WHERE THE NEWS ENDS

CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY

Where The News Ends By William Henry Chamberlin Molotov as Machiavelli IHAVE JUST been rereading with care an extremely significant speech which Molotov delivered on Soviet foreign policy...

...What had "changed," of course was the SovietGerman relationship, expressed in the infamous Hitler-Stalin deal of August 23, subsequently modified on September 21>, dividing most of eastern Europe into Soviet and Nazi spheres of influence...
...But -and this fact is too often overlooked— 255 Congressmen tr/io voted for tin- Bill were re-elected...
...The "non-liberal" majority in the Senate is even bigger...
...They should prepare to battle in the primaries...
...Thus the Taft-Hartley supporters in the House who, for the most part, may be expected not to take a liberal stand on any given issue, are still in the majority...
...Molotov's revealing address is to be found in "Soviet Russia Today" for November, 1939, and is printed as an appendix in Ann Sue Cardwell's admirable book, Poland and Russia (Sheed and Ward, 1944...
...The first of these points is the length to which the Soviet Government was willing to go in implementing its "non-aggression pact" (mutual aggression pact wotdd have been a much more accurate term) with Nazi Germany...
...But Congress' actions should have come as no surprise...
...These assurances were formalized in three pacts, a treaty of non-aggression, signed in Moscow on July 25, 1932, a conciliation convention, signed on November 23, 1932...
...Next year's local elections can serve a.s an important proving ground And the following year, when many of the Senators and aft the Representatives will be up for re-election, a liberal majority can be installed...
...The peace terms, forced on the Finns in March 1940, required the cession of Viborg and the northern shore of Lake Ladoga...
...The other is the complete absence of any relation between Soviet words and Soviet deeds, between Soviet promise and Soviet performance...
...But the conservative wing of the Senate is still very much in the saddle and on certain measures, such as Civil Rights which most of the Southern members consider a threat to their birthright, the non-Liberal majority becomes overwhelming...
...For example, one could fill a small book with Soviet ollicial assurances of friendship for Poland and respect for Polish independence and Territorial integrity...
...But only a month was to elapse before Russia would launch an unprovoked war of aggression against Finland...
...Molotov also gave Britain and France a curtain lecture on the wickedness of ideological wars...
...Congress not only passed this measure, but overrode the President's veto by a huge vote -many more than the required two-thirds majority...
...It is also true that two or three Southern Democrats are pretty consistently on the liberal side of issues...
...and a protocol extending for ten years the treatyof July 25, 1932...
...in political parties, in organizations such as Americans for Democratic Action, in labor union political leagues...
...Where The News Ends By William Henry Chamberlin Molotov as Machiavelli IHAVE JUST been rereading with care an extremely significant speech which Molotov delivered on Soviet foreign policy before The Supreme Soviet, or Soviet parliament, on October 31, 1939...
...It was this immoral deal, sanctioned explicitly and implicitly at Yalta, which furnshes the only Soviet title deed to the territory it has annexed outside its 1939 frontier: Eastern Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina...
...His new position in the Soviet hierarchy makes this speech particularly significant at this time...
...And once again—as so often in the past -liberals must ait down and take stock, make decisions, and get back to work...
...4' * * MOLOTOV IS EQUALLY instructive when he turns lo the question of aggression...
...It is therefore not only senseless but criminal to wage such a war as the war for 'the destruction Of Hitlerism,' camouflaged as a fight for 'democracy'.'' MOLOTOV'S SPEECH of J939 js very, much worth reading and pondering in 1949—as an indisputable guide to Ihe worth of Soviet promises and paper agreements...
...One may accept or reject the ideology of Hitleriam as well as any other ideological system...
...That the voting record of the present Congress should come as no shock is clearly evident if we examine the vote of the Eightieth Congress on the Taft-Hartley Law...
...BUT MOLOTOV, who had already sent a message of effusive congratulation to Ribben trop on the entrance of the German troops into Warsaw, threw off the mask completely in his October 31 speech...
...Of the former, twenty-two represent the South...
...The answer is obvious...
...One hopes that every Pole, inside a.s well as outside the iron curtain, knows of these words, and has drawn the appropriate political conclusions...
...And to the credit of the conservatives, they have boon working hard since the election to mend their fences...
...Anyone who surveyed tho actual strength of the liberal vote, as opposed to the Democratic vote, in Congress should have recognized the fact that the highly-tuuterl victory on November 2nd was largely illusory...
...Having tested their strength last November, liberals must reorganize themselves...
...But everyone would understand that an ideology cannot be destroyed by force, that it cannot be eliminated by war...
...Today, as far as the European great powers are concerned, Germany is in the position of a state which is striving for the earliest termination of the war and for peace, while Britain and France, which but yesterday were declaiming against aggression, are in favor of continuing the war and are opposed to the conclusion of peace, The roles, as you see, are changing...
...Many people have certainly been executed as Nazi collaborators for much smaller offenses in this direction than the Soviet Foreign Minister and his colleagues committed during the period between 1939 and 1941...
...They should resolve that 1950's victory will be a real one- and not another will o' the wisp...
...But here is Molotov saying, apparently without cracking a smile: "We stand for the scrupt.lous and punctilious observance of pacts on a basis of complete reciprocity, and we declare that all nonsense about sovietizing the Baltic countries is only to the interest of our common enemies and of all anti-Soviet provocateurs...
...Under the strongest kind of pressure treaties permitting the Soviet Union to maintain air and naval bases in these countries had been signed...
...Liberals should start working now...
...But the disappointment is no less keen...
...Of ninety-five Senators (Wagner of New York has been too ill to attend sessions), 53 are Democrats and 42 Republicans...
...THESE FACTS should have been evident on November 2nd...
...This book, courageously published at a time when traitors, fellow-travelers and ignoramuses were riding high in the field of molding American public opinion about the Soviet regime, is one of the first vigorous, documented exposures of the appalling cruelties against the civilian population which characterized the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland AN EDITORIAL— The Romance Is Over LIBERALS, who have claimed the Eightyfirst Congress as their very own...
...That they were not reflects upon the liberals, not the conservatives...
...We know, for example, that in the past few months such concepts as 'aggression' and 'aggressor' have acquired a new concrete connotation, a new meaning, ft is not hard to understand that we can no longer employ these concepts in the sense we did, say, three or four months ago...
...It is true, of course, that some Republican Senators —Morse of Oregon, Ives of New York, Lodge of Massachusetts, Tobey of New Hampshire— find themselves on the side of the administration more often than not...
...have been rudely awakened during the past week as a result of Senatorial action on the filibuster and House action on rent control...
...What happened to the legislators who favored this bill...
...The speech was delivered shortly after the Soviet Government had forced its "protection' on the Baltic republics, Latvia', Estonia and Lithuania...
...A little later Molotov characterized as "a sheer fabrication and lie" the assertion that the* Soviet Union was demanding the cession of the city of Viborg and the northern shore of Lake Ladoga...
...This address is worth looking up and reading line by line because it brings home with crystal clarity two points which were forgotten in the pro-Soviet enthusiasm in which the western powers indulged during the war years...
...One swift blow to Poland," he proclaimed, "first by the German Army and then by the Red Army, and nothing was left of this ugk offspring of the Versailles Treaty...
...that is a matter of political views...
...IN THE LAST election, over one hundred Representatives who supported the Taft-Hartley Bill were defeated for re-election—itself a tremendous victory for the Liberal-Labor forces...
...Within a year these unfortunate lands would be completely sovietized...

Vol. 32 • March 1949 • No. 13


 
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