Documentary News Letter (1942-1943)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MAY 1942 THE WAR-A PEOPLES REVOLUTION This time the common man in all lands will build a new world, says HENRY A. WALLACE* Reprinted by courtesy of Reynolds News this is a fight between a slave world and a free world. Just as the United States in 1862 could not remain half slave and half free, so in 1942 the world must make a decision for complete victory one way or the other. As we begin the final stages of this fight to the death between the free and the slave world, it is worth while refreshing our minds about the march of freedom for the common man. The idea of freedom is derived from the Jible with its extraordinary emphasis on the dignity of the individual. The prophets of the Old Testament were the first to preach social justice. But that which was sensed many years before Christ was not given powerful political expression until our nation was formed as a federal union 150 years ago: even then, the march of the common people had only begun. Most of them were unable to read and write, and there were no State schools to which all children could go. Men and women cannot be really free until they have plenty to eat and time and ability to read, to think and to talk things If we measure freedom by standards of nutrition, education and self-government, we might rank the United States and certain nations of Western Europe very high. But this is unfair to other nations where education has become widespread only in the past 20 years. Russia, for example, has changed from an illiterate to a literate nation within one generation, and in the process Russia's appreciation of freedom has increased tremendously. Everywhere reading and writing are accompanied by industrial progress and industrial progress inevitably brings a strong Labour Movement. Fundamentally, there are no backward peoples, lacking in mechanical sense. Russians. Chinese and Indians all learn to read and write and operate machines just as well as your children or my children. Everywhere the common people are on the march. By millions, they are learning to read and write, learning to think together, to use tools. They are learning to think together in Labour Movements, some of which may be extreme or impracticable at first, but which will settle down to serve effectively the interests of the common man. In the countries where the ability to read and write has been acquired recently — 62 per cent of the people of the world are still illiterate — where people have had no long experience of governing themselves on the basis of their own thinking, it is easy for demagogues to prostitute the mind of the common man to their own base ends. Such a demagogue may get financial help from some person of wealth. The demagogue is the curse of the modern world ; of all demagogues, the worst are those who are financed by wealthy men who sincerely believe their wealth is likely to be safer if they can hire men with political "it" to change the signpost and to lure the people back into the most degraded slavery. The march of freedom of the last 150 years has been a long drawn-out people's revolution. In this great revolution of the people there were the American Revolution of 1775. the French Revolution of 1792, the Latin-American Revolution of the Bolivarian era, the German Revolution of 1848, and the Russian Revolution of 1917. Each spoke for the common man in terms of blood on the battlefield. Some went to excess, but the significant thing is that people broke their way to the light. More of them learned to think and work together. The people's revolution aims at peace, not at violence, but if the rights of the common man are attacked, it unleashes the ferocity of the she-bear who has lost a cub. The people are on the march towards even fuller freedom than the most fortunate people of the world have hitherto enjoyed. No Nazi counter-revolution will stop it. The common man will smoke the Hitler stooges out into the open in the L'nited States, in LatinAmerica, and in India. He will destroy their influence. No Lavals or Mussolinis will be tolerated in a free world. The people, in their millennial and revolutionary march forward, are manifesting here on earth the dignity that is in every human soul. They hold as their credo Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, which are the very core of the revolution for which the United Nations have taken their stand. We in the United States may think there is nothing very' revolutionary about freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and freedom from fear of secret police. But when we begin to think about the significance of freedom from want for the average man, then we know that the revolution of the past 1 50 years has not been completed either here in the United States or in any other nation in the world. We know this revolution cannot stop until freedom from want has actually been attained. We failed in our job after the World WarWe did not know how to go about building an enduring world-wide peace. We lacked the nerve to follow through and prevent German rearmament. We did not build a peace treaty on the fundamental doctrines of the people's revolution. We did not strive to create a world where there could be freedom from want for all peoples. But by our very errors we have learned much ; and after this war we will be in a position to * Vice-President of the United States utilise our knowledge and build a world which will be economically, politically, and. I hope, spiritually sound. Modern science, which is a by-product and essential part of the people's revolution, has made it technologically possible to see that all peoples throughout the world get enough to eat Peace must mean a better standard of living for the common man, not merely in the United States and England, but also in India, Russia. China and Latin-America — not merely in the United Nations, but also in Germany, Italy and Japan. Some have spoken of "the American Century'-' I say that the century we are entering, which will come into being after this war, can be, and must be, the century of the common man. Perhaps it will be America's opportunity to support the freedoms and duties by which the common man must live. Everywhere the common man must learn to build his own industries with his own hands. Everywhere the common man must learn to increase his productivity so that he and his children can eventually pay to the world community all that they have received. No nation will have the God-given right to exploit other nations. The older nations will have the privilege of helping the younger nations to get started on the path of industrialisation, but there must be neither military nor economicimperialism. Modern science must be released from German slavery. The international cartels that serve American greed and the German will to power must go. Cartels in the peace to come must be subject to international control for the common man as well as being under the control of the respective home governments. In this way, we can prevent the Germans again building a war machine while we sleep. With international monopoly pools under control, it will be possible for inventions to serve all people, instead of only a few. When peace comes, the citizen again will have the supreme duty of sacrificing a lesser interest for the greater interest of general welfare. Those who write the Peace must think of the whole world. There can be no privileged peoples. If we really believe we are fighting for a people's peace, the rest becomes easy. Production? Yes, it will be easy to get production without strikes or sabotage, production with whole-hearted co-operation. I need say little about our duty to fight. It is true American youth hates war with a holy hatred. But because of that fact and because Hitler and the German people stand as the very symbol of war. we shall light with tireless enthusiasm until war and the possibility of war has been removed from this planet. (continued on p. 78)