The Veteran in Civilian Life

Charles G. Bolte, a founder of the liberal American Veterans Committee, contributed an opinion on the “basic disturbance” in the returning veteran's life that he believed must be addressed. He used the phrase repeatedly in his article. Bolte wrote that the new veterans were eager to hear from people willing to address this “basic disturbance,” forthrightly express their own deep convictions and offer constructive solutions whether liberal or conservative. He pointed to Representative Charles M. La Follette's recent speech to the Indianapolis chapter of the American Veterans Committee as an example of the kind of talk veterans wanted to hear.

LaFollette, who was third cousin to the LaFollettes of Wisconsin's Progressive Party, was running in the Republican primary in Indiana for the US Senate. He represented the Evansville area in Congress. Bolte said the veterans appreciated his “straight talk” whether or not they agreed with the specifics. He wrote that LaFollette committed himself to what many people in his home state would consider heresy by signing the declaration calling for the UN to establish world law, calling for friendly relations with the Soviet Union and recommending an end to “monopoly capitalism.” LaFollette also urged the vets to reject the doctrines of both the extreme Right and extreme Left, calling them both "hoary dogmas of the past." The Russophobes on the right, he charged, found “aggression in every act of the Soviet Union and Communism in every proposal seeking to find democratic solutions for our domestic, social and economic problems.” The Russophiles on the left, he said, had become apologists for every Russian action in both foreign and domestic affairs.

Bolte expressed hope that LaFollette's political honesty would not prove suicidal but LaFollette lost the primary to a Right Wing extremist, William E. Jenner, who had previously served a brief term in the Senate and who went on to win the election in November. The elections that year essentially wiped out the Midwestern Progressive wing of the Republican party that dated back to the days of Teddy Roosevelt. Jenner was even more of an extremist than Joe McCarthy, who had beaten LaFollette's third cousin in the Wisconsin Republican primary. Jenner not only vigorously supported McCarthy's witch hunts but did him one better by calling for the impeachment of President Truman, who he said had put Soviet agents in charge of the country. He also declared that the United Nations had infiltrated the nation's educational system. He lasted in Congress until he retired in 1958 when his brand of idiocy had fallen out of style and was replaced by a liberal Democrat.

The 26-year-old Bolte was something of a Golden Boy in 1946. He was the first chairman of the Americans Veterans Committee founded in 1944 as a liberal alternative to the American Legion. He was a New Yorker who had joined the British King's Royal Rifle Company in 1941, right after his graduation from Dartmouth and before America had entered the war. He had lost a leg at El Alamein. Afterward he worked as a civilian in the Office of War Information. In 1945 he wrote a book, The New Veteran, and began writing for magazines like The Nation. In the December 10, 1945 issue of Life magazine (available for viewing at Google Books), he wrote a piece on the aims of his organization. In December 1946, Bolte was chosen as one of first group of Rhodes Scholars since the onset of the war in Europe in 1939. He subsequently was a vice president of Viking Press, a director of the ACLU, executive director of the American Book Publishers Council, and vice president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The AVC called for housing and educational assistance for veterans, the active participation of veterans in elections and a job for every veteran. It vigorously opposed racial discrimination and strongly supported the United Nations and the ideal of world government. Its chapters, including those in the Deep South, were integrated, unlike those of the VFW or American Legion. It did away with the funny hats, fraternal rituals and horseplay of the other veteran's organizations. Although it was national, its membership was largely concentrated in and around East Coast college campuses populated by upper class progressives (at least according to The Guardians: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment by Geoffrey M. Kabaservice.) Although the leadership and the majority of the membership were not Communists or party sympathizers and its agenda was not particularly radical, the Right Wing targeted it in the Red Scare after the war. It expelled its Communist members in 1948 but dwindled in size and influence as its members left school and began careers at a time when supporting equal rights or international cooperation could get you branded a dangerous subversive. It lasted in vestigial form until 2007 when its last two chapters folded. As noted in the main news section of the paper, La Guardia addressed the Columbia AVC chapter the previous week on the world famine.