FDR3

[Linda Reed--PCC West Campus CSC <lreed@west.cscwc.pima.edu>]

There was no reason for meeting at sea save
the purely spectacular features which Roosevelt always loved. The dramatic
effect of the meeting was very
great. It made a thunderous radio story and massive headlines. But,
as was so characteristic of Roosevelt, the
great declaration of principles was a mere incident of the meeting.
The purpose was wholly military. 

Three weeks after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt sent for all the representatives
in America of these occupied
countries and said to them: 

"Be assured, gentlemen, that the restoration of the countries occupied
by Germany and suffering under the
Axis yoke is my greatest concern, which is shared in like degree by
Mr. Churchill. We promise that all will be
done to insure the independence of these countries." 

Churchill was present. He turned to the Polish Ambassador and said:

"We will never forget what glorious Poland has done and is doing nor
what heroic Greece and Holland have
done in this war. I hope I need not add that Great Britain has set
herself the aim of restoring full independence
and freedom to the nations that have been overrun by Hitler."

These reassurances were to be repeated many times with varying oratorical
flourishes. And as for the "Atlantic
Charter," which was nothing more than a screen to hide what had actually
been done at Placentia Bay, a
handsome copy of it was made, bearing the names of Churchill and Roosevelt,
and placed on exhibition in the
National Museum in Washington, where crowds viewed it with reverence
as one of the great documents of
history. 

. On November 27, just ten
days before the attack, the President told Secretary Stimson, who wrote
it in his diary, that our course was to
maneuver the Japanese into attacking us. This would put us into the
war and solve his problem.

The Board of Economic Warfare was created to control the export of
all materials seeking private
export and to look after the procurement of all materials essential
to the war effort, except arms and munitions.
Vice President Wallace was named chairman of the Board of Economic
Warfare (BEW). 

There was an element of "cloak and dagger" in this institution. It
was at war with Hitler and Hirohito in the
markets of the world. It bought things we needed. But it also bought,
where necessary, things we did not need
in order to preclude the enemy getting them. This was called "preclusive"
buying. It issued thousands of
export licenses every day. It was quite a bureau and it bulged with
bureaucrats. At the top, next to Wallace,
was a somewhat cheaper edition of Wallace YD an authentic New Deal bureaucrat,
if there ever was one. He was
Milo Perkins, executive director. 

Perkins was a man with a soul YD one of
those souls that keeps making a lot of noise inside his body. He went
in for art and music and finally
Theosophy. The New Republic said of him that "for nine years at nine
every Sunday morning, he donned his
priestly robes, took along his sons and acolytes and preached to a
congregation of fifty people."

By 1943 the BEW had 200 economic commandos in the field fighting Hitler
in the market places of the world and
around 3,000 in Washington directing their weird operations
Although this outfit spent $1,200,000,000, no law ever authorized it,
and the Senate never confirmed the
appointment of Wallace or Perkins. The President "grabbed the torch"
and created it by edict.

Of course, a great legion of economic soldiers had to have a chief
economist. How they picked him I do not
know. But these two great geopolitical warriors YD Wallace and Perkins
YD came up with a gentleman named Dr.
Maurice Parmalee, born in Constantinople. 
Parmalee wrote another book labeled "Bolshevism, Fascism and the Liberal
Democratic State." In this
he renders it feasible to introduce a planned social economy much more
rapidly than has been the case in the
U.S.S.R. ...The superficial paraphernalia of capitalism can be dispensed
with more quickly than in the Soviet
Union." But the doctor had strayed into much lighter fields of literature.
He had also written a book called
"Nudism in Modern Life" which is secluded in the obscene section of
the Library of Congress. In it the doctor
revealed his interest in a science called Gymnosophy, a cult of the
old gymnosophists who it seems were
ancient Hindu hermit philosophers who went around with little or no
clothing. 

"these gymnosophist nudist colonies furnish excellent opportunities
for experiments
along socialist lines ... Customary nudity is impossible under existing
undemocratic, social and economic and
political organization." 

A new chief economist was brought in YD Dr. John Bovingdon.
Bovingdon was no fool. He went to Harvard and graduated with honors,
which is more than Mr. Roosevelt did.
But he, too, was one of those free spirits of the wandering winds who
had managed to live for a while in the
Orient, three years in Europe and England, two years in Russia and
for smaller terms in 22 other countries. His
Harvard class reunion book said he "engaged in art activities, painting
on fabrics, poetry, dancing, acting,
consultant on the Moscow Art Theater, oneYDman commercial monodrama
programs, weaving, sandalYDmaking"
and so on. In 1931 the police in Los Angeles raided a Red pageant for
a Lenin Memorial which Bovingdon was
staging. The experience shook Mr. Bovingdon terribly and he went to
Russia. He got a job in Moscow as a
director of the International Theatre. He worked as a journalist in
the world of free Russian speech, wrote radio
scripts and plays. He decided to return to the United States to make
us understand Russia. 
In January, 1938, he appeared in Long Beach,
California, at the town's first "Communist Party celebration on the
14th anniversary of Lenin's death." 

By what curious movement of the stars did these weird ideological brothers
turn up on posts of the
greatest importance in the councils of the New Deal? As fast as one
was pushed out another moved in. It could
not be by chance, since this happened in practically every important
bureau.
{Can you say 'conspiracy?...sure you can... - sog}

These two strange birds were not isolated cases. The UnYDAmerican Activities
Committee gave Wallace a list of
35 Communists in the BEW. That information was merely brushed aside
with some insulting smear against the
Committee. 

It mattered not what the New Dealer touched, it became a torch to be
grabbed, it became an instrument for use
in his adventures in social engineering, and after June, 1941 when
Hitler turned on his partner Stalin, these
bureaus became roosting places for droves of Communist termites who
utilized their positions as far as they
dared to advance the interests of Soviet Russia and to help "dispense
with the superficial paraphernalia of
capitalism" in this country under cover of the war. 

By no means a basically bad person, he was
congenitally incapable of resisting the destructive personal effects
of power. 

*** sog ***
>From the four corners of the land, as well as from the pink and Red
purlieus of New ork and Chicago and
every big city, came the molders of the Brave New World.
*** sog ***

They put their busy fingers into everything. They dictated women's
styles, the shapes of women's stockings;
they told butchers how to carve a roast; they limited the length of
Santa Claus' whiskers in department stores. 

At one time there was an almost complete breakdown of food distribution
throughout the United States. The
paper work required of an ordinary small merchant was so extensive
that it was practically impossible to comply
with.

These rules and regulations became so irksome that people ignored them.
Then the OPA set up a nationwide
network of courts before which citizens could be hauled up and tried
for breaking laws enacted by OPA
bureaucrats. If convicted, they could, under OPA rulings, have their
ration cards taken away from them YD
sentenced to starve. 

One may talk about the profits of war, but there were in truth
little profits for honest men because the government YD and rightly
YD during the war drained away in drastic taxes
most of the profits. 

In the financing and supervision of the war effort from
Washington practically every fiscal crime was committed. And the plain
evidence of that is before us in the bill
for the war. Few realize how vast it was. For the mind, even of the
trained financier, begins to lose its capacity
for proportion after the figures pass beyond the limit of understandable
billions. The war cost I reckon at 363
billion dollars. 

Chapter Eight - The Thought Police

1.

If there is one department of human struggle which the radical revolutionist
understands and loves it is the war
that is waged on the mass mind; the war that is carried on with poisons
distilled in the mind to produce bias
and hatred. It would be strange indeed if we did not find some of the
practitioners of this dark art from New
ork and some of the offYDscourings of Europe's battered revolutionary
emigres numerously entrenched in that
thoroughly unYDAmerican institution during the war which was known as
the OWI YD the Office of War
Information. 

It began with a thing called the Office of Facts and Figures.
a drove of writers and journalists whose souls were enlisted in the
great crusade to bring on the Brave
New World of the Future. It was in fact an agency for selling Roosevelt's
Third New Deal and Roosevelt
himself to the people under the guise of "maintaining public morale"
and conducting "psychological warfare."

, OWI spent $68,000,000 and had 5,561
agents scattered all over the world.

But OWI had other tasks than selling America to the Arabs. It was also
busy selling Russia to the Americans.
The chief of the Foreign Language Section of OWI was a young gentleman
28 years old who had spent his
entire life on New ork's East Side, who spoke no foreign language
and yet had the decision on whether news
should be released to Europe or not. Anybody who disagreed with his
high admiration for our Soviet ally was
labeled a fascist. There was another child wonder YD 23 years old YD
who was the Russian expert of the OWI and
who saw to it that nothing went out that was displeasing to the objectives
of our noble ally YD including
grabbing ugoslavia. OWI's broadcasts to Poland ended not with the
Polish national anthem but with a song
adopted by the Polish emigres in Moscow who were known as Stalin's
"Committee of Liberation." The expert in
charge of the Polish section was actually born in Poland, but left
there and spent the rest of his life in France
where he was notorious as a Communist. He fraternized with the Vichy
government while Hitler and Stalin were
pals, but when Hitler invaded Russia he came to America and quickly
became OWI's expert in explaining
American democracy to the people of Poland.51 

The deputy director of the Pacific and Far Eastern Area was a British
subject until he got a government job in
Washington in 1942. While running this important bureau for OWI, he
wrote a play which was produced at
Hunter College. Burton Rascoe, reviewing it, said: "Its most conspicuous
purpose is to idealize the Red Army
in China, to defame the Chungking government under Chiang KaiYDshek
and to ridicule the political, social and
educational ideas of the vast majority of the American people."52 

The men, material, cable and wireless time used up by OWI were immense.
It ran 350 daily radio programs and
had a daily cableYDwireless output of 100,000 words. It was the world's
largest pamphlet and magazine publisher
and a big movie producer, sending shorts to every country in the world.
It sent out 3,500 transcribed
recordings a month and turned out 50 movie shorts a year. The content
of most of this material was pure drivel.

All of this work was not just naive. OWI printed 2,500,000 pamphlets
called "The Negro in the War,"54 with
pictures of Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt, the Negroes' friends, in preparation
for the fourthYDterm campaign. It printed
a handsome volume called "Handbook of the United States"55 and gave
a British firm the right to publish it.
This gave a history of America, with the story from Leif Ericson's
discovery up to 1932 in four and oneYDhalf
pages. The rest of the history was devoted to Roosevelt and his New
Deal. This was in 1944 and a national
election was coming and England was jammed with American soldiers who
could vote. 

It had a department that supplied the pulp paper magazines with direction
and suggestions on how to slant
mystery and love stories. Western story writers were told how to emphasize
the heroism of our allies YD you
know which one. Writers were told to cast their soap operas with silent,
dogged Britons, faithful Chinese and
honest Latins. They must portray Japanese as having set out to seize
our Western seaboard and the sly and
treacherous characteristics of the Jap must be contrasted with the
faithfulness of the Chinese. They suggested
that Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu be turned into a Jap instead of a Chinese.

When the war began the government, recognizing the need for protecting
our military operations from leaks
through careless or uninformed press reporting, organized the Office
of Censorship headed by Byron Price, an
able official of the Associated Press. To this bureau was given the
power to monitor all communications. It set
up a censorship organization which all publishers and broadcasters
voluntarily cooperated with. It worked
admirably and Mr. Price won the unstinted approval of the press for
his capable and tactful, yet firm, handling
of this difficult problem. No other government agency had any authority
whatever to engage in this activity.
And it was never intended that anybody should have the power to attempt
to interfere with the rights of
citizens to discuss with freedom all political questions, subject only
to the obligation not to divulge information
that would aid the enemy or defeat our military operations. 

Nevertheless, the OWI and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took
upon themselves the power to
carry on the most extensive propaganda among, and the most dangerous
interference with, the
foreignYDlanguage broadcasting stations. Of course the ordinary American
official was hardly aware of the
opportunities this kind of thing gave to those who had political or
ideological axes to grind. 

It was important to see that nothing subversive and nothing that would
adversely affect the war effort
was used. And for this purpose the Office of Censorship was admirably
equipped and managed. But the FCC
decided that it would take a hand, not merely in monitoring the stations
but in literally directing and controlling
them. The OWI similarly arrived at the same conclusion. It also set
up a division for dealing with the problems
of the foreignYDborn through radio. 

Mr. Eugene L. Garey, chief counsel of the Congressional Select Committee
Investigating the FCC, speaking of
these conditions said: 

"From the record thus far made it appears that, in one foreign language
broadcasting station in New ork City,
the program director, the announcer, the script writer, the censor,
and the monitor of the ItalianYDlanguage
programs are all aliens or persons owing their positions to the Office
of War Information, with the approval of
the FCC. 

"The situation thus portrayed is not peculiar to this single station,
or to this one city. Information in our
possession indicates that the same situation prevails generally in
the foreign language stations throughout the
country. Every such key position in each of the three radio stations
presently under investigation are found to
be similarly staffed. These staffs select the news, edit the script,
and announce the program. The program, in
turn, is censored by them, monitored by them, and is presented under
the direction of a program director of
similar character. 

"From these apparently unrelated facts the picture must be further
developed. 

"OWI had the men and the material. It had the proper dye to color the
news. It also had the desire to select and
censor the news. What it lacked was the power, or perhaps more accurately
stated, even the color of power, to
carry their designs into effect. Hence the need to enlist the Federal
Communications Commission in its purpose.

"True it is that the Federal Communications Commission had no such
lawful power, but the Federal
Communications Commission did have the power to license and hence the
power to compel obedience to its
directions. The record now shows their unlawful use of this power.

"Working together in a common purpose, the Federal Communications Commission
and the Office of War
Information have accomplished a result that compels pause YD and presents
the solemn question of 'Whither are
we going?' 

"A division called the War Problems Division was created by the Federal
Communications Commission, and a
staff of attorneys began to function. 

"This division was not a regulatory body. It was not formed to instruct,
or supervise, or to correct. It was
formed for the avowed purpose of unlawfully liquidating all of the
radio personnel in the foreignYDlanguage field
that did not meet with its favor. A real gestapo was created and a
lawless enterprise was launched. 

"It is suggested that we accept this unlawful situation as a benevolent
expedient of the moment, but no such
purpose as we find here disclosed, however benevolently cloaked, can
justify the practices we find. All tyranny
begins under the guise of benevolence. 

"The voices of these aliens go into our homes, and the unwary are led
to believe that they speak with authority
and official approval. They even censor our Christmas and Easter religious
programs, and tell us what music we
may hear. The FCC is alarmed about whether we will react properly to
news furnished by our national news
agencies. Apparently we can still read the news in our press, but we
can only hear what these aliens permit us
to. What next medium of communications will receive the benevolent
attention of these misguided zealots?
Obviously, the press. 

"These interpreters of our national policy YD these slanters of our
news YD these destroyers of free speech YD are
alien in birth, alien in education, alien in training and in thought.

"And still these are the people who are permitted to mold our thoughts
YD to tell us what America's war aims and
purposes are. These people are in position to color, to delete, or
to slant, as they see fit, in accordance with
their own peculiar alien views and ideologies. 

"Persons are being accused of being proYDfascist, and that without proof
and without trial. Persons suspected of
being proYDfascist, and without proof, have been removed from the air
and replaced by wearers of the Black Shirt
... 

"If the radio can thus be controlled in August, 1943, there is nothing
to prevent the same control from slanting
our political news and nothing to prevent the coloring of our war aims
and purposes when peace comes."57 

In the presence of a government which had enlarged its power over the
lives and the thoughts and opinions of
citizens and which did not hesitate to use that power, the whole citizenry
was intimidated. Editors, writers,
commentators were intimidated. Men whose opinions did not conform to
the reigning philosophy were driven
from the air, from magazines and newspapers. While American citizens
who were moved by a deep and
unselfish devotion to the ideals of this Republic YD however wrongYDheaded
that may be in the light of the new
modes of "freedom" YD were forced into silence, the most blatant and
disruptive revolutionary lovers of the
systems of both fascism and Communism and that illegitimate offspring
of both YD Red fascism YD were lording it
over our minds. 

All this was possible for one reason and one reason only YD because
the President of the United States
countenanced these things, encouraged them and in many cases sponsored
them, not because he was a
Communist or fascist or held definitely to any political system, but
because at the moment they contributed to
his own ambitions. 

When a nation is at war, its leaders are compelled by the necessities
of practical administration to use every
means at hand to sell the war to the people who must fight it and pay
for it. As part of that job it is usual to
include the leader himself in the package. He is therefore portrayed
in heroic proportions and colors in order to
command for his leadership the fullest measure of unity. War, as we
have seen, puts into the hands of a leader
control over the instruments of propaganda and opinion on an everYDincreasing
scale. In our day the press, the
radio, the movies, even the schoolroom and the pulpit are mobilized
to justify the war, to magnify the leader and
to intimidate his critics. The citizen who is hardy enough to question
the official version of the leader and his
policies may find himself labeled as a public enemy or even as a traitor.
Hence as the war proceeds, amidst all
the trappings which the art of theater can contribute, it is possible
to build up a vast fraud, with an
everYDmounting torrent of false news, false pictures, false eulogies
and false history. After every war many years
are required to reduce its great figures to their just proportions
and to bring the whole pretentious legend back
into focus with truth. 

the public was treated to the royal spectacles off the coast
of Newfoundland aboard the Augusta, at Quebec, Casablanca, Moscow,
Cairo, Teheran and finally at alta.
Eloquent communiques pretended to inform the people of what had been
agreed on.
We now know that these communiques told us little of what had happened;
that the whole story lay, for long,
behind a great curtain of secrecy; that much YD though not all YD has
now been painfully brought to light and that
what stands revealed is a story very different from that heroic chronicle
of triumphs with which we were regaled
at the time. 

As Roosevelt saw it, Stalin was his great target. He began by completely
deceiving himself about Stalin. First of
all, he decided he must cultivate Stalin's good will and to do this
he convinced himself he must sell Stalin to our
people. Accordingly the instruments of propaganda which he could influence
YD the radio and the movies and to
a considerable degree, the press YD were set to work upon the great
task. 

Under the influence of this benevolent atmosphere the Reds in New ork
and their compliant dupes, the
fellowYDtravelers, swarmed into Washington and presently were sitting
in positions of power or influence in the
policyYDmaking sections of the government. Joe Davies had been induced
to go to Moscow, wrote his notorious
"Mission to Moscow," a jumble of obvious fictions which were later
transferred to the screen several times
exaggerated and shot into millions of minds in movie houses. 

We know now from the election returns
of 1944 that the Reds had in their hands enough support to have turned
the tide against Roosevelt. In New
ork State, for instance, Roosevelt won its 47 electoral votes by a
majority of 317,000. But he got 825,000 votes
from the Red American Labor Party dominated by the Communists, which
had also nominated him, and the
American Liberal Party made up of the pinks, which also nominated him.
Without these votes he would have
lost the state. He dared not defy these two powerful groups. On the
other hand, he was in a very deep hole
with the votes of the Polish, Lithuanian, Serbian and other Baltic
and Balkan peoples living in America who
were citizens. He had betrayed the Poles, the Serbs and the Baltic
peoples. But he had managed to keep it dark.
Somehow he must avoid any publication of the truth until after the
election. 

They made a decision at Quebec which has up to this moment paralyzed
utterly the
making of a stable peace in Europe and is pregnant with consequences
so terrible for the future that the mind
draws away from them in consternation.

Secretary Hull said: "This was a plan of blind vengeance ... It failed
to see that in striking at Germany it was
striking at all Europe." The proposals "that the mines be ruined was
almost breathtaking in its implications for
all Europe."

Beyond all this, of course, was our dignity as a civilized
people. The barbarians could sweep into enemy countries and ravage
their fields, burn their cities and murder
their leaders. This is a job from which a civilized people must recoil
if they have not lost their souls.

Roosevelt agreed to the Morgenthau Plan to destroy German industry
and to reduce Germany to a country
primarily agricultural and pastoral. Secretaries Hull and Stimson did
not know anything about it until four days
after it was done. 

e the contents of the Morgenthau Plan leaked to the papers and
Roosevelt became alarmed at the violence of the reaction, a fine evidence
of the fundamentally decent nature of
the majority of Americans. 

In the end the President was persuaded to get out of this appalling
agreement so far as destroying the mines of
the Ruhr were concerned. But Stimson declares "the same attitude remained,"
and the whole world now knows
of the frightful wreckage that was carried on in Germany and the blow
to the economy of all Europe that was
delivered in the name of "blind vengeance" and immortal hatred. 

The administration was now the hopeless prisoner of these demanding
and ruthless radical labor
leaders, who had shown their ability to elect or defeat the Democratic
party, who had filled all the departments
and bureaus with their agents and who had insinuated their experts
into the CIO labor unions and their
propagandists into the radio, the movies and all the great instruments
of communication and opinion YD a fact
which Mr. Roosevelt's successors would have to face when the war ended.

What had become of the Atlantic Charter? On December 20, 1944, the
President at a press conference was
asked about the Charter which he and Churchill had signed. His reply
literally bowled over the correspondents.
There was not and never had been a complete Atlantic Charter signed
by him and Churchill, he replied. Then
where is the Charter now, he was asked. He replied: "There wasn't any
copy of the Atlantic Charter so far as I
know." It was just a press release. It was scribbled on a piece of
paper by him and Churchill and Sumner Welles
and Sir Alexander Cadogan. It was just handed to the radio operator
aboard the British and American warships
to put on the air as a news release. Further inquiry revealed that
Stephen Early had handed it out on his own
with the signatures of Churchill and Roosevelt attached. And over on
the wall of the National Museum in
Washington, beautifully framed and illuminated after the manner of
an ancient document YD like Magna Carta or
the Declaration of Independence YD was the great Atlantic Charter itself,
with the signatures of Roosevelt and
Churchill. Daily visitors stood before it as before some great historic
document. John O'Donnell, of the New
ork Daily News, asked the curator where he got it. He answered that
it came from the Office of War
Information. They had "loaned" the precious document to the National
Museum. By inquiry at the OWI YD that
prolific fountain of phony news YD O'Donnell learned that OWI had gotten
it up and affixed the names of
Roosevelt and Churchill. They had printed 240,000 copies of it. O'Donnell
went back to the Museum with this
information. And lo! the great Charter was gone. An attendant told
him it had been ordered off the wall twenty
minutes before. Thus ended the story of this wretched fraud. The fake
document which was never signed and
was nothing more than a publicity stunt to conceal the real purposes
of the Atlantic meeting had been slain by
its chief sponsor and, of course, all its highYDsounding professions,
after Teheran, had become as sounding
brass or a tinkling cymbal. 

On January 20, 1945, Roosevelt was sworn in as President of the United
States for a fourth term. Three days
later he left Norfolk on the heavy cruiser Quincy for what was to be
his last act in the hapless drama of peace.