The Catholic times. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1951-current, 1960-01-15
JOSEPH BREIG-
1860 Looks
Good To Me

W@M3WY
The chairman was Haywood Broun pronounced
Broom
The American Newspaper Guild was in con-
vention.
The place was Toronto.
was there as a delegate.
had little experience in parliamentary maneuver-
ing and smokefiled-room planning.
All the same, | realized what was happening.
The convention was being steam-rollered by GER
tain New Workers whose mouths were filled with the
kind of catch-WordS dear to communists.
HAYWOOD sRoUN, the great columnist-and
emphatlcaly he was a great newspaper columnist-sat
1mpaSSlve on the platform, welding his gavel
| wondered. Did he care what was going on? Did
he know?
In any case, | knew. And | knew communism for
the deadly thing it is.
AT times it seemed to me that I was the only dele
gate who did know. Others sat bemused while
"fascism" was denounced, and communism, by impli.
cation, praised.
The New Workers introduced resolution con-
demning the Franco government in Spain.
THERE WAS ONE THING that | did know about
parliamentary procedure. A proposed amendment
must be voted upon before the resolution is put to the
ballot.
| went to the microphone. Broun recognized me.
| offered an amendment which said that the
American Newspaper Guild condemned not only
fascism, but every other form of government that
tended to make man a slave of the state.
The New Workers went into action swiftly and
efficiently. | sat and watched my amendment over
~whelmingly defeated, and the original resolution
adopted.
The American Newspaper Guild was on record as
condemnlng "fascism" but not communism.
| went home and back to my reWrite desk.
Then the Youngstown chapter las | recalD de-
handed a referendum. Nine other guilds joined in
the movement forcing a polling of the entire ANG
membership.
n TRICKY resolution was thrown out.
The following year, the Washington chapter took
power out of the hands Of the New York steamrroller
nDprdt0rS and communism o0t ifs eOmp-JInnance from
the American Newspaper Guild,
The men and women who wrote the nations news
papers were now awake to a deadly danger. Commu-
nists had lost a decisive battle in the theater of public
opinion. And the ANG was safe from the dry-rot
and destruction that communist manipulation brings.
| tell this story because now it is 1860, and the
struggle won by the N engages most of mankind.
/ am strangely confident of victory.
| lived to see communism exposed and welded
out @. places of influence in American journalism.
And as American Journalism went, | knew, much
of history would go.
LIVED TO SEE Haywood Broun becoming a
Catholic, and sweeping aside communist double talk
with a few of the massive, crushing words which he
could WELD like a huge irresistible broom.
A few years later. / took my place at an editorial
desk across which flowed, day in and day out for IA
years. a flood of the news of the world.
There were years in those IA when | was scared
stiff Freedom and decency were on the defensive;
communism often seemed about to overrun the earth
by brute force.
Europe was PROSTATE. Communism seized Eastern
Europe and reached for France, Italy, Germany and
other nations.
But America was not now bemused America act
ed At enormous expense and by herculean labors,
the worlds balance was slowly tilted.
In 1856, the Hungarian people rose for freedom,
and for a time communism's empire seemed on the
point of collapse. The rising was brutally crushed
but at the cost of communism's last shred of moral
pretenSe.
Mankind now knows communism for what it is.
Communism, not freedom, is on the defensive.
The year 1860 looks richly promising.