THE COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS

...It is also true that since publication of Arthur Koestler's books, and especially since the Kravchenko trial, it has become a little easier to express criticism of the Soviet Union...

...The Left apparently has to move more slowly, for fear of losing its working class audience—and it is the working class, after all, which has to be won over to reduce Communist strength...

...Moreover, he was aware that the Indian Communists would exploit nationalist feelings and present themselves as the true protagonists of national liberation, had he taken any other course...

...I often wonder if I represent any one at all...

...A conference opposed to dictatorship should have protested the dictatorial conditions which prevail in Eastem Berlin and1 Eastern Germany, as in other Communist-dominated areas...

...Though they are building a Commonwealth which no longer calls itself "British", they are doing it in a manner essentially British at its best...

...and I am inclined to think that I do not though many have kindly and friendly feelings towards me...

...But the responsible statesmen of the Commonwealth do not mind if by such means they can, in a new form, uphold an association which has deep historical roots and Which appears indispensible to world peace and security...

...They belong to two worlds: the world of their origin, and the world of their adoption...

...he long ago indicated his preference for the first alternative...

...This means that George VI will remain the monarch of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the British Isles—all of which are included in the new Commonwealth—but not of India...

...John Hynd and Fenner Brockway from Britain...

...Whether this was done out of the traditional habit of taking the line of least resistance, or out of reluctance to involve Germans in international controversy, is not clear...

...The Berlin crisis went unmentioned...

...Unfortunately the organizational apparatus for the Paris anti-war, anti-dictatorship conference fell into the hands of the Paris newspaper Franc'Tireur and the small leftish Parisian clique, Rassemblement Democratique RevoIuiionnaireTheaded by Jean-Paul Sartre and David Rousset...

...By creating the new Commonwealth, the British Prime Ministers mee.ting in London have given a war-weary humanity a "glorious example of what can be achieved through good-will and compromise...

...Rousset and his Franc-Tireur group made plans for a world congress this Fall, by which time he and his followers may or may not be sufficiently developed to provide intelligent political direction...

...the King's English should go, too...

...i Cairo is being practical in cementing friendly relations wtih Transjordan, despite her failure to aid Egypt in the war with Israel...

...The emotions of many will be against him...

...I have become a queer mixture of the East and West out of place everywhere, at home nowhere, Perhaps my thoughts and approach to life are more akin to What is called Western than Eastern, but India clings to me, as she does to all hex children, in innumerable ways...

...It certainly became clear that a Franco-German rapprochement (so often called the key to a new, free Europe) is altogether possible in the next period—if only the democratic pro-European, pro-Western elements on both sides of the Rhine could take up contact with each other with a litUe more energy and imagination...

...The British have learned well the lesson taught by that uncompromising and self-righteous tyrant, George III...

...Ignazio Silone and Carlo Levi came from Italy...

...NEHRU WILL BE ATTACKED, inevitably and the outcome of the struggle with his enemies will provide one of the most exciting of contemporary historical dramas...

...This is one of the most moving self-, analyses I know...

...At the same time, the new Commonwealth is a political creation which, defying all logic...

...the booing at the Vel D'Hiv mass meeting when Dr...

...Hook and Farrell...

...Sidney Hook, James T. Farrell and Karl Compton from the United States...

...It is true that both the government center forces and the DeGaulllsts have made some inroads amoffg Communist followers...

...For a political organism proclaimed dead as often as it has been, the British system has again demonstrated a remarkable power for adapting itself to new circumstances...

...Certainly a conference which stands for peace should have taken a stand against the warlike methods which put a free city of two million under Soviet attack...

...of Bulgaria went to Russia for a health-cure...

...Morris Chapman...

...I cannot be of it But in my own country also, sometimes, I have an exile's feeling...

...Nevertheless, the shadow of a fanatical patty With two million members (and many more millions of followers) which can paralyze the country at will (even if it can no longer call a successful general strike) covers the whole face of French life like a black hood...

...I cannot get rid of either that past inheritance or my recent acquisitions...

...To them it is just one dam irritation after another...

...And these are lessons which, not incidentally, the entire world ought very soon to learn if it is not to suffer thorough annihilation...

...But this was tempered1 by the growing recognition of the foreign representatives in Paris of how terribly difficult and complicated the French political situation was...

...NEVER HAS A GREAT HISTORICAL EVENT occurred less spectacularly than the founding three weeks ago in London of the new— formerly British—Commonwealth of Nations...

...OLD TARNOW SPOKE, and his address was a vague collection of plati. tudes and banalities which could'well have been uttered by the delegate from Samoa...

...The question is not only one of actual policy, but of psychological approach...

...But for the time being the British have embarked upon a new and thrilling adventure...

...One must never forget that the French Communist party is the Jargest, best organized and most powerful political party in the country, with an almost uncontested hold on the trade-unions...

...was the SartreRous slogan), So it came about that the conference was dominated by the most sectarian kind of French revolutionary phraseology, and by an enormous reluctance to draw clear lines (and even a fear of calling things by their right names...

...Franc-Tireur is perhaps the second largest Paris morning daily, a paper of influence among workers and former resistance people, but a paper which has broken with its Communist sympathies only within the last year and is still floundering in a deep, embarassing confusion ("neither Communist nor anti-Communist...

...As an outcome of the New York and Paris meetings of democratic intellectuals, plans are now being laid for the organisation of a world movement dedicated to the ideals of democratic civilisation as opposed to lbs, tyrannical, aggressive aims of totalitarianism...

...On the other hand, India, a former colony, will also harvest not inconsiderable gains through intimate economic and political association with the other Commonwealth nations, and at the same time be free to pursue her own independent course...

...International representatives were quickly mobilized...

...the whistling when the Dutch delegate condemned the war in Indonesia but said that for the very same reasons he supported the Marshall Plan and the Atlantic Pact ("Without them," he shouted back at his hecklers, "we would not be sitting here in Paris holding this conference...

...They have found that necessary social reforms can be achieved through evolution and gradual adaption to need, instead of through violent revolution...

...THE PEACE CONFERENCE held in Paris last weekend — officially called Journee Internationale de la Resistance a la Dictature et a la Guerre—•took its inspiration from the refusal of American intellectuals in New York to allow the Communists to monopolize the slogan of "peace...

...Now that the English king Is ¦gone...

...I am a stranger and alien in the West...

...The following is a first-hand report of some of the highlights of the nonCommunist Paris gathering...

...They have discovered that peaceful ties between nations can best be maintained through a flexible rather than a rigid framework...

...Long an opponent of British rule in India, Nehru was many times jailed by the Raj...

...It remains to be seen whether Nehru will succeed in convincing his followers that an Indian republic—bound to a Commonwealth at whose head stands a king against whom Indian nationalism has so long fought—represents a true realization of Indian independence...

...At any rate, it must be recorded that the German delegates were everywhere received with warmth and friendliness, and when the German1 speaker v/as introduced to the conference the applause was loud and vigorous...

...A man of profound political understanding, Nehru realized that, if the new Commonwealth was to be favorably received in India, he would have to insist upon recognition of India as a republic if only out of deference to popular feeling at home...

...Comptoij defended American atomic policy...

...Frequently assimilating the cultural patterns of the intelligentsia of the ruling nation, these leaders are put in a somewhat ambiguous position...

...PEN POINTS Opponents of the Columbia Valley Administration view it as the latest step along the road to socialism...

...It is a rule that the leader of a revolutionary party, having achieved its goal and begun the work of reconstruction, should be suspected of "betrayal" because he is forced to build to some degree upon realities inherited from the old regime...

...In Paris a week after the Communists' very formidable and impressive second show of peace strength (among the added stars were Ilya* Ehrenburg, Joliot-Curie and Arnold Zweig), several French groups planned to organize a replica of the New York counterdemonstration...

...But Nehru does not submit to emotionalism...

...But he was always conscious of the fact that he himself was ^JLPXQduct of British education as well as the Indian nationalist tradition...

...It makes one wonder what will happen to the whole, carefully devised conception when men like Nehru are no longer the leaders...

...In future issues The New Leuitr will present further accounts by two of the American delegates...

...There is probably more than meets the eye in the report that Premier Dimttrot...

...According to the Prime Ministers' agreement, the qld imperial Commonwealth is to be reconstituted in a manner which will permit India—about to declare itself an independent republic —to associate on equal terms with th^ mother country and her dominions...

...The dictatorships of Spain and Greece were condemned—but the Soviet dictatorships in Russia and satellite countries were only fleetingly touched...

...In 1938, he described this tragic dilemma in a passage of unsurpassable lucidity: "Indeed...

...AGAINST THIS BACKGROUND...

...Only the "militant wing" of Hook, Farrell and Hynd (the Dutch delegate) spoke openly on the questions of the day...

...Perhaps, as many expert observers argued last week-end in Paris, one must be very patient and be content with small progress...

...WHAT THIS AMOUNTS TO is that each can have his cake and eat it too...

...The great threat to world peace came from Indonesia and Malaya...

...Nobody has understood that more clearly than Nehru himself...

...generations of Brahmins...

...THERE WAS WIDESPREAD disappointment among many delegations and also much Indignation (and even a little revolt...

...Peace Conference at Paris French Intellectuals Riddled by Sectarianism, Naivete By Melvin J. Lasky New Leader Correspondent in Germany PARIS...

...The other alternative is to take the leadership away from these forces — which are riddled with indecision, sectarianism and intrigue...

...In his famous autobiography, quoting Spinoza's "Freedom through knowledge and understanding or emotional bondage...

...HERE WAS A GREAT CHANCE to establish a significant common front of democrats, socialists and liberals who recognize the fundamental clash between freedom and totalitarianism raging in the world today...

...and behind me lie, somewhere in the subconscious, racial memories of a hundred, or whatever the number may be...

...A month before, Sidney Hook, George Counts, Bertram D. Wolfe and others had challenged the pro-Soviet delegations led by Fadeev and Shostakovich and had successfully managed to draw a clear line between those who wanted "a Soviet peace," and the rest of the Western democratic world which sought peace with liberty...

...THE CENTRAL FIGURE at the Prime Ministers' sessions, significantly enough, was not of Anglo-Saxon stock, but a dsecendant of an old BrahminHindu family—Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru...

...It is easy to mock the inconsistency evident in the creation of a union between a republic and a group of nations living under a monarchy...

...There are many examples of national liberation movements which would have failed had their leaders not passed through the school of their original enemies...

...This general situation involved, of course, the German representatives present—Fritz Tarnow of the Bizonal trade unions, Reiner Hildebrandt and Professor Hans Leisegang of Berlin, and Franz Borkenau of Marbutg...

...The French Right could afford to be anti-Soviet, anti-Communist, pro-Western, pro-Marshall Plan and Atlantic Pact...

...Britain will reap the manifold economic, political and military advantages to be gained from continued association with the worldwide empire she founded so long ago, and simultaneously stand in a higher moral relationship to it than has any imperial power in history...

...There is no use, she must figure, crying over spilled blood...

...There is some justice in the demand that Ireland drop English and adopt Gaelic as her national tongue...

...must appear baffling to those who do not understand the pragmatic nature of the British mind...

...It was the very firm feeling of at least the last three that the Berlin question should have been raised...

...They are both part of me, and though they help me in both the East and the West, they alto create in me a feeling of spiritual loneliness not only in public activities but in life itself...

...Shrewd Communist politicians know when it is healthy to be sick...