Editorial
Editorial Betrayal at Saigon As our perspective lengthens, it becomes increasingly plain that the 13-month-old Korean armistice brought little gain to the free world. It left Korea devastated...
...De Gasperi The death of Alcide de Gasperi has swept away one of the towering figures of postwar Europe...
...It was all fully within the terms of the armistice, for none of the Western delegates at Geneva, eager to scuttle and run in Indo-China, had given any thought to the problem of forced repatriation...
...Premier Mendes-France is reported to have conceded in his hastily-convened parley with Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden that German rearmament must be attained, whatever the fate of EDC...
...Abroad, he became a symbol of the ideal of Western European unity...
...Without the amendments, it seems doubtful that EDC can clear the French Parliamentary hurdle...
...The whole messy episode was quickly buried in the inside pages of the newspapers...
...it released Communist forces for renewed pressure in Indo-China...
...it lent wings to every neutralist and "business as usual" delusion in Western Europe and Asia...
...And yet, it did seem that one vitally important truth had emerged from the two-year talkathon at Kaesong and Panmunjom: the criminal immorality of forcible repatriation...
...Now, through the callousness of our allies and our own Government's lack of alertness, we have once more kicked away what was perhaps our biggest trump in the unending struggle between the free and slave worlds...
...It had taken us almost a decade to wipe out the memory of the post-World War II repatriation horror, when thousands of Russian POWs and civilian deportees were forcibly returned to their tormentors under the Yalta pact...
...French Premier Pierre Mendes-France, whose coming has been like a gust of fresh air in the musty attic of French politics, must be credited with a sincere attempt to break the two-year EDC deadlock...
...According to dispatches from Saigon, 2,500 reluctant Vietminh returnees, bound for Ho Chi Minh's new "people's democracy" in North Vietnam, rioted on board ship in the harbor...
...a German national army will probably be created under an independent agreement with the two AngloSaxon powers...
...with them, however, the defense community would be shorn of all the supra-national features which fired the enthusiasm of its proponents...
...Our uncompromising stand on principle in Korea had seemed a convincing pledge that Communist defectors in future wars, big and little, would never face a similar betrayal...
...And EDC It seems sardonically fitting that Italy's de Gasperi should leave the scene just as the European Defense Community was apparently nearing final defeat...
...Nevertheless, the refusal of the other five signatory powers to accept Mendes-France's proposed amendments to the treaty is more than understandable...
...If not...
...De Gasperi's death is thus a double blow to the democratic West...
...the passing of its leader and main source of cohesion will unleash all the centrifugal forces pent up within it...
...France's ultra-nationalists have achieved one objective, it is true: The European Defense Comnumitv—barring a last-minute reversal of form—is dead, and France has preserved the last full measure of her national sovereignty, But Germany is to be rearmed notwithstanding—and in a form which may prove more dangerous to German democracy and world peace than anything contemplated by EDC...
...Mankind's penchant for forgetting the lessons of history is, of course, nothing new...
...At the same time, the champions of European unity, already in retreat, have been deprived of a powerful voice...
...West Germany will be included in the NATO framework...
...The guards fired, killing one and wounding several others, and order was restored...
...German rearmament would be achieved, but the various EDC contingents would operate as separate entities much like national armies, the member-states would have virtual veto power in all important matters, and plans for an eventual European political community would be abandoned...
...The free world can ill afford many more losses like this one...
...Taking over the Premiership at a time when the tragic farce of Fascism had sent Italy's international slock to an all-time low, he led his country on the road to economic revival and restored its prestige in diplomatic councils...
...Two years of French obstructionism have thus yielded a bitter crop...
...The sequel to the approaching collapse of EDC had long been foreshadowed...
...But it is surely hitting a new low when, eight short months after the last Korean POW screamed defiance at his Red "explainers," we lapse back into indifference to the fate of the Communist non-returner...
...With the European Army seemingly dead, the United States and Britain are casting about for an alternative method of using German manpower in the defense of Western Europe...
...The Christian Democratic party, a ramshackle structure encompassing every political hue from arch-reaction to ultra-liberalism, was seriously weakened by the electoral defeat of June 1953...
...Now, scarcely a year later, the cause for which men bled and argued for so long has apparently been forgotten...
...If possible...
...At home, he almost singlehandedly forged the Christian Democratic party into a political instrument that successfully beat off all assaults by the Communist Left and the Monarchist and neo-Fascist Right...
...It left Korea devastated and still divided...
Vol. 37 • August 1954 • No. 35
