The Rebirth of Political Credulity
HOOK, SIDNEY
The Rebirth of Political Credulity Sidney Hook Analyzes the Illusions of The Peace and the Realities of Power Politics By Sidney Hook ARTHUR KOESTLER'S remark that the war is a conflict between...
...CECRETARY HULL tells us that the principles ex-pressed in the Moscow Declaration on Italy will act as a guide for the restoration of all other countries...
...As late as January 5, 1942, Anthony Eden said: "Reichg-ftihrer Hitler could have remained a Nasi, if he had stayed at home...
...Yet neither in their own day nor at any other time were their word* taken at their face value...
...Put ivsofnr as the plan is feasible at all, it can be put into effect only in countries where political democracy prevails...
...They e*«—provided each country surrenders enough of its sacred "sovereignty" to permit an international control commission to operate on its own s->il...
...Their opposite number* in Britain, echo the same sentiment...
...It is evident that it is not only the Axis countries the United Nations fear...
...Let us test the blithe assurances of those who are so sanguine that the presence of the U. S. in the League would have made a decisive difference by reference to two key episodes—Spain and Munich...
...But in the interests of his own security will Stalin choose to stay at home...
...Agreement so far seems to be restrii t d to unanimous support of a program of complete destruction of the Axis nations as military powers...
...The danger of a disastrous peace is in direct proportion to the optimism evoked by the declarations of the Pacts of Moscow, Cairo and Teheran—an optimism that breathes through the reassurances of Secretary Hull, the editorial Hosannas of the New York and London Timet as well as Pravda, and the comic little-Jack-Horner-pride of the liberal weeklies which claim that their line triumphed at the councils of the great powers...
...Eden thinks...
...But one would have to be a fool not to see that, according to this, Russia is a society in which the mo$t i,*mu> right» of civilization are lacking...
...The truth about German re-armament came to light . because Carl ,von Osietsky and his associates could The Great Illusion THERE is not one single liberal left in Rnssia who dares open his mouth in the mildest criticism of the Stalin dictatorship...
...Would the U. S. have taken a different position as member of the League...
...The plain truth is that the words signed at Moscow and Teheran are no guide to the things to come...
...Even those who think they differ from Vansittart are agreed on this...
...China is thinking not only in terms of industrial construction but of military potential...
...The fact is that the Comintern was dissolved only on paper, as a careful reading of the words proclaiming its dissolution shows...
...For, as the Rt...
...Agreement on phrasing and agreement on meaning are two different things in politics I do not wish to discount the significance of the fact that agreement on phrasing has been won...
...One would have to be a cynic to doubt his sincerity...
...As soon as we leave the plane of broad generalities for specific detail, it becomes more and more doubtful whether in relation to security or any other major problem, foreign policy and domestic policy can be aa completely dissociated as Mr...
...Russia has publicized the most grandiose plans for a professional officer caste, and revised her entire educational system to train every boy and girl as soldier and mother...
...The Rebirth of Political Credulity Sidney Hook Analyzes the Illusions of The Peace and the Realities of Power Politics By Sidney Hook ARTHUR KOESTLER'S remark that the war is a conflict between a lie on one side and a half-b...
...But aa the war goes on and peace plans are hatched in the capitals of the world, the fractional truth for which the democratic half of the United Nations is fighting seems in danger of having its value diminished...
...Are the partite to the pact really speaking the samve Ian-Some broad hints have already been dropped to the effect that one of the great difficulties at the conferences hss been to work out an agreement on phrasing...
...A person or thing is wherever it acts...
...But what do we observe...
...Nor is there any reason to believe that the "big three" of those days, Emperor Alexander of Russia, Emperor Francis of Austria, and ming Frederick William of Prussia, were insineere in their piousc professions of faith and good will...
...What reason is there suddenly to assume that they will have less significance in determining the future than they had in the past...
...The cry for a new faith has so far given lm th only to a new credulity...
...The plain implication at the time was that Marshall Stalin, as a welcome ally, could remain snything he pleased so long as he stayed at home...
...Will good-will sueceed in the future any better than in-the past...
...The New Republic comments without irony, "and the word to emphasize here is democratic...
...Tl ey are determined that America shall hereafter always be awake—and ready...
...LEAVE boundary disputes aside...
...The Communist Parties of the world are stronger today and no less creatures of the Stalin regime than they were at the time the Comintern was formally dissolved...
...Rut cannot national armaments be controlled precisely because of this fear...
...And one...
...SOME observers have quieted their uneasy feelings about the Moscow-Cairo-Teheran Pacts with the comforting belief that although a great deal has been left undone, the goal of international peace is finally in sight That an International Federation to ensure peace is desirable is above dispute...
...But if it is rhetoric we want, the older models are still the best...
...Unless agreement is reached betwetn member nations on this point any international federation would be a joke...
...And as individuals, the royal triumvirate shared much more of a common ideology than do the heads of the United Nations...
...Yet a majority of American liberal writers, who condone in Russia what they would condemn in America, leap to the defense of Russian imperialism, and seem to ignore the glaring contradiction, between Stalin's verbal pretentions and the realities of totalitarian Communism...
...At Teheran Stalin signed the proclamation which welcomed into the new concert of nations all peoples who are dedicated "to the elimination of tyranny and slavery, oppression and intolerance" and who "choose to come into a world of democratic nations...
...This already trenches considerably on national sovereignty and makes its acceptance unlikely...
...No diplomatic document ever surpassed the rhetorical heights of the text of the Holy Alliance from whose preamble the above is drawn...
...The illusion that this Is a revolutionary war which will create a new heaven and a new earth is slowly withering away, and eventually the illusion that Russia champions democracy will collapse too—but not until after the damage has been dona, and the fellow-traveling liberals have aided tail Great Powers In losing the pane...
...Such a commission, if it is not to function like the infamous Spanish Non-intervention Committee, hiust bo granted the right to,investigate military affairs in countries, and invested with the rower to subpoena witnesses and records, eoforcible by Ivrtl courts...
...They are not revolutionary organizations, of course, but remain very effective agents of Russian state policy...
...Lord Vansittart, England's former Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, has reminded us, the language of diplomacy is composed these days with one eye on trusting liberals...
...But agreement on phrasing presages far less for the future of Europe than the activities of the Anglo-American military government in Italy, the organization on Russian soil or under Russian influence of ersatz regimes for almost every one pf the occupied countries, and the existence of recognised conflicts of interests between the great powers of an economical, political and ethnic character...
...It was often difficult to assign thsm their proper weights but they always counted for more than the rhetoric of statesmen and the genial smiles wreathed in the smoke of cigarette, cigar and pipe...
...Questions concerning boundaries are superficial expressions of deeper anxieties about security...
...Curiously enough there is a growing disposition to frown upon any attempts to scan carefully the phrasing, of the Moscow-Teheran declarations or to evaluate the significance of their omissions...
...Is security a simple inter national problem that can be settled juridically...
...Sidney Hook analyzes the illusions aroused by the rhetoric of the declarations adopted at the Moscow and Teheran conferences, in the light of the realities of power politics...
...The problem of security is bound up with disarmament, or regulation of armaments...
...Presumably we shall never have to fear from that corner again...
...Their countries, politically, economically, and socially, had more in common then than have the United Nations now...
...Good...
...But, then, against whom are directed the military measures and programs now being prepared for the post-war period in almost all countries f Not only American army men but American statesmen and educators are warning us in ever-growing volume against a repetition of our past military un-preparedness...
...truth on the other is itself not wholly true...
...weald have to be a hopeless fool not to understand that^sinee Russia is a signatory to the declaration on Italy, her statesmen mast interpret these principles quite differently from the way in which democrats like Mr...
...Taken in context they not only suggest the normal discrepancy betwetn diplomatic word and political deed, they provoke the question whether the same words mean the same thing to the signatories...
...Hitler still remains the chief enemy of all...
...What prevented the League from enforcing sanctions against aggressor nations...
...He answered, "The intellectuals...
...There was once an Alliance whose signatories declared: "that the present act has for its sole object to manifest, in the face of the universe, their unalterable determination to adopt aa their rule of conduct, whether in the administration of their respective states or in their political relations with all other governments no other principles ¦ than those of their holy religion, precepts of justice, of charity, and 01 peace, which, far from b. injr exclusively applicable to private life, ought, on the contrary, directly to influence the resolution of princes and guide all their decisions, as offering the only means of consolidating human institutions and remedying their imperfections...
...Yes, this is the word to emphasize...
...But the question is: what is the likehood that such a Federation will succeed where the League of Nations failed...
...where!?—is the evidence that the League would actually have invoked military sanctions against any great power if the United States had been a member...
...There is no evidence that President Roosevelt, who had urged peaceful compromise in special telegrams to the heeds of the gov-vernmenta involved, regarded Munich as any more of a betrayal than did Chamberlain and Daladier...
...They will depend upon the location of the United Nations armies when the Armistice whistle blows...
...An we to forget overnight and forever after, the multiple causes of war...
...It used to be a sign of political realism to interpret and predict events on the basis of the causal factors indicated...
...No international federation as presently envisaged, composed of the dominant nations as presently constituted, ean or will do anything about removing these causes...
...Even before the farce of Non-intervention began in Europe, President Roosevelt rushed through the Neutrality Resolution in Congress which left democratic Spain to the mercits of Franco and Stalin...
...If it is retorted "the absence of the'United States"—where, oh...
...Hull do...
...The will to illusion must indeed be strong if it boggles at analysis of the language of diplomacy...
...Certainly the American liberals who praised the purges as ridding Russia of its Fifth Column have shown no difficulty in believing that the country where none of the four freedoms exists, will bring all the freedoms to other countries liberated from the Nazi yoke...
...But it comes closest to expressing in epigrammatic form the most relevant truth about the war from the standpoint of democratic socialism...
...and he adds: "These principles—including freedom of religion, of speech, of the press and of assembly, and of the right of people ultimately to choose their own form of government—are among the basic rights of civilized society...
...Such picking and gnawing, hint some liberal journalists, are calculated to undermine public confidence and to help Hitler...
...Stalin was once asked, when he adopted "(he most democratic constitution in the world," who will believe it...
Vol. 27 • January 1944 • No. 1
