 It's time for the Lawn Jean Chronoscope. A television journal of the important issues of the hour brought to you every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. A presentation of the Lawn Jean Wittner Watch Company. Maker of Lawn Jean, the world's most honored watch, and Wittner. Distinguished companion to the world honored Lawn Jean. Good evening. This is Frank Knight. May I introduce our co-editors for this edition of the Lawn Jean Chronoscope? Larry Lasser from the CBS television news staff, and August Heckscher, chief editorial writer for the New York Herald Tribune. Our distinguished guest for this evening is Norman Thomas. Our guest tonight may not have been the most successful man that ever ran for president of the United States, but surely he was one of the most persistent. He was a presidential candidate six times on the Socialist Party ticket, but now Mr. Thomas devotes his time to writing and talking and thinking about the problems of the post-war world. Mr. Thomas, the world recently witnessed the victory of a Socialist Party in power in England directly after the war, but the Bevan government wasn't much of a success. Now, do you still feel that the socialization of big industries is the solution to social problems? Well, first I'm going to remind you that it was the athlete and not the Bevan government, and that it was a very considerable success. The fact is that England and Europe are very much better off. You have no idea how many troubles would have happened if they hadn't. And if you'd had Churchill, I doubt if you'd had the settlement in Burma and India, and you might have had Indochina scattered all over the world. Do you attribute that to the fact that it was a socialist government? Yes, I do, because socialism, not perfectly, but socialism was more definitely in favor of independence than the conservatives were. I do not think and never did that the final road to heaven is state ownership, but I do think there are certain things that should be publicly owned. Things like the natural resources and certain monopolies and oligopolies, but they should also be democratically managed. The British labor government played out its score, and it was a good score, but there remained things to be done. You will remember, of course, that they got a bigger popular vote in the general election than the conservatives who won more seats in Parliament. True, but what about world socialism, Mr. Thomas? Do you think that if democratic socialism were adopted the world over, that would be an answer to permanent peace? Yes, in the same sense that I believe that if real Christianity were adopted, it would be an answer to permanent peace. Norman, do you think that... Well, do you think that the socialists in Europe might together form some kind of a third force? They ought to, they might, especially if you could get any kind of integration in Western Europe. You've got to remember that democratic socialists, partly because they are democratic, have to win by programs of immediate appeal to the voters in the country, and nationalism cuts across, of necessity. And it isn't a disloyalty to socialist ideals, but practical politics that brings it about, that Paul Henry Spock, a good socialist, could declare rather pessimistically that the thing that socialists had learned best to nationalize was socialism. What about the Marxian theory of the ever-increasing conflict between the classes? Do you American socialists hold with that? No, and most socialists have really abandoned that, at least in its extreme and most rigid sense. Most democratic socialists would now tell you that they advance socialism as the necessary fulfillment of democracy, the application of democracy in the field of economics. Norman, you said earlier that British tourism had failed in the colonial problem in Asia. Do you think that the American democracy is succeeding any better? No, chiefly by a kind of a combination of modesty and arrogance. Every now and then we're so modest that we won't speak up to the French on the subject of what should be done. And every now and then, perhaps unconsciously, we're so arrogant that we seem to our friends to introduce a new kind of isolationism, a sort of Uncle Sam knows best isolationism, which doesn't persuade them to go along. I think the substance of our intentions is pretty good. Our manners need to be improved. Norman, you were an articulated pacifist in World War I at least. Now, how do you feel about sending troops to Indochina now to wage war or to stem communist aggression as a part of American democracy? Terribly. Not because I am longer a religious pacifist in the sense that I once was. In some ways I wish I were. I have, for a good long while, accepted the principle of collective security as a necessity in our modern world. I supported Truman's policy in Korea, as you probably know. I think that it would be the worst of all things, and many things are bad. We're America to go it alone in Indochina or to intervene alone or without support of Asian opinion or without a far better base native support than is now evident. I was horrified by the trial balloon Nixon flu. I thought that was dangerous. One of the most likely ways, I think, to get into World War III and one of the worst would have been that. And I am convinced that if we had gone it alone, such as Asian feeling, that the communists could have exploited even in our hour of victory after a cruel and nasty war, hate and fear of suspicion of us and the rest of Asia so that we would have been incredibly hurt. How do you think we could win Asian support then? Only by a far better practice of persuasion than we have followed. Only by a degree of patience. Only by lifting up their hearts with hope. I have been twice, two successive years in Asia, and one of the things that worries me is our failure to make the average Asian believe that it is really we who care for peace. If only it's things that Truman and Eisenhower had said, for instance, have said about universal disarmament under proper controls, could have been lifted to the level of a kind of an ideological crusade, always keeping up our strength. We would have been better off. We would have been better off if we had used the United Nations a little more patiently in the matter of Indochina. We would have been infinitely better off if we had been clear cut in the opposition to colonialism and didn't seem to inherit the colonialism of the French and so on. But Norman, you then could see conditions under which you would be willing to support American participation in United Action in Asia. It isn't the idea of ground troops there that horrifies you, it's the idea of ground troops in conditions that now exist. Well, it horrifies me to think of the agony of it, but some things that horrify me may have to be accepted. And I think it's quite a dangerous nonsense to talk about war without thinking of ground troops. That is the notion that you can win by a couple of injudiciously distributed bombs. How do you feel about the massive retaliation, Norman? Do you feel it's practical as a threat or practical as a military operation? I suspect that if we come to the horror of Third World War, there'll be plenty of retaliation and massive retaliation. But I think the way that Mr. Dulles, whose good intentions also I admit, the way he used the phrase, his instant and massive retaliation, and I could bring mountains of evidence of this, had the effect of scaring lots of the American people and practically all our friends. And not much effect in scaring Joe and Lai or Molotov or Malankov. It was, in other words, a neither practical nor wise to speak as he spoke. He's been explaining it ever since. I wonder whether, Larry, we could change the subject a little bit. Norman, you've been around and seen a great deal in the field of civil liberties over a long period of time. I just wonder how you do feel about the atmosphere that exists in this country today compared, let's say, to the atmosphere that existed after the First World War. In some ways, the atmosphere immediately after the First World War, not only the atmosphere, but the actual things done were worse. After all, civil liberties reached their lowest ebb under that extraordinarily illiberal liberal, Woodrow Wilson, with the art, the view for Jim Ember and the deportations and the thousands of people arrested in what a historian is called Mitchell Palmer's obscene anti-red raids. And the lust laws, the campuses, college campuses were far more closed and intolerant than they are today. The situation today is heaven knows very bad and the comparison, especially in a couple of minutes or you don't even allow that, I know, is, cannot be scientifically pressed. Well, Norman, you got about a million votes in 1932. I think that was the largest number you ever amassed. Now, do you know anything that's happened to those people who did vote for you, who registered socialists when they tried to get jobs in civil service? I suppose that even in this country of happiness where we all are living longer and longer and longer, a lot of them are dead. But of the living and the good money before they were dead, they turned Democrat, at least for the nonce. Is that passed and held against them? A lot of them got jobs under Roosevelt and some of them have still got jobs, but they aren't socialists by acknowledgement anymore. I do not look at the past with unmixed satisfaction, but I do find myself slightly amused when the Republican president, so anybody supported by the editorial writer of the Harold Tribune, really got around to sending messages. He sent a complete and comprehensive survey for a welfare state. Now, I don't quite like his version of the welfare state for reasons we won't go into, but there wasn't any basis for it in 1932 and anybody's platform or anybody's speeches but mine. I accept the bowels of the audience. Now, I ask you this as a last question, since you just have about a minute. What do you think of the future of the Socialist Party here in America? Well, I have said publicly and in the party that the present party has much of a future. I still hope that it can be an educational agency and I still hope that in some measure it can serve as a catalytic force to do what we need. That is to help to cure our instrumental poverty. Our democracy is very weak in its instruments when we have two parties. Two major parties and that's what the situation requires constitutionally, in which both of which the differences are so much greater than they are in the average between them. That means irresponsible parties and it's very hard to govern in democracy with irresponsible parties and the great ambition of our life, the reason I ran so often was not because I thought I'd be elected or the Socialist Party as such would win. I thought the socialist ideal should win and I wanted it to be a catalytic as well as an educational agency and bring about a new political alignment, a real alignment. In other words, do you think we're going away from Socialism as you thought of it even in those days in 1932? Well, thank God not being a Republican, I can admit that I can change my mind. I don't have to talk the language of 1920 and do the things in 1954. That's the difference between me and some Republicans. And I therefore will gladly admit that I have learned enough to change my mind, but my fundamental convictions have not changed as I could prove by citing quotations. Even to Senator McCarthy I can prove it. Thank you very much. Thank God I don't have to. The opinions expressed on the long gene chronoscope were those of the speakers. The editorial board for this edition of the long gene chronoscope was Larry Lesser and August Texture. Our distinguished guest was Norman Thomas, veteran socialist leader and chairman of the Post-War World Council. When next you buy a watch, either for yourself or as an important gift in all probability, your jeweler will show you models of almost every make of watch that you can name at long gene prices and even higher. Now what's your best buy in this situation? Let's look at the record together. It is very significant that of all the watchmakers of the world, only long gene has won 10 World's Fair Grand Prizes and 28 gold medals. 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We invite you to join us every Monday, Wednesday and Friday evening at the same time for the Long Gene Chronoscope, a television journal of the important issues of the hour. Broadcast on behalf of Long Gene, the world's most honored watch and Witner, distinguished companion to the world honored Long Gene. This is Frank Knight reminding you that Long Gene and Witner watches are sold in service from coast to coast by more than 4,000 leading jewelers who proudly display this emblem. Agency for Long Gene Witner Watchers.