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Show Country Warned to Guard I Against Race Disturbances j Insecurity in Reconversion Period May Be Cause for Smouldering Resentment; j Minor Incident May Start Trouble. L , V 1 i By BAUKIIAGK News Analyst and Commentator. The fifth is the police nttitiule. If there is evidence of increased friendliness with the hooligan element ele-ment and of a distrust of the police by the minority group it usually means that the tension has reached a high point the forces of order and the forces of disorder are making mak-ing common causa against the alleged al-leged threat of the minority. The two other danger points are congestion, of which I spoke before (bumping into each other) which may grow out of crowded housing, and labor conditions where the minority protests or appears to threaten to protest discrimination in hiring and firing. With these points as a guide any citizen can learn to recognize the symptoms of danger. There are plenty of people In any community who know what is happening the people whose work takes them into the danger zones, like social workers and police reporters. A school teacher teach-er can learn a lot from what the children say and da But long before the situation WXU Service, Union Trust Building, I Washing-ton, 1. C. I There is a small group in Wash- ) ington very much concerned over a j matter which is a part of recon- I version and about which they can ' do very little. That is the question of race riots likely to accompany de-I de-I mobilization. I was surprised to learn how predictable pre-dictable these clashes are, from the following statement by Alfred Mc-Clung Mc-Clung Lee in a pamphlet produced by a non-profit agency, the American Ameri-can Council of American Kace Relations. Re-lations. It was tliis: "The federal office of facts and figures (later called the office of War Information) had a confidential report re-port 15 months before the 1943 Detroit De-troit race riot . that included this sentence: Unless some socially con-structlve con-structlve steps are taken shortly, the tension that is developing is very likely to burst Into active conflict' " The day after the rioting began, the Detroit Free Press stated: "Two months ago everybody in Detroit De-troit familiar with the situation knew reaches even the rumor stage there must be emergency planning in the community. A program must be set up in which certain groups have certain cer-tain definite things to do the moment the "observers" see the danger signals. sig-nals. Here they are: Be sure the mayor knows exactly exact-ly what steps to take to get the help of the state militia. Have the clergymen clergy-men lined up to use their Influence and if necessary appear in person mobs respect the church. Work out school programs, radio programs, pro-grams, newspaper campaigns the veterans organizations and the boy scouts will help, the civic and public pub-lic utilities, labor and business will co-operate. While President Truman was still on the high seas en route for home, he and his staff began the careful briefing of the correspondents, telling tell-ing them many detais which were not for publication but which will gradually find their way into the public prints. They also gave out specific news items for publication, one of .which stated that it was largely the suggestions sug-gestions of the American delegation which made up the agenda. This that race riots were Inevitable." It is worth noting that the professional profes-sional observers were much farther ahead than the newspaper and newspaper reporters are pretty highly trained Investigators themselves. them-selves. And they did know what was coming well In advance. But the fact remained that nobody did anything about it And that is where you and I step Into the picture. Now nobody but a very small class of professional incitors of riot I want race riots anymore than any one but a very small class of professional profes-sional criminals are in favor of crime. But most people do not realize that these clashes can be avoided and very few indeed realize that they are symptoms and not the disease itself. The basic cause of the group tensions ten-sions which burst Into savage flame, destroy property, interfere with business and nearly always cost lives, is insecurity, just as insecurity is one of the basic causes of wars. A man with a job and firm pros- pects of keeping it who lives in healthy and decent surroundings does not want a riot with anybody. It is the man who is unhappy and i Decause ne is not able to do any thing about it, who looks around for a scapegoat upon whom he can blame all his troubles. He naturally na-turally turns against a group whose members have a different appearance appear-ance and different customs from his own. The long-range cure for this disease is better living conditions, housing and employment. But it is not of the long-range treatment I want to speak, but of the immediate, imme-diate, simple things that you and I can do to stop these tensions before they break. Seven Steps for Breaking Tension First, there are seven things you must know about. One of the first signs of trouble is the rumor crop. ' - " 3 ! 1 ?f ' ' . I I ' 'CJ ' 1 President Harry S. Truman I ' you begin to hear a lot of stones most of which later will prove to have been untrue. They may be started by subversive groups; some will have a grain of truth in them. They will include tales of planned, imminent violence; of some group arming itself for attack or outbreak. Then come stories of violent assault, as-sault, crime and murder. This creates the beginning of tension; the group accused becomes frightened and shows it. This lends color to the tales. Then come the "incidents." Incidents usually begin to occur in crowded places. They might be passed off and forgotten if a back-. back-. ground of hate, fear and suspicion had not been built up. As one observer ob-server said to me: "Riots always start when folks get out and bump into each other." The third point to look for when it is clear that rumors have been thick and incidents have begun to happen is some subversive group which may be promoting the trouble for its own ends. Some of these groups will have very high and mighty ideals and very frequently they will be wrapped up in the flag. (Ku Klux, Black Legion, etc.) The fourth point to watch is crime reports because it is really the hooligan element which finally steps in to do the actual rioting. may dr may not have been aimed 5 at comments in Washington by anti- j administration spokesmen who charged that the communique of the Big Three seemed to reflect chiefly 1 Russian demands. j I believe that history will shew j that the President's claim will De 1 1 literally true. This may. not mean' that America got the majority of j the things she Avanted but rather ' that what could be agreed upon was largely the result of the President's policy of insisting on a solution by compromise rather than a stalemate. stale-mate. The great test of America's position posi-tion will come later. We are the " most conservative of the great powers. We are the only one in which capitalism is threatened by attack from within more than from without. I mean that the majority ma-jority of the nation undoubtedly favor fa-vor capitalism whereas the present British government (the only other large democratic power as we accept ac-cept democracy) is socialistic. Dangers Dan-gers to the American capitalistic system, sys-tem, most observers in Washington agree, come from a small group whose selfish interests are the greatest threat to the system of private enterprise. |