Honolulu Record, September 2, 1948, vol. 1 no. 5, p. 8
a point of view
By W. K. BASSETT
These Anonymous "Letters From the People"
In Rhode Island a bill has been framed for presentation to its next legislature which prohibits the publication in any newspaper of letters, purportedly from readers, which contain or criticize any person in public or private life, unless the names of the writers of the letters are printed with the communications. It remains to be seen whether the legislature of Rhode Island will have the independence and, yes, the decency to make that bill into law.
There are two good reasons why letters signed by pseudonyms should not be printed in newspapers. One is that any self-respecting newspaper should demand that anyone criticizing and, as so often happens, villifying another, should have the courage of his or her own convictions. It is altogether too easy to make charges based merely on hearsay. It is altogether too easy to make implications based on false premises. It is altogether too easy to do this and hide behind anonymity while shooting the poison dart.
Another good reason for the passage of such a law, right here in Hawaii, is that newspapers can, and they do, use their "Letters from the Readers" column to put over their own jabs. Too often these letters emanate not from readers, but from the editorial staff of the paper itself. And often, too, this inside-composed criticism is used as a basis for editorial comments in the same paper.
I doubt that in any city on the Mainland is this highly unethical practice more used than it is right here.
I have been told that such a proposed law may be introduced in the next legislature of Hawaii. I hope it is. The practice will stop many cowards from using their pens and their typewriters.
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This Awful Japanese Language
For those whose blood pressure rises to a precarious height whenever they contemplate the wide use of the Japanese language in this, frontier colony of the United States, I would offer the following letter from Bennett Cerf's column in the Saturday Review of Literature:
"In a recent TRADE WINDS column you stated, Louisiana is the one state in the Union where election returns are announced in two languages—English and French.' I take it you are not familiar with practices in New Mexico, where, after this area has been a part of the United States for a hundred years and a state since 1912, the Spanish and English languages are still widely used. Until recently, our legislature regularly employed interpreters; they are still frequently required in our courts. Ballots are printed in the two languages regularly, notices of election and constitutional amendments are printed and published in both languages, political campaigns are made in both languages, and some of the schools are conducted in Spanish."
I might add that in San Francisco, radio programs completely in the Italian language are not uncommon.
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Another "Smoke-Screen"
I note that another book club is started on the Mainland called "Poor Richard's Book-of-America Club." It characterizes itself as staunchly "anti-Communist and defender of American institutions." This book club is a good example of that class of so-called Americans who call themselves anti-Communists to cover up the fact that they are anti-democratic.
Passages in the initial selection of the book club contain such fine fascist examples as these: "... that which a nation needs quite as badly as a healthy race is the existence of an elite to lead it."
"Germany had its officer corps which unwaveringly upheld its ethics and made good in the darkest days of Germany."
The book club committee includes:
G. Seals Aiken, Georgia attorney, who urges that Negroes be denied citizenship and the right to vote.
Austin J. App, Texan, who says the "German armies were the most decent armies of the war."
Lawrence Denis, Massachusetts author, who has written: "Let me say categorically that I do not believe in democracy or the intelligence of the masses."
Frank A. Parker, New York pamphleteer, who recently distributed a leaflet called "Has Congress Abdicated to International Jewry?"
The point is that we mustn't let people who oppose our democratic way of life delude us by protestations of being anti-Communistic.