced by the pronouncements of Hitler, echoed by Goebbels and others. This movement has its outlet in Fascism and exists in most countries of Europe. Consider the progress of Fascism on the map of the world and compare its with the pitiful progress of Communism. The ideas implicit in this fanatic cult of Germany, that there is nothing above one’s own race and one’s own state, have infected the world, and people say Fascism, alone, saves private property and capitalism.
“The idea is fashionable now. People are beginning to think that freedom of thought is not essential, especially when given to masses. In Germany that cult demands that you give expression to prejudices rather than try to reason them out. One of the greatest spiritual dangers of National Socialism is the fact that it destroys the education of tolerance which it has taken two or three thousand years to cultivate among us under the name of civilization. The idea that each individual is less important than this vague thing called the ‘Nation’ is perilious.”
Dr. Helog W. Culemann – NO: “National Socialism is an emergency – born philosophy of the state. While it is probably the most maligned political theory of our times, in Germany it has been hailed as a life-saving device. It is maligned by the unfavorable propaganda of those who have been expatriated; because it involves a curtailment of human liberty; because it was born in Germany and not in Ethiopia; and, lastly, because the political leaders of the Allies fear that it may give Germany strength to demand a fairer deal.
“Hitler’s policies have brought a decrease in our unemployed from 7 ½ million to approximately 1 ½ million. This has been done by putting people to work reclaiming moors and bogs, by establishing rural housing, by building the German Army. The German Army had to be rebuilt because we were surrounded by neighbors armed to the teeth. This has helped business and restored confidence to the German people.
“I feel that in four years of control of German foreign policy he has shown shrewdness and wisdom and a desire for peace and not war. I leave it to Count de Sales to prove to me and to you that Hitler’s internal and foreign policies constitute threats to the peace of the world.”
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“Mother to Son”
Langston Hughes, march 14, 1937
“Well, son, i’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor –
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landins’,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So, boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now –
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin;
And life for me ain’t been no
Crystal stair.”
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S. Miles Bouton vs. John Spivak, Octorber 25, 1936
Bouton – YES: “The minority so scornful of the Constitution would not only change it in many respects – for one thing it would give the Federal Government very much more power. Not realizing that centralizing the power is one of the essentials of dictatorship. The best instrument loses its force in the hands of the bungler. It is the same with the Constitution. It functions only so long as there shall remain virtue in the body of the people. If it does not function, the fault is not the Constitution’s. It is our fault. It rests with our indifference. Yes, the Constitution functions – but it is only two often we who do not function.”
Spivak – NO: “It is my contention that the Constitution of the United States, from the day of this inception and its adoption, has been and is the greatest bulwark for the property classes that we have. It has been functioning at the expense of the overwhelming majority of the people. Which means the people of the United States. The Constitution functions to protect property rights at the expense of human rights. Nowhere in the Constitution of the United States have I been able to find, and I have searched for it, a statement that Negroes in the South should not be allowed to vote; nowhere in the Constitution have I been able to find a statement that says if you are a poor man, you can’t vote. And yet millions of American citizens of fighting pioneer stock, descendants of men who fought in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, are unable to vote because they are too poor to pay a dollar for a poll tax.”
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Emil Ludwig, November 29, 1936
“War in Europe is imminent because of the political philosophies peculiar to the prospective belligernets. I do not find the philosophic antithesis between fascism and communism, for these have in common the fact and aim of idealizing the state. Both Berlin and Moscow are more or less dictatorships. In both, fear is one of the mediums of governing.
“I do find antithesis, however, in the fact that Berlin, Moscow, and Rome sacrifice the individual to the state, whereas most other governments in Europe subordinate the state to the security of the individual. A second and more practical antithesis is the division of Europe into aggressive and defensive powers. On the defensive you have England, France, Russia, and most of the smaller nations; on the aggressive, Germany, Italy, and, in the Far East, Japan.
“The real tragedy is that pacific inclinations have caused the difficult position of the defensive powers. For ten years England disarmed and trusted to the League of Nations, forgetting that Europe is not an island and making the mistake of thinking that all nations are gentlemen. Today the archbishop of Canterbury can only pray that Hitler will wait two years until England is ready to fight.”
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Senator Robert M. LaFollette (Wisconsin), December 9, 1934
“To bring prosperity back to this country, old-age pensions, unemployment, and accident insurance, as well as adequate care of the physically and mentally ill must be provided, and the 30,000,000 farmers must be guaranteed reasonable return for their labor.
“The only proper cure for unemployment would be jobs at decent wages.
The unemployment should be set to work rebuilding America. We should see that children are not deprived of educational and economic opportunities.
“The Federal Constitution should be amended to give the people the right to say whether this country shall participate in another war, except in case of invasion from abroad.
“Any government has a right to restore a people’s way of life and to enlarge their opportunities, without regard to the costs, and to require the people to pay the bills under a graduated income tax. Wealth will have to be taxed if inflation is to be avoided.”
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James Weldon Johnson, March 25, 1934
“Certainly the Negro, who by the way, landed in America in Jamestown, Virginia two years before your New England Pilgrims laded at Plymouth, has influenced the course and nature of America both actively and passively over a long period of time.
“Passively he has provided the American people, for years on end, and is still providing them with the opportunity to practice injustice, cruelty, and savagery to a defenseless minority. When a Negro accused of a crime, but not tried for it, is burned at the stake under the shadow of two Christian churches and a courthouse in the public square, his few moments of suffering are as nothing compared to the moral degradation of a community.
“Actively, I go so far as to say that there is no artistic creation of the American people, sprung from American soil and acknowledged throughout the world as American rather than as a variation of European art, save only the skyscrapers, which is not Negro.
“The body of American folklore, so well collected and explained by Joel Chandler Harris, is Negro. The American music in its most beautiful and its most popular versions is Negro. The spirituals, I may say, are of the loveliest and most elevating folk music in the world. No other body of folk music has for its inspiration the naïve and tender devotional aspiration toward heaven and the good life that is so characteristic of the Negro religious songs.”
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Dr. Anna L. Strong, October 22, 1933
“Recognition of Soviet Russia by the United States will do more to prevent war between Russia and Japan than the League of Nations could ever do. There may come a time, and it may come soon, when the Bolshevists may be called on to save civilization for the rest of the world.
“Nowhere in the world have women such equal wages and equal standards as have the women of the Soviet. Women work side by side with men in the factories, on the docks, in the subways, in the mines, in the steel mills, and in the hospitals. Men and women are equal in love and custom.”
Q: What about the starvation and want that I personally found in the Soviet Union when I visited there recently?
A: I do not believe that you have been in the Soviet Union during the past two years. There has been no need or want in the Soviet during the past few years.
Q: When I visited the Soviet Union in 1934 I found persons seeking crusts of bread; I had been unable to purchase for myself an ordinary bar of soap.
A: There was no such hunger; the Soviet is a country of industry and happiness.
