WASHINGTON REPORT

Truman has seized

By WILLIAM Z. FOSTER

unprecedented

dictatorial powers by emergency

BY DECLARING the United States to be in a state of

national emergency, President Truman has seized
unprecedented dictatorial powers. His proclamation has
greatly increased the already vast powers of the execu-
stive, it has shorn the prerogatives of Congress and seeks
to throw the Bill of Rights into the discard.

This is a heavy blow against American democracy,
what is left of it. And all this has been done on the
basis of a“war crisis” of the Truman government's own
making.

The proclamation of the state of national emergency
greatly intensifies the danger of war and fascism, for
the U.S. and the world. And this is its precise purpose.

Its aims are to throw the country even more com-
pletely into the arms of reaction, to bréak down the
peace resistance of the masses, and to catapult the
world into a war that none of the peoples want. Just
what reactionary forces will. be running the country
under Truman’s dictatorial ukase has been made clear
by the President’s speedy appointment of C, E. Wilson,
Wall Street industrialist, to the powerful post of Mo-
bilization Director.

President Truman, who has arbitrarily assumed these
dictatorial powers, without so much as a by-your-leave
from Congress or the people, now possesses enormous
war powers. He has become the tsar of industry and
can drive it over onto a war footing. He also has the
authority to fix prices (example, auto industry), to
allocate essential materials, and if need be, to seize and
operate industries for war production. He can also set
wage rates, lengthen working hours, prohibit strikes,
and, under the Taft-Hartley slave labor act, send recal-
citrant strikers to jail.

President Truman is also in full command of an
immense thought-control system with which, in the
current war hysteria to confuse the people and to
batter the masses’ opposition to his war policies, Among
these instrumentalities are the vastly expanded FBI,
the big network of national and state UnAmerican Activi-
ties Committees, “loyalty boards,” and the like. Under
the McCarran and Smith Acts he can throw the militant
advocates of peace into jails and concentration camps.
His emergency decree reinforces all the fascist tenden-
cies in this country. ; :

The president also has seized control of the power
to initiate war. Under the Constitution, the Senate is
supposed to be a vital factor in the making of foreign

policy, but is has now been shoved into the background.
As the dictator of American diplomacy, Truman is .

at present arbitrarily rejecting the peace terms of the
Russians and Chinese regarding the Korean war. Great
Britain and many other countries have already endorsed
the two most important of these terms—namely, that
the United States should get out of Formosa and
that People’s China be given its seat in the !United
Nations. And the third point—that all foreign troops,
including the Chinese volunteers, should leave Korea,
is eminently reasonable and could be readily agreed to.

But President Truman, disregarding the peace will
of the world, says, No, and hastens our country along
the road to war.

@ : ;

The gravest danger of all in the situation is that
Truman, with his dictatorial powers, is now in a position
to push the U.S. into war without consulting Congress
or anyone else, save his Wall Street masters. He can
shift American armed forces provocatively all over
the world; he can order an extension of the war against
China; he can instruct the air force to drop the atomic

bomb and thereby provoke a world war crisis—just as
his imperious will decides.

As for the Senate and Congress as a whole, they are
little more than interested onlookers so far as the
making of decisive foreign policy is concerned.

In short, President Truman now has it in his power
to. create such a “fait accompli” war situation that
Congress would have no other choice but to rubber
stamp his action by formally declaring war. Truman
personally rushed us into the Korean war, without con-
sulting Congress or the people, and there is every
reason to believe, considering his war orientation, that
he would similarily push us into a world war, unless
restrained by popular opposition.

A peace-loving Congress could clip Truman’s dicta-
torial powers, among other ways, by holding him up
on taxes and appropriations and by refusing to endorse
his war personnel appointments. But the big majority of
the Republicans in Congress, like the Democrats, are
as warmad as Truman himself, The Republicans, eager-
ly urging Truman to the fatal precipice of war, oppose
him only in the sense of utilizing the present war
hysteria to advance their own partisan interests.

A militant labor movement could also make ducks
and drakes of President Truman’s man-on-horseback
plans to squeeze the country into war, under the pretext
that the government is fighting for peace and democ-
racy. But the top leaderships of the AFL, CIO and con-
servative independent unions are just as war-minded
and imperialist as Wall Street bankers.

Regardless of the peace, sentiments of their mem-
bership, they have made the trade union movement
into a definite part of the war machine of American
imperialism. They are all set for war, atomic bomb, no
strike pledge, industrial speedup, and all the rest
of it. Their only demand is for recognition of them-
selves in the war preparations.

Obviously, President Truman’s appointment of him-
self as the would-be dictator of the United States
by greatly increasing the war danger, makes it even
more imperative for the masses of the workers and of
the people generally to assert their will for peace. They

have the power to put a halt to the warmongers, if they

will but use ‘it vigorously.

War is not inevitable, Peace can be had on honor-
able terms with the Soviet Union, the People’s Democ-
racies, and People’s China. There is no reason why the
capitalist and socialist systems cannot peacefully co-
exist in the world, except that American capitalism is
determined upon war, :

Wall Street’s drive for world mastery—its further
attempt to have the capitalist system and to destroy

world socialism—is an insane project. It is an ex-.

pression of the panic, frustration and desperation of
the leaders of capitalism, as they observe their own
world system falling to pieces and world socialism rapidly
growing. The dominating which they cannot accomplish
by economic, political and diplomatic means they hope
to achieve by a great world war.

But this is sheer political madness. Another world
war would wipe out the capitalist system, not establish
Wall Street’s hoped-for world domination. The war
that Truman and his capitalist masters are so feverishly
organizing could only result in overwhelming military

disaster for the American people,

The warmongers must be stopped before it is too
late. :

@ William Z. Foster is national chairman of the U.S.
Communist party.

CHALLENGES STATE DEP‘T BAN

WASHINGTON

AUL ROBESON has filed suit against U.S. Secre-

tary of State Dean Acheson in an effort to pre-

vent cancellation of his passport which he needed
fora European concert tbur.

Papers filed for the Negro leader in Federal
District Court last month described him as one who
‘has deservedly won for himself respect and recog-
nition throughout the world, not only as one of the
great living Americans, but also as one of the world’s
leading personalities.”

Despite this record, the suit said Acheson and
the U.S. State Department declared any foreign travel

States,’ and wants him to turn in his passport. He
said he had traveled since 1922, oe

Robeson files suit to hold passport

‘fession outside the United States, and asked the court

would be “contrary to the best interests lof the United —

Robeson said he is a co-chairman of the Pro-
gressive party, a “spokesman for the working men
and women” of the nation, and that the government’s
action against him was arbitrary, illegal and uncon-
stitutional, ;

He declared he had a “property right” guaran-
teed under the Constitution: to engage in his pro-

to force a lifting of the state department’s ban.

‘Robeson said he was planning a European tour
for singing and lecturing which would take him to
England, France Italy, Scandinavia and Czechoslo-
vakia,

POT-POURRI

By a small sample
judge the whole...

How time flies

ae BLACKMORE. (SC, Lethbridge) _ placed
blaine for the world’s current troubles on the United
States:

“If you want to know where lies the cause of the

. distrust of men all over the earth, look to the United States

of America.”

Mr. Blackmore, born in Sublett, Idaho, said -he
still loves the U.S. but one has to face the facts.

“The immediate material cause of the general situa-
tion is the U.S. with her enormous productive potential,
with her rich and varied resources, with her large popula-
tion, with her more and more self-sufficiency, with her
tremendous degree of industnialization, with her vast ac-
crinulated wealth, but her faulty domestic distribution.

‘‘Notwithstanding that this nation is wealthy beyond
all the nations that ever existed on the face of the earth,
she has as many people per hundred within her borders
who are on the verge of starvation and who are filled
with dread as we are.”

The U.S. was guided by “‘fallacious principles of

trade and finance” and had a “grossly mis-informed

—Veancouver Sun, May 5, 1948

PE SS i

“e ._ In the western world, particularly in the U.S... -
as the Literary Gazette phrased it, ‘some sort of a mon-
key empire has arisen’:”

—Moscow dispatch to the New York Times,
January 1, 1950.

We must not question why they seek
To kill and loot in foreign lands
But only wait for their commands.
Heed not the chatter and the shriek
And bow not to the monkey bands. _
—With apologies to Lord Dunsany

* % % *

The Super-collosal Lie

KYO, Dec. 30 (AP)—Chinese and Korean Com-
munist soldiers in Korea are being showered with new

counter-propaganda leaflets urging them to quit the war,
Gen. MacArthur’s headquarters disclosed today.

The leaflets are being dropped by United Nations
planes on Red troop positions. The heaviest emphasis
is on front-line forces.

One leaflet in Chinese tells Chinese troops their
government has completed a “secret treaty’ with the
Soviet Union to reduce China’s population by 100,000,-
000 people. Illustrated by a graphic picture of four
Chinese soldiers with a Red Cross marked on one of
‘them, the propaganda missive adds:

‘‘Already the Communists are putting this evil scheme
into operation. Last spring they let thousands of Chinese
die in floods and famine and refused American offers
of rice and wheat tto relieve the suffering.

“Now, they have sent you to Korea so that you
can be killed in a foreign war. Is this all part of their

secret plot to eliminate one out of every four Chinese?
“Do you want to be sacrificed for the Communists?”
—Associated Press dispatch to the Vancouver Sun

“PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JANUARY 5, 1951 — PAGE 9