Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
By William Henry Chamberlin Where the News Ends What to Do With the Aggressors •yHE question of what to do with the aggressor peoples is being more and more discussed as the changing military...
...Nor do I know anything about "Darlan's secretariats...
...Willkie is not alone in his concern...
...The formidable military showing of Germany and Japan would not have been possible if a considerable part of the German and Japanese peoples had not identified themselves with the existing regimes...
...We must have a council of grand military strategy on which all nations that are bearing the brunt of the ^fighting are represented...
...Nazis...
...Wheeler-Nye-Fish...
...To Conserve the State's Natural Resources...
...It is not true that the ideal did not appeal to millions of Germans and did not win great and sometimes heroic sacrifices...
...The second perspective is that of conservative, status-quo internationalism, which finds strong allies in official circles...
...China was at the heart of the long series of events which brought us into the war...
...The New Leader will be the last to object to picking Hitler as the chief enemy...
...Once the military knockout is achieved and the elementary jobs of disarmament, occupation, administration and policing are under way, it will be more hopeful to build on whatever democratic liberal and moderate forces exist in Germany sad Japan, rather than to try to govern these countries on a colonial h««i« EDITORIAL COMMENT THE QUESTION OF CHINA TWO themes run through the texture of the masterly White Paper issued by our government during the past week...
...The events in North Africa point this whole problem up...
...The purpose of the Russians in encouraging a second army—and one inimical to the first—must be to forestall their allies in this region...
...But such trials should be restricted to acts which art of clearly pathological criminalty...
...The launching of the union was accepted by the world as a guarantee of complete cooperation in the military struggle...
...These six escaped via Gibraltar to bring to light a tragic and shocking story...
...Our correspondent voiced the opinion that when a council is set up, it must be headed by an exceptionally popular and trusted American, and he referred to the possibility that at some future date Franklin D. Roosevelt may be free to accept this responsibility...
...A front-page story in last week's New Leader headlined this angle of Vice-President Wallace's significant address...
...They had refused to follow the original French orders to resist the Allied forces...
...It follows, as ? folows A, from the welcome hand extended to Messrs Darlan and Nogues, and those triplets of political low-life in France, Cagoulard-backer Pucheau, defeatist Flandin, and fascist Peyrouton...
...it cannot be made to fight efficiently if its heart is not in the struggle...
...The entire presentation envisages the resources and manpower of the state as devoted, first, to the prosecution of the war and, second, to promoting the welfare of all the citizens...
...There is an overwhelming case for trying and properly punishing persons who may be found guilty of such incredible cruelties as the killing of the children in the Medera Sanitarium...
...Decker Makes A Correction From GEORGE DECKER ?? the Editor: One sentence in my last article was misrepresented...
...By William Henry Chamberlin Where the News Ends What to Do With the Aggressors •yHE question of what to do with the aggressor peoples is being more and more discussed as the changing military situation gives more promise that United Nations will have the final say-in this question...
...They are thinking of a council made up of leading personalities, a body which could center the world's attention and furnish a basis for its faith...
...The heads of the great powers are still running the war very much as they would have run it had no declaration been signed a year ago...
...But the plan fact of the matter is that there are three major perspectives on the world situation, and I am not sure but that all three can be considered international-minded...
...We -have strained all our resources to send aid to Britain and to Russia for their fight against Hitler Germany...
...I suppose that by some mistake lines were inserted in my article from some other article for which I am not responsible...
...1 AST week The New Laader remarked that French controversies in Algeria are ino more than a preview of headaches to come...
...With the glorification of the Partisans went a systematic eampagin of vilification against General Mihailovich...
...But there is as yet no organic connection between the powers fighting on the democratic side...
...Recently new bands of fighters have been getting the publicity...
...What is up...
...The most salutary retribution would take the form of judgments pronounced by German court...
...The war on Qhina, beginning in 1937, was rightly viewed by Secretary Hull as involving our interests as well as those of all the rest of the world...
...So-called "isolationism" has certainly been found to have an amazing string of foreign connections...
...That type of mind seems to be especially prevalent among the well-to-do commuters of the metropolitan area who read the New York Herald Tribune...
...With millions of practiially unarmed and ill-equipped soldiers, they have been standing up for the cause which we are now defending...
...Or what would have been the fate of Robert E. Lee aad Jefferson Davis and other men who are regeren**, in the South as heroes if the North bad unwise*/" i started a series of trials after the end of th* Civil* War...
...It is not true that a second German Republic may not have better success...
...Yet C. Wright Mills writes as if I had never given a moment to thinking about lines of demarcation in a mixed economy...
...They have the men...
...What seems very easy from Mr...
...The Chinese from 1931 onward have been the victims of acts which led up to Pearl Harbor...
...I know nothing about "the Nogues clique" and never used this expression...
...The best proof is to call the roll, a long and honorable roll, of Germans murdered by nationalist fanatics under the Weimar Republic, tortured and killed in concentration camps under Hitler...
...Natural monopolies, such as roads, dams, power plants, etc., should be made an investment field for the State...
...on Nasi criminals...
...The German Social Democrats and a considerable number of middle claas liberals and moderates earnestly wished for a Europe of peace and international understanding...
...in a Darlan jail...
...The government is to be the people's instrument for bending industry and institutions to the public service...
...It is not without significance that on the first anniversary he occupied the center of the stage...
...monopolistic practices in steel, coal, etc., should be broken up by the State...
...He said: "We will have no United Nations after the war unless we make the United Nations now a fact and not a mere euphonious phrase...
...Willkie's high-swinging point of view, may seem extremely difficult to the men who sweat with actual problems on the earth...
...Willkie, we might get a lot of interesting information...
...Some did return, and after the Darlan deal found themselves ("dangerous troublemakers...
...From JOHN CHAMBERLAIN To the Editor: Ain't we having fun...
...WHERE is one to find the balance between the *T sentimentality that would exempt the Germans and the Japanese, as peoples, from all responsibility for the crimes of Germany and Japan, as corporate entities, and the sentimentality that would bash out the brains of every individual German and Japanese...
...On the part of Americans, who have been comparatively lightly touched by the war, it seems both stupid and disheartening...
...Trial by victors has its elements of danger and suspicion...
...Dewey...
...It may be objected that after the last war the Germans showed no desire to try their "war criminals...
...i Where acts of peculiar and monstrous cruelty, unconnected with any military excuse, have been committed and call for international trials, the personnel of the courts should be drawn, whan possible, from citizens of neutral countries...
...There is still a tendency to think in terms of the distinctly outworn categories of "isolationist" and "interventionist," of "Roosevelt-Hull" vs...
...The second is the account of the launching by Japan of her headlong adventure in the Orient and of the reaction on this side of the Pacific...
...General Mi-hailovich has been long recognized by the Yugoslav Government in Exile as commander of its forces in the field...
...Local rivalries, the old differences between Croats and Serbs, are partly responsible for the present dangerous conflict But even more ominous is the apparent fact that Russia has intervened to build up a Communist force in advance of the genuine liberation of the country...
...This man, whose troops had killed thousands of Germans and kept many German divisions anchored in the narrow valleys of Yugoslavia, was suddenly dubbed a fascist and an ally of the...
...Having threatened cuts in the budget and thereby roused howls of opposition, he politely omitted all mention of the subject from his message to the legislature...
...Willkie was calling for a second front, General Eisenhower was already on his way to North Africa...
...I wrote that the position of Giraud could be facilitated by the support of Nogues, who is an outstanding administrator...
...Fortunately, the citizens have had given to them a document which enables them to imagine what sort of message Dean Alfange would have presented to this legislature had he received one more vote than Mr...
...It is clear that there are great difficulties to be overcome— especially with regard to the bringing of Russia into any set of clear understandings...
...Jews and other Europeans who have suffered the atrocities of Nazi conquest...
...It did not kill, torture and indulge in sadistic perversions of the Nazi style...
...Indeed, my ability to reiterate often bores the daylights out of me...
...That, I submit, is a pattern for freedom...
...It is simply not true that the majority of the German people during that period were a unit in desiring to set out on a new career of blood and plunder...
...The one is a sentimentality of well-meaning, muddled goodwill that does credit to the hearts, but not to the heads of its exponents...
...Whsa the Nazi regime totters there will be no one to save theXJermans in occupied countries from ths ruthless vengeance of the oppressed and tormented peoples...
...It must occur to anyone who considers the two parts of the narrative together that we have been much more logical and effective about Germany than about Japan...
...General Mihailovich is an official of the Government in Exile, which operates from London and has the support of Britain...
...LJOW much of the united purpose and action * * do we have among the United Nations one year after the signing of the pact at Washington...
...In the light of their own grim records, the Germans and the Japanese cannot expect to get off scot-free when the tide of battle has shifted against them...
...Acknowledging that past administrations have left the state in excellent conditions, he suggests practically nothing by way of change...
...If these twenty-nine nations do not learn how to cooperate during the war, Mr...
...But a reading of the lively state paper highlights the fact that the part "of China in this great conflict has been almost overlooked...
...In a dispatch from the Mediterranean area Ernie Pyle, correspondent of the World-Telegiain, ? cj-'vi is LJJdL ? it f JurUlUmental policy still is one of soft-gloving the snakes in our midst...
...They occupy a strategic position near to Japan's soft under-side...
...P. S.: The New Leader is doing a swell job in agitating these questions...
...See Political Mess in Africa Result of Illiberal Realpolitik From SAM STAFF To the Editor: It seems to me that the sharp turns of events the War has been taking recently have effectively exposed a very dangerous political lag among liberal and progressive-minded people...
...His self-assumed Roman Imperial toga has been such a grotesque misfit, his grasping for foreign territory has been, in the main, so dismally unsuccessful that he has not aroused for his people anything like the volume of mingled fear and hatred that has been the natural result of the German and Japanese careers of conquest...
...It is Germany and Japan that are usually thought of in this connection...
...Moreover, it is unreasonable for a people to...
...Subsequent sections bear such titles as: To Improve Our War Economy...
...In regard to the postwar treatment of Germany and Japan there are two undesirable extremes of sentimentality...
...In recent weeks the Chetniks and Partisans have been fighting each other—a state of affairs which mast be very satisfactory to the Germans...
...Our planes participate in the flights over Germany and Italy...
...on an all-out program of homicide and pijjage and then plead temporary mental aberration when defeat is staring them in the face...
...What are the Communists fighting for?v SUPPOSE ALFANGE WERE ELECTED •THOSE who anticipated anything youthful * and dashing of the administration of Thomas E. Dewey are in for a let-down...
...evidence should be carefully examined...
...Willkie thinks, we are sure to have disunion, dislocation and frustration after the war...
...All of these nations have declared formal acceptance of the Atlantic Charter as the embodiment of their national and international ideals...
...the proceedings should be fully publicised so that every German may realize that these men are being punished not because they fought for Germany, bet because they were guilty of acts revolting to every tradition of German and European civilization...
...The picture is not a pretty one...
...As the year has moved forward with its burden of sacrifices, losses and hopes deterred, The New Leader has frequently drawn attention to the fact that actual union of the twenty-nine nations still remains little more than an idea...
...A people can be mobilized by terror...
...And in a Herald-Tribune dispatch from London, another correspondent tells the story of six young anti-fascist Frenchmen who just managed to escape a prison sentence in liberated North Africa...
...The extremists in one camp uphold the viewpoint that the Germans and the Japanese are misguided peoples, the prey of a few unscrupulous war lords...
...This situation affords an uninhibited idealist like Wendell Willkie his perfect cue...
...After all, as Kutusov, according to Tolstoy, said of the French in Russia in 181t: "No one asked them to come here...
...Which, in a word, would be independent and critical and freedom-loving...
...If the President or Secretary Hull were free to answer Mr...
...between .the United States and Russia...
...There is no economic Council...
...The third perspective, and we need to bring it out in the open as dramatically and sharply as we can, is the international perspective of liberal and progressive people throughout the ranks of the United Nations, who are devoted to a decisive victory over fascism, and who ar«> prepared to speak up for a worldwide democratic policy which would recognize and even help the labor and Socialist movements of Europe if they are backed by-popular majorities, which would sympathize and support the democratic movements toward national independence in the Middle and Far East...
...It definitely andLoffi-cially raised the Atlantic Charter from the status of a paper signed by two men to that of a formal international declaration...
...Definite but ineffective measures were constantly being tried from that time onward to induce the Japanese to withdraw...
...The Italian peoples have perhaps just one thing for which they may be grateful to Benito Mussolini...
...Plenty of blood will be required, in any event, in retribution for the victims of Lidice and the other martyred communities of Europe...
...The entire document was evidently dictated by the desire to avoid the making of enemies...
...But both in London and Washington , voices have recently been raised which suggest that Mr...
...Under this caption the proposal is made to appoint a State Economic Council, to be composed of representatives of industry, labor, agriculture, consumer, welfare and educational groups "to plan the extension of industrial activity, employment and vocational training...
...Here, in column after column, article after article, even in a book published as far back as 1940, I've been trying to lay down a governing principle for a "mixed economy" that will keep it from being a mixed-up economy...
...Men and women all over the world accepted these facts' as the beginning of a new and better era...
...He is puzzled by the "astonishing number of Axis sympathizers in North Africa," and observes that the U. S. occupying forces were arresting only "the most out-and-out Axis agents" and allowing Fascist societies to continue operations ! This is hardly surprising...
...To Broaden the Base of Social Security...
...Persons harboring such notions, envisage something far different from a merely technical body...
...It was not until October 16, 1940, that the export of steel scrap to Japan was forbidden...
...They offered their services to the U. S. officers, who turned them down, refused to ass^t them to get over to De Gaulle's ranks, and counseled them to return...
...It ought to have lessons for us all...
...At the other extreme are the fanatics who believe that Germans and Japanese, down to the babe in the womb, are accursed peoples, fit only for extermination, who lie awake nights devising ingenious means of torture and punishment after the end of hostilities...
...They are called Partisans, have Russian advisers and were first vigorously publicized in this country by the Communist press...
...In Yugoslavia we have been watching for some weeks a fractricidal battle carried on between two anti-Axis groups...
...The other is a sentimentality of pathological hatred that does credit to neither...
...His restrained eloquence on the subject of the rights of labor contains the sly suggestion that the state must defend these rights against the federal government...
...It is true that the effort to make Germany a progressive republic failed...
...Each of the twenty-six powers, joined later by three others, pledged itself "to employ its full resources, military and economic," against the common enemy...
...What he would have said would have been as different as possible from the modest words which came from Albany this week...
...I once turned to the correspondence column of that paper and was amazed at the number of persons with addresses in Long Island arr8 Westchester who had apparently taken as their particular branch of war effort the thinking out of means of cutting the throats of as many Germans as possible after the end of the war with a maximum of sadistic relish...
...But seriously, I despair of most peoples' ability to read...
...There is no peace council...
...The whole great world tragedy starts with the 1931 attack on Manchuria...
...The first is the tale of the rise of Hitler and of our relations with him...
...Finally, just before Pearl Harbor, the chief issue which prevented an agreement was "the conflict between Japan and China, particularly the evacuation of the Japanese troops from China...
...We have no right to criticise Thomas E. Dewey for failing to speak with the voice of Dean .Alfange...
...Understandings about important matters have been reached ^between Britain and Russia, and...
...This whole business is obscure, but two things are clear...
...It is well to recall in this connection that when Mr...
...If we could put this ALP program into every' voter's hands, there would be some regrets— and, possibly some changed votes four years hence...
...the rest of the field should be free to private investors, subject to pressure by governmental monetary policy...
...But' in comparison with what we have sent to Britain and Russia, they have received from us practically nothing...
...There is consequently more reason to expect that after this war the German people will themselves be in an unforgiving mood...
...In defeating him we shall be knocking the main prop from the Axis...
...But there is a great distinction between the two situations...
...Keep the fight going, and we may all learn something...
...LETTERS TO THE EDITOR John Chamberlain on the 'Mixed-up Economy'— 'Why Don't Critics Read What I Write...
...He lacks even the courage of his conservatism...
...It is not antagonistic to social security, such as old age pensions, work relief, what-not...
...Whatever the subtle and perhaps subconscious motivation of this lack of even-handedness, there can be no adequate open and candid defense of it...
...i*"\NE could understand this attitude, even while denying its wisdom from the standpoint of the long range interests of civilization, ii it had been voiced by Poles, Czechs, Greeks...
...I often wonder why writers write, since readers (most of them) just don't read...
...And civilization will not be achieved by deliberately setting in motion a series of massacres...
...To Educate for Democracy...
...There is no place on earth where a small military investment will bring so large a return as China...
...But when one sees proposals that look to little less than the outright extermination of the German and Japanese peoples one should call a halt in the name of reason and humanity...
...Imperial Germany, with ?? its sabre-rattling militarism, was still a civilised state, compared with the Third Reich...
...This is true, but it is far from being the entire truth...
...What would have been the verdict on Sherman or Sheridan by Southern courts recruited fvam Georgia and the Shenandoah Valley...
...For America's influence will be immensely decisive in framing the answer to the question whether civilized life in Europe and Asia wjll again be possible after the long dark night of the present war...
...The majority of the citizens voted for what they are about to receive...
...For one thing such proposals are often based on a cockeyed interpretation of events in Germany between the downfall of the Kaiser and the rise to Hitler...
...The first heading of the ALP program is entitled: "To Marshall Our Economic Resources for Full Employment and Prosperity...
...With his well organized bands of Chetniks, he has carried on a military campaign which has won the admiration of the entire world...
...An intelligent German now living in this country once said to me: "War propaganda made Americans believe that Imperial Germany was what Hitler's Germany really is...
...WHO ARE THESE PARTISANS...
...There is no war council...
...The announcement of this union sent a thrill around the world on New Year's Day, 1942...
...UNITED NATIONS...
...Our men are already approaching the continent of Europe...
Vol. 26 • January 1943 • No. 2
