Editorials

...In this criticism, does the pope deny the values of democratic political institutions and, as Safire has it, side with third-world "dictatorships, oligarchies, and juntas...

...What the letter reflects is, in fact, an old problem-nations with estimable political institutions at home may act abroad in ways that deny those values...

...After many years of hiding his military service, and many more months of denying any role in wartime atrocities, Waldheim now appears to concede that he knew of the numerous violations of human rights and international law about which the commission report speaks...

...Specifically, Safire is outraged at the equation of the superpowers' responsibility for the baleful conditions of the third world...

...Responding to the report of the official commission established to look into his wartime record, the president of Austria declared that the report was a "clear statement saying that I am not guilty of war crimes and that knowledge is not a crime...

...In a man-on-the-street interview, one of his fellow countrymen more candidly assessed the position of Waldheim and of Austria itself, "If knowledge is a crime, they should lock all of us up...

...His opponents, including the prime minister and many prominent business people ardently wish for his departure because the controversy is disrupting the...

...EDITORIALS Solliciludo rei socialis John Paul II will variously provoke, irritate, and hearten many people with his seventh encyclical, The Social Concern of the Church...

...But finally it focuses on one...

...John Paul's tone is more urgent and stark than that of his predecessor's, reflecting as he says, the fact that "hopes for development" are "very far from being realized...

...Austria's own responsibility for this past has never been acknowledged and repented...

...In retrospect, the Anschluss, has been described as the "rape of Austria...

...Thus his general insights were comprehensive...

...This is why, writes the pope, the "church's social doctrine adopts a critical attitude towards both liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism...

...The commission's cautious conclusions have not ended the matter...

...And it is this pivotal and neuralgic point that will certainly cause controversy: "The existence of two opposing blocs, commonly known as the East and the West," whose political, ideological, and military struggles transferred to the developing nations...

...Unlike France, its collaborators were never exposed...

...government and sullying Austria's international image...

...Nonetheless, many Austrians quickly embraced Nazism...

...Unlike Germany, it never went through war crimes trials and a period of re-education...

...It is true that Hitler, afraid that Austrians would prefer independence, forced the government to accept incorporation into a greater Germany...

...NATIONAL AMNESIA Kurt Waldheim has declared himself, "not guilty...

...Americans do not take kindly to being called an imperialistic power, particularly by a "foreigner," and Safire's ire reflects that national trait...

...The nation had long nurtured a home-grown fascism and anti-Semitism, linked to the "national Catholicism" Shuster mentions, it was a tradition that instructed Hitler in his Austrian youth, that supported the authoritarian regime which seized power in 1934, and that scrambled to welcome the Nazi German forces in 1938...

...He provides an account that leaves little room to doubt that even in 1938, the attacks on the Jewish population were vicious and terrifying, and that dissenters to National Socialism had reason to fear for their lives...

...Nor, unlike the United States, has it produced persistent, if few, voices of conscience like those raised against the fire-bombing of German cities, the internment of Japanese-Americans, the failure to mount rescue efforts for victims of the Holocaust, and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

...The letter cites many causes for continuing underdevelopment-"from grave omissions on the part of the developing nations themselves" to international "economic, financial, and social mechanisms which...often function almost automatically...

...he will not resign...

...Furthermore, he detects in each of the two blocs "a tendency towards imperialism...

...His work as a translator and officer, the report says, made Waldheim "one of the staff members who was especially well-informed...

...It is an honest criticism- one of many, painful as they may be-to which we must attend...

...They related not only to tactical, strategic, and administrative orders, but in some cases also included actions and measures which contradicted military law and the principles of humanity...

...We reprint his account below...

...helps to widen the gap already existing on the economic level between North and South...

...In the pope's analysis the brightest future of the third world lies in building institutions and practices analogous to those of liberal democracy, including limited government, individual rights, participatory political processes, and systems that foster individual economic initiatives...

...Opponents and supporters alike seem unprepared to deal with the substance of the accusations against Waldheim-and in a larger sense against Austria itself...

...Austria never had to account for its wartime acts, and was quickly welcomed back into the bosom of the civilized West-the better to battle against "godless Communism.'' But the cost is apparent even now-above all in the suppurative anti-Semitism with which many Austrians have reacted to the charges against Waldheim, and in the splendid obtuseness with which Waldheim has proclaimed himself vindicated.elf vindicated...

...His wide-ranging and compelling analysis of the continuing lag in third-world development commemorates the twentieth anniversary of Paul VI's Populorum Progressio, but goes far beyond it...

...William Safire, in a first critical reaction (New York Times, February 22,1988), detects in this rhetorical evenhandedness a simplistic view of the world and a craven effort to curry favor with the third world, a tactic which, he believes, will only serve to "enshrine the rhetoric of resentment...

...The encyclical says that the West's struggle with the Soviets is impeding that process...

...Waldheim and his supporters believe they have been vindicated...

...A close reading of The Social Concern of the Church turns up criticisms of single-party states, of bureaucratic control of economies, and of the stultifying effects of illiteracy, discrimination, and exploitation-in other words, descriptions of Eastern Europe and a host of developing nations in Africa, Latin America, and Central America...

...Our intentions and our hopes for the political and economic future of the third world may be laudable...

...But it is the political and military struggle between the Soviets and the West, which is actually misshaping that future by exacerbating local conflicts, by diverting development funds to military uses, and by encouraging the arms trade...

...But it would be a mistake to see in the encyclical's criticism of the West's responsibility for continuing underdevelopment either a "collectivist'' mentality or a dismissal of democratic institutions...

...German troops marched into Austria on March 11,1938--fifty years ago this week...

...Commonweal carried a report of the event by George Shuster, then traveling in Europe...