Where the News Ends:
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin Yalta's Ghosts Walk Again THE CONCLUSION of the Austrian Peace Treaty and the agreement for a Big Four meeting "at the summit" are...
...On the other hand, there is a case for adapting the strategy of the free nations to that of the Communist bloc...
...In spite of the disillusioning results of top-level meetings in the past, a large part of the British public seems to cherish an almost mystical faith in the virtue of such talks...
...Eisenhower and Dulles would have preferred a slow, gradual approach: discussions on the Foreign-Minister level first, with a meeting of the President and the three Prime Ministers only if substantial preliminary negotiations seemed to warrant it...
...WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin Yalta's Ghosts Walk Again THE CONCLUSION of the Austrian Peace Treaty and the agreement for a Big Four meeting "at the summit" are indications that the struggle with the Communist world has shifted from a war of position to a war of movement...
...Rigidity has given way to a certain amount of fluidity...
...The heart of Lippmann's argument is that Stalin was in possession of the territories which were conceded to him...
...There are both dangers and opportunities in a resumption, after an interval of ten years, of Big Four personal diplomacy...
...The obvious primary objective of the Austrian move was to undermine NATO and the defense of Western Europe by promoting neutralist illusions in Germany...
...A good psychological preparation for the prospective conference would be to study carefully the record of Yalta, to recognize why it was a crime and a blunder, and to make sure that there is no relapse into the Yalta psychology in the future...
...The decision to accept a conference of the heads of government was not taken quickly or enthusiastically in Washington...
...If it is possible to obtain unity for Germany in freedom and a relaxation of the Soviet grip on its satellites without consenting to the dissolution of the Atlantic alliance, the opportunity should not be overlooked...
...and to balance the two cool-headedly...
...The ghost of Yalta inevitably walks when there is the prospect of a new meeting of heads of the Big Powers...
...One way of going about this is to examine carefully the elaborate apologetics for Yalta which Waltet Lippmann has been publishing in the New York Herald Tribune...
...This agreement provided Stalin with a moral cloak for his aggressive designs in Asia...
...of course, Yalta was a consequence of the "unconditional surrender" slogan which robbed our diplomacy of flexibility and prevented us from achieving earlier what we have been painfully trying to accomplish during the last few years: the build-up of a non-Nazi Germany and a nonmilitarist Japan as bastions against the Soviet and Chinese Communist thrust in Europe and Asia...
...There was an alternative to Yalta short of war: a forthright Anglo-American declaration that no annexations of foreign territory, contrary to the principles of the Atlantic Charter would be recognized...
...There are many instances in history, such as the Japanese withdrawal from Eastern Siberia after World War I. when territory occupied under wartime conditions was evacuated peacefully...
...It is not likely, but it is possible that Stalin's political heirs are thinking in terms of retreat—at a price, ft is worthwhile to find out how much of a retreat is contemplated and what the price may be...
...It is a matter of great urgency to learn the lessons of Yalta thoroughly at the present time, when the United States Government, in this era of more fluid diplomatic maneuvering, will be under strong pressure to treat other areas as Poland and China were treated at Yalta...
...The dangers are perhaps more obvious...
...Public opinion in free countries is apt to be forgetful and unduly optimistic...
...To see that this does not happen is the first moral and political imperative of American statesmanship and American public opinion...
...Soviet Communist diplomacy is expert in driving wedges between non-Communist nations and between governments and peoples...
...and what could we have done about it...
...But the Conservative Government of Great Britain, on the eve of an election, was very anxious for the meeting...
...The sudden alteration of the Soviet attitude on Austria suggests the maneuver of a chess player who gives up a pawn in the hope of capturing a more valuable piece from his adversary and perhaps paving the way for a checkmate...
...It is remarkable what propaganda dividends Moscow can reap from a few minor gestures of common civility...
...more important, with almost a legal title enforceable at the peace conference to the territories and privileges which he demanded...
...This same mood exists in France, and the French Government felt entitled to some reward for having ratified the pacts to arm the German Federal Republic...
...The best concise answer to this was furnished by the late Chester Wilmot in his The Struggle for Europe: "The real issue for the world and for the future was not what Stalin would or could have taken, but what he was given the right to take...
...And...
Vol. 38 • May 1955 • No. 22
