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Show Marshall Plan Has Halted The Spread of Communism By BAUKHAGE News Analyst and Commentator. WASHINGTON. When this country was struggling into early manhood, man-hood, it was clear to our statesmen that if the tree oi western democracy demo-cracy were to flourish and bring forth fruit in its season, it would have ; to be shielded from foreign interference. The Monroe doctrine was enunciated. It was defensive, negative rather than positive; it simply said to the world: hold what you have, but take no more. It was a large order for a young nation. It covered a lot ! i of territory. It worked. The world grew older and smal!- j er. A new, powerful anti-democratic force arose. Amer- ; J i It !, k i " .. V;U ican leaders decided decid-ed that if the tree we had planted, now in full fruit, were to continue to live and flourish, tf e ramparts we watched watch-ed would have to embrace and protect pro-tect our friends whose liberties were threatened even ev-en more immediately immedi-ately than our own. The Marshal! of a Neanderthaler cave in the year 23,000 B. C. the mastodon on which he was riding having broken a tusk or an axle or something and all the poor man wanted was to borrow an extra tusk. But since the Cro-Magnon was unable to communicate com-municate his perfectly peaceful desire, de-sire, and before he could present his driver's License or his membership member-ship card in the loyal order of moose, for identity, the Neanderthaler, Neander-thaler, after shoving his wife in the corner and calling his dogs, would step out and welcome the unfortunate unfortun-ate visitor with a hearty wallop on the cranium. The result was probably a war between the Neanderthalers and the Cro-Magnons in which the Neanderthaler had a fifty-fifty fifty-fifty chance of eating Cro. ' i BAUKHAGE plan was enuncia- I ted in June of 1947. , i After thorough debate in congress, 5 It finally vas given sinews on June 1 28 of this year. ! What is the score today? Even if the Innocent visitor had been able to grunt without mis-pronouncing his consonants and lacerating lacera-ting his labials, and even if his inhospitable in-hospitable ho.t had listened to him, that host probably could not have digested his idea as easily, at least as he later digested him. We have words to work with, and thus are able to fashion the tools of communication. But unless the speech teachers (and all teachers) furnish the jkills for the use of those words, the effort is in vain. Unless the idea behind what we believe in can be communicated, communica-ted, (and it can't be, unless we agree on the meaning of words) it withers on the vine. Thus, the speech teacher must teach his pupils not only the medium of communication, but the means of using it and convince them it has concrete value. In the field of labor relations at home, or international understanding understand-ing abroad, v-e never can hope to achieve a real bulwark for democracy demo-cracy unless a mental contact can be made, communications established estab-lished words and ideas joined so that they have a universal meaning and the message they convey can be digested. As Eric Peterson, general secretary-treasurer of the International Association of Machinists, put it: "The need for better lines of communication com-munication between labor and management, man-agement, and between the conciliator concilia-tor and disputing parties is a distinct dis-tinct challenge. For basically, the failure of these two groups to iron out their disputes without ill-will or violence is part and parcel of the broader problem of discord which plagues the v.orld today in its quest for peace." ' Peterson went on to say that a starting point for speech teachers tea-chers might be to pay less attention at-tention to Demosthenes who became be-came a great orator by practicing practic-ing shouting until he could be heard above the roaring of the waves, and a little more to developing de-veloping men whose voices may net be loud, but whose skilfull persuasion can be heard above the misunderstanding in men's hearts. Speaking for management at the conference, Robert Chester Smith, director of industrial and personnel person-nel relations for the Pullman Standard Stan-dard Car Manufacturing company of Chicago, expressed his belief that each of the three members of the industrial tri.imvirate the investor, inves-tor, the manager and the laboring man "has been and continues to be too short sip.hted. Each has been looking at the problem through its own specially-conditioned glasses, and has been unable to see either upward, downward or sirtewise. and unfortunately not very far a-ead." John Q. Jennings, head of Industrial Indus-trial Relations for the Singer Manufacturing Manu-facturing company, told an interesting inter-esting story about how New York's great tugboat dispute last winter had been settled. The negotiations had dragged on for hours until well after midnight. Management and union men had basically agreed on the point at issue, but whenever they tried to phrase the agreement on paper, th :v got entangled in a maze of complicated terminology. Shortly after 1 a. m., one of the negotiators happened to say in simple language what everyone else was trying to say in technical language. lan-guage. Somebody had a brilliant idea: "Why nut put it Just that way In the contract?" They did a two-sentenc? paragraph in ordinary or-dinary rank and file English was inserted a departure Jennings described as something brand-new brand-new in anion contracts. Mere announcement of the " Idea is credited with checking 1 Red revolution In Italy, with i blocking the tide of Communist I aggression in western Europe. ! Now, after only seven months of ,; functioning, I believe that objective observers will admit with Economic Cooperation Administrator Paul Hofman, a bard-headed bus'ness- i man, that "it has not only stopped ! the march of Communism, bui hs ; turned the tide in the opposite di rection." Only recently, Yugoslavia Yugosla-via drew up agreements for trade with western Europe, thus smashing smash-ing one hole in the iron curtain. The ECA is just what it was 'a-j 'a-j belled "enlightened self-interest." ! ; To a chaotic and jittery Europe, it ! , helped to bring: a 25 per cent ;n- crease in agricultural productior, j : over the previous year; industrial l : : production above the pre-war level of 1938; relaxation of inflationary i pressures in all the ERP countries : except France and Greece. ; Now what? To convince our people that the game is worth the candle, ! that whatever the cost, this is ! the first bloodless war ever j fought, that It is cheap insur- ance against a shooting war. ' j To convince congress that the j charges, among others, that ECA is ;' j j not being efficiently operated, . j that big business is being favored I I and little business slighted are un- , : I I Just, or if the charges are true, cor- , j rect them. :, i j To Spsak Or : Mot To Speak ". ; Before congress convened, Wash ington was e'tjoying its usual 'nllux of national conventions, among them two groups concerned with the oral cavity the dentists and the speech-teachers speech-teachers of the nation. Although I : i j was invited to attend sessions of ' ! both groups, I exercised my jaws at t only one the speech instructors' meeting. The job of the speech instructor Is, of eourse, to get the learners to use words to express ideas a difficult diffi-cult task. Not 'hat the raw materif.l is lacking. The dictionary is mil of words, and the "air is thick with ideas. More d.fficult is getting the 1 words out of 'he dictionary and the Ideas out of the air into the learners' learn-ers' heads. The next step is to set the learner to understand the meau-Ing meau-Ing of the worda he uses nj then to translate them into ideas which somebody else can understand un-derstand aye! there's the 'rub! Consequently the speech instructors instruc-tors have not only a difficult, but a hazardous profession. Leaving a man alone with a lot of words is like leaving him in a laboratory with a lot of breakable atoms. We know from recent reports that some of the scientists working with atomic energy go blind. It's a wonder to me that more speech instructors don't go deaf. I suppose speech teachers also teach that most useful corollary art the use ot words to conceal one's meaning. It is one I practice arduously. After a decade and a half cf broadcasting, most of my listeners haven't the slightest idea of what my politics are. 0ne Point wnich was stressed at the speech conference was that the competition for power which ends in strife domestic, industrial, international in-ternational is due, chiefly to improper im-proper communication. I agree with that assumption. There is no excuse for this In this day and age I' was different -vhc-r. a Cro-Magnon appeared at the door j X |