It does not set out any
advantages
of Basic English to those who choose to go on from the start Ogden made.
Ezra-Pound-Speaking
Of course, some of its components will have been spared.
A Scandinavian once said to me, "There aren't any Scandinavians who would put his money into gold mines.
" He said to me, "Republican Party, hell.
14 Jews on their committee.
" If there were six, they would be running the whole of it.
And some members would have been satisfied, perhaps like Knox and Stimson, they would be burned on the seats of the cushion.
But the old equine members, the old horses of battle, the lesser orders of the Republican Party will be way out in the cornfield.
The Demi's will deflate on their own.
And the name of the new [abattoir?
] will be called the world's uniform currency.
To be managed on the interests of whom?
The Republicans are not the sole goat.
England is one goat.
Thirty-two other nations are being sheparded toward shearing field and the slaughter house.
Gold and more gold.
Those among you who sold business short and went into national bonds will come home again.
The dollars that were sent abroad to buy gold will come again, worth twice or more than they were at the rate of export, and Democracy shall be holy.
Mr. Morgenthau or Bill Solomon-Isaacs Smith may replace Mr. Wallace as the white-haired, the oncoming darling. You may at least have openly and avowedly at last have a full-blooded circumsized kike in the White House to celebrate annually the defeat of Jim Blaine. Mr. Hoover will be given a post of honor as bellboy's assistant [maid? ] in the Senate or
? something, as a reward for long and infamous service to financiers. But the old party will be no more. Ham Fish will be reduced to the status of a Shindwell in England. Mr. Vandenburg will retire, and the universal gold standard, the price of foodstuffs, and clothing fluctuating in Fall River and Sweden will reign from Kentucky to Cawnpore, if you are still in possession of Cawnpore. And the war with Russia will be imminent and stay imminent until it breaks out.
But in the meantime there will be hot money to be made in providing Russia with the latest tanks and armaments. But there is or should be grief in Republican circles, because the banker's conspiracy, the-- -- wheel, the control of currency wheel, is a game to be manipulated right in the Democratic circle, right in our Democratic party's home circle, and perhaps Hymie has his eye on the White House. After all, between one Henry or another, what does it matter? Henry the seventh, Henry the eighth, both of them Tudors, both of them in the tradition. Henry or Hank, the Vice-President Hymie or Henry, the Vice President Henry or Henry Heinie Ben Morgenthau ben Solomon Isaac, what does it matter? Both parties have sinned. And now the Republicans are in for another skin deal, but it is their pelt that is up at auction. All hail the Soviet Paradise. The American slave state is to be elected on gold, under gold, and there will be still more unemployment, more than anything else you've been used to, only less of it, while the leading Republicans who are elderly men may find it hard to adjust themselves to a rapid and wicked world. Perhaps it's-- --that they should stear toward their graves. They did not hear the engine squeal. Perhaps [Ford? ] will be your next President.
#99 (June 19, 1943) U. S. (C43) WAR AIMS
You do not know WHAT you are fighting for. Europe considers you complete swine to be making war on Europe at all; and considers you
? utter asses to be diddled by the Morgenthau, Lehman combine, Seligman, Rosenman and the rest of it.
And you lose your OWN liberties faster than you deprive Europe of hers, or at least that's what it looks like.
Prosperity, American prosperity was just 'round the corner, and American prosperity has gone down the drain. Hasn't it? Mebbe your press tells you different; but in that case why is it so hard to get American papers? One bit of paper still has some life in it. I don't want to exaggerate. But looks like as if somebody out in Colorado (ColorAAAdo) had a brainwave. AMENDMENT. Three fourths of the states have to amend it. Is there a part still left of the old machinery that hasn't been rusted and rotted by Jews? Five states, very little. Straw in the wind. But I heard Illinois was amongst 'em. Mebbe it is just Schenectady hooey. Five is a long way from 36. Mebbe it is just a display of emotion. Locking the door after the blighter has got into the stable and taken out all the bran, oats and barley.
I could suggest a whole flock of amendments, as well as enforcements. In fact it is difficult to see how an amendment would be able to act where the text itself doesn't. I say difficult, not impossible. The text is known (to those who have the patience to read it, possibly one 1/100th of the denizens). They forget it, save in a few western states. I think somebody in Dakoty once read it. The Constitution. However that don't mean that a new amendment wouldn't get enough publicity to prevent a vast movement to suspend the amendment in favor of Trilby. Yes, yes, his middle name is Trilby, he writes it Franklin T. Roosevelt.
However, the removal of one hypnotized lunkus, for the sake of inserting another hypnotized lunkus or rabbit, might not bring total salvation, might not bring sudden salvation.
? And prosperity was just 'round the corner, and now it is out guarding Persian railroads, Iran, used to be Persia. Now it is part of the Soviet Russia, with American troops guarding the railways in order to bring the good life to Arkansas. Looks like Montana had slipped into Texas, and the American people ate loco-weed, in default of canned goods from Mr. Armour.
Do you YET sigh for the good old days, when you could write letters uncensored, or telegraph to Mama, without having a permit? I told you, I dun told you communications would be difficult. No American boys will be sent to die on foreign fields. O Ma, O American Mama, did you hear your beloved Franklin Trilby singing that operetta?
Now I repeat to you, I go on repeating to you that when Bryan, W. J. B. , met Mr. Kitson, he said that the silver was ballyhood, to cover a deeper issue? A more basic issue, namely control of the national credit.
Well if credit is a mystery, shall we call it the power to buy? You know what the power to BUY is?
And second justice is measured by the way that the power to buy is divided between the citizens or inhabitants of a nation
And the idea of having a Congress in the beginning was that the Congress should keep an eye on JUST that component of the life, they meant it to be the GOOD life, of the nation.
And they sought out many inventions. That is history. They, that is, a gang of 'em sought out ways to diddle the people. And for 80 years the AMERICAN people resisted the wangles, in one way or another.
And now you certainly should vote for that amendment. No president to sit for more than eight years Robbing the people or presiding with a wealth of blather and falsehood over the depredations committed by the Jews in his treasury and the various other highly odorous swindles. The
? chief noise, the chief blather should be altered at least once in eight years but that ain't the arf of it deane. You need several amendments. And if Congress won t go on the air let the State Senators go on the air let the State Legislatures go on the air to compensate for the difficulties of communication, difficulties of communication by rail, by automobile, by gasless carriages, that were called horseless carriages once. You need a whole flock of amendments. You need state rights IN ACTION You need state rights put into effect put into practice UP TO the absoloot limit. I mean up to any length that don't mean dissolvin' the Union.
I say dissolvin' the Union, I don't mean the exclusion of Iran, Nepal, Bungalore, and Rhodesia from the benefits of Morgenthau's administration. One continent at a time. When you can trust the kahal, the Baruchs, the Rothschilds, Lehmans, Seligmans, Sassoons, and other importations ancient and modern from the sewers of Pal'stine, and the Ghettoes of Cawnpore, when you can trust the high kikery, high kahalery in Washington and the Bowery, and Fifth Avenue. What, only ten million yidds in America, said the American lady, why surely, why from 50th Street to 59th Street on Fifth Avenue, you hardly hear English spoken. She was a recent arrival in Rome, kicked out with her husband, who was European. Still IS European. Well, when you can trust these big noses to govern America, without enslaving and bleeding the Aryan population, mebbe it will be time to send your sturdy sons to die in the foreign desert and to collect dividends for Kuhn Loeb and Co. , in East Africa.
But in the meantime pass the amendment, pass a whole flock of amendments: let the individual states take a hand in governing and allotting the purchasing power of their OWN inhabitants. Let the producers eat of their produce.
Just 'round the corner, pie in the sky. Where ARE your pathologists? Henceforth, as it can be retroactive, as you did not put him away, henceforth, grow wise by experience, and when any man refrains from,
? when any man eschews peace IN the present tense on the excuse that he wants to prevent his great grandchildren having a war, send for the DOCTOR, don't send for Rosenman, send for the doctor, for a responsible doctor.
And study the development of criminal process, say from the time of the Dreyfus case to the present. Where, for example, did the gangsters get their system of getting criminals OUT of quo.
That is no novelty. Which of you has studied the development of the technique of gangster organization?
#100, FCC Transcript (June 20, 1943) U. K. (C45) [ON BRAINS OR MEDULLA]
They murmured of money. It wasn't very enlightening. It was almost as if they wanted to free themselves of the reproach of never having mentioned the subject. And they also mentioned the universal language -- --name has been breathed into the ambient British air. I miss it. Wealth had something to do with the bread price. Perhaps England is waking. Perhaps certain persons and topics were apparently out of the silent zone into the zone of calumny. That is the usual kindly process. First ten or more years of silence, then the decade of calumny. So in twenty years one can collect on the invested capital and when the hoax has been exposed, Mr. Ike-- --is already in some other line of business. They call it business. Now Esperanto and Basic English are both unsatisfactory. Any language is unsatisfactory. Any language is unsatisfactory if you have to cut down the thought to fit a very restrictive means of expression.
If the Brain Trust or any other group of permitted persons is serious on the subject of inter-communications between the different peoples,
? people who use different languages, they might, however, let bygones be bygones and consider the scheme which I broached in the JAPAN TIMES, on May 17, 1940 (or was it '39? ): Namely, the trilingual system. The JAPAN TIMES gave good display to the article. It was certainly above the conflict. The Brain Trust scheme seems to ignore the Orient altogether. My scheme was impartial. It contained one Axis language, one anti-Axis language, and one Oriental language, or other means of communication.
I was considering civilization at large, and a means of full communication, not merely a commercial stenography. I believe it would be about as simple to learn to write in a foreign tongue as to restrict oneself to Ogden's basic English vocabulary. That may be because I have written in French and Italian, and have not worried about keeping inside a restricted vocabulary.
My proposal was, as I say, tri-lingual. Italian, English, and ideogram. That is, Chinese ideogram used as a written tongue, but with Japanese pronunciation. That gives you the languages of Confucius, Shakespeare, and Dante. There is no sentiment in this selection. You say the Germans would never accept this. That is, you don't say so because you are quite crazy in talking of re-educating nations which are far more educated than you are. I believe our Germans would place unsentimental reasons first, the Germans are more diligent than other men, great numbers of them habitually-- --. Secondly, my opinion is-- --I omitted the German language, because that language retains more inflections than the three languages I selected.
I say, ideogram with Japanese pronunciation, because almost no foreigner can pronounce Chinese properly, let alone manage the tones, because the pronunciation varies with the different regions of China, and because I find no agreements as how the sounds, such as one can understand, or really hear, should be transcribed in our alphabet. Whereas the Japanese is phonetically simple as the Italian, whose sounds
? in many ways they resemble. I say Italian, not French, not merely for political reasons. French is hell to pronounce. You have to screw up your nose for the nasals. Apart from the political, Italian is spoken like she is writ. No monkey business. Every letter is pronounced in the same way wherever it occurs. The only apparent exception is the c and ch before a and o. Before a and o, c is hard and before i and e it is soft. The hard sound is written ch before i and e. But the spelling is uniform and follows in all cases and there are no-- --.
I would suggest that the Japanese sign for the syllables, for the sound of the syllables, be transliterated to the Roman alphabet when they accompany the ideogram. Let me explain. The written Chinese is common in both Japan and China. All those written signs are the same for Japan and all China. Anyone who reads them in one place knows what they mean in another. It is the common tongue or common written tongue for all those millions.
As English, with its variants is common to England, and the United States, and is a lingua franca for India. I take into account distribution. The number of people who already know each of the languages mentioned. It is as easy to learn Italian as to learn Esperanto. It does not cut the fingers and toes off any one's thought. And that can be borne out by anyone of the hundred Englishmen who have studied with Professor Morelli. It is high time you looked into his methods. But apart from Morelli's methods, based on words almost identical in the two languages or at least perfectly recognizable as from English to Italian or from Italian to English, Italian is the simplest descendent from Latin.
Latin, the universal stronghold of European snobs for nearly 2000 years. Italian is clearer than Latin, you might say maturer than Latin. They boasted-- --translated-- --using fewer words in his Italian version than are used in the Latin original. Intelligent auditors can go on with his talk -- --. The intelligent auditor ought to be able to think of objections and answer them. The Brain Trust, if it weren't utterly frivolous, would take
? up the subject. It is a non-political subject. It is outside the conflict. It has to do with the possible future.
It does not set out any advantages of Basic English to those who choose to go on from the start Ogden made. But Ogden is too lazy to think of any developments, on his first outline. He hadn't even got the-- --or to the introductory notes on the [Fenollosa? ] essay notes on the written character.
I offer this as a challenge. If the Brain Trust is just one more part of the present system, as Chesterton has defined it, an instrument to blot out the public memory, an instrument for destroying the public memory, said G. K. C. when he wrote----December, 1939, in his weekly. Blotting out the past so that people shall not learn from it, distracting them from present realities with a mirage of an impossible future. Well, the break from Italian to English is very short if you follow Morelli, or from English to Italian. That makes the universal language for Europe, a double language, not only of commerce but of culture. The fear of the ideogram is due largely to ignorance. I have followed Fenollosa and the tract is most thorny. He needs more printed manuals such as I have begun to print here, in my edition of The Great Learning, the Testament of Confucius.
And anyhow, when you people talk of a one language system, you mean mostly one language for Europe and America. Very few of you think of the rest at all.
#101 (June 22, 1943) U. S. (C64) STALIN
"The first contradiction is the antagonism between labor and capital," wrote Stalin 21 years ago. "Imperialism is the export of capital to the sources of raw materials," wrote Mr. Stalin, 21 years ago, in his highly vivacious little brochure, "The Foundations of Leninism. "
? Tsarist Russia was an immense reserve force for western imperialism, not only in that it gave free entry to foreign capital which controlled decisive branches of Russian economy like fuel and metallurgy, but also that it could furnish millions of soldiers to the western imperialists.
Russian army, 12 million strong; shed its blood on imperialist fronts to safeguard the staggering profits of Anglo-French capitalists. Tsarism was the agent of western imperialism in squeezing hundreds of millions from the population by way of interest on loans floated in Paris, London, etc. , faithful ally in partitioning Turkey, Persia, China, etc. Was not Russia an essential factor in this war? Joe is speaking of the war that had occurred before he wrote his little brochure. As to this war: some estimates give 30 million as the cost to Russia, 30 million human lives.
The Leninist theory of the proletarian revolution is based on three fundamental issues.
First thesis, the domination of finance capital in the advanced capitalist countries, the issue of stocks and bonds as the principal operation of finance capital, the export of capital to the sources of raw materials, which is one of the bases of imperialism, the OMNIPOTENCE of a financial oligarchy, a consequence of the dominations of financial capital. All these reveal the crudely parasitic character of monopolist capitalism, make the yoke of the capitalist trusts and syndicates 100 times more burdensome.
Perhaps Col. McCormick had better get the pamphlet and read it. Tenth anniversary edition, International Publishers, 100,000 copies at 10 cents, probably reprinted dozens of times during the past decade, as they will have already celebrated a 20th anniversary.
The Col. has heard recently, i. e. , in the course of the early spring of this year, of the American Constitution. I dunno whether he has yet passed the stages of his beardless youth, eh, the MENTAL stages. If he had
? been a serious character SOONER, he would have used his enormous printing space for the reprint of the thought of the American founders, Adams, Jefferson, Van Buren, and the distribution of the works of the Adams descendents. BUT he omitted it. And I don't 'spose he listens in to Rome radio. So somebody better tell him.
Twenty years ago Stalin was talkin' about self-criticisms within the proletarian parties, their education and instruction on the basis of their own mistakes. The proletariat, wrote Mr. Stalin, can not retain power if it does not possess adequate educated administrative cadres, ready for and capable of organizing the administration of the country. It's the question of the advance with seven-league strides to raise the cultural level that gives one pause. Instead of educatin' and teachin' the party true revolutionary tactics from a study of its own mistakes, we find a studied evasion of thorny questions, which are glossed over and veiled. "Left wing communism, and infantile discord," the words are not mine, but Lenin's.
Mr. Stalin said in regard to slogans and resolutions that it was enough to recall the history of the famous watchword "war against war," to realize the utter falsity and rottenness of the political processes of these parties which veil, etc. There really seems to have been little doubt as to Stalin's direction in 1922. His mind appears to have been remarkably clear.
The main query to be raised at this moment, when Mr. Stalin is undoubtedly as victorious INSIDE the U. S. and Britain, as U. S. particular interests are being in absorbing the flesh pots of Empire, (British empire first), the main query is as to the nature and direction of the evolution of revolution in the United States. I know it is exceedingly difficult to get a general idea into, let us say, Co. McCormick's head or Hamilton Fish's. Do we move toward REVOLUTION, as from man toward the amoeba, or do we move, or even desire to move toward an integration of the individual AS component of the general social scene?
? Do we want to be taken to pieces, separated into spare parts, quite spare and utterly separable, at the rate say of 30 million a shot, functioning at a lower level, or do we wish to maintain that complexity to which the human organism BIOLOGICALLY, BI/O/LOG/ICALLy has evolved during millennia, or however it did evolve?
Does the infantile disorder recognize that the homestead works better, or even might in certain conditions work better, function better than the kolkhoz? That is a superficial query. If the homestead displays a higher mechanical efficiency than the kolkhoz, how far should it be opposed? Can it be opposed as a matter of principle? In short, how protean is materialism anyway? Can it take on so new an aspect? Are the cadres gettin' educated seven-leagued enough for the circumstance? And after all, is a theory about the mutability of materialism any more binding than a signed contract?
I 'spect if the Colonel, Col. McCormick, is listening, or if anyone is kind enough to stenograph this discourse, the Col. is by now about all bawled up. Mebbe he is trying to ride on a party that just AIN'T guided by an advanced theory. What can one do with a country in which NEITHER party is literate? All this should hook onto S. Welles' pieties about economic aggression. But I am at the end of my time.
#102 (June 26, 1943) U. S. (C65) MATERIALISM
An idea is colored by what it is dipped in. Take for example the more or less Teutonic idea of materialism. Marx and Engels get to foolin' 'round with Hegel's philosophy, or something, and evolve or devolve what is called Marxian materialism, and it gets toted off into Russia. And after 25 years, what do we have? We have these howlin' Slavs: gone off on a purely metaphysical, typically Russian crusade. As crazy as any excess of the middle ages. Utterly OB/liv/i/ous of the material facts. That is to say, I suppose anyone will admit that the German workman is
? MATERIALLY better off than the Russian opposite number. Materially speakin', the factory reforms proposed by Robert Owen and the ideas of Hobhouse that Marx so approved of in fact all the British aims that caused Marx to write his Xth chapter Best chapter in Das Kapital so far as I am concerned. Well all that AIM, to get the workin' man decently fed, and clothed, and housed, and given decent livin conditions and hours of labor has we believe gone further in Germany than in Russia. Despite labels and programs.
I have heard it said that Germany has gone communist but nobody can accuse Europe of havin' gone RUSSIAN, or Germany of havin' gone Russian. Marx looked at England, and thought about Germany, and something got set loose in Russia into which country inspection has long been denied. For years nobody was supposed to LOOK at what actually happened. It was all metaphysical. Nice programs and dire results. And Russians certainly in ignorance of living conditions of working men elsewhere. What causes that? Maybe it is the material nature of the slavic animal or of the Tartar fanatic.
However look back at some of the words in the program Materialism: what does it mean? Are you for it? Are you for WHATEVER it means? Or do you on occasion like to know what you mean, or what you are shouting for? Are you a materialist WHATEVER it means, or are you a materialist only on condition that it means something in particular, something rather than something else?
George Santayana calls himself a materialist. It rather shocked old William James. Ole William told young George, he was younger at that stage of world history, that his, Santayana's philosophy was organized rottenness. I can not agree with fuzzy old James. It appears to me that George Santayana rather agrees with Thomas Aquinas. I mean the materialist Santayana ends up by writin' a book called The Realm of Spirit. I occasionally plunge into the work to calm my heated mind. I mean when I am not up to Confucius and Mencius. And Thomas
? Aquinas says somewhere that the soul is the first ACT of an organic body. Well, I ask George Santayana what THAT means. And he says entelechy, which seems to me to be dodgin' behind a Greek word. But anyhow, a materialist definition of the soul seems to be that it is the first act, or first action, or first condition of an organic body. Don't ASK me. I am merely trying to show how far the word or idea materialist can be stretched by people who play with abstractions. Marx's theory of value always seemed to me metaphysical.
But to get down to brass material tacks. Does a Marxian materialist prefer human conditions for labor to inhuman conditions? Do the actual material advances in the conditions of German working men count for anything in a material universe? Or does the Marxian materialist prefer the Russian enwarped and metaphysical state, wherein no one has a room of her own?
I think it matters. I think it is a question of administration, material administration. I am all for local control. The principle of local control has made some advances during the past weeks. I mean on paper, and in the aerial discussion. On paper, or in the air, the comintern has declared for local control or administration. But is that material or metaphysical? I think it matters very much WHO administers. I think the future of any party, communist or other, in the U. S. A. depends very greatly on the men, on the personality of the men who CONTROL it. I am all for responsibility, personal responsibility. I fail to see what PRINCIPLE of materialism or metaphysicality has to do with the machine gunning of three year old kids. I fail to see where the invasion of one country by another hitches up to the program of any set of idealists, whether Moscovite or Democratic, i. e. , plutocratic. Does the dissolution of the Comintern mean that Moscow proposes that every nation should be administered by members OF that nation or race? That would be an interesting line of inquiry. The suppression for all material and practical purposes of nearly all South American government seems rather out of
? line, with this dissolution of international aspirations on the part of the comintern.
The nipping, not in the bud, but in the decayed and gangrenous remnants on London's usurocratic grasp on large parts of most continents is of course a spectacular play against the economic oppression (past tense of economic aggression) of the London plutocracy. That might be all to the good, if the U. S. hadn't decayed into something very like, or possibly worse than the British methods of the late 18th century, impression of seamen included. But in the oedeniatous decomposition of the U. S. plutocracy and usurocracy, what assurance has anyone, or what assurance is anyone in the U. S. trying to get, that the New Steal in the U. S. A. will be under local control?
There is really so much to say that I find it difficult to divide it up into ten minute samples. Are you heading for a RUSSIAN control of the U. S. , the U. S. of A. , or the U. S. of Europe? What assurance is anyone in the U. S. trying to obtain that Kansas and Illinois will be controlled in ANY way by denizens of those geographic parts of the American union?
Yes, I know, people are being sent out FROM the U. S. to take over control in ex-Persia, now labeled Iran, etc. and vast tracts of the ex- British oppressed dominions are fallin' under Wall St. control. But what is it MATERIALLY to the folks who have mortgaged their farms to the Milk Trust?
#103 (June 29, 1943) U. S. (C67) COMMUNIST MILLIONAIRES
Is Mr. Roosevelt a Communist? Is Mr. Lehman a Communist? Is Mr. Morgenthau a Communist, is Mr. Bullitt, or Sir V. Sassoon, and if not why not? And what becomes of their millions, what becomes of their private fortunes when Communism takes over control of the U. S. A. ? And if not, why not? And is the American Communist Party, now freed
? from the apron strings of the comintern, is the American Communist Party governed by Wall Street? And if not, WHY not? And if not, why this continual export of capital to places abroad?
And then there come these proposals, these money proposals, these starvation proposals, these restriction proposals.
Mr. Morgenthau or Bill Solomon-Isaacs Smith may replace Mr. Wallace as the white-haired, the oncoming darling. You may at least have openly and avowedly at last have a full-blooded circumsized kike in the White House to celebrate annually the defeat of Jim Blaine. Mr. Hoover will be given a post of honor as bellboy's assistant [maid? ] in the Senate or
? something, as a reward for long and infamous service to financiers. But the old party will be no more. Ham Fish will be reduced to the status of a Shindwell in England. Mr. Vandenburg will retire, and the universal gold standard, the price of foodstuffs, and clothing fluctuating in Fall River and Sweden will reign from Kentucky to Cawnpore, if you are still in possession of Cawnpore. And the war with Russia will be imminent and stay imminent until it breaks out.
But in the meantime there will be hot money to be made in providing Russia with the latest tanks and armaments. But there is or should be grief in Republican circles, because the banker's conspiracy, the-- -- wheel, the control of currency wheel, is a game to be manipulated right in the Democratic circle, right in our Democratic party's home circle, and perhaps Hymie has his eye on the White House. After all, between one Henry or another, what does it matter? Henry the seventh, Henry the eighth, both of them Tudors, both of them in the tradition. Henry or Hank, the Vice-President Hymie or Henry, the Vice President Henry or Henry Heinie Ben Morgenthau ben Solomon Isaac, what does it matter? Both parties have sinned. And now the Republicans are in for another skin deal, but it is their pelt that is up at auction. All hail the Soviet Paradise. The American slave state is to be elected on gold, under gold, and there will be still more unemployment, more than anything else you've been used to, only less of it, while the leading Republicans who are elderly men may find it hard to adjust themselves to a rapid and wicked world. Perhaps it's-- --that they should stear toward their graves. They did not hear the engine squeal. Perhaps [Ford? ] will be your next President.
#99 (June 19, 1943) U. S. (C43) WAR AIMS
You do not know WHAT you are fighting for. Europe considers you complete swine to be making war on Europe at all; and considers you
? utter asses to be diddled by the Morgenthau, Lehman combine, Seligman, Rosenman and the rest of it.
And you lose your OWN liberties faster than you deprive Europe of hers, or at least that's what it looks like.
Prosperity, American prosperity was just 'round the corner, and American prosperity has gone down the drain. Hasn't it? Mebbe your press tells you different; but in that case why is it so hard to get American papers? One bit of paper still has some life in it. I don't want to exaggerate. But looks like as if somebody out in Colorado (ColorAAAdo) had a brainwave. AMENDMENT. Three fourths of the states have to amend it. Is there a part still left of the old machinery that hasn't been rusted and rotted by Jews? Five states, very little. Straw in the wind. But I heard Illinois was amongst 'em. Mebbe it is just Schenectady hooey. Five is a long way from 36. Mebbe it is just a display of emotion. Locking the door after the blighter has got into the stable and taken out all the bran, oats and barley.
I could suggest a whole flock of amendments, as well as enforcements. In fact it is difficult to see how an amendment would be able to act where the text itself doesn't. I say difficult, not impossible. The text is known (to those who have the patience to read it, possibly one 1/100th of the denizens). They forget it, save in a few western states. I think somebody in Dakoty once read it. The Constitution. However that don't mean that a new amendment wouldn't get enough publicity to prevent a vast movement to suspend the amendment in favor of Trilby. Yes, yes, his middle name is Trilby, he writes it Franklin T. Roosevelt.
However, the removal of one hypnotized lunkus, for the sake of inserting another hypnotized lunkus or rabbit, might not bring total salvation, might not bring sudden salvation.
? And prosperity was just 'round the corner, and now it is out guarding Persian railroads, Iran, used to be Persia. Now it is part of the Soviet Russia, with American troops guarding the railways in order to bring the good life to Arkansas. Looks like Montana had slipped into Texas, and the American people ate loco-weed, in default of canned goods from Mr. Armour.
Do you YET sigh for the good old days, when you could write letters uncensored, or telegraph to Mama, without having a permit? I told you, I dun told you communications would be difficult. No American boys will be sent to die on foreign fields. O Ma, O American Mama, did you hear your beloved Franklin Trilby singing that operetta?
Now I repeat to you, I go on repeating to you that when Bryan, W. J. B. , met Mr. Kitson, he said that the silver was ballyhood, to cover a deeper issue? A more basic issue, namely control of the national credit.
Well if credit is a mystery, shall we call it the power to buy? You know what the power to BUY is?
And second justice is measured by the way that the power to buy is divided between the citizens or inhabitants of a nation
And the idea of having a Congress in the beginning was that the Congress should keep an eye on JUST that component of the life, they meant it to be the GOOD life, of the nation.
And they sought out many inventions. That is history. They, that is, a gang of 'em sought out ways to diddle the people. And for 80 years the AMERICAN people resisted the wangles, in one way or another.
And now you certainly should vote for that amendment. No president to sit for more than eight years Robbing the people or presiding with a wealth of blather and falsehood over the depredations committed by the Jews in his treasury and the various other highly odorous swindles. The
? chief noise, the chief blather should be altered at least once in eight years but that ain't the arf of it deane. You need several amendments. And if Congress won t go on the air let the State Senators go on the air let the State Legislatures go on the air to compensate for the difficulties of communication, difficulties of communication by rail, by automobile, by gasless carriages, that were called horseless carriages once. You need a whole flock of amendments. You need state rights IN ACTION You need state rights put into effect put into practice UP TO the absoloot limit. I mean up to any length that don't mean dissolvin' the Union.
I say dissolvin' the Union, I don't mean the exclusion of Iran, Nepal, Bungalore, and Rhodesia from the benefits of Morgenthau's administration. One continent at a time. When you can trust the kahal, the Baruchs, the Rothschilds, Lehmans, Seligmans, Sassoons, and other importations ancient and modern from the sewers of Pal'stine, and the Ghettoes of Cawnpore, when you can trust the high kikery, high kahalery in Washington and the Bowery, and Fifth Avenue. What, only ten million yidds in America, said the American lady, why surely, why from 50th Street to 59th Street on Fifth Avenue, you hardly hear English spoken. She was a recent arrival in Rome, kicked out with her husband, who was European. Still IS European. Well, when you can trust these big noses to govern America, without enslaving and bleeding the Aryan population, mebbe it will be time to send your sturdy sons to die in the foreign desert and to collect dividends for Kuhn Loeb and Co. , in East Africa.
But in the meantime pass the amendment, pass a whole flock of amendments: let the individual states take a hand in governing and allotting the purchasing power of their OWN inhabitants. Let the producers eat of their produce.
Just 'round the corner, pie in the sky. Where ARE your pathologists? Henceforth, as it can be retroactive, as you did not put him away, henceforth, grow wise by experience, and when any man refrains from,
? when any man eschews peace IN the present tense on the excuse that he wants to prevent his great grandchildren having a war, send for the DOCTOR, don't send for Rosenman, send for the doctor, for a responsible doctor.
And study the development of criminal process, say from the time of the Dreyfus case to the present. Where, for example, did the gangsters get their system of getting criminals OUT of quo.
That is no novelty. Which of you has studied the development of the technique of gangster organization?
#100, FCC Transcript (June 20, 1943) U. K. (C45) [ON BRAINS OR MEDULLA]
They murmured of money. It wasn't very enlightening. It was almost as if they wanted to free themselves of the reproach of never having mentioned the subject. And they also mentioned the universal language -- --name has been breathed into the ambient British air. I miss it. Wealth had something to do with the bread price. Perhaps England is waking. Perhaps certain persons and topics were apparently out of the silent zone into the zone of calumny. That is the usual kindly process. First ten or more years of silence, then the decade of calumny. So in twenty years one can collect on the invested capital and when the hoax has been exposed, Mr. Ike-- --is already in some other line of business. They call it business. Now Esperanto and Basic English are both unsatisfactory. Any language is unsatisfactory. Any language is unsatisfactory if you have to cut down the thought to fit a very restrictive means of expression.
If the Brain Trust or any other group of permitted persons is serious on the subject of inter-communications between the different peoples,
? people who use different languages, they might, however, let bygones be bygones and consider the scheme which I broached in the JAPAN TIMES, on May 17, 1940 (or was it '39? ): Namely, the trilingual system. The JAPAN TIMES gave good display to the article. It was certainly above the conflict. The Brain Trust scheme seems to ignore the Orient altogether. My scheme was impartial. It contained one Axis language, one anti-Axis language, and one Oriental language, or other means of communication.
I was considering civilization at large, and a means of full communication, not merely a commercial stenography. I believe it would be about as simple to learn to write in a foreign tongue as to restrict oneself to Ogden's basic English vocabulary. That may be because I have written in French and Italian, and have not worried about keeping inside a restricted vocabulary.
My proposal was, as I say, tri-lingual. Italian, English, and ideogram. That is, Chinese ideogram used as a written tongue, but with Japanese pronunciation. That gives you the languages of Confucius, Shakespeare, and Dante. There is no sentiment in this selection. You say the Germans would never accept this. That is, you don't say so because you are quite crazy in talking of re-educating nations which are far more educated than you are. I believe our Germans would place unsentimental reasons first, the Germans are more diligent than other men, great numbers of them habitually-- --. Secondly, my opinion is-- --I omitted the German language, because that language retains more inflections than the three languages I selected.
I say, ideogram with Japanese pronunciation, because almost no foreigner can pronounce Chinese properly, let alone manage the tones, because the pronunciation varies with the different regions of China, and because I find no agreements as how the sounds, such as one can understand, or really hear, should be transcribed in our alphabet. Whereas the Japanese is phonetically simple as the Italian, whose sounds
? in many ways they resemble. I say Italian, not French, not merely for political reasons. French is hell to pronounce. You have to screw up your nose for the nasals. Apart from the political, Italian is spoken like she is writ. No monkey business. Every letter is pronounced in the same way wherever it occurs. The only apparent exception is the c and ch before a and o. Before a and o, c is hard and before i and e it is soft. The hard sound is written ch before i and e. But the spelling is uniform and follows in all cases and there are no-- --.
I would suggest that the Japanese sign for the syllables, for the sound of the syllables, be transliterated to the Roman alphabet when they accompany the ideogram. Let me explain. The written Chinese is common in both Japan and China. All those written signs are the same for Japan and all China. Anyone who reads them in one place knows what they mean in another. It is the common tongue or common written tongue for all those millions.
As English, with its variants is common to England, and the United States, and is a lingua franca for India. I take into account distribution. The number of people who already know each of the languages mentioned. It is as easy to learn Italian as to learn Esperanto. It does not cut the fingers and toes off any one's thought. And that can be borne out by anyone of the hundred Englishmen who have studied with Professor Morelli. It is high time you looked into his methods. But apart from Morelli's methods, based on words almost identical in the two languages or at least perfectly recognizable as from English to Italian or from Italian to English, Italian is the simplest descendent from Latin.
Latin, the universal stronghold of European snobs for nearly 2000 years. Italian is clearer than Latin, you might say maturer than Latin. They boasted-- --translated-- --using fewer words in his Italian version than are used in the Latin original. Intelligent auditors can go on with his talk -- --. The intelligent auditor ought to be able to think of objections and answer them. The Brain Trust, if it weren't utterly frivolous, would take
? up the subject. It is a non-political subject. It is outside the conflict. It has to do with the possible future.
It does not set out any advantages of Basic English to those who choose to go on from the start Ogden made. But Ogden is too lazy to think of any developments, on his first outline. He hadn't even got the-- --or to the introductory notes on the [Fenollosa? ] essay notes on the written character.
I offer this as a challenge. If the Brain Trust is just one more part of the present system, as Chesterton has defined it, an instrument to blot out the public memory, an instrument for destroying the public memory, said G. K. C. when he wrote----December, 1939, in his weekly. Blotting out the past so that people shall not learn from it, distracting them from present realities with a mirage of an impossible future. Well, the break from Italian to English is very short if you follow Morelli, or from English to Italian. That makes the universal language for Europe, a double language, not only of commerce but of culture. The fear of the ideogram is due largely to ignorance. I have followed Fenollosa and the tract is most thorny. He needs more printed manuals such as I have begun to print here, in my edition of The Great Learning, the Testament of Confucius.
And anyhow, when you people talk of a one language system, you mean mostly one language for Europe and America. Very few of you think of the rest at all.
#101 (June 22, 1943) U. S. (C64) STALIN
"The first contradiction is the antagonism between labor and capital," wrote Stalin 21 years ago. "Imperialism is the export of capital to the sources of raw materials," wrote Mr. Stalin, 21 years ago, in his highly vivacious little brochure, "The Foundations of Leninism. "
? Tsarist Russia was an immense reserve force for western imperialism, not only in that it gave free entry to foreign capital which controlled decisive branches of Russian economy like fuel and metallurgy, but also that it could furnish millions of soldiers to the western imperialists.
Russian army, 12 million strong; shed its blood on imperialist fronts to safeguard the staggering profits of Anglo-French capitalists. Tsarism was the agent of western imperialism in squeezing hundreds of millions from the population by way of interest on loans floated in Paris, London, etc. , faithful ally in partitioning Turkey, Persia, China, etc. Was not Russia an essential factor in this war? Joe is speaking of the war that had occurred before he wrote his little brochure. As to this war: some estimates give 30 million as the cost to Russia, 30 million human lives.
The Leninist theory of the proletarian revolution is based on three fundamental issues.
First thesis, the domination of finance capital in the advanced capitalist countries, the issue of stocks and bonds as the principal operation of finance capital, the export of capital to the sources of raw materials, which is one of the bases of imperialism, the OMNIPOTENCE of a financial oligarchy, a consequence of the dominations of financial capital. All these reveal the crudely parasitic character of monopolist capitalism, make the yoke of the capitalist trusts and syndicates 100 times more burdensome.
Perhaps Col. McCormick had better get the pamphlet and read it. Tenth anniversary edition, International Publishers, 100,000 copies at 10 cents, probably reprinted dozens of times during the past decade, as they will have already celebrated a 20th anniversary.
The Col. has heard recently, i. e. , in the course of the early spring of this year, of the American Constitution. I dunno whether he has yet passed the stages of his beardless youth, eh, the MENTAL stages. If he had
? been a serious character SOONER, he would have used his enormous printing space for the reprint of the thought of the American founders, Adams, Jefferson, Van Buren, and the distribution of the works of the Adams descendents. BUT he omitted it. And I don't 'spose he listens in to Rome radio. So somebody better tell him.
Twenty years ago Stalin was talkin' about self-criticisms within the proletarian parties, their education and instruction on the basis of their own mistakes. The proletariat, wrote Mr. Stalin, can not retain power if it does not possess adequate educated administrative cadres, ready for and capable of organizing the administration of the country. It's the question of the advance with seven-league strides to raise the cultural level that gives one pause. Instead of educatin' and teachin' the party true revolutionary tactics from a study of its own mistakes, we find a studied evasion of thorny questions, which are glossed over and veiled. "Left wing communism, and infantile discord," the words are not mine, but Lenin's.
Mr. Stalin said in regard to slogans and resolutions that it was enough to recall the history of the famous watchword "war against war," to realize the utter falsity and rottenness of the political processes of these parties which veil, etc. There really seems to have been little doubt as to Stalin's direction in 1922. His mind appears to have been remarkably clear.
The main query to be raised at this moment, when Mr. Stalin is undoubtedly as victorious INSIDE the U. S. and Britain, as U. S. particular interests are being in absorbing the flesh pots of Empire, (British empire first), the main query is as to the nature and direction of the evolution of revolution in the United States. I know it is exceedingly difficult to get a general idea into, let us say, Co. McCormick's head or Hamilton Fish's. Do we move toward REVOLUTION, as from man toward the amoeba, or do we move, or even desire to move toward an integration of the individual AS component of the general social scene?
? Do we want to be taken to pieces, separated into spare parts, quite spare and utterly separable, at the rate say of 30 million a shot, functioning at a lower level, or do we wish to maintain that complexity to which the human organism BIOLOGICALLY, BI/O/LOG/ICALLy has evolved during millennia, or however it did evolve?
Does the infantile disorder recognize that the homestead works better, or even might in certain conditions work better, function better than the kolkhoz? That is a superficial query. If the homestead displays a higher mechanical efficiency than the kolkhoz, how far should it be opposed? Can it be opposed as a matter of principle? In short, how protean is materialism anyway? Can it take on so new an aspect? Are the cadres gettin' educated seven-leagued enough for the circumstance? And after all, is a theory about the mutability of materialism any more binding than a signed contract?
I 'spect if the Colonel, Col. McCormick, is listening, or if anyone is kind enough to stenograph this discourse, the Col. is by now about all bawled up. Mebbe he is trying to ride on a party that just AIN'T guided by an advanced theory. What can one do with a country in which NEITHER party is literate? All this should hook onto S. Welles' pieties about economic aggression. But I am at the end of my time.
#102 (June 26, 1943) U. S. (C65) MATERIALISM
An idea is colored by what it is dipped in. Take for example the more or less Teutonic idea of materialism. Marx and Engels get to foolin' 'round with Hegel's philosophy, or something, and evolve or devolve what is called Marxian materialism, and it gets toted off into Russia. And after 25 years, what do we have? We have these howlin' Slavs: gone off on a purely metaphysical, typically Russian crusade. As crazy as any excess of the middle ages. Utterly OB/liv/i/ous of the material facts. That is to say, I suppose anyone will admit that the German workman is
? MATERIALLY better off than the Russian opposite number. Materially speakin', the factory reforms proposed by Robert Owen and the ideas of Hobhouse that Marx so approved of in fact all the British aims that caused Marx to write his Xth chapter Best chapter in Das Kapital so far as I am concerned. Well all that AIM, to get the workin' man decently fed, and clothed, and housed, and given decent livin conditions and hours of labor has we believe gone further in Germany than in Russia. Despite labels and programs.
I have heard it said that Germany has gone communist but nobody can accuse Europe of havin' gone RUSSIAN, or Germany of havin' gone Russian. Marx looked at England, and thought about Germany, and something got set loose in Russia into which country inspection has long been denied. For years nobody was supposed to LOOK at what actually happened. It was all metaphysical. Nice programs and dire results. And Russians certainly in ignorance of living conditions of working men elsewhere. What causes that? Maybe it is the material nature of the slavic animal or of the Tartar fanatic.
However look back at some of the words in the program Materialism: what does it mean? Are you for it? Are you for WHATEVER it means? Or do you on occasion like to know what you mean, or what you are shouting for? Are you a materialist WHATEVER it means, or are you a materialist only on condition that it means something in particular, something rather than something else?
George Santayana calls himself a materialist. It rather shocked old William James. Ole William told young George, he was younger at that stage of world history, that his, Santayana's philosophy was organized rottenness. I can not agree with fuzzy old James. It appears to me that George Santayana rather agrees with Thomas Aquinas. I mean the materialist Santayana ends up by writin' a book called The Realm of Spirit. I occasionally plunge into the work to calm my heated mind. I mean when I am not up to Confucius and Mencius. And Thomas
? Aquinas says somewhere that the soul is the first ACT of an organic body. Well, I ask George Santayana what THAT means. And he says entelechy, which seems to me to be dodgin' behind a Greek word. But anyhow, a materialist definition of the soul seems to be that it is the first act, or first action, or first condition of an organic body. Don't ASK me. I am merely trying to show how far the word or idea materialist can be stretched by people who play with abstractions. Marx's theory of value always seemed to me metaphysical.
But to get down to brass material tacks. Does a Marxian materialist prefer human conditions for labor to inhuman conditions? Do the actual material advances in the conditions of German working men count for anything in a material universe? Or does the Marxian materialist prefer the Russian enwarped and metaphysical state, wherein no one has a room of her own?
I think it matters. I think it is a question of administration, material administration. I am all for local control. The principle of local control has made some advances during the past weeks. I mean on paper, and in the aerial discussion. On paper, or in the air, the comintern has declared for local control or administration. But is that material or metaphysical? I think it matters very much WHO administers. I think the future of any party, communist or other, in the U. S. A. depends very greatly on the men, on the personality of the men who CONTROL it. I am all for responsibility, personal responsibility. I fail to see what PRINCIPLE of materialism or metaphysicality has to do with the machine gunning of three year old kids. I fail to see where the invasion of one country by another hitches up to the program of any set of idealists, whether Moscovite or Democratic, i. e. , plutocratic. Does the dissolution of the Comintern mean that Moscow proposes that every nation should be administered by members OF that nation or race? That would be an interesting line of inquiry. The suppression for all material and practical purposes of nearly all South American government seems rather out of
? line, with this dissolution of international aspirations on the part of the comintern.
The nipping, not in the bud, but in the decayed and gangrenous remnants on London's usurocratic grasp on large parts of most continents is of course a spectacular play against the economic oppression (past tense of economic aggression) of the London plutocracy. That might be all to the good, if the U. S. hadn't decayed into something very like, or possibly worse than the British methods of the late 18th century, impression of seamen included. But in the oedeniatous decomposition of the U. S. plutocracy and usurocracy, what assurance has anyone, or what assurance is anyone in the U. S. trying to get, that the New Steal in the U. S. A. will be under local control?
There is really so much to say that I find it difficult to divide it up into ten minute samples. Are you heading for a RUSSIAN control of the U. S. , the U. S. of A. , or the U. S. of Europe? What assurance is anyone in the U. S. trying to obtain that Kansas and Illinois will be controlled in ANY way by denizens of those geographic parts of the American union?
Yes, I know, people are being sent out FROM the U. S. to take over control in ex-Persia, now labeled Iran, etc. and vast tracts of the ex- British oppressed dominions are fallin' under Wall St. control. But what is it MATERIALLY to the folks who have mortgaged their farms to the Milk Trust?
#103 (June 29, 1943) U. S. (C67) COMMUNIST MILLIONAIRES
Is Mr. Roosevelt a Communist? Is Mr. Lehman a Communist? Is Mr. Morgenthau a Communist, is Mr. Bullitt, or Sir V. Sassoon, and if not why not? And what becomes of their millions, what becomes of their private fortunes when Communism takes over control of the U. S. A. ? And if not, why not? And is the American Communist Party, now freed
? from the apron strings of the comintern, is the American Communist Party governed by Wall Street? And if not, WHY not? And if not, why this continual export of capital to places abroad?
And then there come these proposals, these money proposals, these starvation proposals, these restriction proposals.
