Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
Where the News Ends By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN Aspects of Bombing. THE protest agamst obturation bombfnga initiated kg the British, pacifist author Vera Brittaih and peaiished OK thia aide of...
...The conflict between Russia and Poland doe* not eaa-cera the "Curson Line," it does not really concern the frontiers of Poland or her demographic structure...
...Without Polsnd there csn be no such Europe...
...The threat to Polish independence is still a threat to Europt, no matter whence It comes...
...Polsnd is the victim cf the one, as of the other...
...However, Frenay was honest enough to admit the aid he received from Pucheu...
...Such an objective is not to be realized by kidglove *ethods...
...The New York rimes reports fifty disapproving let-tars to one approving, and this is probably a fair reflection of public sentiment...
...Only the dictatorships have resorted tp such legal methods to execute an opponent who might be an inconvenient and embarrassing witness...
...Replaced as Minister of the Inferior by Laval in April, 1942...
...All Europe is looking on...
...THE EDITORS...
...No fears need be shed over the Inglorious demise of this Vichyite—but the court procedure which condemned him is canto for alarm...
...The most charitable interpretation of that type of below In- belt aspersion is to set it down to a bad rase of civilian shellshock...
...On June 20 they were isolationists, but on June 22 they were the most patriotic of interventionists—in one day the ' war had changed from an imperialist conflict to a people's war against fascism...
...t/*to Potest will riot be heeded...
...What weapon of modern warfare is not triad...
...The necessary purge of war criminals, fascists, Nazis, Vichyites, Quislings, must be based upon the firm principles of democratic justice that prevailed in pre-war French, British, and American courts — not upon the expedients adopted in totalitarian countries...
...Hut not Poland only...
...and klmtelf under suspecfon of Vicky* sympathies...
...Democracy postulates a fair trial for even the worst criminals...
...Pacifism is still a rather lonely faith...
...If the French Committee of National Liberation pursues such juridicial methods in dealing with its enemies, it will travel on the road toward corruption and, possibly, civil war...
...And their conclusions would not be favorable to the Nazi regime...
...If we cannot afford to abandon such a fearful weapon as wholesale air attacks on great centers of population, we can much less afford morally to abandon any promising method of political warfare that might also serve to shorten the great agony of the human rare...
...to most persons is the virtual impossibility of picking and choosing as between destruc-«*ve weapons in a total war...
...Written In Januaiy, its significance is all the greater been una of the Sub sequent eoura of events: The Russian Declaration of January 11th, has uncovered the biggest political crisis pi the second World War so far...
...Pey ronton...
...But I recently found sn exposition of what is at stake in the neo-Munich policy in relation to Stalin, avowed by Churchill in his last big speech, not disavowed by our own Government, that is at once so true and so brave and ro eloquent that I think it should be reprinted, especially as it appeared in an English magazine which unfoftunalely lias little circulation in this country...
...Usually I find enough ideas of my own—good, bad or indifferent —for this purpose...
...A leading: De Gaullist, Henri Frenay, now Algiers Commissioner for Deportations 'and Prisoners of War, when he was a leader of the underground movement received from Pucheu passes permitting him to move freely through unoccupied France...
...The procedure was typical of sinners who try to forget or cover up their sins by exposing the sins of others...
...o.d carried oaf Vichy's antl-Semitic lows Initiated by...
...That is why, in September, 1989, Englsnd and the Empire went to war...
...But it will not have without value...
...That is the question...
...The Communists, who were the most articulate, and violent accusers, collaborated with the Nazis until the invasion of Russia on June 21, 1941, just ss in America the Moscow-Firsters did the same sort . of job as the America-Firsters...
...Now that every De Gaullist must swear to his undying faith in democracy it is expedient to extirpate the most important witness to their compromising connections...
...The Tory vehemence of the reaction iuu many Americans are not frivolous snd **•» »bbut the terrible consequence of total war, ?f- *° the nth degree that impersonal and amoral •tohee makes possible...
...Now the criticism of the protest falls into several moral and intellectual categories, ranging from the stupidly illiberal to the intelligently discriminating and discerning...
...These principles were violated at the Algiers trial of Pucheu, as they were at the Kharkov trial of German prisoners of war...
...Perhaps the supreme objective, from the standpoint of civilization, is to get •*»•*» state of total war just as quickly as possible...
...The Algiers trial was a reprehensible exhibition, pregnant with political dangers...
...The purpose of such a war, summed up with brutsl clarity, is to kill and torment your adversary to such a degree that you can hssose your will on him...
...Ho became Minis for of the Infer/or offer Peyronton left ffetrf position /a Fmbrwary, 1941...
...The trial confirmed the charges that some of these De Gaullists had maintained relations with Pucheu while he was Vichy's Minister of the Interior...
...As for the non-Nazi groups of the German people, the effect of the protest on their morale could, I think, only be beneficial, from our own standpoint...
...What I havs in mind Is the beginning of a laadsag a/tarle on Poland in "The NtneteanUi Cardmry and After,*' by its editor, P. A. Vuight...
...Pierre Weiss (right), prosecutor at the Algiers trial of Pucheu...
...Beyond this there is another question: Shall Europe exist—the Europe we have known, and hope to know again, the Europe for which the war is being fought, the Europe which alone gives the war any meaning, a Europe that is neither anarchy nor servitude, the Europe that is a bal-lan< .1 and integral whole, the Europe of systems and ideaa, varied and yet related, the Europe of many sovereign states, big snd small, the Europe that ia so much more than a geographic expression, Europe, the stronghold of the Graeco-Roman and Christian heritage...
...The argument against heeding this appeal that would bs most convincing...
...They would think of what would have happened to twenty-eight Germans who would sign such a manifesto...
...The Drang narh Often was thrown bark at Stalingrad...
...The Algiers trial bad nothing to do with an actual or possible revolution...
...but I believe they are representatives of the group...
...But his trial in Algiers was dishonest, a mockery of democratic jurisprudence, a disgraceful fane, reminiscent of the Moscow purge-trials...
...Pierre Piichen (left) WCS a member of Jacques Dorlott fa sclsf group...
...onld be more surely destructive of democracy, toa^iswal liberty and all humane and cultural values •to) an indefinite prolongation of the present struggle...
...After all, the proportion of men in prison, in work camps or on outside service projects as conscientious objectors to men in combat service is only about one in one thousand...
...And the idea of my old professor of philosophy, Rufus Jones, or John Haynes Holmes, or Oswald Garrison Villard, who consistently denounced Hitler and all his works from the moment the Nasi regime came into power, smirking over Rotterdam, or exulting in the bombing of Coventry or secretly gloating over the victims of Lidice is about as absurdly out of character as anything 1 can imagine...
...I believe these words of Voigt about Munich II are just as prophetic as anything Churchill said or wrote about Munich I. The Pucheu Trial at Algiers KIO liberal doubts that Pierre Purlieu, Vichyite collaborationist, deserves Revere punishment for his crimes against France and against the cause of democracy...
...Pucheu had protected some De Gaullists who, like himself, had fascist tendencies...
...The Pucheu trial ha* been defended as a manifestation of "revolutionary justice," foreshadowing the purge to take place during the coining French revolution...
...but for finsl judgment other witnesses are needed...
...Unfortunately the De Gaullists who testified against Pucheu are hardly more reliable than the Communists...
...KlOlt am I much impressed by the suggestion that this protest will lift Axis morale...
...This, incidentally, is a moi h more prevalent, although much less excusable form of the disease than the military brand...
...As it happens, I only know three of the signatories of the protest reasonably well...
...The fact that Pucheu was attacked by Communists does not absolve him...
...A bad example of "the first category is the all too familiar yawp: These protesters didn't say anything about Rotterdam and Coventry and Lidice, did they...
...There is no revolution in Algiers, and no one knows whether or what kind of a -revolution may occur in France...
...And with such an argument anything can be justified...
...THE protest agamst obturation bombfnga initiated kg the British, pacifist author Vera Brittaih and peaiished OK thia aide of the Atlantic by twenty-eight atr mostly aaajjals and Protestant clergymen, haa anilled wideaproad reverberations: Indeed, the amount el criticism it has aroused is out of all proportion to the amount of popular support which the proposal U discontinue or relax atr bombing at a critical phase in the war could expect to receive...
...AN ISSUE MADE CLi AW IT is not often that I resort to the traditional scissors and paste to fill up this column...
...They would feel that the voice of humanity had not been forcibly silenced, even in the most ruthless of wars, in free countries...
...1942...
...ti^ conviction that the use of air power on an ^•^¦'•todented scale will bring about an earlier end-~fj$ *°o war, and this conviction alone, that could ™jv its use to any thoughtful and humane American...
...He Increased repressive oction against the French underground, Including execution...
...The question is: Shall Poland exist...
...Thereafter they led the parade of patriots denouncing former isolationists...
...Arrived in North Africa in December...
...It has now been succeeded by the Drang nach Writer...
...The threat to Polish independence was a threat to Europe—and, therefore, to Great Britain and the Empire...
...The questions are not: Shall bar eastern border be shifted westward...
...nto destruction of so many1 landmarks of Europe's «M culture, the Wllihfc and blinding1 and mutilation n* numbers of people who csn scarcely, by any J****0 «f imagination, be considered legitimate ob-*** of retribution for the crimes of the Nazis, women, J*** children, old men: these things can only find ¦*%' - ¦ •¦ tumoral compensation in an effort to lay the foundations of a world where totalitarian regimes and aggressive wars will be made impossible...
...The Nazi leaders are certainly realistic enough to know that the moral scruples of twenty-eight pacifists will not strike a promising weapon out of the hands of the American and British military command...
...The "revolutionary" tribunal was composed of a prosecutor who remained Petajn's obedient, servant at least until October 1942, and jydges whose records would call for their condemnation as ex-Vichites—or some of them at least...
...Submarine war-tore is cruet The aftermath of a hand-to-hand bayonet thsrge is not a pretty sight...
...If the signatories of the protest will pursue this line of thought, they will find themselves in the company of a large number of Americana who are diaturbed at what seems to be the purposeles drift of our foreign policy, who wonder why the Atlantic Charter has been so brusquely discarded and what, if anything, is being put in its place as a statement of war aims...
...Shall she lose her eastern territories or, losing them, acquire in their place western territories at the exepnee of Germsny...
...Such a war would be an ap-crime indeed if it were waged for no higher Usf10™ p0*'tiv,e'PUTP<«* than saVage retaliation, on a u*feM scale, against a savage enemy...
...Starvation blockade is cruel...
Vol. 27 • March 1944 • No. 13
