The sight of elderly wedded couples dwelling in mutual devotion sometimes impels one to think of their early loves. In the present case the spectacle of Mr. Churchill’s government wedded to Stalin’s, and Mr. Roosevelt’s in violable word mixed into it; in short, this triangual Darby and Joan of the three hebraicized governments leads one to look back at the forgotten incidents of their courtship.
In particular, the love feasts between our American Reds and Moscow in vite beautific contemplation. Our idealists loved Moscow while Mr. Churchill was still playing the bashful Swain. In fact he was scowling at Stalin, and from the incomprehension of his eternal love for the Moscovites he was being not only sulky, but insulting. So with true love. Never, Never, NEVER would he come and kiss the Russian Joan under the sickle and mistletoe.
Our own American Trade Unionists were more oncoming. They LIKED the bud of Russian promise. Ref. Worker’s Library No. 3 bearing the dim and lavender date: Sept. 9, 1927.
Jay Lovestone (né possibly Liebstein) on the first page of amorous paean inscribes the luminous words “THE establishment of the 7-hour day in Russia.” Well that’s far off enough and long enough before the Stakhelevites, and Mr. Lovestone is very hard on the American Federation of Labor. “Reactionary trade union bureaucrats” he call’s ’em.
And in that memorable day an’ year our dewey-eyed workers (trade unionists and idealists) technical advisors they figger in the catalog, Brophy, R.W. [?] Dunn, C.H. Douglas, Rex Tugwell, Stuart Chase, a lot, as you see, of brawny fellows who had used either the hammer or sickle in daily life, went over to visit the Kumrad. And apart from the general, as op posed to the specific nature of the answers, the kumrad didn’t do so bad. The questions being rather more nebulous and UNspecific than the answers. How could the debonair murderer get down very near to brass tacks in his answers ?
After all Marx was pretty good at history and diagnosis. Nobody on the Axis side denies that Marx discovered several genuine faults in the usury system.
All we ask is a way to CURE ’em. And the torture chambers in most countries where Stalin’s power has reached, and in a few embassies where he had been unable to get control of the total police force, rather indicate that the Boishie system never got UNIVERSAL approval from its victims.
However, when next dining with Rabbi Lehman, or Scholem Mosestha and the rest of the international bankers, spring a few pages of the kumrad’s answers between the caviar and the pheasant and see if it don’t enliven the dinner.
Sure Stalin approves of Marx and Engels wantin’ to take ECONOMIC, political, cultural and organizational measures. And seem’ as he put ’em in that order, you would expect me to fall for it ?
ECONOMIC first. Of course the Bolshies didn’t. Any party that comes into power, probably puts ORGANIZATIONAL measures first, and the economics belong, alas to the almost inaccessible part of culture. So FEW people seem able to grasp simple economics without, as Senator Bankhead remarked, about three centuries delay.
Three centuries, to get people to understand anything about anything havin’ to do with money. An’ it is now demonstrated on the corpus vilis of British reformers’ hopes that very little economic reform gets into practice without precedent organizational and political measures of an almost earth shaking nature. A curious phrase about “reconstruct capitalist society” must belong to the translator. I don’t want to pin that on Joseph, tho’ mebbe that was part of his muddle. I am far less concerned with Joe’s lacunae than with a few clear positive statements. Joe said he was aware that “a number of capitalist governments are controlled by big banks,” notwithstanding the existence of “democratic” parliaments.
Not bad for a Georgian assassin. And possibly several decades ahead of the American public and professoriat. Not a single power in which the Cabinet can be formed in opposition to the will of the big financial magnates. I wonder: is that why they took Joe for a ride ?
“It is sufficient to exert financial pressure to cause Cabinet Ministers to fall from their posts as if they were stunned.”
Joey was talkin’ of European cabinets; not of the so very different American DEMocracy (as they call it) etc. where, unless there is absolute surety that financial pressure won’t be used, the blighters seldom or never get in. Joe SAID that the control of government by money-bags is inconceivable and absolutely excluded in the U.S.S.R. How different from the home life of our own DEMOCRACY (as they call it), etc. and how different from anything any British politician has ever encountered, and how different from any state of things that Churchill’s group would desire.
“Narrow circle” said Joe of individuals connected in one way or another with the large banks and because of that they strive to conceal the part they play in this from the people.
What a PERFECT ally for Churchill, Morgenthau, Lehman, and the present Anglo-Jewish regimes ! Well, the starry eyed Mr. Tugwell, and the cautious Mr. Chase and Jim Maurer and Brophy took it all down hook, line and sinker. Seven hour day and the rest of it. It was a stirring occasion. The only thing is that the idealist’s ideals have got going so much faster and gone so much further. The Axis side of the present hard feelings.
Here the TRADE UNIONS, with their syndic. organization, and their recognized legal status whereby they propose, formulate, and GET what they want in Italy is really of so much MORE interest for any member of ANY trade union, or for any leader of labor who cares a hang about the welfare of the led that one only hopes the American trade unionist will someday read Por, or at least read something about Italian organizational measures.
The Stalin interview is a tough piece of reading, very hard to take hold of. That was probably the secret of his hold—plenty of people who KNOW Russia have been puzzled by the gap between their effective propaganda and their local failure in solving human problems. I believe the human material they had to work on explains part of the latter. I mean why they did NOT make a paradise, but mostly a sweat shop—machines before men—men as material. But the other side, the devilish efficiency of their propaganda, is worth study.
And it seems to be a variant on the old political wheeze of sticking to general statements that each auditor interprets to mean what HE would mean IF he said it.
And now for contrast, close harmony, let us look at a recent emission from Joe’s faithful companion, fellow idealist, and pledged ally, Mr. N.M. Butler. On June 3, 1941, year current, as delivered at the commencement of Columbia University, when Ole Nick was awaitin’ another Waterloo, and as is common with his kind, he wasn’t puttin’ it in the first person singular. Nick wanted Americans to go fight for the British exploiters; so he said “THE WORLD” etc. In this case THE WORLD (meaning Nick and his pay masters). The World he sez, awaits another Waterloo. And on the fifth page it turns out he meant a defeat of Hitler!! Which might be called “metonomy” or takin’ a part for the “whole,” and not the better whole either.
Now the WORLD, as any college president ought to know, before the trustees pay him his fat annual salary, is spherical in form, and is composed of MORE than one continent, and not wholly and totally enraptured with the big usury central.
However let Nick Butler speak for himself, as he has never failed to do in all his oleaginous lifetime.
Several pages of the old scamp’s palaver contain statements by which no right thinking man would be offended. The slabs of print, the page undivided by paragraph divisions, tends to lull the reader or auditor into security.
Mr. Butler even disapproves (mildly, of course) of the “controlling desire for gain,” alias our old enemy the profit motive. Of course he keeps off the specific MEANS of gain, exercised by his owners. He then pays a delicate compliment to Lord Holy Fox, without committing himself, in fact nothing could be more downy.
The FIRST Lord Halifax, unaided by his charming and formidable Lady, said there were three hundred years ago many things that riches cannot buy. Therefore the American boys should bleed for the present Lord Holy Fox. Now Ole Nick don’t go as far back as all that, he stops back in the 17th Century; before Robert Cecil was so vigorous in defense of the British OPIUM interests in Shanghai.
Victory for a moral ideal is not enough, according to Nicholas, because the “gain-seeking interest has control of so vast a proportion of mankind.” That is true enough, but it ain’t reduced the moral ideal to ABSOLUTE impotence. This is what was worrying Butler; but he hadn’t got down to bed rock. He said there was a time, back apparently when Mark Hanna was running the United State of America, when the moral ideal was to all appearances gainin’ ground.
Of course if by that he means that some empires were GAINING territory, he might have said so, only he didn’t. Ole Nicholas puts the rise of the triumph, real or apparent, the IDEAL, from the McKinley to the Wealsohn administration.
Note of HOpe and progress.
In 1910, the American Congress was unanimous for the moral principle (so long as no questions were asked about the privileges of the usury central). Nic complains that the moral ideal has disappeared in all that has to do with international relations.
Which shows the state of DEEP ignorance in the WORLD; as distinct from Nicholas Butler’s circle or pot.
And lookin’ at dates, he must have been blurrin’ this blurb the same week that a Chinaman, not of Wang Ching Wei’s party, but of Chiang Kai-shek’s party, and FAITHFUL to Chiang, saying what Hitler’s justice in scuttling international affairs was such that the Chinese of the ANTI-JAP, anti-Wang party might accept Hitler’s arbitrage.
Mr. Butler then seems to fall into incoherence. He talks of a PLEDGE as something to be kept; what price, England, Churchill, and Roosevelt ? He objects to having the savings of generations swept away; he asks what has become of the influence of and guidance of the great religions; Christian, Mosel, HEBREW, and Buddhist, and begorrah, of Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, leaving out St. Ambrose and St. Antonio da Firenze, and graciously waivin’ a hand to the captains of the mind, Spanish, Italian, French, English, German. And of course Abraham Lincoln, not quoting old Abe on the currency issue. And then barbarous brutality, without mention of Esthonia, Finland, or places occupied by the— —Bustin of churches and museums. Wot price Louvain and Cyrenaica ? And all this “However dark the skies,” etc. ends up with a historic parallel; the WORLD waitin’ for a new Vaterloo; because Napolean BonypartY went into Russia, and if Hitler ain’t licked in Europe, it will come in Asia or Africa. Well that is a bad slip, because Knox and Stimson, etc. are retching for to rape Africa. But at any rate you git a picture of Nicholas, and METONOMY or takin’ a part for the HOLE. A figger of Rhetorik sez Sam Johnson, whereby one word is put for another.
Now if Butler, the old goof, wants me to give him a clean bill of health, he can use the enormous power conferred on him by his position, to get Columbia University to issue a series of volumes containing the GIST of the beliefs and knowledge of John Adams, Jefferson, Jackson, Van Buren, and Lincoln. NOT leaving out every phrase and paragraph which I, and men like me, consider vital to the understanding of American history.
EZRA POUND SPEAKING 