Onward
Christian Soldiers
A review
Jewish publications of
all kinds should contain a prominently placed statement that they are
Jewish. This would automatically
brand them as being completely unreliable and people would read them at their
own risk, or would know what to expect.
- Donald Day, 1942
When Pope Francis came to the United States, he
chose two American Catholics for public praise, Dorothy Day and Thomas
Merton. Day was a journalist and social
activist. She was a woman of strong
views and sturdy character who was not afraid to challenge higher
authority. The trait seems to have
run in the family. DorothyÕs older
brother, Donald, was also a journalist, and he ended up sacrificing his career
for his principles.
Judged simply on their work as journalists,
Donald was a good deal more influential than was Dorothy. For more than 20 years, from his post as
Eastern European correspondent for Colonel Robert McCormickÕs conservative Chicago Tribune in Riga, Latvia, he was the only American reporter to
report consistently and honestly on the horrors of the Soviet Union. His dispatches were syndicated, and it
would probably not be an exaggeration to say that he was more responsible than
any other person for the fact that the Communist government of Joseph Stalin
was treated as a pariah nation in this country throughout the 1920s and into
the early 1930s. Without his lonely
voice, it is doubtful that the United States would have ended up as the last
major power to extend diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union, which it did
finally in 1933, the first year of Franklin D. RooseveltÕs presidency. The Communist Bolsheviks had come to
power in 1917.
The election of Roosevelt, with his pro-Soviet attitude, was the beginning of
the end of DayÕs journalistic career for the one major American newspaper that
swam against the Roosevelt and New York
Times-led pro-Soviet tide. He might not have started out that way,
but DayÕs experience as an old-school reporter, calling things as he saw them,
had turned him into a fierce anti-Communist opponent of the Soviet Union.
Lonesome Window on the USSR
His education began when, as labor editor of The New York World, he was invited to
visit Russia by Ludwig Martens, the unofficial Soviet envoy to this country,
who was being expelled. He went
with him as far as Riga where he applied for a visa to enter Russia. The visa, which Martens had promised to
him, was not forthcoming from Moscow and Day stayed in Riga. From there he got in touch with the TribuneÕs foreign service chief, the
legendary war correspondent Floyd Gibbons, who helped him get the job for that
newspaper covering Eastern Europe and continuing his attempt to get that visa
to move to Moscow. It was never granted.
Day wrote his book detailing his experiences and
his observations in 1942. It was
not published until 1982, by Noontide Press. The full title of the book is Onward Christian Soldiers: 1920-1942: Propaganda, Censorship
and One ManÕs Struggle to Herald the Truth. The TribuneÕs longtime Washington correspondent, Walter Trohan, wrote the bookÕs
introduction in late 1981. Here we
pick up TrohanÕs admiring narrative:
From his Riga listening post, Day sent the first
stories of the Russian famine. He
was tireless in interviewing those fleeing Russia and got the first reports of
life in the boasted Red Eden. He
was the first to interview Americans who were released from Soviet prisons at
the instigation of the American government on the recommendation of Herbert
Hoover, who headed a relief program which not only saved millions of Russian
lives but doubtless saved the Bolshevik regime itself.
In his work Day had some of the glamor of the Richard Harding Davis era of foreign
correspondence. He worked with
Lithuanian irregulars in the seizure of the Memel territory in 1923. He was there when Estonian Communists
undertook their bloody attempt to overthrow the Government. He was the confidant and advisor to many
figures in the new governments in the area. For 21 years he was on hand in Latvia,
Estonia, Lithuania, Poland and Finland.
He covered both Finnish-Russian wars, that for
liberation in 1917 and that which was a prelude to World War II. He sent many graphic accounts of warfare
in sub-zero weather.
Through 21 years Day sought regularly to get the
once promised visa. Almost as
regularly he was approached by Red agents, who told him he
would get the visa if he would write favorable articles for some months,
and if he would agree to report on the activities of governments with which he
was familiar.
This Day would not do. He considered the invitation one to join
the Soviet espionage apparatus. His
dispatches were giving readers a picture of life in the new republics, all of
which had won independence through bitter and even bloody struggles with Russia.
These countries had established themselves, not by grants of aid from the
outside but by their own efforts.
These countries allowed Day to write without censorship, where in Russia
correspondents were required not only to submit to censorship but to report to the foreign office every three months for
consideration of the extension of their visas. If they displeased the Soviets, their
visas were withdrawn. For this
reason, The Tribune elected to
withdraw George Seldes, its Soviet ingratiating
correspondent from Moscow and leave the coverage to Day from Riga. *
By the test of time DayÕs dispatches stand out
as not only more truthful but more informative than
those of his Moscow contemporaries.
Reading DayÕs relatively short 204-page
paperback it is easy to see why the manuscript took 40 years to see the light
of day. The book swims as strongly
against the still-prevailing Good War-tide on World War II as did his
dispatches about the Soviet Union. Furthermore,
his very blunt and judgmental views on various ethnic and religious groups,
particularly Jews, could hardly be more politically incorrect by todayÕs
standards. This is the voice of a
man who had seen a good sample of the absolutely evil monstrosity that StalinÕs
Communist Russia was. Then his country allied itself with that monstrosity, and
he was ordered to return home. The
order initially came in August 1942 not from his newspaper but from the U.S.
government. By that time he was in
Sweden, having escaped the Soviet takeover of the Baltic States. He did not go home; his passport was
lifted, and he became a man without a country.
The first chapter is entitled, ÒWhy I did not go
home,Ó and here are some excerpts:
Herschel Johnson, the American minister in
Sweden, had asked the assistance of the Swedish authorities to prevent me from
leaving for Finland. In explaining
this unusual action of the American government he said that Washington charged
me with being Òanti-Bolshevik, anti-British and anti-Roosevelt.Ó
---
As for the charges the American minister
preferred against me, they also apply to The
Chicago Tribune which stationed me in Riga for 20 years reporting
developments in Russia and Northern Europe. I happened to be the only American staff
correspondent stationed in this part of Europe. The
Chicago Tribune editorially opposed the Bolshevik regime. It had always warned our government of
the machinations of the British government against the United States; among
other acts, London had successfully organized the debtor nations of Europe to
default together with Great Britain in paying their war and post-war debts to
America. It had also unsuccessfully
warned the American people against the intrigues and propaganda of the British
government to involve us in a European war, our involvement converting it into
a new world war, more dangerous and horrible than the last. It had unsuccessfully campaigned against
Franklin Roosevelt, and the international forces behind him, who for years
maneuvered to bring America into the war and who finally succeeded.
I was even more involved than The Tribune. For more than 20 years my name had
been signed on my dispatches. I had
been under constant attack by Soviet, Jewish, Polish and Lithuanian newspapers
in the United States. On a number
of occasions, through denunciations and provocations these forces attempted to
have me either recalled or discharged.
In 1939 the Polish government annulled my visa and refused to permit me
to make further trips to Poland where I had visited three and sometimes four
times a year since 1922. In 1939
the Lithuanian government, after refusing to censor my cables, ordered me
expelled from the country. The
Soviets, Jews, Poles and Lithuanians all maintain powerful agencies in
Washington to pressurize the American government. So unfortunately I found myself in the
position of having far more enemies than friends in Washington where the
government is now making extraordinary efforts to comply with the demands and
requests of the Soviet government.
---
There are naturally other reasons why Washington
wanted to remove me from my post in Northern Europe. Washington does not want to have any
independent American correspondents in Europe. Formerly a correspondentÕs first loyalty
was to his newspaper. Today it must
be to the Roosevelt Trust in Washington.
Today instead of reporting news, correspondents are expected to report
propaganda. They are expected to
help the government delude newspaper readers. War is supposed to justify many things
incompatible with peacetime standards of honor. Patriotism is very often a shroud
concealing a cadaver wasted with pain and wracked with torture. Perhaps it is unfortunate for myself
that I cannot adapt myself to the Roosevelt TrustÕs perversion of
patriotism. If, after thirty years
of newspaper work I am suddenly treated as a criminal, then something has
radically changed.
With the long list of enemies he had accumulated
through his blunt reporting, Day had legitimate reasons to fear not just for
his career but for his very life should he return home. Furthermore, as he recounts in the
chapter, he had knowledge of some very dubious dealings by the Soviet
ambassador to the United States at the time, Maxim Litvinov, back when Litvinov
had been the minister to Estonia, and Litvinov knew that he knew. ÒI have occasion to know that Litvinov,Ó
wrote Day, Òhas long memory and, as I cabled to Colonel McCormick, so long as
he is persona grata in Washington I
will be non grata.Ó
Of those who posed a threat to Day, those first
two, the Soviets and the Jews, were the most powerful and the most
dangerous. Day earned their enmity
through first-hand knowledge and experience. The following comes from his chapter on
Latvia:
Can you picture groups of men and women and
children being forced to crawl on their hands and knees through the streets to
the railroad station where they were herded like animals, the men into one row
of freight cars, the women and children into another? Then
these trains with their human freight leaving during the night on journeys
lasting for many days eastwards? From one distant station to
another till the secret destination was reached? Families separated
forever on this earth? Farewells which turned into
moans of utter despair? This happened in Kaunas (Kovno) the capital of Lithuania.
Can you picture autotrucks
night after night rumbling through the streets carrying their loads of arrested
men and women to secret prisons? Of tiny torture cells in which the
prisoner was unable to lie down or even to sit
down? Of actual physical torture to obtain confessions of
acts never committed, or of information concerning the whereabouts of fugitives
from the communist class war? Of men flayed alive, castrated, with
their faces beaten until their noses and jaw-bones were smashed and
broken? All this before the communist executioner with a single shot in
the back of their head put them out of their misery? Of Christian women and
girls being violated by Jewish chekists? All
this happened in Riga, the capital of Latvia.
Can you picture men, women and children being
placed in freight cars and being kept there two and three days without food,
without water, without facilities to perform natural functions? The men in one line of cars, the women and children in another?
Of agonized screams for help from both lines of
cars? Of indignant crowds of people gathering wishing to rescue
them? Of platoons of GPU troops rounding up these people and marching
them off to forced labor on fortifications works? Of trains finally
disappearing into the night, also eastwards to exile and death? All this
happened in Tallin (Reval)
the capital of Estonia.
---
The Red Terror, as it is
called by the Communists themselves, was introduced as a matter of
course in those countries annexed by the Soviet Government. Red Terror is the liquidation by
execution and exile of all classes except the proletariat. The GPU in the Baltic States
employed the same methods used during the early years of the revolution in
Russia. The sadistic barbarity which the GPU used against the outlawed classes is
a practical and effective method of terrorizing into inaction any element of
the population which might resist.
Compared with the mental and physical torture
methods of the Jewish GPU of Russia, the guillotine of the French revolution
was a very pleasant form of death.
Chroniclers tell us how hoi polloi
of Paris screamed with sadistic delight when a dripping head with blond
hair was held up on the scaffold for their inspection. This suggests the victims of the French
revolution included the Nordic element.
This instinctive racial hatred manifested itself in the Russian
revolution where the upper classes were also of the Nordic race. Racial hatred also played a role in the
actions of the Jewish GPU in the Baltic States.
You notice I say Jewish GPU. This is correct. From the very beginning of the Russian
revolution the terrorists branch of the government was
in the hands of the Jews. Felix Djerjinski, a Pole who first headed the Cheka,
had Menshinski and Jagoda
as assistants. He
was succeeded by Menshinski, who was followed in
succession by Jagoda, Yeshov,
Akulov and then Berija who
now heads this terror organization.
All of these men are Jews.
All the testimony gathered from survivors of the Red Terror in the
Baltic States confirms that the GPU leaders were, almost without exception,
Jews. And so long as the GPU holds
supreme control in Russia, the Soviet Government must be regarded as a Jewish
controlled regime. I might mention
here that I have reported this phase of the communist revolution many times
during the past 22 years to The Chicago Tribune which,
together with other American newspapers subscribing to our press service, has
published these articles.
Bad ÒDayÓ for the Pope
In a previous chapter on the United States, he
decries the change in the character of the country caused by heavy Jewish
immigration from Eastern Europe, and in doing so reveals his first acquaintance
with Jewish journalism:
Unknown to the Americans the Jews in the United
States had collected huge funds to assist the Jews of eastern
Europe to reach America. In Riga
for the first time I came into contact with Jewish journalists. They forwarded news to Jewish newspapers
in Germany, France, England, the United States and many other countries. Most of the stories concerned
pogroms. They obtained them from
Jews who had succeeded in bribing their way out of Russia and who were
attempting to bribe their way into other countries. I was approached on many occasions and
asked to forward pogrom stories. I
investigated and found them untrue.
The Jewish refugees were seeking sympathy and assistance. With their oriental imagination and
disrespect for the truth, they embellished rumors they had heard in the course
of their pilgrimage until they became a real slaughter or a pitiless
massacre.
---
The Jews found means of evading the law. They migrated to the United States in
hundreds of thousands. And within
the short space of 15 years, the United States, like the Jewish controlled Union
of Soviet Socialistic Republics, has become an instrument of Jewish
imperialistic ambitions.
In light of such observations by Donald Day, we
can say without fear of contradiction that Pope Francis, who is so lavishly
praised by the largely Jewish controlled mainstream press, will not be singling
out DorothyÕs once-famous brother for any sort of special mention anytime soon. It is all the less likely because
brother Donald also was unstinting in his criticism of the Roman Catholic
Church, especially for what he regarded as its interference for ill in the
politics of Poland and Lithuania.
No evil, though, compared in Donald DayÕs mind
to that of Soviet Communism:
Just how far the average American is attracted
by this strange-tasting medicine of Roosevelt has yet to be revealed, for the
average American is inarticulate.
From everything I know about my own country I can at least report that
real Americans are not at all pleased to find themselves as allies and
supporters of Bolshevism, because these Americans are Christians.
My career as a correspondent ended because I
found myself unable to become a soothsayer. I have remained in Europe because I
prefer to fight with all my power against the Bolsheviks rather than to fight
for them.
At this point you might ask yourself, dear
reader, what you would have done in the same situation.
Defector, but No Traitor
As Trohan reports in
his introduction, a year after his refusal to return home, DayÕs fight against
Bolshevism took the form of working as a commentator for Nazi propaganda
radio. But, according to Trohan, Òhe confined himself to praising Finnish athletes
and lauding the bravery of Finn troops in their war with Russia.Ó American
occupation forces in Germany, Òafter careful combing of his broadcasts revealed
no taint of treason,Ó allowed him to return to Finland and his Finnish wife. According to Wikipedia, Trohan has not told
the full story:
He was rearrested pending treason
charges on January 12, 1949, but the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) dropped
the case soon after. As Soviet-American tensions mounted following the end of
the war, there was no interest in prosecuting Day for his wartime broadcasts
that had principally targeted the Soviets. As a DOJ memorandum of December 6,
1946, had noted: "Donald Day was a broadcaster for the Germans during the
last eight or nine months of the war. His broadcasts consisted primarily of
extremely anti-Russian statements. He made broadcasts both to the United States
and to American troops." A memorandum dated January 22, 1947 said that he
"sometimes suggested that the United States should not have entered the
war and that Germany's cause against Russia was just."
One might also surmise that the government also
made the judgment that it was better not to stir up the sort of issues that might
have been raised in any public trial of Donald Day. It thought it to be better, rather, that
this once very influential journalist be permitted to slip quietly off the
pages of history.
* Wikipedia reports, in conflict with the
conservative Trohan, that the leftist Seldes was expelled by the Soviets for circumventing their
censorship, not voluntarily removed by his employer.
David Martin
November 19, 2015
See also my review of Diana WestÕs American Betrayal.
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