The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN Atombomb Blows Off a Few Masks The Truman-Attlee atombomb state-I input lines them up. Read what the columnists and radio commentators have to say about...
...If there is any other explanation, I wish someone would tell me what it is...
...We Have Seea Tfcoir faces I WOULD not want anyone te think that these writers and speakers represent the whole line-up of the American press and radio...
...At-titudes toward the atombomb reveal as much as attitudes toward the Hitler-Stalin Tart did hack in 1940...
...lt haa more fascination than any shell game ever had...
...They ahewed their faces, but so did others...
...And now contrast the devious double-tatkera with the forthright and well, informed William Philip Simm;: -jhe plan calls for creation of a UNO commission to submit proposals for exchanging scientific information for peaceful use, outlawing ita military use and, finally, setting up a system of international inspection...
...Such patent and partisan propaganda can hardly fool anyone...
...Without 'adequate safeguards' against misuse by any nation, we shall have to keep the bomb, accept the armament race it will provoke and very likely die in an atomic struggle...
...The Washington declaration has thrown down the gauntlet...
...It served well the Allied war purposes and it was in line with our traditionnl advocacy of the open door...
...All of this involved making every effort to keep the pe.u-e within China, doing whatever could be done to end or, at least, to postpone the struggle between the Chinese Government and Chinese Communists...
...How would you like to go on with the game...
...Dorothy Thompson, for instance, can see as far as anyone into a piece of official prose—and here is what she wrote after reading the much-discussed pronouncement: "The joint statement . . . adds up to declaring: First, we get secure peace...
...The whole adventure should be ended...
...But the frank statement should serve as a stop sign for whole platoons of politicians and diplomats...
...He was to keep China in the war against Japan, to strengthen the Government of Chiang Kai-shek and to improve the relations between our fighting forces and those of the Chinese...
...The prime ministers of three great nations—and Steel is a citizen of one of them—are accused, not precisely ef being rata, but of having produced a rat...
...This writer favors making the bomb and similar weapons the monopoly of the United Nations Orgonization so reorganized and strenghened as to be a safe custodian for so appalling an instrument...
...The only possible explanation is that Samuel Grafton, like Joseph Starobin, favors the USSR and dictatorship—that he is against the United Nations and democracy...
...The reference is not clear, but apparently the retiring Ambassador is expressing his disapproval of the blundering attempts of Britain, France and the Netherlands to take up their colonial maladministration of eastern colonies where they left off before the war...
...Kdgar Ansel Mowrer sees it this way: '"this writer does not advocate sharing the bomb with new nations except through the United Nations Organization...
...This, in fact, destroys the entire premise of the United Nations...
...It is his business to pitch into them and heat up his readers against them...
...Over the radio Raymond Grain Swing called the steps proposed by the three national leaders "extraordinarily weak...
...An iacome of $1,900 at today's high prices places us below the living standards we had at the time of Pearl Harbor...
...The slicker they are, the greater the danger...
...moment of mask removal st the end of a costume party...
...No excuse for mistaken identities from here on...
...Conquest of China by the Communist forces would mean the end of China's freedom...
...Try it on a few others —and let me know your results...
...Read what the columnists and radio commentators have to say about it—and it is like the revealing...
...His actual allegiance is clear...
...Much more dangerous is the writing «f smooth chaps who pretend to be good Americans and good democrats...
...we fix it so no nation can make war...
...The appointment of General George C. Marshall to the vacated post at Chungking seems to indicate that our Chinese policy will not be changed...
...He is free from partisan political commitments...
...For the most disturbing effect of the communique is that it actually rules out a world conference or a Big Three meeting at which all questions, including that of the bomb, could lie put on the table...
...As far as he is concerned, the three conscientious prime ministers are merely enemies...
...But there is something crudely honest about this performance...
...About China his outburst is more specific...
...All of this was good policy...
...The combined Rritish-Canadian-USA proposal wan so prosaically and methodically outlined that there is no excuse for misunderstanding or misinterpretation...
...At today's prices it costs $2,K00 a year to support a family of four at a health and efficiency level of living...
...Membership in this bloc is open to any nation which subordinates its policy to the United States, the kingpin of this bloc...
...Today oar average yearly income is cat back from $2 lull in 1944 lo $1,900...
...What they say is there bears no resemblance to what is actually there...
...This lt honest criticism...
...The professional foreign service men," we are told, "sided with the Communist armed party and with the imperialist bloc of nations whose policy it was to keep China divided against herself...
...The man who wrote it was not interested in telling his readers the news or starting honest discussion of it...
...We have lost prestige by being tied in with these attempts...
...You see how it goes—how a man's attitude toward the tripartite atnmbomb statement reveals the loyalties beneath the over-lay of deceptive verbiage...
...The conscientious and pedestrian—but meticulously clear prose of the prime ministers is called MhI line and burbling...
...He cannot be brushed aside...
...Try a few lines from the typewriter of Samuel Grafton, published in The Neto York Post and a string of other'papers: "We are torn between a desire to share and a desire to keep...
...Those who have been hit by the flying missies howl that Patrick Hurley is an irresponsible hothead...
...What caused the Ambassador undiplomatically to lose his temper and throw up his job was failure to secure complete cooperation of State Department underlings both in Chungking and Washington...
...It means, moreover, that in the President's opinion the effective execution of that policy is of such importance that it requires one of our top men...
...This is, of coure, an unblushing distortion of every word set down by the three prime ministers...
...At some points his statement is ambiguous, but at others it is painfully clear...
...Pretending all the time to lie wonderfully good and high-minded -anil O, so clever and bright—Samuel (Jrafton is giving a false report of what was said and a false picture of what may be done...
...Not to have suggested this immediately and io so many words, rather than obliquely and in 'stares,' la the greatest weakness of the three-power atomic plan...
...The directives under which he was sent to Chungking were clear...
...And with the excess profits tax lifted, corporation proflta after taxes are expected to be higher than at any ether time in history...
...The result is that we are caught in an evil drift...
...and what finally comes out of the Truman-Attlee statement is not that it solves the problem of the atomic bomb, but that it perhaps makes a solution impossible...
...Lisa Sergio found it difficult "to take the atom energy proposal at face value...
...These are serious charges...
...And in the State Department, it is charged, a considerable section "is endeavoring to support Communism generally as well as specifically in China...
...All of the politically-intelligent democrats are lined up on one side and thr dubious double-talkers who prefer Stalin's ways to ours on the other side, with a few innocents in between...
...Here is how Joseph Starobin fulminated Vie day after the exact words of the declaration appeared in all the papers: "But the plain fact is that Truman, Attlee and Mackenzie King have succeeded in establshing an atomic bloc within the United Nations...
...However, the proposals, in effect, constitute yet another earnest bid for Russian collaboration withput which the UNO will find itself stymied...
...Her practice has been to refuse information of almost every kind...
...we get a real world authority...
...1 suggest that the atombomb will serve as an infallible test...
...If he really wanted to improve the world, to work for peace and unity, he would discuss the good and bad points of the statement...
...Russia, it is widely felt, will object to many of these activities—especially the right of inspection...
...How this tragedy is to be prevented the General did not say...
...But among broadcasters it was Johannes Steel who made his position clearest: "The mountain has labored to bring forth not a mouse, but a rat...
...Of the 2( major manufacturing industries, net one pays an average wage high enough lo support a family at this level...
...But this man from the Indian Territory who served as Secretary of War during the Hoover Administration has been sent on diplomatic missions over a good part of the world and has, moreover, spent some illuminating weeks in Moscow...
...He could not make a case by telling the truth— so he tells a series of lies...
...The attack on the organization of the State Department is given balance and credibility by the fact that "the imperialist bloc of nations" draws a part *of Hurley's fire...
...An Editorial— Hurley Blows the Lid THE fireworks with which Major General Patrick Hurley backed out of his job as Ambassador to China cast a lurid but welcome light on all that has been happening over there...
...We entered two world wars with the high purposes expressed in the Atlantic Charter and now we are being sucked into a third one...
...I have applied it to six commentators...
...Now this, plainly, is as much of a lie as The Daily Worker's little essay...
...Reading these hot words, you would never guess that the statement explains in careful detail that we hold the bomb for the time being and will turn it over to a responsible international body as soon as one exists...
...General Marshall's achievements in the war proved possession of the rarest sort of administrative ability...
...But the boys on The Daily Worker —to take them first—write as if they had read some completely different document...
...He would not by double-talk pretend that it says what it does not say...
...Monthly Survey says that from 1939 te 1945, coi poratios profits, before taxes, rose four times as much as did the average worker's income...
...The AH...
...The author docs not even pretend to examine the text of the statement...
...Only those who favor increasing Russian conquest could fail to favor the lines of action marked out for Ambassador Hurley...
...How ran you explain such a man...
...and then we will lie free to use atomic energy for human welfare without fear of human destruction...
...The plain invitation to the United Nations to take up the business of the atomic-bomb snd fin m a responsible council fit to handle it is twistingly and obliquely denied...
...and we Mat and burble on both sides of the fence...
...Instead of spotting the pea under the shell, you point your finger at the fellow-traveler behind the column or the radio broadcast...
...The atombomb armaments race starts as of tonight...
...And if the presence of such an American representative, and of American forces, is advantageous to the Chinese Government, only those who have disgusted Hurley by their aid to the Communists will be distressed by that fact...
...He is against the United States and in favor of Russia...
Vol. 28 • November 1945 • No. 48
