Commonweal Magazine – Old Magazine Articles

Government-Supplied Scabs
(Commonweal Magazine, 1947)

Writing to the editors of the news monthly, Commonweal during the Autumn of 1947 was Harry Leland Mitchell (1906 – 1989), president of the Southern Tenant Farmer’s Union who reported that the National Farm Labor Union was engaged in an important strike against the Di Giorgio Corporation in Bakersfield, California:

First, the Di Giorgio Corporation is the world’s largest fruit-producing corporation… it is to large scale industrialized agriculture what Ford is to the automobile industry. If the National Farm Labor Union wins the strike, it will be possible to proceed rapidly to the [organizing] of the migratory agricultural workers of California.

– but the union didn’t win. Di Giorgio, in league with the Department of Agriculture, secured foreign laborers to break the strike.

Regretting the A-Bomb
(Commonweal Magazine, 1945)

An anonymous columnist at The Commonweal (New York) was quick to condemn the use of the Atomic Bombs:

… we are confronted with an obligation to condemn what we ourselves did, an obligation to admit that our victory has been sadly sullied not only because we used this weapon but because we have tacitly acceded to use it.

The American-Imposed Censorship
(Commonweal, 1947)

The suspicious lads of the U.S. Army’s Civil Censorship Detachment, General Headquarters, Japan, were given the task of combing-over not simply the articles that were to appear in the Japanese press, but all civilian correspondences that were to be delivered through the mail, as well. Seeing that the Japanese were recovering Fascists, like their former BFFs in far-off Germany, the chatter of unfulfilled totalitarians was a primary concern. They were especially keen on seeing to it that the gruesome photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki be as limited in their circulation as possible. But what makes this column most surprising is the fact that the brass hats at GHQ knew full well that the American people hate censorship and would not want it practiced in their name.

Marshal Pétain on Trial
(Commonweal, 1945)

An irate editorial concerning the 1945 trial of French General Henri Philippe Pétain (1856 – 1951).

Whoever is managing the current spectacle in Paris desires us to think that the Petain trial is a revolutionary trial. The thesis is that the whole French nation has risen against the politicians who did not prepare for the war, against the Marshal who signed the the armistice, collaborated with the Germans and betrayed France. And so that trial is not a search for truth, it is a public exposure of truth, it is a simple demonstration…Look at them: Daladier, Reynaud, Weygrand – how they fight each one against the other. Because it is not just Petain who is guilty. It is Petain’s trial. But it is also the trial of all the witnesses… Everyone is guilty.

Saint Peter: An Appreciation
(Commonweal, 1931)

The well-loved Christian author Helen Walker Homan wrote this very charming essay about Saint Peter:

Saint Peter knows that the very fact that he, of all the Apostles, has been the most frequent subject of jokes by mankind, is only an added proof that he has been the most beloved of mankind.

President Truman and Civil Rights
(Commonweal, 1948)

When President Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights submitted their findings to the White House in December of 1947, the anxious and skeptical editors at COMMONWEAL MAGAZINE eagerly waited their conclusions. Knowing that this Southern president was the only Klansman (1924 membership) to have ever attained such high office, they were doubtful that any good would come of it, and in this column they explain why they felt that way.

Four years later an article was written about the gratitude many African-Americans felt toward President Truman and his stand on civil rights – read it here…

VE-Day in Germany
(Commonweal, 1945)

In the end, the German soldier faced the greatest ignominy which any soldier can receive. His own people discredited and betrayed him. The people knew the war was lost. They knew too that fanatical resistance meant that their homes and their fields were lost, too. Many an American soldier owes his life (though from the long range point of view, not his gratitude) to the very people who heiled Hitler into power. They would stool-pigeon on those SS troops who remained behind our lines to carry out guerrilla warfare.

Click here to read about the post-war trial of Norway’s Quisling.

‘Dark December”
(The Commonweal, 1947)

This is the 1947 review of Robert Merrian’s history on the Battle of the Bulge, Dark December; the reviewer, T.E. Cassidy, had served as a U.S. Army intelligence officer in the Ardennes:

Merriam is at his best analyzing the actual confusion that was rampant from the very beginning of the German drive on December 16th. I know his handling is expert here, for I was in the midst of the chaos, and can vividly recall, for example, the blank stares I met at various headquarters when I would ask what road net was clear, and to what point. It was really no one’s fault, after the first day or two. People simply did not know what was happening. And it was days and days before there was any concerted agreement among the different levels as to just what was going on.