EUROPE AT STAKE
Where the News Ends New Look for Fellow Travelers By William Henry Chamberlin THERE IS A NEW LOOK today in the speeches and writings of conscious and unconscious American...
...By our actions in Paris we can win or lose the battle for Europe...
...Moscow has been preparing the ground for eventual Soviet penetration of Germany by advocating unity longer and louder than anyone else...
...If any criticism could be fairly made of the press handling of that affair it was the excessive and exaggerated publicity generated by the extensive news coverage...
...Although a partitioned Germany is not desirable, a unified Germany susceptible to Soviet aims could prove far more dangerous...
...in the industries or professions, without joining some organization thatcould l)e represented as Nazi-dominated, without making some gesture of conformity to the ruling regime...
...This praise of Evatt is symbolic of another aspect of the fellow-traveler new look, an effort to rush the United States into succumbing to Soviet peace offensives before the necessary conditions and guaranties of a genuine peace can be tested and established...
...The solution may lie in just the opposite direction: continued partition of Germany.' If Western Europe has been able to prosper apart from its Eastern half, is there any reason ¦ why a West German state could not survive indefinitely, and in due time perhaps enter into the Western European union on an equal basis...
...There must also he consistent, intelligent rejection of mental and emotional attitudes which make for Communist success...
...The facts about Communism are so notorious that direct defense of it, in theory and practice, has become a thankless and unpopular job...
...Hence the new look, the tendency to exploit emotions which, at first sight, have nothing to do with the regime in the Kremlin...
...Oh the eve of the Paris meeting...
...It is unlikely that Russia will accept such conditions...
...In the last analysis, therefore, the so-called "German problem" really reduces itself to the/ problem of the unification of Europe itself...
...EXHIBIT 2 is a panegyric of the UN Assembly President, Herbert V. Evatt, by Alvarez del Vayo, whose pro-Soviet bias is obvious in all his comment on international affairs...
...Second, we must conceive of Germany in terms of Europe...
...The split within Germany only reflects the larger division between Eastern and Western Europe...
...Such a Germany is a distinct possibility...
...What is important now is not what a German may have thought or said ten years ago, but ' whether he can be won for the West today...
...Eastern zone Communists are again proposing to Western German leaders a "unity meeting...
...For twelve years the Nasi Party was In supreme control of Germany...
...Big Four supervision over the n«Qy German state for an indefinite period, with no veto power for Russia...
...Nevertheless, we must demand thenfor principled as well as practical reasons...
...Western Germany, at present terrifically overcrowded, would be utterly incapable of self-support...
...Restoration of German foreign trade is or should be a major American political objective...
...In short, there <s danger that, at Paris—unless our diplomats come astutely prepared—we shall be tossed a Soviet coin labeled, "Heads we win, tails you lose...
...EXHIBIT 1 is a violent diatribe against the industrial fair in New York, accompanied by an anonymous article from Germany, which concentrates on the alleged failure to purge former Nazis to the exclusion of every other element in the complex German situation...
...The only logical inference to be drawn from the attack on the industrial fair is that Americans should boycott or otherwise restrict any revival of German foreign trade...
...These people would be, some of them already have been, the likeliest recruits for the SED and other Communist-run political organizations...
...Throughout the world Russia is sponsoring "peace" conferences to provide a smokescreen for her maneuvers...
...Potent as nationalism is, and legitimate as German aspirations may be, re-creation of another national state is not necessarily the road to the broader goal of Continental unity...
...FIRST...
...Suppose the Russians bring to Paris a plan for unifying Germany...
...Among these emotions are undiscriminating hatred of Germany, suspicion that the western t powers are sabotaging peace, and onesided concentration on the real or supposed defects of free societies...
...He is precisely the kind of man who would walk open-eyed into a Soviet diplomatic booby-trap...
...At Paris the watchword must be: No appeasement...
...Now European integration is one of the crucial problems of our age...
...It should stimulate clearer and sharper thinking on what America's objectives are in foreign affairs and how these objectives can reasonably be achieved.' Mere blasts against Cdmunism and assurances of anti-Communist sentiment are not enough...
...This means, at least: Strictest supervision of elections in the Eastern zone to a central government...
...Today this attitude is restricted to a diminishing small hard core of individuals, mostly those who have run up a score of joining at least twenty disloyal and pro-Communist "fronts...
...Enormously convinced of his own importance, a self-appointed champion of the "little man", Evatt is one of the most starry-eyed, -woolly-minded and least realistic statesmen on the world scene...
...no separate economic or political or military understandings between Germany and Russia...
...But opposition might be interpreted in Germany as enmity to unification in principle...
...And already, we are thrown—"victory'1 and all—into a quandary...
...and a conscious effort to integrate' Germany into a unified democratic European, system...
...Where the News Ends New Look for Fellow Travelers By William Henry Chamberlin THERE IS A NEW LOOK today in the speeches and writings of conscious and unconscious American fellow-travelers...
...To support Russia's plan would mean entrapping ourselves in a scheme designed to benefit only Moscow...
...Undoubtedly, an Allied victory has been won, thanks to the Berlin airlift and the Atlantic Pact...
...But without foreign trade...
...It was almost impossible, given the nature of the totalitarian state, for a German to take an active part in political or economic liie...
...WITH ALL THIS IN MIND, consider the Jessup-Malik discussions and the forthcoming Foreign Ministers meeting...
...Totalitarian governments, as Hitler taught us, understand only the language of economic, political and military power...
...The fellow-traveler new look will bear close watching...
...This is just what he did, in association with the UN Secretary, Trygve Lie, when these two spokesmen for the United Nations recommended an appeasement formula for the settlement of the Berlin blockade last autumn...
...Our diplomats must retain uppermost in mind the fact that, were it not for the Atlantic Pact, the airlift, the nascent West German State, and ERP, no concessions would have been made by Moscow...
...If the West is not to fall into a fatal trap, two principles must govern its behavior at Paris...
...EXHIBIT 3 was an unconsciously amusing article by Tom O'Connor, formerly of PM and its defunct successor, The New York Star, denouncing the New York press for reporting the obvious fact that the late unlamented "Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace" had nothing to do with culture, science or peace, but was simply a forum for Communist propaganda...
...AT PARIS WE CAN MAKE IT VERY CLEAR that we are for German unification, but only on an unequivocally democratic basis...
...The democracies not only have no plan of their own, but have refused seriously to consider the question...
...Meanwhile, of course, we must maintain our armed forces in Germany, and strengthen the West German state with a view to integrating it later with the Western democracies...
...OUR ATTITUDE TOWARD RUSSIA must remain "stiff...
...For, in conceding to us on the secondary issue of Berlin the Russians hope to improve their position on the primary issue: What is to be done with Germany...
...Europe at Stake GERMAN UNIFICATION is almost certain to be the main issue facing the Big Four at Paris on May 23...
...Thero was a time when many Americans who were not members of the Communist Party came out in full-throated glorification of the Soviet Union and its satellite states as heralds of a brave new world of social democracy...
...To create in Germany a huge pariah class of individuals who are -barred from constructive work because of former Nazi affiliations is to play right into Stalin's hands...
...But only a limited victory...
...The continual harping on the "Nazi" question also reveals a deliberate or superficial attempt to confuse public opinion...
...The conditions motivating the Rapallo Treaty and the Stalin-Hitler Pact—previous RussoGerman threats to the West—still exist: Getmany requires the vast' unexploited market in the East which Russia oversees...
...A recent issue of The Nation offers three characteristic exhibits in this trend...
...and Russia's twin goals of industrialization and world dominion depend on direct access to highly mechanized Western Germany—the heartland of Europe...
Vol. 32 • May 1949 • No. 20
