REALISM AND LIPPMANN
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
Where the News Ends Realism and Lippmann By William Henry Chamberlin THIS COLUMN has not always found itself in agreement with Dean Acheson on matters of public policy. The Secretary...
...Newspaper headline...
...Baldwin well in his new endeavor, and congratulate his successor as Director of the ACLU, Patrick Murphy Maliti...
...All of this must add up to a paradox for those whose view of liberty is determined by a particular idea or belief which, directly or indirectly, refuses to accept the legitimacy of an opposing idea or belief...
...The ACLU Paradox TO MANY, the American Civil Liberties Union is a paradox...
...It battles for the underprivileged—as when it successfully fought against yellow dog contracts and labor injunctions...
...It enters actions like the famous Tennessee Scopes "monkey-trial" which lend corntort to atheism (but also, in this case, to reason in general...
...We wish Mr...
...But nowhere in this long tirade could one find the outline of a consetructive alternative policy...
...To know that we can lirk the Reds And not (oh, State) their bootsl —Richard Armour...
...There are two questions which, it seems to me, every advocate of a "new approach" to Moscow must face up to...
...So long as we follow its principles we shall be on the right road...
...yet it will also contest in the Supreme Court several bans on a religious group like Jehovah's Witnesses...
...Harry D. Gideons*, Sidney Hook...
...At least till someone shoots...
...Executive Editor: S. M. Levilas...
...remains in power...
...The method of pitting equal or superior force against force has worked in such cases as the Berlin airlift, the saving of Greece from Communist conquest, the protection of such vital areas as Turkey and Iran...
...But the organization he now leaves after three decades, to work for civil liberties on a w*orld scale, will not falter without him because, in devoting a lifetime to righting for liberty he helped create a new kind of career which other Americans have since taken up...
...Tn a land so thoroughly dedicated to freedom as ours is, there should logically be no need for ar American Civil Liberties Union...
...It ought to be pasted up prominently in the State Department as a permanent guide for our dealings with the Kremlin so long as the present regime, or anything like it...
...Acheson deserved well of his country when he issued recently a statement defining with clarity and piecision the only means of getting along with the Kremlin...
...Now that Hitler is dead, I do not suppose that there can be any serious question that Stalin is the most formidable despot of our time, the man who has inflicted the greatest amount of suffering on the greatest number of people...
...Horace M. Kalian, Algernon Lee, Marx Lewis...
...It braves popular wrath to fight the racial injustice which characterizes a Scottsboro Case or the wartime evacuation of West Coast Japanese-Americans: but it will likewise defend the freedom of citizens to make "negative remarks about race or religion...
...Lippmann does not fulfill his patriotic and intellectual .obligation to face these questions when he resorts to such empty banalities as the following: "Even if there is no way by which the Russians can be induced or compelled to act in good faith, there still remains the necessity of acting in good faith with ourselves...
...Labor or Tory, Rep...
...but also treacherous subverters of democracy—like the GermanAmerican Bund and the Communist party...
...is the maintenance of equal or superior strength...
...Not long ago the Secretary, it seems to me, made an error of judgment in throwing the weight of his influence aganist taking action calculated to keep Formosa out of the hands of the hostile Chinese Communist regime...
...1 read del Vayo regularly in the Nation...
...From this he draws the inescapable conclusion that the only means of dealing with the Soviet Union, apart from appeasement ending in total surrender and catastrophe...
...Associate Editors: David J. Dallin...
...As the Secretary of State puts it: "Agreements reached with the Soviet government are useful when those agreements register facts or a situation which exists, and they are not useful when they are merely agreements...
...but he maintains a profound silence as to what that "something" is or could be, short of staking the very existence of the United States on the brittle security of Stalin's word...
...Managing Editor: Daniel JimH...
...We do not keep faith with ourselves . . . when we refuse to admit that there is something which can possibly be discovered which we do not already know " * * ? Consistency, Thou Art a Jewel IN A HIGHLY EULOGISTIC REVIEW of Alvarez del Vayo's autobiography, Raymond Gram Swing in a recent issue of the Notion salutes the author as "a man of signal courage, of passionate sincerity and integrity...
...Second, is any conceivable atomic or other arms agreement foolproof —can it be automatically safe agarnst breach and evasion—given the premises of Soviet bad will and bad faith, the totalitarian nature of Soviet society and the enormous size of the Soviet Union...
...And also that a single hour Of notice will be long enough...
...CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: John Chamberlain...
...and his appearance with that preposterous charlatan, the Red Dean of Canterbury, at a meeting in 1945 sponsored by the Council of American-Soviet Friendship, was not a happy idea...
...overwhelming in its logical realism...
...Literary Editor: Mary V. Green...
...But Mr...
...It's good to know we have the power And that, indeed, we're strong enough...
...NOTICE Johnson Says U.S...
...Newspaper headline...
...But, search my memory as "I will, I cannot think of any harsh word this "consistent enemy of despotism" has ever said about the Soviet despot...
...As he pointed out, the method of peaceful negotiation has never worked with Stalin...
...Indeed, his column is one long and not very subtle plea for appeasement of the Soviet dictatorship...
...Max Danish, Leon Dennen, John Dewey...
...Italics supplied...
...The New Leader EDITORIAL BOARD: Editor: William E. Bohn...
...Paradoxical is it, too, that, while many distinguished minds have contributed toward the ACLU's uniqueness, usefulness, and reputation for integrity and sincerity, one man stands out as its master-builder—Roger N. Baldwin...
...Assistant Editor: Analole Shub...
...a consistent enemy oj despotism...
...Left or Right...
...You can't argue with a river, it is going to flow...
...He brushes off the Baruch Plan as obsolete, he argues in tones of urgency that we must "do something...
...To ask them not to fish and to say we will have an agreement that you wont fish is like trying to deal with a force of nature...
...and also for the privileged—as in a suit where it defended "the right of employers to free speech in dealing with unions...
...ACHESON LENT the prestige of his office to affirming a principle which is not exactly news to readers of The New Leader, but which apparently must he stated again and again for the benefit of too-forgetful Americans This principle is that the word of the Soviet Government has time and again proved to be utterly worthless...
...Drama Critic: Joseph T. Shiplay...
...severe reduction of military appropriations" and "recognition of the Chinese 'People's' Republic...
...First, can there be any confidence in Soviet goodwill and good faith, given the philosophy of communism and the historical record...
...But thai contradiction is of our own making, t\o\ of the Union's...
...Weakness anywhere, as he says, is an irresistible temptation to the Soviet government to fish in troubled waters...
...Set to Lick Reds on Hour's Notice...
...The Secretary of State made an unfortunate choice of friends in Alger Hiss...
...Now Lippmann has reverted to* the same method in his discussion of the problem of atomic armaments...
...or Dem.— The same old story...
...Selig Perlman...
...There is nothing in the record to show that Acheson, during the war period, opposed the appeacement policy toward Stalin and the vindictive peace settlements in Europe and the Far East which contributed very much to creating the state of permanent crisis and tension in which we are obliged to live today...
...And there is one final paradox to note...
...Some time ago, Lippmann devoted his column for a period of weeks to attacking George Kennan's philosophy of containing Soviet Communism...
...Even to the point of inviting you to disagree v/ith what the New York-Time.* called its "fundamentalist" philosophy, as it demonstrated at its thirtieth anniversary conference the other day when it featured speakers who clashed violently with leaders of the Union...
...We'll now sleep sounder in our beds...
...Washington Editor: Jonathan Stout...
...By coincidence Acheson's remarks, a model of clearsighted realism, appeared on the same day as did a conspicuous monument of unrealism in Walter Lippmann's column...
...It was a splendid state paper, clear, coolheaded...
...It defends not only fervent believers in democracy—Sacco and Vanzetti, for example...
...Eugene Lyons...
...But the paradox is dissolved and becomes enviable consistency when one realizes that the ACLU simply believes in upholding the Bill of Rights one hundred per cent of the time for one hundred per cent of the population...
...PRE-ELECTION PROSPECTUS Churchill's Party Promises Tax Cut, Free Enterprise...
...If the hitter's ultimate purpose ear be defined it mighl be thus: to create those conditions which will make superfluous the existence of a civil liberties movement...
...In the very issue of the Nation where Swing's tribute appeared, (\e\ Vayo was singingthe praises of a fellow-traveler splinter group of French Socialists whose program included such items, certainly not calculated to displease the Kremlin, as "repudiation of the Atlantic Part...
Vol. 33 • February 1950 • No. 8
