Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
WHERE the NEWS ENDS Time for Churchill To Step Down By William Henry Chamberlin Had Winston Churchill died a few years ago, he would have been remembered—with all due allowance for some failings...
...He denounced the dishonor and shortsightedness of Munich, the illusion of peace gained at the price of continuous retreat and surrender...
...When Churchill came back into office in 1951, one might have expected that British policy would assume a fighting anti-Communist character...
...You can judge yourselves what will happen then by what is happening now...
...He called for a free, united Germany, freedom for the Soviet satellite nations, a cessation of aggression in Korea and Indo-China...
...But nothing of the kind happened...
...WHERE the NEWS ENDS Time for Churchill To Step Down By William Henry Chamberlin Had Winston Churchill died a few years ago, he would have been remembered—with all due allowance for some failings in his wartime statesmanship—as the Western leader with the clearest vision of totalitarianism's evil, insatiable nature...
...No one in his senses can believe that we have a limitless period of time before us...
...before he goes farther along the road of appeasement that not so long ago led the world to war...
...Last April, following Stalin's death, President Eisenhower delivered a statesmanlike address affirming America's desire for a peace based on justice and liberty...
...Churchill had a splendid opportunity to back up Eisenhower and present the Kremlin with the spectacle of a firm Anglo-American front...
...Churchill's speech at Fulton, Missouri was a powerful clarion call, and his influence may not have been the least that induced President Truman to take the plunge and come to the aid of threatened Greece and Turkey...
...He called on the Soviet Government for "actions, which speak louder than words...
...His flaming words in the darkest hours of World War II will be remembered as long as liberty's indomitable spirit is honored and the English language is read...
...One can only hope that Churchill will lay down the burden of office that now seems too heavy for him...
...And he asked a fateful question which has already, in large part, been answered: "What will happen when they get the atomic bomb themselves and have accumulated a large store...
...The brave words of Fulton, the speech in Wales might as well never have been uttered...
...Churchill proves with documents in the last volume of his memoirs that he quickly awakened during the last weeks of the war to the new threat from the East...
...retire to their own country...
...And what is one to make of Churchill's inane hope that the Soviet Government "will play a proud and splendid part in the guidance of the human race...
...He also missed an opportunity to denounce the treaty of alliance between Great Britain and the Soviet Union, which makes no political sense if the North Atlantic Treaty obligations are to be taken seriously...
...But the publicly announced, flat refusal of the British Government to assume any commitment "in advance of the results of Geneva" was a sure formula for turning Geneva into another Munich or Yalta...
...Instead of following this course, the ageing British Prime Minister came out with his disastrous speech of May 11, 1953...
...As conditions of this peace, Eisenhower laid down terms similar to those which Churchill had suggested in his October 1948 address...
...be content to live on their own and cease to darken the world and prevent its recovery by these endless threats, intrigues and propaganda...
...liberate the Communist-held portion of Korea...
...During the last year...
...cease to oppress, torment and exploit the immense part of Germany and Austria which is now in their hands...
...This speech was powerful encouragement to all the defeatist forces on the Continent...
...For him, this final stage of the war was tragedy in the midst of triumph, defeat against the background of victory...
...We ought to bring matters to a head and make a final settlement...
...proposing a top-level conference with Malenkov, with no advance requirement in the way of proof of Soviet good faith...
...And it was Churchill who, in a speech delivered in Wales, on October 9, 1948, gave one of the clearest and most forceful statements of the causes and objectives of the cold war...
...It would be unfair to blame exclusively any one nation, or to absolve entirely any one nation, for the sorry spectacle at Geneva...
...He laid down a series of such actions: that the Kremlin rulers should release their grip on the satellite slates...
...Even though Red China was at war with Great Britain and the other powers which had sent troops to Korea, Churchill failed to break off relations with her and correct what was perhaps the Labor party's worst foreign-policy blunder...
...This expression of hope might seem superfluous, in view of the fact that one-third of the human race has already been enslaved by Communist imperialism...
...the deterioration in the quality of Churchill's leadership has developed at an appalling pace...
...If these things are done in the green wood, what will be done in the dry...
...The lion of 1940 begins to look more and more like his fumbling, appeasement-minded predecessor, Neville Chamberlain...
Vol. 37 • May 1954 • No. 22
