Rose L. Martin's classic book, Fabian Freeway

Colchester Collection ^ | 1966 | Rose L. Martin

[oblomov]

Introduction to this well-researched book, now over 55 years old but still relevant:

AS A very young college graduate, searching for literary employment
in the New York City of the middle nineteen-twenties, the author of
this book happened to discover a colony called Turtle Bay. It included
about a dozen remodeled town houses on East Forty-eighth and
Forty-ninth Streets, arranged for gracious living before the phrase
was current. One of the first modem restorations in the Forties and
Fifties near the East River, it bloomed unexpectedly in a neighborhood of tenements and abandoned breweries.
Evidently its builders were versed in the colonial history of Manhattan Island, when the
entire region consisting of a few large farms had been known as
Turtle Bay. For its twentieth century revivalists, the name had a double meaning.

The colony was planned by Mrs. John W. Martin (the former Prestonia Mann), wife of a British Fabian Socialist who
had transferred his activities to the United States before the turn of the century.
Founded as a quiet haven for a little group of serious thinkers,
the Turtle Bay restoration listed among its early settlers the Pulitzer
prize winning novelist, Ernest Poole, and several editors of the New Republic.
There was Philip Littell, whose family once owned the Living Age
in Boston; Francis Hackett, popular Anglo-Irish biographer and book
critic; and a perennial summer and fall tenant on leave from the
University of Chicago English Department, Robert Morss Lovett.
Some had permanent summer cottages and others were recurrent
weekend guests at Cornish, New Hampshire, in the White Mountains, where they fraternized
annually with Harvard alumni Edward Burling, Sr. and George M. Rublee,
members of the same prosperous Washington law firm to which a future Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, belonged.
All were charming, witty, well-bred, industrious, solvent: clearly
superior persons and all aware of the fact. The Harvard men among
them typified in one way or another the revolt against New England
Puritanism and utilized the Bible as a prime source of wit and humor.
(Philip Littell named his canary Onan, because it scattered its seed.)
These were the American cousins of a species, commonly cultivated
in England by the Fabian Society, because such individuals made
Socialism appear attractive as well as respectable. Being socially
beyond reproach, it would be difficult to attack them, however dubious the doctrines they favored.

Turtle Bay colonists of the twenties personally knew and admired
a good many of the English Fabians, a fact frequently reflected in
their writings. Ernest Poole had retired in 1918 from a six-year term
as vice president of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, which changed
its name in 1921 to the League for Industrial Democracy and was
hailed at its 40th Anniversary dinner as "America's Fabian Society."
The chief activist among Turtle Bay residents was Robert Morse Lovett, whom the others affected to regard as an enfant terrible
because of his pacifist stand during World War I. Besides serving as literary editor of the New Republic six months
of the year, Lovett was an official of the American Civil Liberties
Union and the League for Industrial Democracy, the latter occasionally listed in British Fabian Society literature among its overseas
branches. He was also a trustee of the American Fund for Public
Service, known as the Garland Fund, which financed a swarm of
so-called liberal organizations hospitable both to Socialists and covert
Communists, as well as to old-fashioned social reformers. In those
days, the terms "front organization," and "fellow traveler," were still unknown.

A central feature of Turtle Bay was its pleasant Italian-style garden,
shared by all the residents and wonderfully green in spring. Set in
the flagstone walk was a small figure of a turtle in mosaic with the
inscription, Festina lente ("Make, haste slowly"). To casual visitors,
the turtle merely added a picturesque touch. Few recognized this unobtrusive little beast as an emblem of Britain's Fabian Society,
which, since its formation in 1884, has preached and practiced a
philosophy of achieving Socialism by gradual means. Over the years to the present, the Fabian turtle has won a series
of gradual victories that could hardly have been predicted in 1920,
when the possibility of Socialist control in England and the United
States seemed remote to its own leaders. Even now the results are
hardly credible to the great majority of people in this country.
In England the Fabian Society, numbering at most five thousand
listed members, has succeeded in penetrating and permeating organizations, social movements, political parties, until today its influence
pervades the whole fabric. of daily life. At one time, with a Labour
Government in power, 10 Cabinet Ministers, including the Prime
Minister, 35 Under Secretaries and other officers of State, and 229
of 394 Labour Party Members of Parliament held membership in the
Fabian Society. After World War II Fabians presided, as England's
Winston Churchill declined to do, over the liquidation of Britain's
colonial empire, and today, through their control of opinion-forming
groups at the highest levels, they play a powerful role in formulating
foreign policy on both sides of the Atlantic. In the United States the progress of the Fabian pilgrims, though
more difficult to trace, has been impressive. On the whole, United
States Fabians in public office have been more cautious .than their
British models about admitting that Socialism is their goal. The gradualist and freewheeling character of the movement, plus the generally
unsuspicious nature of the American people where gift horses are
concerned, has allowed our native Fabian Socialists to pursue their
goals step by step without disclosing their direction. Their once slow
and cautious pace has been gradually accelerated to a breakneck speed.

In the past, Fabians were more successful in capturing administrative than legislative posts in the United States. They have left their
mark on three decades of legislation largely through a combination
of Executive pressure and the allure of free spending. The interpretive role of the Judiciary and the power of Executive decree have
assumed new importance for Fabian-inspired officials unable to legislate Socialism by more direct methods.

With the multiplication of Federal agencies and employees (2,515,870 Federal civilian employees in November, 1962, as compared to
605,496 in June, 1932), the progress of Fabianism through government channels was further veiled. Not only the general public but
many public officials as well were confused, and still remain so. The
Romans had a word for it-obscurantism--which means the purposeful concealment of one's ultimate purpose.
By September, 1961, at least thirty-six high officials of the New Frontier Administration were found to be past or present members of an
Anglo-Fabian-inspired organization calling itself Americans for Democratic Action. The tally included two Cabinet members, three White
House aides, Under Secretaries and Assistant Secretaries in various
departments of government, and holders of other policy-making posts
ranging from ambassadors to the director of the Export-Import Bank.
Americans sometimes wonder why so many members of a leftist
elite occupy posts of great influence in Washington today. Others ask
why United States spokesmen at home and abroad seem. so often
to be following policies counter to our traditional interests as a nation,
and why in Cold War operations we so frequently lose by default to
our declared mortal enemy, international Communism. We will try to discover the honest answers to such puzzling questions.

First, we will trace the movement represented by Americans
for Democratic Action and related groups from. its historic origin in
British Fabianism to the present day. Second, we will make plain,
beyond the shadow of any future doubt, the tactical service rendered
by the Socialist International, with which the Fabian Society is allied,
in advancing the ultimate goals of the 'Communist International.
A curious thing about our American Fahians-so reticent as public
officials about admitting their Socialist motivation-is that in private
life they tend to express themselves rather freely in signed articles for
publications reaching a limited circle of readers. With research, it
becomes possible to demonstrate their Socialist views in their own
words. However, any attempts to confront them with the evidence or
to interpret their programs in the light of their own confessed philosophy are promptly and vigorously denounced as "unfair," if not downright wicked.

In the past thirty years a whole series of loaded epithets has been
invented for that purpose, beginning with "reactionary" in the early
nineteen-thirties and proceeding through "Fascist" and "McCarthyite"
to "Birchite". At present, "right-wing extremism" is the automatic
catchword applied to any person who seeks to expose or oppose the
Socialist advance, and even to persons expressing the mildest sort of patriotic sentiments.

Still, men must be judged by what they advocate. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Pulitzer prize winner and Harvard history professor, writing
on "The Future of Socialism" for the Partisan Review in 1947, said:

"There seems to be no inherent obstacle to the gradual advance of Socialism in the United States through a series of 'New Deals.'"

Elsewhere he describes the New Deal as "a process of backing into Socialism."
In 1949 Schlesinger was advocating "liberal Socialism" and calling
on a powerful state 'to expend its main strength in determining the broad levels and conditions of economic activity."
Three years later he insisted that those who called him a Socialist were seeking to smear
him; but he still asserted that he was a "New Dealer". In 1954 he
contributed what the Fabian News described as "an important article
on foreign policy" to the Fabian International Review. From 1961 to 1964 Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. was
Administrative Assistant to the President of the United States. Since his case is by no
means an isolated one, and since we have the example of England
to show us what a well-placed group of dedicated Socialists can accomplish in transforming the economic and political life of a nation,
it would seem reasonable to inquire where all this is leading us.
Where, indeed? In a rare moment of candor Gus Hall, General
Secretary of the 'Communist Party of the United States, told us just
where. Addressing a capacity audience of University of California
students at the off-campus YMCA in January, 1962, Hall announced
that the trend in the United States is towards Socialism, 'not like in other countries but based on America's background, and still Socialism."
And he predicted that "the United States will move gradually from Socialism to the higher state of Communism."

[oblomov]

My apologies for bad formatting. PDF of the original document is at the link.

[freedomson]

Oh wait, you said, 'Rose", not, 'Ross".

I'll show myself out.

[Stosh]

Didn’t Turtle Bay turn into the UN complex? One group of confused, self-important socialist fantasy-peddlers replaced by another?

[oblomov]

UN Secretary General building sits on reclaimed land that’s adjacent to the original Turtle Bay. The neighborhood is now called Sutton Place, and is one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in Manhattan. The houses are mostly three or four story brownstones not subdivided into apartments, and security/safety is very high because of the nearby UN building, consulates, hotels hosting foreign dignitaries, etc.

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

Bkmrk

[Scarlett156]

Well, dang, I was hoping it would end with cannibalism or something like that.