The Poison Pen

ONE of the things that broke the hearts of most of the American correspondents who saw first the German Republic and then the French Republic go down was the stubborn refusal of these two democracies to do anything at all against those within who were openly working to overthrow them. Are we in the United States making the same stubborn mistake, and at the vulnerable moment when we are fighting desperately for our very existence? Let us not be hysterical about the matter. Let us grant that fascism has not yet any appreciable hold on more than a few Americans. Let us be thankful, too, that Mr. Biddle refuses to start this war with the orgy of witch-hunting with which Mr. Wilson’s Attorney General ended the last one.

And yet there is an ugly fact, little noticed by the press and radio until very recently, which the American people and its government might wisely face sooner than later. It is this: the United States in the midst of a grim war is knowingly harboring an aggressive fascist Fifth Column whose open and avowed purpose is to make us lose the war, accept defeat, and submit to a world dominated by Hiller and the Tokyo militarists. This Fifth Column is not a secret group, working under cover as did the original Fifth Column in Madrid. Nor is it silent. It breathes its defeatism and its treason openly through the pages of ninety-five pro-Axis publications which our government mail trains, each week or each month, carry — at the taxpayers’ expense — to hundreds of thousands of Americans.

I

And our government, in the name of democracy, has been hesitant about taking action in the matter. Or is our administration, a little weary of being charged by the Colonel McCormicks, the Captain Pattersons, the Hearsts, and some others with being a dictatorship, merely waiting until our goodnatured citizenry becomes sufficiently aroused to demand that it do something about it? Perhaps so. Perhaps it is waiting for the good citizens to rise up and demand an answer to the question the confused citizens of Republican Germany and Republican France didn’t have quite the anger or the gumption to ask until it was too late: Why can’t a democracy be strong and tough enough to squelch the little minority which is out to destroy it? Is there anything undemocratic about being strong and tough?

That was the fatal trouble with the good democrats of Germany and France. They confused democracy with weakness. To take action against those who would overthrow democracy, they argued, would in itself be overthrowing democracy. Therefore, do not take any action against your enemies. In a true democracy they must be allowed to say or do what they please. True democracy? It was nothing of the kind. It was the negation of the whole democratic process, of the fundamental principle of democracy, which is majority rule. And yet the leaders of German and French democracy either did not understand this, or their powers of reason and will were paralyzed. Chancellor Bruening could never quite reach a decision to squelch Hitler though the Weimar Constitution, the most democratic in Europe, gave him the legal power to do so. He was not helped any by the largest democratic party in Germany, the Social Democrats, who stupidly declined to use the very democratic machinery which they had largely created.

It was the same in France. There the two main democratic parties, the Socialists and the Radical-Socialists (the latter being about as ‘radical’ and ‘socialistic’ as our own Republican Party under Mr. Hoover), had the power and the constitutional authority to deal adequately with the anti-democratic forces which in the end, with the help of the Nazi Germans, brought down the Third Republic. But they declined to use their power and their authority. What did M. Daladier, the courageous but confused leader of the Radical-Socialists and the Premier of France, do when he met his very first test, the attempted fascist coup (as irony would have it, supported by the Communists) in Paris on the night of February 6, 1934? After successfully putting down the coup, he was frightened by the bloodshed, though it was nothing compared to the bloodshed which the Nazis would unloose in Paris six years later. I shall never forget my bewilderment when I learned of Daladier’s resignation on February 7. Or perhaps it was his excuse for resigning that bewildered me. He said: ‘The government, which has the responsibility for order and security, refuses to assure it by exceptional means which might bring further bloodshed. It does not desire to employ soldiers against demonstrators. I have therefore handed to the President of the Republic the resignation of the Cabinet.’

One can sympathize with a man who abhors bloodshed. It is the mark of a civilized, humane man. Unfortunately history, both ancient and recent, has taught us that bloodshed is sometimes the price of preserving the state or a way of life. We ourselves learned that terrible lesson between 1861 and 1865, and in a different but perhaps no less terrible way we are about to relearn it, now that war has brought a mighty challenge to our state and to our way of life from without.

But there is also a challenge to our democratic state and to our tolerant, democratic way of life from within. Can we not learn something from the tragedies of Germany and France, who were conquered by a similar challenge? Can we not learn how to deal with the Fifth Column before it deals with us — the overwhelming majority of the American people? Many citizens will interject at this point: ‘Ah, yes. But the Fifth Column is so small, so unimportant. Why bother about it?’ In the nineteen-twenties, nineteen out of every twenty Germans said the same thing about Hitler.

Perhaps it is not for this writer, who has spent sixteen out of the last seventeen years abroad, to say what the danger is. But he notes that Archibald MacLeish, who has spent most of the last seventeen years at home and whose present job enables him to know what our government is worrying about, declared the other day that our chief enemies are the ‘divisionists’ and ‘defeatists’ within our gates. Mr. MacLeish somehow gave the impression that our government took the matter quite seriously. He also gave the impression that our government had no intention of doing anything about it, but would leave that to the people.

The challenge to our government’s war effort comes from two main sources. One consists of a few press lords, chiefly Colonel Robert R. McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, his cousin, Captain Joseph M. Patterson, publisher of the New York Daily News, and Mr. Hearst. Their activities would furnish enough material for a separate article. Ex-isolationists, ex-appeasers, but now firmly wrapped in the flag, they have been busy of late spreading suspicion of our two chief allies, Britain and Russia, and embarrassing the policy and the war strategy of our duly elected government by demagogic appeals to yank our forces back to Hawaii or to relieve the boys in Bataan. The best that can be said about them, in the words of a recent Herald-Tribune editorial, is that ‘they are not very helpful.’ In judging their motives one cannot forget that the Chicago Tribune knowingly published, three days before Pearl Harbor, a War Department document of the most confidential nature, containing secret information of the utmost value to our present enemies.

The other challenge, which is the principal concern of this article, comes from the Bundists, the various ‘Shirtists’ (White, Silver, and so on), the KuKluxers, the Coughlinites, the ‘American Destiny’ crowd, and the rest of the native fascists. They are openly antiSemitic, anti-democratic, hysterically anti-Roosevelt, and wholeheartedly proAxis. They are against the war, they proclaim that we and not the others started it, and that we shall lose. And they are out to help us to lose, and to aid Hitler in building his Aryan, totalitarian world. They publish some ninety-five publications. They reach several millions of readers. Let us see what they are preaching to Americans in the midst of war.

II

Probably the most influential of the publications is Social Justice, founded by the Reverend Charles E. Coughlin and published in Royal Oak, Michigan. It has a weekly circulation of 200,000. It is violently anti-British, anti-Russian, anti-Semitic; its articles constantly dwell on the theme that this war is ‘ meaningless’ and ‘useless’; and the kind of ‘social justice’ it desires is the kind that Hitler offers. Take its defeatism. In one issue it publishes a letter from Washington, D. C., arguing that this war is a ‘useless slaughter’ and that it was caused by the ‘aggressive provocation’ of a few Americans. Mr. Roosevelt is held responsible for our terrible defeats. Thus: ‘As a result of having followed . . . Mr. Roosevelt’s strategy, the shores of our homeland are not secure, mighty units of the United Nations’ fleet have been destroyed. . . . Perhaps already the Axis holds supremacy on the seas.’ It is all Mr. Roosevelt’s fault. Of course there were some politicians and ‘warmongers’ who cannot escape some blame. Thus: ‘When our soldiers return, no politician who created the war will be respected. Then the consequences of the present world-revolution will dawn on the hand-clapping “patriots,” the warmongering clerics, and the squandering politicians.’

Not Japan, but the United States, was responsible for the war, Social Justice tells its readers in effect. And it argues: ‘We cut off Japan’s supply of oil and steel. We refused to buy Japan’s silk; we strangled Japan’s economy. In a word, the United States was engaged in a white war against Japan before Japan became engaged in a blood war against us.’

Japan’s ‘co-prosperity program,’ which has brought misery and death to millions of Chinese, is praised by Social Justice in the same issue in which it announces it has bought $25,000 in Defense Bonds.

For Hitler’s and Japan’s ‘expansion,’ Social Justice finds plenty of justification: ‘In Japan there live 75 million persons. . . . Japan is almost barren of natural resources. Her people are prolific. Is there not another law, mightier than the Atlantic Charter, which permits a people to expand to unused territories? . . . Any honest person will concede that Hitler and Hitlerism were protests against the old order dominated by Britain and the United States; were spearheads of a “new order” to overthrow imperialism. . . . This means that the signatories of the Atlantic Charter abhor Hitler’s blood superiority but support the British and American imperial superiority.’

Part of the peculiar attitude of Social Justice toward its own government and those of the Allies stems from its deep attachment to Ireland. Thus, when American troops landed in northern Ireland, the magazine’s cover flaunted a large headline: ‘United States Invades Ireland.’ And an editorial explained how the Reverend Father Coughlin had taken action to frustrate an understanding between the American government and Dr. De Valera in regard to the presence of American soldiers on northern Irish soil.

III

If Social Justice is more effective than its contemporaries in fomenting distrust and defeatism among the American people, certain other publications are more daring in openly inciting rebellion and treason. For example, there is the statement of Francis P. Moran of Boston, an associate of the now dissolved ‘ Christian Front’ in New England. He declares: ‘Mr. Roosevelt has sent our citizens to their deaths. . . . He is guilty of murder.’ Mr. Moran’s plan for helping us lose the war is to get the citizens to refuse to pay their taxes. Says he: ‘We advocate the refusal by all sincere and courageous American citizens to pay such taxes on the basis that they are unconstitutional, un-American and morally unjust. . . . Do not refuse to file your income tax reports. Place yourself on record honestly and then refuse to pay this unjust tax.’

George W. Christians, of Chattanooga, Tennessee, leader of the so-called ‘Christian Whiteshirts,’ had ideas as to the kind of action American fascists should take against the President. One of his handbills screamed: ‘Now we are to give up our lives for the delusion of grandeur of a merciless monster, F. D. R. Some neck — for a rope.’

X-Ray, published in Muncie, Indiana, demands the impeachment of Mr. Roosevelt and the throwing out of the Jews, who, it holds, head ‘ practically all Government Departments’ in Washington. ‘Jews, Jews at the head of everything. Why? Are we to be a nation dominated by Jews?’

William Dudley Pelley, leader of the fascist ‘Silver Shirts,’ promised in the pages of his weekly Galilean that this country will yet witness a ‘Great Accounting’ — a statement which recalls Hitler’s threat, made shortly before he came to powder, that ‘heads will roll,’ which of course they did. Mr. Pelley was convicted on January 21 of violating the terms of his suspended sentence handed down by a court of North Carolina. He was recently taken into custody by Federal officers on new charges. Mr. Pelley wants us to lose this war and the Japanese and Germans to win it. And he has tried to convince the American people that that will be a good thing for us. Then will come the ‘Great Accounting.’ Wrote Mr. Pelley’s Galilean of March 2: —

‘Nippon early adhered to the Axis Powers because inherently the Axis . . . lineup was the nationalistic lineup. The United Nations lineup was the communistic lineup, masquerading under the name of democracy. . . . Luciferian Bolshevism . . . was the true cause of the war in both Europe and Asia. . . . The inescapable fact [is] that fundamentally our American republic is at war to preserve and restore Luciferian Bolshevism, instigated and underwritten to the moment by Mongolic Judaists. . . . As disaster piles on disaster . . . the outraged and frightened American people are due to . . . have a showdow n with the Luciferians and hurl them out of office and into oblivion.

‘Then will come the Great Accounting.

‘Politicians and Luciferian satraps who at this moment are talking insolently about concentration camps . . . will abruptly face the actualities of them, themselves.’

Pelley did not mince words in trying to convince his fellow Americans that the Nazis and the Japanese have evolved something superior to what this democratic Republic has to offer. Thus: ‘The Mongolic Judaist has momentarily seized control of its [America’s] political institutions. . . . Hitler, in cleansing the German bloodstream of this inferior infusion, performs a vast service . . . to world humanity in general . . . and is rewarded with political and military ascendancy and an overlordship of all decadent Europe. The Orient, being predominantly of Mongolic composition, is being serviced through a similar renovation at the hands of the Nipponese.’

Similar rubbish may be found in the other American fascist publications now being freely circulated throughout this democratic land. There is no reason to believe that they coöperate to any great extent with one another, though sometimes they exchange mailing lists or complimentary blurbs. But they do have a common denominator. They all oppose the war, work for their country’s defeat, and prepare for the day when Hitler’s primitive and savage rule may descend upon us, and they may play their part in it.

The attitude of our government during the first four months of the war was that the pro-fascist American press was not worth bothering about. The Attorney General, Mr. Francis Biddle, deliberately declined to take any legal action. His position seemed to be that the Fifth Column publications did not constitute a menace. He also seemed to feel very strongly that to start prosecutions might: easily lead to a witch-hunt which would make a mockery of the freedom of the press and of speech. In a magazine article Mr. Biddle wrote: —

‘I have directed that no man be arrested for sedition under Federal Law except on my written instructions. Men should never, under our law, be prosecuted for their opinions, however they may disturb the moral assumptions that most of us share.’

This was a very noble sentiment, and many liberal Americans share it. But was it a wise policy during a savage war and a war, moreover, that was being fought by our enemies on a new front, the front of the mind? Were we to accept defeat so lightly in psychological warfare? Was not one of the greatest of our liberals, Justice Holmes, more realistic when he wrote: ‘When a nation is at war many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that they will not be endured.’

The Federal Statutes are very concise on the problem. They provide: ‘Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall wilfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States, or to promote the success of its enemies . . . shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both.’

On March 26, Mr. Biddle indicated in a press conference that his views were changing. He announced that indictments for sedition would be brought against three or four of the worst proAxis publications. He was indirectly quoted as saying that he had come to the belief that, in view of the rôle of the Fifth Column in modern war, the written word had to be considered much more dangerous than in the First World War, and that in consequence a seditious utterance, whether written or oral, might have to be considered the equivalent of a seditious act.

There will be few Americans who will disagree with that. There will be few who will object to their duly elected government showing that democracy can be both wise and strong enough to handle the enemy within the gate.