THE NOME NUGGET
Published Monday, Wednesday and Friday by the
NOME PUBLISHING CO.
NOME, ALASKA
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W. A. Bouchef .Owner-Publisher
Emily Boucher .Local Editor
Entered as second class matter October 14, 1943, at he postoffice
at Nome, Alaska, under the Act of March 3, 1879.
Nome, Alaska,.Wednesday, November 24, 1948
THANKSGIVING MEANS GIVING
(New World News Service)
America has been proud of her Thanksgiving tradi
tion since the first celebration by the Pilgrim Fathers.
The harvest of those days has grown into the greatest
industrial and agricultural potential in the world. And
America is giving freely of that bounty to the rest of the
world. A Los Angeles businessman reporting on his re
cent trip through Europe said that prominent men th°r^
had told him the Marshall Plan was “the greatest act of
unselfishness in world history.”
But just as the early Pilgrims looked to America for
more than the products of the soil, so the world today
wants more than food and material from us. America
must export the ideology of democracy.
Our failure during recent years to analyze the ideo
logical issues involved in the Chinese situation is bnnm
eranqing back on us today. Because we failed to fieht
the ideological war then, America mav need to send bil
lions in arms and aid to retrieve the situation.
Roger D. Lapham, chief of ECA for China, sa’d re
cently that three courses were open for the United
States: 1—abandonment of Nationalist China. 2—a “mid
dle of the road policy,” the kind we are pursuing today
which means we want to go in swimming but we do not
want to get our feet wet or; 3—“an affirmative policy.”
Lapham concluded, “Let us give affirmative aid.” What
we give China materially and morally in the next few1
months will probably decide the future of a billion peo
ple in the Far East.
At last year’s Thanksgiving we were preparing to
give the Marshall Plan to the democracies. For Thanks
giving this year we can give the ideological counterpart
of the Marshall Plan—the moral re-armament of men
and nations at a size and speed adequate to insure the
security of democracy.
MOVIES FOR RUSSIA
(Daily Alaska Empire)
That was quite a bit of news Mr. Eric Johnston gave
us the other day: that the Soviet Government is now
back in the market for Hollywood films, and willing to
pya for them in good, hard — well, relatively hard —
American dollars. As we understand the arrangement,
the Russians have agreed to buy at least 20 out of a hun
dred pictures submitted to them as the best among the
current offerings. Mr. Johnston assured us that this will
have no effect on the general character or ideology of
the pictures hereafter to be produced; in other words the
movies will continue to reflect what Hollywood consid
ers to be “the American way of life.” Similar agree
ments, it seems, have been made with the Communist
government of Czechoslovakia and with the deviationist
government of Yugoslavia.
What may be behind this sudden revision of the cul
tural party-line we can only surmise. The more obvious
conjecture, of course, is that the Kremlin, having been
unable to get audiences into the theaters to look at its
own ideologically pure home-made films, is now at
tempting to bait the customers of high-life among the
decadent bourgeoise. This, of course, might be a rather
dangerous business, since even Americans, especially of
the younger set, who are regularly exposed to the Hol
lywood ethos, often develop a taste for it.
It occurs to us, however, that the Russian motive
might be something more subtle than this. Indeed it may
be ♦hat the Soviet leaders, who are said to be full of guile
FOR WHICH WE’LL ALL BE THANKFUL
_ ^_*
in simh matters, are anxious to promote among their
people the notion that American men, besides being
rma7in<dv rich and incorrigibly hedonistic, are abys
mally ?+uo;d and timorous, so that the actual govern
ment of the country is in the hands of a few rather rat
tle-brained female beauties. According to Mr. Johnston,
the Kremlin has shown a strong preference for Holly
wood musical comedies, and from such pictures, espe
cially those in technicolor, the Russian people might
very well ge the idea that, speaking militarily, these
United States would be a pushover for any really tou<di
and determined enemy. In short, their reaction might
be much like that of the famous General Bleucher, on
his first visit to London, after the Battle of Waterloo.
“Mein Gott!” he is said to have exclaimed. “Vot a place
to loot!”
ECONOMIC WAR POTENTIALS
(Rocky Mountain News)
A naval intelligence officer recently warned that *he
United States risks “total war and'total destruction” by
wailing to supply our military planners with the la+^st
data on the industrial war potentials of other nations.
• We do not see how there can be sound defense nl*n
n’ng without such information. Moreover, we should
think it could be obtained through our existing agencies
without great difficulty.
To be sure, it isn’t easy to penetrate the iron curtain
I for any purpose. But there is a free exchange of infor
i mation in the rest of the world.
Reasonably accurate data are available on the natural
1 resources and current productive capacities of Russia
and her satellite states—the only direction from which
aggressive war is conceivable. Knowing substantia1^
what the Soviets h&ve, or had at some previous date, we
also know what they lack, or have lacked, to gear thei**
productive machine for a war against a nation of our
own potentialities.
These needs must be supplied by purchases from
areas outside their sphere of influence. Information on
such purchases is available to us for the asking.
It should be possible to maintain a running, cumula
tive inventory on the development of Russia’s war po
tential by co-ordinating certain of the activities abroad
of the state, commerce and defense departments. That
can be done by simple presidential directive, and hiring
competent men to do the job.
The purchases of strategic war materials, machine
tools and heavy equipment probably can be traced to
their ultimate destinations, to some extent.
But even total figures and general trends in purchase*
broken down into their several categories, should reveal
from day to day how the Soviets are extending their
war-production machinery and building up stockpiles
of essential war materials.
If we are not presently engaged in assembling such
information, we ought to be doing it.
Battle Line
(New World News)
November is the month of
Thanksgiving, of elections, of foot
ball. You can put them in any or
der you like but taken together
they represent the outward and
visible form of our democratic way
of life.
Yet today these and all the other
institutions synonymous with free
dom are threatened. For the first
time in history, democracy’s bluff
in the ideological field has been
called. While we are battling
fiercely for Berlin nad exerting
every effort through the Marshall
Plan, we have got to face the fact
that democracy is still being out
flanked ideologically in practically
every other vital area around the
world — France, China, Burma,
Malaya adn Indonesia.
This time we do not hold all the
: cards in our hand.
Now in an ordinary card game
your hand may be improved by a
chance deal from the pack, but in
his ideological struggle in which
we are involved your hand is* im
proved by the speed with which
you put your ideology to work on
i world scale.
Speaking recently at the World
Assembly for Moral Re-Armament
at Caux, Swi zerland, John Roots
of Washington, D. C., said:
“Communism has done the
Christian faith a great service. It
says to the Christian world, ‘You
either live your ideology and con
quer the world with it, or we will
take over.’ Now that is not an
empty threat.
“A force that has taken over
half the nations of the world—
taken them over in the sense of
being the directing force in their
' thinking—that is communism. It is
; not just a political idea. It is more
than an economic theory. It is an
iieology.
“Now what do we mean by this
word “ideology?’ Fai'h is an idea
that changes people. An ideology
;3 an idea that changes nations.
The average Christian today is not
living an ideology. He may have a
personal faith. But it is not a burn
ing living, moment by moment
reality.
“An ideology is a belief that
makes a total claim on a man’s life
and on a nation’s culture; that
man’s personal habits, who his
friends are, how he spends every
minute of his time, the way he
spends every penny of his money,
whom he marries, his children, his
future, his hates, his defeats, and
his dreams. Nothing less than that
is an ideology.”
Communism demands this ideo
logical living. Can democracy hope
to survive if we demand of our
selves anything less?
Deep in its heritage, democracy
has an idea that is big enough to>
demand sacrificial and ideological
living of all its citizens. It has
called this sort of living forth in
time of war. Now it must call it
forth in the time of peace. The
framers of our Declaration of In
dependence pledged their lives,
their fortunes and their sacred
honor to win our country’s free
dom. Today we will have to do the
same to back the ideological attack
to save a world’s freedom.
For Thanksgiving this year, wei
can thank God that there is evi
dence that democracy is getting off
the defensive and onto the attack
with an inspired ideology that can
rally the heart of Europe.