Bide Time, Keep Issues Alive, Loeb Tells HLU Heads

Asking that progressives stand firm and "look to the next swing," James Loeb, national director of the Union for Democratic Action, told the Executive Committee of the Liberal Union last night that "while the present reaction was inevitable, its intensity and its duration depend on how well we prepare ourselves both programatically and organizationally to stop the sweep."

The UDA is a countrywide organization, led by Reinhold Niebuhr, which has long championed a non-communist liberal approach to American problems. Loeb appeared before the HLU officers to discuss proposed affiliation of the HLU's parent body, the United States Student Assembly, with the UDA. At the next Liberal Union meeting, the Executive Committee will recommend support of the affiliation move.

"Everything we do" said Loeb, "must have reference to the stream of American liberalism. We have to look to the next swing, and see to it that we have something better to offer than Gerald L. K. Smith."

Post-War Reaction

"Progressives," he continued, "have to realize in their disappointments about Tuesday that we find ourselves in a period of intense post-war reaction; and that this reaction was inevitable and would have taken place in a modified form even if Roosevelt had lived.

"When and if the next depression comes, we've got to be prepared with a basic economic policy that outs deeper than the New Deal. We'll need a new New Deal to fit a new period. The long term problem must not be minimized, of course, for from a short term point of view it's clear that we're not going to get much out of the 80th Congress. The best we can do is raise those issues which will enable us to get a better 81st."

"In foreign policy," Loeb continued, "we must follow a strategy which while not anti-Russian, will adhere to all-out democratic principles."