The
Nation, an American weekly magazine, was first published on 6th
July, 1865 by Joseph H. Richards. Its original sponsors were concerned
with securing full rights for the newly freed slaves. The first editor
was E. L. Godkin (1865-81) but much of
the writing was done by William Dean Howells.
The Nation was sold to Henry Villard
in June, 1881. After Villard's became owner of the magazine, editors
have included Wendell Phillips Garrison (1881-1906), Hammond Lamont
(1906-09), Paul Elmer More (1909-14), Harold De Wolf Fuller (1914-18)
and Oswald Garrison Villard (1918-32).
His friend, Carl Schurz, also became a
regular contributor to the magazine.
Villard
held radical political opinions and gave his support to women's
suffrage, trade union law reform and
equal rights for African Americans,
and was a founder member of the National Association
for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP).
A
pacifist, Villard opposed America's
participation in the First World War. This upset
his patriotic readers and advertisers and Villard was forced to sell
the New York Evening Post. However,
he retained The Nation and continued to use this as the personal
organ of his views. He recruited several radical journalists including
Norman Thomas, Freda
Kirchway and Emily Balch.
After
the war The Nation faithfully supported radical causes. Although
it only had a circulation of around 25,000 but it had a tremendous
influence in political and intellectual circles. Villard generally
supported left-wing presidential candidates including Eugene
V. Debs (1920), Robert LaFollette,
(1924) and Norman Thomas (1928). In 1932
Villard favoured Franklin D. Roosevelt
and his New Deal proposals.
Oswald Garrison Villard resigned as editor of The Nation
in 1933 and was replaced by Freda Kirchway.
Villard remained the publisher, but Kirchwey now had complete control
over the content of the journal. Although she had campaigned for Norman
Thomas for president, she supported Franklin
D. Roosevelt and his New Deal programme.
Over
the next few years she used her power to campaign against the fascist
regimes in Europe. When Adolf Hitler gained
power in 1933 she wrote that he represented "the abolition of
personal liberty, for prejudice, for reaction, for race hatred and
persecution, for terror and murder." Kirchwey argued that the
United States should abandon its policy of isolationism and urged
the government to impose economic boycotts on Germany
and Italy.
Freda
Kirchway
also advocated a close alliance with the Soviet
Union against Nazi Germany. In
August 1935 she warned "that
the basic conflict of the next ten years will not be between capitalism
and revolution but between fascism and democracy - a struggle in which
the forces of revolution must support." However, Kirchwey's views
on the soviet government were dramatically shaken by the Great
Purge when some of her political friends were executed by Joseph
Stalin.
The
Nation also wanted the United States administration to aid republicans
in Spain
against General Francisco Franco. In an
article she wrote entitled Spain is the Key in February 1937
she made the forecast that "Franco's success would encourage
the Nazis to go and do likewise in Czechoslovakia, Danzig, the Polish
Corridor, or anywhere else. Defeated in Spain, Hitler would be sobered
and checked. He would also be weakened by the expenditure on Franco
of several hundred million dollars. If the fascists are beaten in
Spain, they are weakened everywhere. The supreme test of an anti-fascist
is not what he says but what he does for Spain."
Kirchwey
supported Franklin D. Roosevelt in his
campaign against the Supreme Court. In
an editorial in The Nation she
wrote "The soil of economic
chaos out of which fascism grows has been amply supplied by the court's
refusal to allow national action for economic control." This
upset her publisher, Oswald Garrison Villard,
who believed that the president was wrong to try and control the decisions
of the court. Kirchwey refused to change her stance on this issue
and to maintain her independence she decided to try and buy the journal.
In June 1937, Kirchwey and her husband purchased it for $20,000.
In
1938 Congress established the House of Un-American
Activities Committee (HUAC) to investigate people suspected of
unpatriotic behaviour. Kirchwey believed that the setting up of the
HUAC was an attempt to restrict the freedom of the press and she accused
Martin Dies, its chairman, as a "one-man
Gestapo from Texas." She added that "Dies isn't after sedition;
he is after you and me and the President."
After
the outbreak of the Second World War The
Nation campaigned for the United States to give more help to Jews
trying to escape from persecution in Germany
and the occupied territories. She wrote in January 1940 that "thousands
of European Jews will die, unnecessarily, if we do not reach them
with our life-giving dollars."
Kirchwey
also called for universal military training in the United
States. This upset Oswald Garrison Villard
who severed all ties with the journal and stopped writing his weekly
column, Personal and Private. Kirchwey's articles in favour
of American support for the Allies against Nazi
Germany lost the journal a large number of readers. She refused
to compromise her views and in August 1941 wrote: "Before its
total, uncompromising demands are laid upon them, the people of America
must learn that this war is their war; that they cannot dodge it or
buy their way out of it; that they must fight it because fighting
is the only alternative to surrender.
By
January 1942 over half a million Jews had
been exterminated in Europe. This received little coverage in newspapers
in the United States. This was not true of The
Nation and
the journal published a series of articles by Philip S. Bernstein
detailing what was happening in the concentration
camps being run by the Schutzstaffel (SS).
Freda
Kirchway
upset many liberals in March 1942 by arguing in favour of the fascist
being suppressed. Her long time friend Norman
Thomas wrote
to her pointing out: " In ten years or less it won't be the people
you want to suppress now who will be suppressed and stay suppressed
by your theory; it will be yourselves along with many others, unless,
indeed, you want to go farther than I think you do in support of a
Roosevelt totalitarianism. Don't forget that neither Roosevelt nor
anybody else is immortal. The principles once established are apt
to outlive men."
When
the American Civil Rights Union
(ACLU)
decided to defend the freedom of the fascist press she resigned her
membership. John Haynes Holmes wrote
to her explaining the decision of the ACLU: "I would fight to
the death to maintain their (fascists) liberties, not for their own
sake, but for the sake of a democracy which disappears when such
liberties are withdrawn. Indeed, it is no longer a democracy, but
to the extent at least that civil liberties are denied, has already
itself become a fascist state.
The
Nation
continued to lose money and was in danger of closing. In 1943 Kirchwey
made an appeal for $25,000 to keep it in business. The readers raised
$36,000 and the money was used to establish Nation Associates. This
new organization published the journal and arranged political conferences.
After
the war Kirchwey was criticized for of her support of the Soviet
Union. When long time staff member Louis
Fischer resigned
over this issue, Kirchwey wrote in the journal: "We believe Russian
policy is primarily a security policy, not an imperialist one; it
can become dangerous to the world, therefore, only if Russia decides
that the other major powers are plotting against it."
Kirchwey
was one of America's strongest critics of McCarthyism.
In one article written in June 1950 she defined McCarthyism as "the
means by which a handful of men, disguised as hunters of subversion,
cynically subvert the instruments of justice and hold up to contempt
the government itself in order to help their own political fortunes."
In
September 1955 Freda Kirchway retired
as editor of The Nation
and was replaced by Carey McWilliams.
He instituted investigative reports on domestic issues. This included
a series on Jim Crow Laws and articles
on consumer issues by Ralph Nader.
(1)
Prospectus of the Nation (June, 1865)
(1)
To discuss current affairs, especially in their legal, economic, and
constitutional phases, with more moderation than the party press;
(2) to maintain true democratic principles; (3) to work for the equality
of "the labouring classes at the South"; (4) to enforce
the doctrine that the whole country has the "strongest interest"
in the elevation of the Negro; (5) to fix attention on the importance
of popular education; (6) to inform the country of conditions in the
southern states; (7) to criticize books and works of art soundly and
impartially.
(2)
Oswald Garrison Villard, The Nation
(31st August, 1927)
Massachusetts has triumphantly killed an Italian fishmonger and an
Italian cobbler, but she has blackened the name of the United States
across all the seas.
(3)
Freda
Kirchway,
The Nation (1933)
Although
the Nation has questioned the probability that in the long
run it would be possible to save an industrial system by the incentive
of profits, it has regarded the Roosevelt program in general as the
most intelligent means that could be taken toward the end.
(4)
Raymond Gram Swing, The Nation
(20th March, 1933)
Their
programs (Huey P. Long and Charles Coughlin), for all their glamorous
radical sound, are capitalist radicalism. For fascism is the reorganization
of society by undemocratic means to maintain the capitalist system.
It is a movement, first of all, of passion and prejudice, growing
out of the despair of disillusioned. Impoverished people. Then comes
the collusion between demagogue and big business.
(5)
W. A. White, letter to Oswald
Garrison Villard , complaining about Freda Kirchwey's support
for Franklin D. Roosevelt in his struggle
with the Supreme Court (20th March, 1933)
It
is unthinkable that a progressive and liberal journal should actually
advocate any plan by which new judges are placed on our supreme tribunal
who will decide cases on instructions, or who will be believed to
have decided them on this basis.
(6)
Freda
Kirchway,
The
Nation (August, 1935)
It
may well be that the basic conflict of the next ten years will not
be between capitalism and revolution but between fascism and democracy
- a struggle in which the forces of revolution must support and win
the support of all the friends of democracy, while the forces of capitalism
will gradually, and often unwillingly, form an alliance with the cohorts
of fascism.
(7)
Freda
Kirchway,
The Nation (February, 1937)
Franco's
success would encourage the Nazis to go and do likewise in Czechoslovakia,
Danzig, the Polish Corridor, or anywhere else. Defeated in Spain,
Hitler would be sobered and checked. He would also be weakened by
the expenditure on Franco of several hundred million dollars. If the
fascists are beaten in Spain, they are weakened everywhere. The supreme
test of an antifascist is not what he says but what he does for Spain.
(8)
Freda
Kirchway,
The Nation (March, 1938)
The
trial of Bukharin and his fellow oppositionists has broken about the
ears of the world like the detonation of a bomb. One can hear the
cracking of liberal hopes; of the dream of antifascist unity; of a
whole system of revolutionary philosophy wherever democracy is threatened,
the significance of the trial will be anxiously weighed.
In
spite of the trials, I believe Russia is dependable; that it wants
peace, and will join in any joint effort to check Hitler and Mussolini,
and will also fight if necessary. Russia is still the strongest reason
for hope.
(9)
Freda
Kirchway,
The Nation
(April, 1939)
We surrendered our chance to mind our business in Spain; we were too
intent on keeping out of trouble and minding Chamberlain's business.
We allowed democracy to be slaughtered in Spain. Today the United
States is the grand arsenal for triumphant fascism. It is our business
to stop providing these three aggressors with arms and the goods necessary
to the manufacture of arms and the conduct of war.
(10)
Freda
Kirchway,
The Nation (October,
1939)
Now
is the time for all good men to come to the aid of democracy. We have
not gone to war, and no excuse exists for wartime hysteria. Neither
Communists nor even (German-American) Bundists are enemy agents. They
deserve to be watched but not to be persecuted. The real danger is
that general detestation of Communists and Bundists will lead to acts
of outright repression supported not only by reactionaries but by
disgusted liberals. Democracy was not invented as a luxury to be indulged
in only in times of calm and stability. It is a pliable, tough-fibered
technique especially useful when times are hard. Only a weak and distrustful
American could today advocate measures of repression and coercion,
or encourage a mood of panic. Now is the time to demonstrate the resilience
of our institutions. Now is the time to deal with dissent calmly and
with full respect for its rights.
(11)
Freda
Kirchway,
The Nation (April,
1940)
At
what moment does it become necessary to limit the freedom of everyone
in order to suppress the danger lurking in a disloyal handful. The
moment for drastic repression has not arrived, and the task of liberals
in America is difficult but clear. They must fight to preserve the
democratic safeguards contained in the Bill of Rights, while applying
to Nazis and their supporters the equally democratic methods of exposure,
counter-propaganda, and justified legal attack. Otherwise the Nazi
invasion of Norway is likely to end in a victory for Martin Dies in
America.
(12)
Freda
Kirchway,
The Nation (August,
1941)
Before
its total, uncompromising demands are laid upon them, the people of
America must learn that this war is their war; that they cannot dodge
it or buy their way out of it; that they must fight it because fighting
is the only alternative to surrender.
(13)
In March 1942 Freda Kirchwey argued in The Nation that the
fascist press should be banned in the United States. In a letter to
Kirchwey, Norman Thomas objected to this
point of view (3rd April, 1942)
It
is a rather terrible thing that liberals should now be the spokesmen
for a jittery program which, if it means anything, can only be interpreted
to mean no criticism of the Administration except from us. In ten
years or less it won't be the people you want to suppress now who
will be suppressed and stay suppressed by your theory; it will be
yourselves along with many others, unless, indeed, you want to go
farther than I think you do in support of a Roosevelt totalitarianism.
Don't forget that neither Roosevelt nor anybody else is immortal.
The principles once established are apt to outlive men.
(14)
Statement published by the staff of The Nation in October 1944.
It
is one thing to expound high principles in print week by week. It
is another to put them into practice day by day. And we who work with
Freda Kirchwey think it relevant to depose and say that her liberalism
begins at home. As editor-in-chief she has had the wisdom and courage
to establish a genuine working democracy of which the tone and temper
are set by her own respect for other individuals and their opinions,
her humor, and her sense of fair play. As employer her sympathy and
understanding for every human problem have won for her the freely
given loyalty and friendship of every worker in the shop. In The Nation
world liberty, equality, and fraternity, the four freedoms, collective
security, and the union shop prevail. We who work in it find it good.
We recommend it to the larger world, and on this, the twenty-fifth
anniversary of her connection with The Nation we salute Freda Kirchwey
as editor and as human being.
(15)
Louis
Fischer resigned
from The Nation after a dispute with Freda Kirchwey, over the
reporting of the situation in the Soviet Union.
Kirchwey replied to this charge in the journal published on 2nd June
1945.
We
assume that he is charging The Nation with a bias in favor of Russia
and of communism. We suppose he considers that to be our "line."
We suppose he is charging us with ignoring, out of "expediency,"
the bad behavior of the Soviet Union; of failing out of policy to
denounce the Soviet power for suppressing "small, weak states".
We can only answer quite flatly that he is wrong. We say what we believe.
What we believe is very different from what Mr. Fischer believes.
We
believe Russian policy is primarily a security policy, not an imperialist
one; it can become dangerous to the world, therefore, only if Russia
decides that the other major powers are plotting against it. It would
be dishonest to pretend that we think Russia's foreign policy is as
great a threat to the basic purpose of destroying fascism and its
political and economic roots as is the foreign policy of Britain and
the United States.
(16)
Freda
Kirchway,
The Nation (18th
August, 1945)
The
bomb that hurried Russia into Far Eastern war a week ahead of schedule
and drove Japan to surrender has accomplished the specific job for
which it was created. From the point of view of military strategy,
$2,000,000,000 (the cost of the bomb and the cost of nine days of
war) was never better spent. The suffering, the wholesale slaughter
it entailed, have been outweighed by its spectacular success; Allied
leaders can rightly claim that the loss of life on both sides would
have been many times greater if the atomic bomb had not been used
and Japan had gone on fighting. There is no answer to this argument.
The danger is that it will encourage those in power to assume that,
once accepted as valid, the argument can be applied equally well in
the future. If that assumption should be permitted, the chance of
saving civilization - perhaps the world itself - from destruction
is a remote one.
(17)
Freda
Kirchway,
The Nation (18th
August, 1945)
The
Nation celebrates its Eighty-fifth Anniversary in a sober mood. Today
only one subject is important - the possibility of averting a general
war which would wipe out, impartially, the institutions of civilized
life and the forces that threaten them this symposium is presented
as a positive contribution to the broadening of the discussion of
peace or war in the knowledge that for all nations the issue is survival.
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