St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 18

PAGE 2C ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, TUESDAY, APRIL 9, 1946 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH Founded hy JOSEPH PULITZER Zml J2. JI7 i The Pulitzer PublwKing Co. TtUpnt Aiiicm MAm Hi III Olive St.

(I) THE POST DISrATCH PLATFORM I know that my retirement will make no difference in its cardinal principles; that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the puhlic welfare; never be satisfied with merely printing news; always be drastically independent; never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty. JOSEPH PULITZEL April 10, 1907. THE GERALD SMITH AFFAIR fmmWm iSllli BETTER TAKE HEED The Veterans' Caee Tn he Editor of the Post-Dlnpatch: What does it take to make a newspaper wake up and face reality that while we've licked Fascism in the greater part of the world, it is still alive and kicking so long as we allow hate-mongers such as Gerald L. K. Smith and Arthur Ter-miniello to spread their poison? Newspapers make the same mistake as those who chose to defend Hitler's free speech and dismissed his ranting as babbling that would die from lack of attention.

Can it be that the Star-Times and the Post-Dispatch have so soon forgotten the terrible lessons of the war? I feel that this must be true when I read the editorial statements: "He (Smith) might be less effective if more generally ignored" (Star-Times), and "The veterans were guilty of an Intolerable action" (Post-Dispatch). The veterans who picketed and protested the Gerald Smith rally took another attitude. Through militant but orderly action, they demonstrated that they were not going to let a new Hitler arise in America unchallenged. Is it not ironic and alarming that, following these demonstrations, the two papers found themselves in the Smith camp aligned against the veterans, echoing the hate-monger's charge that his constitutional rights of free speech and assembly had been violated? It is also alarming that the newspapers, through injudicious use of sensational headlines and pictures, created the false impression that veterans used violence to achieve their ends in exposing Smith and disrupting his meeting. As an eyewitness I can say that this was far from the truth-.

The newspaper distortions have done more than anything else to support Smith's contention that he was right and that the veterans were Communist hoodlums and puppets. One crying example of this distortion was the news coverage of the first meeting. One headline screamed: "Veterans Storm America First Rally Meeting in Uproar and Fists Fly" (Post-Dispatch), while buried in the seventh paragraph of another story is a statement that the veterans could not have been involved In the fracas because "they were all on the platform at the time" (Star-Times). The tame sensational treatment was accorded stories concerning the picket line. Pictures and headlines featured arrest and violence while buried in the text of the story was the statement: "Most of the pickets remained in their lines in orderly fashion" (Star-Times).

The predominantly orderly character of the demonstration is all the more surprising because it might be expected that ex-soldiers who had come up against Fascist bayonets would want to use more violent methods than picketing and persuasion, cat-calls and scorn. Certainly the provocation of a straight-armed Nazi salute, given by at least one person in the audience, would not be treated so mildly in many parts of the globe. I think the Star-Times and the Post-Dispatch owe the veterans apologies for their snide editorial remarks and distorted news coverage, and owe their readers a more constructive antidote for Smith's poison than an attack on those who oppose him. LARRY NORTIFWOOD, Chairman, Washington University American Veterans' Committee. The Growing Revolt in Asia Books About New Orleans In Fiction, Fact and Art The Mirror of Public Opinion Bitter struggle for independence is under way among colonial peoples of the East, writer says; they fight against odJs but without compromise; nationalists once accepteJ Atlantic Charter promises; now they are losing faith in United States as advocate of freedom.

Do the Auditorium marchers know that some are already calling them Communists? We honor the quality of these veterans feelings, but they have let feelings run away from good sense. Until sense returns, Smith will chuckle for the free build-up they give him. If he cannot make himself important, some of his enemies seem bent on doing itfor him. War; Aims Are at Stake Suppose that a year ago today, with the Ninth Army just past Hanover on the drive to Berlin, with Gen. Clark's forces still battling through to Rome and GIs continuing the rugged struggle for Okinawa, Congress had been quibbling over renewal of the Draft Act, due to expire in five weeks.

An uproar from all over the nation against shutting off replacements would have shaken the Capitol dome in Washington, and laggard lawmakers would have been forced into action, regardless of their political fears. Now that the shooting war is over, many Congressmen may not recognize the parallel between such a hypothetical situation and the present state of affairs. It would be a serious mistake, however, to assume that the war is over for good. It will not be actually ended until the militarists who made World War II are permanently subdued, and the last spark of war-mindedness is educated out of their peoples. And, as many dispatches from Germany and Japan prove, those objectives are still far from realization.

Gen. Eisenhower warned against the delusion in his testimony yesterday urging extension of the Draft Act. "If we pretend that the war is over the second that the shooting stops," he said, "we are likely to lose the aims and purposes for which we made the sacrifice of war." He went on to reiterate that expiration of the draft would leave the Army short of its minimum needs for control of our defeated enemies. If Congress persists in haggling, and the Army finds itself short of men, how will the "aims and purposes for which we made the sacrifice of war" be realized? The answer is, They won't be. Even to consider a policy that would mean abandoning those aims and purposes would have brought a storm of contempt and scorn from the whole country a year ago.

Though there is no shooting on Okinawa or on the road to Berlin today, those aims and purposes are nevertheless in danger, and they cannot be realized without extension of the draft. Will Congress dare surrender so weakly in the struggle to attain the war aims for which so many Americans gave their lives? Two Anti-Housing Attacks Senator Capehart, the reactionary Indiana Republican, wants to cut incentive subsidies under the Wyatt housing program from the proposed $600,000,000 to $300,000,000. The program, says he, could make a start and then come back to Congress if it needs more money. It must be perfectly obvious to Mr. Capehart that he is proposing to limit the program to one year instead of two, and that the housing shortage cannot come out of the high-acute stage in less than two years.

What he evidently means, therefore, is that he hopes either to weaken the program by chiseling it now or to find a reactionary temper which will kill it after one year. To similar effect, Senator Taft wants to deny subsidy guarantees to new building materials. Wise as Mr. Taft is in co-sponsoring the progressive Wagner-Ellender-Taft long-range slum clearance bill, he is neither wise nor progressive here. The housing emergency, like the earlier munitions emergency, cannot be surmounted in time by conventional materials and methods.

Sincere though his opposition may therefore be, he is singing the materials-producer lobby's song. Certainly that lobby deserves no deference. It has had its day in the sun and abused it away. Several of its member industries have been convicted repeatedly for conspiring to hold prices high and to shut out rival new materials. before any Senator conies out against new-industry subsidies in general, let him first examine his positions on tariffs, the disposition of Government aluminum plants, the subsidies which farmers are guaranteed for more than two years to come, the improvement of rivers and harbors in his own district.

In comparison with some of those, the degree of Government help to an industry under the Wyatt program is the very height of modesty. Cart Before the Atomic Horse The problem of atomic control is getting too much emphasis, says Robert Strausz-llupe, political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of several books on world affairs. If there are reasons for war, he goes on, then men will find the weapons with which to fight. So, if the economic and political causes of war are eliminated, atomic energy, in his view, will become a "subsidiary issue." While it is vitally important for mankind to eliminate the economic and political causes of war, Prof. Strausz-IIupe has that cart a long way ahead of the atomic horse.

Eliminating the causes of war is a task of long-run magnitude. There simply isn't time to devote all attention to that problem of the ages while atomic destruction runs wild and uncontrolled. Work can be pushed on the basic issue, as the UN is dedicated to do, and all humankind will wish the delvers well. But meanwhile, the pressing, immediate, crucial, life-and-death problem is that of atomic control. If war breaks out before it is solved, then universal catastrophe is in prospect.

But if a feasible plan for managing this devastating force is evolved, then mankind can turn with more assurance and greater hope to the age-old problem of curbing, war itself. A plan of high practicability and sound common sense has Just been worked out by the State Department Board of Consultants; its full text was published in this newspaper last Sunday. The terms for international control of the dangerous phases of atomic energy therein proposed are concrete, specific, demanding serious discussion in the world's forum. Representative Voorhis of California, appearing on the same broadcast at which Prof. Strausz-Hupe made his strange criticism, indorsed the world authority idea which the consultants offered.

Certainly this is a far more promising suggestion than continuance of the prolonged quest for world reform, while the atomic bomb race continues, as the political scientist suggests. Our Duty in Asia The misery of Asia's rebellious millions Is a serious challenge to President Truman's "universal foreign policy" enunciated in Chicago, In America there is a promise of peace and freedom, but in Asia there is the fact of war and colonial domination. Here, "Give us liberty or give us death" is a historical allusion, but miles away, it is a living slogan that has caused more deaths than liberty. Mr. Truman said that our policy is "to remedy the conditions that made it possible for Japan to turn upon her neighbors." What were those conditions? Primarily, they were restlessness and frustrated rebellion, in an Asia weakly held by foreign rulers.

Yet, as today's Mirror of Public Opinion shows, foreign armies are trying to restore those same conditions today, and we are implicated. The United States is implicated because it led Asia from Japanese misrule, but dropped the responsibility there; because it withdrew its army, but still furnished weapons for the assault upon peoples fighting for freedom; because America has been the hope of these peoples, a symbol and promiser of freedom by the Atlantic Charter and by its record in the Philippines, yet now the hope and promise and even our prestige are waning across the Pacific. America's immediate concern is, or should be, the Philippine Islands. Within three months, the Filipinos will be free. But that may be an empty independence.

High Commissioner McNutt states that the islands "are the most devastated land in the world." Our responsibility and gratitude toward a people that fought for us demand that we repair this devastation, and provide the Filipinos with some sort of prosperity to support their freedom. What have we done about this? For months the House Insular Affairs Committee neglected a Senate measure to pay Filipinos for less than half the damage they suffered in fighting Japan. Four days ago, the committee finally approved the bill. A few days earlier, the House itself had passed the Bell measure, which would allow eight years of free trade with the islands, followed by gradually steeper tariffs. Even when these bills are passed, after the long delay, our books will not be clear of the debt to the Philippines.

These measures would do little more than restore the status quo of Filipino economy. That was an insufficient, semi-feudal economy, resting largely on free trade with America. It did not promise economic survival to a people who hope to be free. So our duty to the Philippines is not just restoration. It is a matter of establishing economic independence for a nation which has been our dependency.

It is a matter of providing further money and credit, and expert economic advice, for a thorough job of renovation. For, as Mr. McNutt has said, "The act of granting Independence will be a savage mockery unless we implement our political generosity with effective economic assistance." Our conduct toward the Philippines will be justification for our foreign policy elsewhere in the Far East It will be the means of reviving our crumbling prestige which, as the Mirror says, is "a crucial political fact in Asia today. Upon that basis, the United States will have the right to raise the colonial question with the colonial powers, in UN, and every time those powers seek the financial and political support from us which they must have. Then our universal foreign policy may assume something like reality.

Otherwise, if we fail in the Philippines, and if we accept imperialism elsewhere, Mr. Truman's statement on the Far East will remain just six paragraphs on paper to millions of Asiatics who cannot read it, and would not believe if they could. In Defense of a Sand Trap A Massachusetts golf club greenkeeper is making war on the traditional sand trap because, he says, "Just keeping these things raked takes a man half a day." But he forgets that the sand trap provides some of golf's richest moments. Just keeping the traps plowed up takes a duffer half a day. The trap is a test of ability, ingenuity and profanity.

Some dubbing Dante to rise to poesy for his fairway purgatory, for if he cannot exactly swear by the sand trap, at least he can swear at it. Smith's Right to Speak Two veterans express in the letter column today an aversion to Gerald L. K. Smith and his followers. They speak for millions who have risked death to fight his Fascist prototypes in Europe and Asia.

For the third time, however, and for reasons partly stated in Robert Moore's letter, we assert that their aversion has led to an intolerable act. To say that the newspapers distorted the story of their effort to break up Smith's meetings last week is to ignore the fact that they did march in; they did attempt to intimidate; their act, no matter how well-disciplined, was disorderly. It would no doubt have led to a riot if members of the audience had resisted it. Mr. Norlhwood is not logical.

If Gerald L. K. Smith is so grave a menace, breaking tip his meetings is piking protection. Logic on that premise would advocate sterner measures. It is also illogical to argue that democracy can fight Fascism by Fascist methods and remain democracy.

Make no mistake, the veterans march into Kiel Auditorium is sickeningly reminiscent of the late German-American Bund. It is also a tactic used by the Ku Klux Klan and reactionary World War I veteran groups against meetings of liberal and progressive organizations. Is Mr. Northwood willing to give right-wing groups equal liberty to break up his meetings? Does he propose a general tradition of intimidation and potential violence? Little though Gerald Smith deserves the traditional American freedoms, we cannot destroy his freedom without wounding the institution of freedom. The slower, then, but constructive attack is to let him sing his hymn of hate and then laugh or scorn his following down to the hereditary crackpots.

Most constructive of all, progressive veteran organizations should work to create such an order of peace and prosperity and social justice that Gerald Smith will become a curious sort of comedian without an audience. The opposite course of intimidation is wasted effort. It is tragically wasted, because those who use totalitarian tactics become suspect of totalitarianism. Harold R. Isaacs, Former Correspondent in Asia for Newsweek, in Harper's Magazine "Bmn Mnrdi first," by W.

Adolphe Robert. (Bubbs- Merrill Indianapolis.) "The River ltoad," by France Parkinson Key. (Julian Messner, New York.) "Voodoo In New Orleans," by Robert Tillant. (Mac- mlllan New York.) "City of the Mardl Gnu," Drawing! by Barry L. DeVore Jr.

and Tet by Martin Yeseloff. (Bernard Ackcrrnan, New York.) "Jllnlng In New Orleans," by Scoop Kennedy, and "The ftarhrlur In New Orleans," by Robert Kinney. (Rornmn House, New Orleans.) New Orleans has a perpetual appeal for the tourist, and this season it has cast its spell over writers as well. The titles here listed are only part of the Crescent City's current literary crop, but they are representative of what seems to be a trend. The first, a historical novel, depicts New Orleans during the Civil War (or rather, as Southern usage insists, the War Between the States).

The book's chief virtue is in its excellently drawn local background and its historical references. The hero, a gallant young Creole, lives on Royal street, in the French Quarter, and becomes a Confederate officer; the lovely heroine, of Virginia descent, serves the South as a spy. Their experiences and those of their families in the war constitute an intrinsically interesting and moving story, but the action is often forced, and the dialogue is of the stilted Victorian variety. Another novel of the region, "The River Road," has reached best-seller status. The setting is an ante-bellum plantation house on the highway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge; the time is 1918-44; the plot is concerned with an involved family history and the problems of sugar culture.

The novel is long, detailed and slow-moving, with much evidence of careful research. More readable than many novels is the study of voodoo by Robert Tallant, coauthor of "Gumbo Ya-Ya," another recent New Orleans book. Mr. Tallant traces voodoo to its beginnings in African tribal religion, describes its practice in New Orleans by "Queen" Marie Laveau and her followers and tells of its present exploitation through sale of charms and love powders to the gullible. The author attributes the hold of voodoo to mass psychology and fear, for some of its practitioners have used poisons to implement their incantations.

Many grim episodes connected with this formidable superstition have been collected by the writer in study coveting many year. In "City of the Mardl Urns," Harry I DeVore Jr. presents i0 admirable pen-and-ink drawings of New Orleans scenes. The brief texts that accompany the pictures are fine examples of compact and expressive writing. Visitors and residents alike will find the book has successfully captured the spirit of a charming city.

Unfortunately, the publishers have used paper so thin that the printed lines of text show through it and mar the picture on the reverse side of the page. The last two titles listed are essentially guidebooks, though with no concern whatever for the conventions of Baedeker. Both are brightly written, personal on occasion and gay in their introductions to the eating places and night life of a city celebrated for both, FERD GOTTLIEB. uncertain and bolstered only by their violent and savage Eurasian and Amboinese mercenaries. In the hinterland, while evacuating internees, British forces were clashing constantly with the hated and feared "extremists." Repeatedly Japanese troops, operating under British command, were thrown into the local battles.

The Dutch seriously argued that the docile Javanese had suddenly gone mad. Queen Wilhelmi-na was offering confederation. But the Indonesians did not want to confederate. "Merdeka" was the word now, independence! America's Fart in Jmperialicm The United States is fully party to the Allied policy of restoring the imperial status quo ante in the colonies as a prerequisite to any "reforms." Until January, the United States was formally associated with all operations conducted by Lord Louis Mountbatten, and in these actions the United States was represented by great stores of lend-lease weapons freely used against colonial insurgents. Nor is Russia any less engaged in the responsibility for the guiding top Allied policy in which it shared.

Not until it suited its maneuvers at London late in January did Russia abruptly raise the issue of Indonesia while remaining notably silent on the subject of Indo-China, because it is more interested in detaching France from British influence than it is in the fate of the Annamites. By commission or by omission, all the powers are joined in the effort to dam up somehow the nationalist flood in Asia rising in the wake of this war just as it rose in the wake of the last. Sympathy But Not Support The nationalists in these countries had hoped for a different outcome. There was a certain amount of naive belief In the Atlantic Charter and the pledges of (frlf-de-termination so freely bandied about during the war. But this belief was by no means based wholly on illusions.

Since the old dispensation had led the powers so close to the edge of total disaster, many nationalists believed that out of sheer self-interest the victors would agree to a drastic change. They looked to the United States for moral and political and practical support of this position. They have not received any such support. American official statements have offered verbal sympathy with the ultimate goals of the nationalists but American action has consisted of practical support for the immediate aims of the imperialists. The result is a growing defection from the great hope in America.

A crucial political fact in Asia today is the crumbling of American prestige in the eyes of subject peoples. For with this faith may be passing the last hope of a less painful transition toward a new and more hopeful order of things. Across Asia, with anger and bitterness and in defiance of great odds, subject peoples are again struggling for independence. And they mean independence. Not trusteeship or self-government or dominion status but independence.

For Indians, Eurmese, Annamites, Koreans, Indonesians, the basic issue is simple: to submit no longer to any foreign rulers. They are intent upon becoming their own masters. Their determination cuts across all the arguments and counter-arguments, all the ifs and buts and howevers. "I'm sick of being told that we're not 'ripe' for self-rule and that we'll only make a mess of things," a young Annamite told me in Hanoi. "Are the French, of all people in the world, 'ripe' enough to rule even themselves? Can we possibly make more of a mess of things than all the rulers of the world have already made?" Everywhere the impulse is the same.

I remember a day I spent in the Korean countryside talking to farmers and small village shopkeepers. There was a tall farmer named Yoon who held his round-faced. Mack-eyed son in his arms against his spotless white jacket. "What do you want?" I asked. Koreans Erupt in Anger He smiled.

"Better living" was the way the interpreter phrased his answer. I asked him what that meant. "It means good crops and good he said. "It means getting our young men back from the Japanese forced labor gangs. It means getting a government of our own." Farmer Yoon knew exactly what he wanted.

But Korea was partitioned and the divided country placed under Soviet and American military occupation and Military Government. The gloss wore off and when the Moscow Conference offered nothing more than continued partition and a five-year "trusteeship," Koreans erupted in anger. Down in Indo-China the Annamites have carried the same determination to the battlefield. When the Japanese collapsed under American blows, the French moved to regain their power. The British, using Indian and Japanese troops, helped the French win a foothold on the Saigon peninsula.

The Annamites, who had proclaimed their independence and set up their own government as the Republic of Viet Nam, resisted with a sprinkling of modern weapons, with ingeniously devised bows and arrows and muzzle-loading rifles and Incendiary torches and homemade grenades. Little reported now, this war goes on. Familiar Slogans in Java Across Batavia's walls and houses and public buildings, the Indonesians had scrawled slogans to greet the arriving occupation troops. They had expected these to be American and they drew their phrases from the American lexicon: "Government for, by, and of the people Or: "Give us freedom or give us death!" The occupying forces turned out to be British but the effect was not wasted. "Your damned American revolution is still giving us trouble," one weary British officer said to me.

In Batavia sat the British, harried and defensively righteous; the Dutch, sullen and Defies lis Tn the Editor of the Post-Dispatch: F.eing one of the veterans who tried to break up the meeting, I now doubt you really mean everything you proclaim in the Post-Dispatch Platform. Do you want a veteran who saw action, who saw his comrades killed. Christians and non-Christians, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and of other religions, who saw the result of Hitler's rule in Europe where people of all races and religions were persecuted, just to ignore Smith and his Nazi stooges while they are inciting race hatred? Freedom of speech Is very nice, but AUl Ixihbeck and his like finht for that freedom? No! They were here spreading poison and preparing for another war afrainst true AmerieaniHrn. I defy you to print this letter. Or per-hnps you are afraid that St.

Louis Nazis will not buv the Post-Dispatch anv more. HERMAN MARKOVITZ. Two Fallacies To tde Editor of the Post-Dispatch: Your editorial, "Freedom for the Thought We Hate," contained some good common sense, which is a radical departure from most of the previous Post-Dispatch editorials. Those who would forcibly shut the. mouth of Gerald Smith are wrong in two respects.

First, to deny Smith and his group of hate-mongers freedom of speech would be the entering wedge of denying other minority groups that privilege. With the exception of advocating overthrow of the United States Government by force, freedom of speech cannot be qualified. Second, unless Smith and Ills group are exterminated (which no rational person would advocate), they will flourish more under restriction and persecution than they would if ignored. Had it been unmolested. Communism would not have reached its present proportion in this countrv.

ROBERT MOORE. A Collection of O. Henry Stories Some of O. Henry's stories are dated, and his clever plot devices have had so many imitators that they now seem hackneyed. Nevertheless, there is still high entertainment in the Old Master, and "Best Stories of O.

Henry" (Sun Dial) is an excellent introduction to him. Bennett Cerf and Van H. Caytmell have chosen 38 stories from his huge output and contribute an appreciative introduction. lUXr FROM 1IITI.KR. H.

V. Wade In (he Detroit News. The genius of the late Hitler never ceases to amaze. He built bonfires of the classics, but carefully preserved any document that would incriminate a pal..