The Wilmington morning star., 1941-01-01
BY PEGLER

with its position.-The Editor.
BY WESTBROOK PEGLER
NEW YORK, Dec. 31.-Back
there in the early '2Os when Scott
Fitgerald's cult of adolescent cry.
i%ng-drunks were bawling that they
had lost their souls, liberalism, as
we understood it in this country,
was first of all opposed to disci-
pline or RECOMMENDATION. Just for
extra, and to make discipline or
RECOMMENDATION particularly odious
to free people, it was called goose
stepping, a happy invention of our
liberal epitheticians, which brought
to mind in a word the detestable
arrogance and brutality of the Ger
man Kaiser and his government.
The Kaiser had just been slapped
down and millions of men on the
victorious side were breaking
ranks and enjoying their release
from the restraints and compul-
sicns of military life. Behind them,
millions of civilians, women as we'll
as men, also were breaking ranks,
so to speak, with the relaxation of
the wartime restraints. The lights
came on in the streets at night, it
was no longer an offense not to
draw the blinds after dark, you
could criticize the government and
books of the now-it-can-be-told Sc
ries began to tumble off the press
es in many languages.
Little Red Blotch
In the United States, prohibition
appeared as a little red blotch,
later to develop into q horrible cor
ruption, which has left permanent
damage in contempt for law and
suspicion of public officers long
after repeal cured the disease it.
self, and great was the resentment
against prohibition on the ground
that a few politico-religious organi-
cations and rich industrialists were
trying to force most of the people
to abide by the rule and conform
to the tastes and an extreme moral
verboten of a few.
Of course, there was much more
to liberalism, but the kernel of it
was Individual rights and rebellion
against compulsion beyond the
minimum restraints necessary for
the regulation of traffic.
But, of course, this liberalism did
not extend to industry, commerce
and finance. These were not per-
sonal or individual matters but is
sues, and the rights of the indi-
vidual could be protected only by
the adoption and Endorsement of
restraints.
Little did we think then that lib
eralism would curl up its tail and
sting itself full of poison in its
angry threshing before two dec
AIDES had passed, but now amt it
the truth?
For today the surviving mem
bers Of the group who fought most
angrily against goose-stepping in
the early '20s are almost all to be
found in that element who hold
that collective action is the only
hope of the worker, and that any
worker who prefers to remain a
loner, or individual, is a pathetic
coward, afraid of his boss, a dirty
traitor to his fellowmen, in receipt
of secret pay from his boss, a
mulish and selfish parasite, en-
the benefits of other mems
and peril or a Fascist.
he is, he had no right as
an individual to conduct himself
as an individual, and by trying to
do so he exiles himself from human
society, sets himself against his
fellowmen and deserves any harm
that befalls him in a contest of his
own choosing. If he is thrown out
of his job, in which it has been
commended by the liberals that he
has a property right, that is his
own fault. If his family suffers
mental and physical harrassment
and goes hungry and cold, that
again is his fault, and the failure
to protect and provide is his to
answer for. If, by the verdict of
union of which he is not a mem
Der after a trial in his absence, he
is forever barred from all employ
ment where unions govern the
work, that again is his own look
out. He could avoid all these pen
theoretically, if he would
but join the union or walk the
goose-step.
The day came when liberals who
mad fiercely hated the goose-step,
goose-stepped in a sort OF prls-
oners' = march before premises
struck by minority vote to revile
Individual men, stone them and
beat them, for their refusal to sub
NIT to RECOMMENDATION disci-
And men who had insisted
that they placed truth above all
so far abandoned their lib
eralism that they plainly admitted
that they preferred to suppress,
or deny truths about r
and a thousand forms OF
in labor unions rather
hurt their new cause OF regl-
m%entation or housekeeping.
The ball-bat and tire-iron, the
meat-hook and the brick are eff
fective weapons for organization,
but they do not appeal to reason. l