No More Learning

Now take the current issues of supposedly serious magazines, magazines that are certainly authoritative in a twisted sense, authoritative and influential. I believe one of them nominated Willkie and by now perhaps
? that fact needs no comment whatever. I've been accused in these talks but, if anyone has seriously answered any of my statements, they have been unable to do so in any form that reaches me. Well, I ask my compatriots of my own age to note that the very high percentage of articles printed in
American magazines contains a joker, that is a silent point, a basically false assumption. I don't mean they all contain the same false assumption. I point k out that there is no public medium in the United States for serious discussion.
Every [one? ] of these publications has subjects which its policy forbids it to mention or to mention without falsification. And I ask the men in my generation to consider the effects, the cumulative effect of this state of things which does not date from September, 1941, but has been going on ever since we can remember.
The progressive falsification of America has been going on for 80 years at least and we have lived through half of it. I mean as conscious leaders, we have had 40 years of ill-intentional and of semi-conscious befuddlement to contend with and it is time to come to the cumulative effect of that profit.
Baruch, Berle, Best? --to take three names starred in American publicity, one pronouncement and two headlined articles are before me. All of these men writing and speaking with authority of a sort official positions, dominant in national affairs and with such views that no man under 40 can possibly untangle their cobwebs.
In normal times, qualified readers wouldn't try. They would let it go at that. They would be busy on constructive work. The old are indifferent, the experienced are indifferent and a cautious son of a New York editor, now in his 70th year, I mean the son in his 70th year, remembered his father's-- --. He shrugged his shoulders, or did when I saw him last
? autumn, who is he to impede human carnage ? The folly of all mankind ain't nothing, but human imbecility gives us an idea of the infinite. And in a way, as he said, do nothing about it.
Well, there is still time to learn something about it, still time to fight against a peace that can be no peace, still time to fight against widespread efforts to prevent the end of the slaughter, which efforts are being made. I mean people are now trying to prevent the war from ending. People have already planned for a peace like the last, a mere parenthesis, a mere slow-up of munition sales, a mere disequilibrium that will keep the world on tenterhooks between the end of this war and the start of the next one.
You cannot sit in Ohio and judge the Balkans. You cannot judge China from Omaha. You could read, and perhaps some American will some day make a vow to read one old paper or magazine once a month, by all means say three or six months old, and once a year read a still older one. That might give you a perspective.
Unless you know at least as much about the past 20 years of Italian history as is contained in old-- --volume on "Italian Socio-Economic Policy," you will not be able to observe how much of old programs has been recently endorsed by Barney Baruch. Nor will you be able to see the price of confidence was-- --article in October Fortune, A. A. Berle, Assistant Secretary of State.
Well, when I was in Washington, a member of the Cabinet told me that so far as he knew Barney was a patriotic gentleman.
Baruch now came out for a constituted price, a price in accord with -- --, a price that would guarantee just recompense to everyone who collaborates in a final product.
? I will be ready to consider Baruch's a patriot when he comes out seriously for abolition of the national debt. He is far in-- --that lives in the new economics.
Now Berle's article is very nice in the second half. It-- --.
#11 (February 19, 1942) U. S. (A77) POWER The President hath power.
The President has NO LEGAL power to enter into devious and secret agreements with foreign powers. He has no legal power to cook up policies with the late Johnnie Buchan and sign the nation's name on the document.
United States Treaties are valid when ratified by the Senate and not before. The President has no legal power to enter into condominiums with foreign governments, for the misconduct of scandalous islands off the China coast or in proximity to distant oriental, or any other damn harbors.
The President has no more legal right to do these infamies than you have to sign my name on a cheque, or I yours.
There is no darkness save ignorance.
The labile, that is to say slidy and weak memory of past events is no asset to a nation or statesman. Looking back to an unsavory part of our American past we find it more savory than the present. Whether Roosevelt has mental stamina enough left to learn anything from his nasty forerunner and foreslider, Woodrow the codface: I know not. But men of mental capacity above that of a wart hog ought to be able to look back as far as 1914 and 1919. Woodrow resisted clamor to get us into that war. When he came in, he was in accord with the will of the people, a will which he had not faked or concocted. The Allies won that war,
? and then cheated Italy. It was an error. The cheating of Italy was an error, and Lloyd George ought to know it by now. The cheating of Italy was an error.
When Wilson further signed or tried to sign the United States name to a rascally agreement, he was NOT expressing the will of the nation. He had already wormed and wriggled out of the proper functions of his office. He had already wormed and wriggled, KNOWING that he opposed the will of the people.
There is a limit or orbit to power. There is a limit or orbit to the practical effects of illegality. The error of old codface, sorefoot, was his own. But he was abetted. In fact he was buttered, caressed, inoculated, and led down the garden path, by his accomplices. They were warned and even had they not been warned it was their duty to ascertain what Woodrow's real powers were. The position of the Warburgs and Lloyd George at Versailles was that of crooks who accept a forged cheque in the hope of passing it on to some one else.
The dirt and grease of the Versailles scoundrels, Jews, sub-Jews and Gen tiles alike, was that having concocted Wilson, having passed him off on their brutalized and stupefied peoples as the United States of America, they proceeded to offer his forged cheque to their people.
The League stank from the beginning. It stank of the Bank of Basel, the Warburgs, the Regents of the Banque de France and the ulcer of England. Not all Roosevelt's actions are infamous. As there is no criticism of music till you can judge the relative merits of different works by the same com poser, so there is no political or ethical criticism till you can measure and judge the different political acts of the same political criminal, gangster, or statesman.
When the President acts within his powers, he has NO NEED to do violence to the laws. His powers are executive, that is, he is legally
? there to PUT INTO effect the will of the nation and the laws made by the representatives of the People. When he violates and passes beyond his legal powers, he acts TOWARD the destruction of ALL legal government of the United States of America, all government by law and by the laws.
I mean by ANY law, he moves toward a total illegality. This is evil, this is extremely dangerous in the long run, it is myopic, it is short-sighted. In fact, the man is an ass. No good American objects to the U. S. A. assuring the tranquility of the Caribbean.
There is no need to violate the mandate of the people in making QUITE sure that there be no submarine bases, poison factories, etc. immediately off the coast of Florida or in easy reach of Georgia, Alabama, and the mouth of the Mississippi. There are even ways [for] America [to] occupy foreign territory after at least attempting to do it legally.
One can offer to buy, even if one thinks one will have to take over, and make reparations later. I do not think Congress would have objected to the taking over of ALL Guiana, not merely the gotterdamn Dutch part. When a politician's WHOLE policy has been indirect, when his whole political strategy has consisted in indirectness, in the carom shot (not the straight shot), it is unwise to accept any act of his at its face value.
If Roosevelt's aim had been Dutch Guiana, he would probably have turned public attention elsewhere. It is reasonable to assume, on the basis of Roosevelt's public career since the end of his second year in the White House, that his aim in this case was NOT Dutch Guiana.
It is legitimate at least to suspect that his MAIN purpose was to grab yet more ILLEGAL power, to put a hot one over such fools as Senator Pepper and the other fools in the Senate and Congress. Like balloon- faced bumbustuous Churchill, Roosevelt follows every error by a demand for more personal power.
? We should be very careful in arriving at [a] judgment of his Caribbean policy. It may be another mere grab. His interest in international politics is considerable. His hate and loathing of legitimate action, of reasoned action, is extreme. His intolerance of all real collaboration either is, or ought to be known to men who share the responsibility for the governing of the United States of America. I should desire an open mind in considering the Caribbean policy, which is O. K. insofar as it aims at peace and security. The question of how far Brazil should agree [with] our IDEAS of peace and security is a hemisphere question. All this is a matter of the American hemisphere. And as I said in opening, we will have no criticism of our own politics, no criticism of it worth the name, till we can judge between one act of our blowy rhinoceros and another. The policy for the western hemisphere is one thing, Asian affairs are another.
England's conduct in China has been for the most part an infamy. Let some bloody-minded betrayer of the British people get up in their grimy assembly and tell the world of their kind acts in the Orient. From the sacking of the Imperial Palace in Peking to the Jewsoons', Sassoons' century of infamy and of opium with Robert Cecil their advocate. That is their dirt, why make it ours ? In any case secret agreements between an usurious nature faker whether in or out of the White House are ILLEGAL. And a foreign government which presents these secret pledges to ITS people as acts of the United States of America participates (and naturally HAS participated) in the swindle. We should leave this trash to its own people, human-- --. If this people hasn't the manhood and sense to spew out their Churchills, Baidwins, Buchans, and lesser vermin, that is their own affair, and they will presumably pay the penalty for their own flaccidity and mistaken toler ance. They will slang us for THEIR errors all right. But that any sub-Jew in the White House should send American lads to die for their Jewsoons and Sassoons and the private interest of the skum of the English earth, and the still lower dregs of the Parsee and Levantine importations is an outrage: and
? that ends it. To send boys from Omaha to Singapore to die for British monopoly and brutality is not the act of an American patriot.
#12 (February 26, 1942) U. S. (B17) AMERICA WAS INTENTIONS
The Honor of the United States of America is NOT concerned with becoming an arsenal.
The men who wintered at Valley Forge did not suffer those months of intense cold and hunger with the design, or in the hope that Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, the union of the colonies would one day be able to stir up wars between other countries in order to sell them munitions.
I don't want, the last thing I want, is that any harm should come to Uncle Sam's Army and Navy. The Navy is, some, of it, gone where I can't much help it. The Army can get on all right if it stays where it ought to be, namely on the North American continent.
I certainly do NOT want American's young blood shed in an assinine attempt to wreck all European civilization. I don't want it Dunkirked, and I would like for Mr. C. Gessler to go on getting his bath at Waikiki, if it ain't too late to mention the subject. I have heard said that Aguinaldo had and has as good a right to the Island of Luzon as George Washington had to Virginia. I am not a Philippine specialist. I have read on fair authority, namely on that of at least one participant, that the British troops after the last war were about fed up with some features of English government.
Dunkirk is one way to keep troops from showing their feelings.
Whether American air destroys the memory, I am not prepared to state. John Devey kept his till ripe old age; and I am reminded of his quotation from Burke on the penal laws, "an elaborate contrivance as well fitted
? for the expression, impoverishment and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself as ever preceded from the perverted ingenuity of man. "
Well, as Prattling Nelson is telling you, you haven't seen anything YET. And it has been forgotten that the 18 years of Irish Parliament, 1782- 1800, followed close on our American revolution, preceding the French [of] 89. That is, if it isn't rank pretense that any non-Irish American knows it, save by odd chance.
For indeed is there much analogy in it for North America ? There is for South American countries. Our South American policy hasn't yet got as far as the Times. A Celt will soon be as rare in Ireland as a Red Indian on the shores of Manhattan.
Perhaps it would be unwise to see too deep for analogies. Palmerston, Lord John Russell and the Times, intending their utterance to apply only to the Pope and the King of Naples, had been advocating the right of every people to choose their own rulers. [By that allusion, I mean short, that they] had a word for it before the Atlantic Conference.
What am I getting at with all this which what, what which ? Well, the moral behind any reference to John Devey is that Oireland kept hold of something. Call it the soul of the Irish nation. Kept hold of it thru 700 years of oppression, bloody oppression, not tea party conversation.
And the Americans, the U. S'ers, have started a fine government in 1776. Couldn't keep it a century and have now plum forgotten it ever existed.
It is to be supposed that you are all running round hot and bothered, like headless chickens, no man understanding another. And the pathological brainstorm in the White House after years of robbing the country dipping into the Treasury, years of frothing at the mouth about Mussolini and Hitler, in mid January comes out with a discourse and EVERY
? single item in it that has a trace of sanity is IMITATED from Mussolini or Hitler.
After 20 years [of] judaic propaganda Lenin Trotsky stuff crowding American history out of the schools, wild inferiority hate against Europe, here old Delano comes out with a mixed bag, in which two thirds of the program is fascist. With, of course, the essential parts missing.
Well now what causes this ? Twenty years late, just 20 years late as Amerikanishly usual. The same old American time lag, leading the world from the back seat as usual.
Amid all which flurry there is much that I am sure of.
This war is part of a process that has been going on for some time. And Roosevelt never lied with mere typically Rooseveltian fluency than when he bleated out his sick blah about wanting to keep YOU (that is you, the American people, and your children and your grandchildren) out of war.
A clean man would have been content to keep peace in his own time and trust his children to follow example. By continued bosh about Europe, which his mental and ethical level is much too low to reach he tipped you into war with the Jew Asia and you are most of you his accomplices
Nevertheless I am convinced of at least one thing. The present war should NOT be allowed to degenerate into a 30 years or even ten years beano for Knudson and the other sustainers of speed-ups and sweating, chain table.
Work 'em up in six years, was the old Jamaica slave owners system. Do the young men, and only young men can stand it, last SIX years at the Knudson band assembly systems ? Jews paid by Schiff in New York got
? hold of Russia and turned the whole land into a sweat shop. Watch your step, brother, it CAN happen to you.
Nothing here about winning the war or not winning it. Wars are not won by sweat shops alone. They are not won by profiteers ONLY. I mean the profiteers win PROFITS, but they do NOT win wars. They start war, but they do not start them in order that any particular nation shall win them.
You can swipe all South America and end up ruined. You can end up with your farms ALL ruined by South American competition INSIDE a customs ring. Dumping of cheaper products is not stopped by mere LACK of customs wall.
If there are any New Englanders, if there are any Americans who have BEEN American for three centuries, or two centuries, or one century, any whose forebears constructed the nation, it is time for 'em to get together and think. It is time for them to break the spell of the Knudson and Stimson slop.
Army [regulations] make it unethical to assert that a plane can not be in two places at once. That is the Knox, Stimson, Roosevelt coherence. Possibly new arms manuals will be issued. It seems unlikely that Stimson will bring luck to an army. Military honor has existed. Stimson is unaware of ANY such component in the life of an army. I don't think Henry is a very good bet.
I refer to his absolute and TOTAL lack of any sense of honor whatsoever, let alone the fine honor that has in the past inhered in the concept of the solider and officer. Three generations of c[h]anting parsons are back of that fishface. As to Knox, well your worst enemies hope you will keep him. A child of four [? ]. I am making these rather gross allusions with a purpose. That is the faint wavering hope that something will wake you.
That some phrase will penetrate the hypnotic
? or dope trance. These two men were distinctly NOT chosen by the people. No member of the Democratic Party would do particular dirts. Some [of] these decrepit hacks are chosen as instrument.
That is O. K. from one point of view, point of view of tyranny. The over lord or autocrat must be served. If his own party will NOT follow him into certain messes, he must go outside his own party.
Why not lay a wreath on the grave of the elective system ?
"Here lies John Jones, he is not dead but sleepeth. " Or here lies democracy.
By God if I was dead, I think I'd admit it.
The question is, if two or three sane men, in the bog of Rooseveltian fuddlement can ANYwhere meet and cohere, and clarify their mental perceptions, they should or could, could or should, begin to wonder WHERE the country is coming OUT, "coming out AT" is, I believe, the phrase current.
Are you headed for a CHEAP, ten cent kike, Blumstein, Blumenstein, Zukor, tawdry imitation of nazism, or say for the moment, of fascism ? VOID of all vital content. And if you mean to imitate it, are you going to emulate, or to vie ? Are you going to try to have as GOOD a brand of the corporate State as is now provided in Europe ? If not, why not ?
You have the least desirable member of the teempin [? ] North American population now at the head of it.
The people have been lied to, betrayed, hog swoggled, and you can't just rub all that out. The question is WHAT of tomorrow morning ? Where do you go from HERE ?
? Thirty years intensive production of synthetic products in order to attack the Japanese colony of Australia in 1947 ? or 1971 ? AND IN THE INTERIM, what of your INTERNAL government ?
Any syndical organization ? Or just Russian mess and chaos, just Soviets run by the Warburgs ?
IS there ANY American consciousness, as distinct from Fortune, and New Yorker hysteria, with fatty what's-his-name Woollcott weeping into the megaphones ? Or the lowest common denominator Mr. Swing whining into the atmosphere that the Americans are humiliated. There must, damn it, there must be traces of the American RACE left somewhere on the American continent. The race that set up the United States government.
Have they lost all sense of coherence ? Is American lucidity dead ?
#13 (March 2, 1942) U. S. (B18) NAPOLEON, ETC.
Monsieur Bonaparte. Napoleon I, made several mistakes, but it is generally conceded that he possessed military ability. Several of his discoveries lie outside the range of my subject but I shall probably be permitted to remind you of one of his dicta, namely, You can't conquer a map.
Not only do the main geographic features of our planet remain fairly stationary, but the nature of the soil and of the climate can not be altered suddenly even by the greediest politician, or most ignorant man hater and Knudson/Stakhalevite.
The AIM in all the more important human endeavors must count for SOMEthing. And you can not get to San Francisco by going to Boston. Granted ? Or NOT granted.
? No one has examined the genesis of the "muddle thru theory in old England. " No one so far as I know has taken the faintest interest in my citation of the Jew prosecuting attorney, for one of America's largest, oldest historic cities.
"All I'm interested in is BUNK," he said to me. Meaning that BUNK, falsification, was his sole interest. Seeing what you can put over. This is one thing from the late P. T. Barnum, from a music hail artist, a circus owner. It is the prestidigitator's job to illude. That's what he is paid for.
It may take another 40 or 80 years to get any of you calm enough, ever again, to ask yourselves whether this is the desirable legal attitude, whether this is the beau ideal, the ne plus ultra, the summum desiderium for a public official, engaged regularly in great municipal law courts. It is open to doubt whether there are six men listening now to this broadcast who are capable of facing this question. If there are, let 'em find six others. Some day you will all have to face it, and face all of its implications, not merely one of 'em.
Some day the remnants of the American people will begin to wonder WHICH side was right. They will wonder whether the choice was wise. They will even begin to wonder which side of WHAT. Which side stood for which PRINCIPLE, not merely stood for which interest.
Hank Wallace has shown up the INTEREST. Gold. Nothing else uniting the three governments, England, Russia, United States of America. THAT IS the interest--gold, usury, debt, monopoly, class interest, and possibly gross indifference and contempt for humanity.
Now if you know anything whatsoever of modern Europe and Asia, you know that HITLER stands for putting men over machines. If you don't know that, you know NOTHING. And beyond that you either know or do not know that Stalin's regime considers humanity as NOTHING save
? raw material. Deliver so many carloads of human MATERIAL at the consumption point.
That is the LOGICAL result of materialism If you assert that men are dirt, that humanity is MERELY material, that is where you come out. And the old Georgian train robber is perfectly logical If all things are merely MATERIAL man is material and the system of ANTI-man treats man as matter.
Now your President exceeds his powers in demanding that you adhere to his politics As Commander in Chief of the Army he can command you to assail enemy forces but even Congress in its most ABJECT and servile moments has not conceded this blood-thirsty maniac the control of your OPINIONS
In fact as long as ANY law is left whatsoever in the United States of America which no Jew and no Roosevelt will LIKE having left there, but as long as it is left there, powers do NOT inhere in officials unless delegated TO them by law. Thus when a lying Dutchman tells you that you have GOT to prefer Bolshevism to Fascism, you can ask: WHY ? Who says so ? AND if you are more than cattle ? If you rate yourselves above cows and sheep, you will in defense of that rating have to ask YOURSELVES whether men are more important than mere machinery.
Whether you intend to be slaves, lifelong slaves, hereditary slaves to machinery and whether you propose to sell your children and your grand children into long lasting slavery to usurers and to machinery.
I mean you will have to make up your MINDS. YOU can not live on cold iron, you can not live on airplane spare parts, YOU can not live well without LAWS which even the officials obey.
And for however long your answer to me is Jim's answer "No boss, no body here in America is INTERESTED in taking things as seriously as you do," there will nevertheless and finally come a time when at least a
? few of you will have to face things or DIE; you will have to THINK or die. Hard choice for the daisy pickers, but a real choice.
Roosevelt's gang have got you hitched up with Russia. Not a very good bet. Russians attack general Winter. Mightn't it be that Joe Bloodsucker KNOWS his army will starve in three or four months ANYHOW unless they break the Germans before that ? Why suppose that winter attack means STRENGTH on the part of the Russians ?
Not my job to speculate on military conditions, but might be. My job, as I see it, is to save what's left of America, and keep up some sort of civilization somewhere or other. I decline to abet the destroyers. I decline, so far as the light is conceded me, I decline to climb trees to catch fish. That's an old one, 24 hundred years old.
Mencius referred t, the folly of starting a war for something you couldn't GET; something the war could not bring to the monarch Mencius was talking to. So he said, climb trees to catch fish.
In the present juncture I refer to the POSSIBILITY that even the swiping and squashing of South America and of Canada may not catch even South America and Canada. Suckers, of course, you will get hold of some of 'em. Am I fanciful ?
Look at least at the possibility that this mere distention of U. S. borders MAY not be the way to get what you are battling for. It WON'T be unless you pay some attention to what happens INSIDE America.
It won't be if you lose ALL internal structure. When the turnpike depends upon Congress, local control is lost. Well, that was said a long time ago. The central government must in modern life have some powers. But as human beings it might be well to ask how many powers, and which powers ?
? And IGNORANCE and feeding on lies won't help you to make a lucid decision. You go yellin' hurray for Litvinov. Do you believe in the ABO LITION of all private ownership ?
I'll say you do not. You have colluded in the OLD British habit of employing the savage to wipe out the civilized rival. Your school has been hooded. You have had a SLOW one put over you. For 80 years, moving imperceptibly, an inch here and an inch there, you have been euchred out of your history, out of knowledge of history, both American and world history. It can not be done, said Henry Adams to Santayana. Oh, you wish to teach at Harvard. It can not be DONE. Henry Adams said he had tried it. Yes, I came LATE, but I am still a bit ahead of the band wagon. Beard, Bowers, D. R. Dewey (not Tommie) been gittin' down TOWARD but not TO the real bedrock. Get on and PUSH. Get into the diggin' and LEARN the face of American history. ADAMS, John Adams, Jefferson, Van Buren, also Brooks Adams. It's 40 years late for Brooks Adams, but you can't do it sooner. And in watching contemporary flim-flam, do at least TRY to sort things OUT.
DO you believe in the Homestead or in communal ownership ? If you believe in the Homestead, WHY fight FOR the abolition of ALL private ownership ?
In taking sides in a quarrel do at least try to find out what's fighting WHICH. Do you stand for the obliteration of Finland ? If not, why fight against Finland. Do you stand, those of you who are above goose gangster level, for the obliteration of all occidental civilization ? If NOT, why join the Anglo-Jewish clique which has been and still is out professedly and openly for the obliteration of Europe ? Western Civilization, all of it that you have still got.
Our forebears made a DISTINCT contribution. The Jesuits in Paraguay made a distinct contribution, but they were wiped out for discovering things. We were wiped out largely in the old 1860's.
? A man who ain't got any foresight gets kicked in the tail. Man fed on lies and lackin' in foresight got kicked in the Guam.
DO you think that is an ISOLATED instance of the hind effects of lackin' foresight ? The starve-the-enemy theme has been sung for a long time on your Victrolas.
Go back and examine it. The cornered weasel will fight. And your MIS-leaders have been out for some years annoying several things larger than weasels. Was it an error ? ARE you going to start NOW trying to evaluate their misdemeanors, or are you all of you going to go plum 100% haywire and stay so ?
DO you believe in the homestead or in communal ownership ? If you do NOT believe in the abolition of ALL private ownership, and the abolition of ALL private initiative, watch your Nelson. He has already got a half-Nelson on you. And if you got to please pore ole Hank Wallace and go on buying all the world's gold from now till the terminus of eternity, you got a day's work comin', with 24 hours labor. And no trade union organization, legally recognized, to put up a tombstone: here lies the 8-hour day.
#14 (March 6, 1942) U. S. (B19) WHY PICK ON THE JEW ?
Well, why pick on the Jew ? I have heard the term "Jewish impertinence," in fact Gaudier-Brzeska used to use it. But I think it was a fellow named Brooks, along in January, had got 'em beat, and the name ain't Hebrew and I don't reckon he is even a crypto. At any rate some murking broadcaster tellin' the world or the Italian residents in the United States that America loves Italy and only got a grudge against the regime. Waaal, as Franklin Delano was recently cursing out the Italian for what they did in 1911, before the word fascist existed, he certainly has got NO alibi, no alibi whatsoever. Now all the United States did to
? show how it loved Italy was to lie like billyOh for 20 years, and try to starve Italy into submission: tariff wall, refusal of Italian goods, refusal of emigrants. What way is that to show love ?
DOUBTless somebody who wants 30 years sweat show now wants Italian workin' men in the United States to go work--OVERTIME.
Well Charlie Marx had a word for it. That part of Marx is sound, and if bygones are gone by, and IF the Americans love the Eyetalians, there is a way to show it. Why not have a little open communication ? Why not print the Charter of Labor ? Why not study how far the Italian law code, the new law code, being published under Mussolini's regime IMPROVES on the old ones ? How many of you have heard of the Charter of Labor ? How many of you have stopped to think whether trade unions ought to have legal status ? And the RESPONSIBILITY that goes with such status ? If you are going [toward] fascism or nazism why not do it with open EYE, why not learn what these systems of government are ? Why not ask and learn how far they are compatible with American habits, [what] is good in 'em, and wherein their strength consists, INSTEAD of merely lying and cussing and trying to kill 'em on the assumption (if you can call it by so mild a term) that they are something they ain't ?
Conditions in German factories ? How do they compare ? I have seen some dirty lying in my time. I can't hold an inquest on every separate lie, but I have seen something, I have heard something, and then I have seen the American reports of 'em.
I have noticed DIScrepancies. I have heard the statement, I mean I HEARD it while it was being said. I heard Mussolini say "WE need years of peace to get on with our internal affairs. " And I have seen it reported next day as a war speech. Twenty years of that sort of thing do not show LOVE of Italy. Not on the part of the reporters or news owners. In fact Mr. Brooks, if it was Brooks, is showing a new love, store label not yet taken off.
? Also Mussolini talking about the fight to grow enough wheat to feed Italy as being the kind of fight he prefers. Well, that was the effort that brought out American hostility all right enough.
Will you lay off it ? And if so, when so ?