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| Obvious—Wasn’t It?

[he government which is elected in the
eral election may be in office for only

port period before the war ends. It will

prty day for the Canadian people if the
eral election follows the pattern of

ferta CCF People’s Weekly.)

The Fat Is In the Fire aS,

‘The Red Army is nearing Hitler's
siguarters—ait can tell by the Oder.7—
fan Max) in The Worker, New York:

bibles, Facts and Fancies —

muostly a postwar government. It willbe

y North. (From an editorial in the.

Retort Courteous

The wife of a U.S. diplomat questioned
Soviet general at a recent dinner party:
She: What is Russia's present aim?”
He: “To defeat our enemy.” _ -
She: “What are you going to do with
Poland?” ees
He: “Liberate her.” ee
She: “And with Germany?”
Re: “Conquer her.” :
She: “What will you do when you get
to the Rhine?’ ee
Pe: + dlake als warm a
—(Time Magazine, New York.)

ps
e Se eS

On the Right-Wing Rich

O rare patricians a
With your austere contempt for politicians
Who truckle to the nation
With social legislation,

How much, much greater

Looms in your eyes a Drew, or a Dictator
Who will not truckle eae

Save when you want to make your mickle

muckle! es
(J. S. Wallace in The Canadian Tribune. )

BN OOK WN =

Anniversary Of

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TEHERAN by Earl Browder.

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~NEW WORLDS FOR WOMEN by Dorise Nielsen.
mISPORY OF THE C.P.S.U.

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SOVIET ECONOMY by Maurice Dobb

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PA. Features, February pp: Page 15°

x

Book Review

By SAMUEL SILLEN in the New York Worker

JX answer to the request of several readers, I am suggesting a

list of readily available readings that will enrich our abservanée
of Negro History Week. :

y

This week presents an excellent opportunity both to acquire
and to spread knowledge about the life of the Negro in America.
But the opportunity will be criminally wasted if | Negro: History
‘Week is regarded as an occasion for a merely formal tribute, to
the Negro:people. The best tribute is genuine understanding based
on study. ~ : : Seem ES See aut otk Ss ROT

_ Nor is this an occasion for a bare catalogue’ 'of facts réegard-

_ing Negro history. It is the meaning of that history that needs to

be mastered today. Negro history must at last be viewed as an
organic part of American history rather than as a quite separate
and neglisible chapter.

It must be viewed in the light of the Negro’s two major strug-
gles in this country: the fight against the, slave system and
the “struggle to achieve full integration into American life on the
basis of unconditional equality. Accurate knowledge, stripped of
traditional prejudice, will simultaneously further the cause of full
equality and strengthen national unity. Ignorance,

in the end, is
the chief accomplice of both Hitler and Jimcrow.

SOCIAL ANALYSIS

We are fortunate this year in having two popular novels
that illuminate hitherto obscured or distorted areas,of gur history.
Howard Fast’s Freedom Road is by now familiar to ammany readers
of this paper. This dramatic story of the Reconstruction’ period

has an urgent meaning for our time. To deepen;one’s knowledee of
_@ period when Negroes and democratic whites topether made great

forward strides, the reader should consult James S$. Allents Recon-
struction and W. E. B. DuBois? Black Reconstruction: °** eee

_ The other novel, Henrietta Buckmaster’s Deep River, is still
dar less widely known than it deserves. It’s picture of Georgia

in the years immediately preceding the Civil Wav contributes pow-
_erfully to a proper appraisal of the slavery period!’ Like Freedom

Road, Deep River combines fresh social analysis ‘with’ attractive
literary form. ~ D DOS She es

For the entire period of slavery and the Civil War, there is one
volume that should be in everyone’s library: The Civil War in
the United States, by Karl Marx and Frederick Hngels. Much of
the material in this enormously instructive compilation first ap-
peared in the New York Tribune in the Civil War Days.

BIOGRAPHICAL

Herbert Aptheker’s four pamphlets on Negro ‘history should
certainly be read or re-read on this occasion. Aptheker has written
on The Negro in the American Revolution, The Negro in the Abo-
litionist Movement. The Negro in the Civil War, and Negro Slave
Revolts in the United States. Incidentally, thesé: four pamphlets
will shortly be issued by International Publishers as one volume:
Main Epochs in the History of the American Negro. tei :

Among the books and pamphlets dealing with individual

Negroes the following merit special attention:
)

Harriet Tubman, by Earl Conrad (Mz. Conrad has:also written
a booklet: Harriet Tubman. Negro Soldier and Abolitionist). Gen-
eral Tubman, as John Brown called her,/ was a scout and nurse
during the Civil War. Kmown as “The Moses of her people,” she
died at 93, was buried with military rites. Her magnificent prose
in unforgettable: “And then we saw lightning, and that was the
guns; and then we heard the thunder, and that was the bie guns;
and then we heard the rain falling, and that was the drops of
blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead
men that we reaped.’ :

Sojourner Truth: God’s Faithful Pilgrim, by Arthur- Huff
Faust, tells the story of another great Negro woman. ‘This tall,
gaunt lady, her head wrapped in white turban, was a real battler.
This anecdote is characteristic. At the close. of one of her anti-
slavery meetings in northern Ohio, a man aproached her and
said: “Old woman, do you think that your talk about slavery does
any good? Why, I don’t care any more for your talk than I do for
the bite of a flea.’ “Perhaps not,” she replied, “but the Lord
willing, I’ll keep you scratching.”

The life of the distinguished scientist George Washington
Carver is told in a fine biography by Rackham Holt. a

The greatest of American Negroes, Frederick Douglas, will
have a place of honor in this year’s celebration of Negro History
Week. International Publishers will appropriately issue for this oc-
casion Frederick Douglass: Tribune of his People; a volume of
selections edited with an introduction by Dr. Philip S: Foner. Every—
one should be acquainted with Douglass’ autobiography, a classie.
American work. His momentous Civil War address, Negroes. and
the National War Effort, is available in a pamphlet with a fore-
word by James W. Ford.

In this eloquent recruiting plea, Douglass said: “Never sincée
the world began was a better chance offered to a long enslaved and
oppressed people. The opportunity is given us to be men. With one
courageous resolution we may blot out the handwriting of ages

against us. Once let the black man get upon his person the brass

letter U.S.; let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on
his shoulder, and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on
earth or under the earth which can deny that he has earned the
right of citizenship in the United’ States.”