Bullitt Throws a Bombshell
OAK, LISTON M.
Bullitt Throws a Bombshell By Liston M. Oak WILLIAM C. BULLITT wrote an article for Uf* which inspired FrmwU to term the former Ambassador to Moscow as "a bankrupt spy." Bullitt said that the...
...Italy is dependent on American charity...
...ansa the Nut* a*, sew* I IsViii ly «•.„,„, Prnewa Bullitt wanto a™egoU«tod (»„ . ,, wants a bloc ef nations against Russia...
...Bullitt is opposed to Allied unity created at Teheran...
...This is higher than just before conquest by Anglo American forces: nearly half of the children that are born die is their first year...
...Before the war the average Italian individual consumed about 2,900 calories daily without alcohol and 3,100 with...
...It ia estimaed that the vital needs of the population are a basic ration of 1,400 calories with available ration foods to bring the daily total up to 2,700...
...that Finland Is different from Germany's other satellites, and deserves a just peace...
...Mmfw Feeef for /fe»y—New ,. General william v. odwyer, chief of the Allied Control (Commission's ecooosaic section, is on the way hack to Washington to report on conditions in Italy.'Herbert l. Matthews, the iV...
...The U. S. grants $10,000,000,000 credits to Russia but none to Italy...
...Communism is the only alternative to a prosperous democracy...
...If we refuse continued relief, Italy will be gripped by starvation, inflation, conditions that will breed a new totalitarianism...
...The lack of food has been ascribed to the lack of shipping facilities...
...Polish patriots in areas conquered by the Red Army are being deported to Siberia, as 1,700,000 were deported after the Soviet seiture of eastern Poland in 1939...
...It is the first time that anyone with a veneer of respectability . . . has uttered a direct call for a war between England and America an one side and Russia on tiie other...
...Paper, citing the full text of the documents on Poland issued by the German Foreign Office when the Nasis captured the archives of the Polish Foreign Office in Warsaw, gives the lie to many of Lerner's base accusations against Bullitt...
...Bullitt wants" war...
...A man who believes the third World War will begin in about 15 years between the Soviet Union and western Europe hacked by Britain and the United States...
...Simitar figures foe July are 2,032...
...A man who believes that the democracies will not dare to fight...
...But whatever the cost, whatever the difficulties, we can now, and must, get more and more food to the starving Italians—or democracy will be starved out of that unhappy peninsula...
...The Church will never surrender to Communist, atheist totalitarianism, he concludes...
...These are figures which are indeed terrifying...
...Western Germany, Italians hope, will be democratic and in alliance with the western powers, and strong enough to resist Russian imperialism...
...and 2,321...
...The Red Cross brings in clothing only...
...As if Stalin had not already created a gulf a mile wide, which the Polish Government-in-Exile strives vainly to bridge...
...Lerner utilizes the old familisr weapon of polemics: Bullitt is "Olympian," hp is presumptuous, he libels the Italians for wham .he speaks, his article is an insult to the Vatican, he doesn't detail the atrocities, of the Nazis—therefore what he writes is untrue...
...With Ercoli's return, 26,000,000 lira was placed to the credit of the Italian Communists...
...Moscow has already made the Atlantic Charter a mere pious hope not supported seriously by Britain and the U.S.A...
...As things are now it is officially estimated that the average Italian has lost five to ten- pounds in weight...
...Even more important is political independence, actual as well as nominal...
...He reports that "the talk of all men throughout Italy is the question: "Will the result of this war be the subjugation of Europe by Moscow instead of by Berlin?'" This, in summary, is Bullitt's answer: Britain will emerge from tins war tired and beak...
...that they were fighting for their homeland against Russian aggression...
...nor for the "naked struggle for political power...
...The democratic parties have neither the funds nor the leadership to achieve as much as the CP...
...The Polish Committee for National Liberation...
...During the first eighteen months of war the Italian basic ration in Rome was 1,391 calories daily . During the next twelve months it'was 1,120...
...If the Finns are to be economic slaves of Moscow the settlement will not work for long...
...But they fear Hitler and Himmler siay carry out their threat to turn Germany over to the Communists...
...Even a broken pledge would be\e,tter than none at all...
...If the present basic ration .is not increased there is no doubt in the minds of Allied medical and health authorities that existing mortality rate will show s continued increase...
...Bullitt said that the Vatican "fears a struggle between Christianity and Communism...
...There is no outside agency capable of meeting the desperate need...
...Y. Time*' eompe-' 'tent correspondent, states that ke will give "terrifying" facts: for instance, the infant mortality rate for Italy for children in their first year for 1931 1935 averaged 104.7 per 1,000 hv« births...
...Buck la the "view ef the world frees Rease" per-trayed ky William C. BellRt...
...If the joint efforts of the British, American and Italian governments fail to prevent starvation and runaway inflation, the Communists will surely be swept into power...
...Bullitt is as anxious to avoid armed conflict with Russia as is I/erner...
...Bat whatever ear differences, The New Leader haa keen almost alone among American peMieations in presenting this picture of the Very real menace ef Stalinist totsKtsrianism—inclneinr tke danger that H may he the cause of World War III...
...Likewise, they interpret Moscow's recent advocacy of the return of Otto of Hapsburg to Austria as being a Machiavellian trick to win over the monarchists and give the Communists time to rebuild their party...
...for Rome alone the rate rose in June 1944 to I'.i.'i and for July, 1944, to 4^8 per 1,000...
...He hated fascism vehemently, as he hates Communist totaliLerner can only "answer" Bullitt t>y following «W Stalinist method ef aame-eslling and by - - ..tm, w bis opponent vietous iu*)nlf»ia...
...It was a major mistake to give such vast lend-lease aid to Russia without exacting ¦ pledge that the Soviets will not interfere with the independence of democratic European states, united in a federation...
...A sad joke is current in Rome: "What is an optimist...
...Buftitt wan one ef tke gravediggers ef France...
...Matthews continues: "The general mortality trend is also upward, figuring from last year to this,, For instance,, in June, 194:i, in Rome 1,373 person* died against 2,535 in June, 1944...
...Italy may...
...General Rata Zymierski was dismissed in degradation from the Polish Army and jailed for taking bribes from armament manufacturers...
...In short, it is officially admitted that the Italian diet has caused a general loss of weight in population, an Increase in general end infant mortality, an increase in the tubercular rate and a general increase in mortality to all diseases...
...Germany will lose territory east of the Oder and the Elbe to either Russia or to a Moscow controlled Poland...
...Italians fear that "withdrawal of British and American forces will leave them at the 111*1 ry of the Soviet Union...
...Bullitt haa always keen wrong...
...I lie tuberculosis death rate in Rome from January to July, 1944, wn* 3,460 as compared with the prewar rale of 1,200...
...An AMG Rom* health officer said about two months ago that the incidence of tuberculosis in Rome w«i about 200 per 1,000...
...Tke German White...
...should back the European democracies against Communist totalitarianism, but "aberrations in American policy" are putaling...
...Nor is he responsible for the race between the Red Army and the Anglo-American forces to get to Germany first...
...UNRRA does not operate in Italy—only in the United Nations...
...The U.s.A...
...from 1936 te 1940 the rate was 102,8...
...For nine months before the entry of Allied troops it reached an all-time low of 304.50...
...What is a pessimist...
...Wltk hie analysis The New Leader is largely ia agreement, slthswgh we Am not share km faith hs ike Cfcwrek as a oeme-erstie political weapon, and we as not think a "democratic monarchy" is needed in Austria, and there are ether points ef divergence...
...Amen...
...Q.E.D.: Tke way to get a peaceful and prosperous world is to dene our eye* to nasty facia, to cherish illusions, to save faith in Moscow as tke fountain-head ef democracy...
...in pi, unable effectively to oppose Russia...
...Only if Turkey, Greece, Albania, Yugoslavia, Austria, western Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and Italy sre united in close alliance has western democratic rivilixation a chance for survival, Bullitt thinks...
...Conditions are bad in Italy's war economy now run by Britain with U. S. aid...
...The Pope's authority has never bean greater...
...The probability of World War HI is increased, not by, such articles as Bullitt's,.but by such wishful thinking and totalitarian liberalism as Lerner's...
...With unlimited funds, the Italian Communists hate campaigned vigorously, and they are capable organisers as well as brave fighters...
...The Italians (read Bullitt) think Britain and the U.S.A...
...And they judge the quality of that merry by the Russians' treatment of the Poles...
...The only permanent strong factor in Italy which the Communists .will find difficult to overcome- is the Vatican, Bullitt believes...
...be captured from within by the Communist agents of Moscow...
...Peace for Finland . . . Hera's another writer tor the Communists to denounce as pro-Nazi, splitting allied unity, etc.—Ludwell Denny says in his Scrippa-Howard column that the Finnish-people have wanted peace all along...
...Bulbil , iwlitieaj ...1,1...
...The Socialists, despite differences, have cooperated with the Communists, and together they may be a majority when northern Italy is liberated...
...have followed a stupid policy in Yugoslavia as well as in Poland...
...Primarily because this is the first time, outside the pages of the lunatic fascist press or the Hearst press, or the McCormick-Patterson axis, that the slimy whispered agitation for a split between America and its Russian partner in the war has found articulate expression...
...Moat ef them are Communists or fellow-travelers...
...Since the Allied occupation a basic ration of 664.77 calories daily has been allowed...
...represents no one except the Soviet Union," Bullitt continues...
...HuJIitt put* his own fetus into the mouths of "the Italians...
...Hence most relief work is left to the Vatican...
...There are few young competent democratic leaders...
...The are alarmed at the •prospect of this neighbor being Stalinist...
...The PM admirer of everything Russian- denies that Poles were deported to Siberia—a fact tf which millions of Poles, can testjfy...
...Likewise, it was the Communists who disrupted anti-Nazi unity in Yugoslavia, not Bullitt...
...Nearly ail Poles support their Government-in-Exile...
...This is Lerner's first falsification: Bullitt pointed to the dinger of another war-he did not call for one...
...Russia will dominate all of central and eastern Europe and Finland, using varied methods to gain control, exploiting "democracy" to reorganize Communist parties, and flnaljy subjecting these states to the aims of Soviet imperialism...
...Why...
...TrlE pundit of PAf, Max Lerner, undeitakt* what he, calls "the nauseating job of dissecting the rotten » cadaver of Bullitt's piece" in Lift...
...Bullitt is • discredited anti-Soviet conspirator...
...Here is the food situation...
...His role in prewar Europe was to warn ngainst impending Nasi aggression, to oppose appeasement...
...The Allied Control Commission is not a relief agency...
...It is estimated that people are now dying of tuberculosis in Italy at the rate of 200,000 annually as compared with the pre-war rate of 60,000...
...He said it can be averted only if the foreign policies of the democracies are based* on realities, not illusions, and if we stop the disastrous policy of appeasement...
...If and when Britons and Americans pull out, the Russians will step in...
...that the majority have always been democratic and anti-Nazi...
...But even if true, says Lerner, it "drives a wedge" between the Russians and the Poles and helps the Germans...
Vol. 27 • September 1944 • No. 37
