Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
WHERE the NEWS ENDS U.S. Policy-Worst Since Yalta By William Henry Chamberlin Not since the dark days of Yalta has an American who views imperialist Communism as the supreme threat to freedom in...
...effort to restore his power and prestige...
...It is easy to imagine situations in the Far East and other parts of the world which will make us wish at some future time that we bad shown more understanding for allies, less unconditional support for a Number One trouble-maker and recipient of Soviet arms...
...It was a painful spectacle to see the United States tagging along behind the butchers of Budapest and the Afro-Asian neutralist bloc (not a member of which put a man or a gun on the front when the chips were down in Korea) in vote after vote in the UN calculated to badger and humiliate our two principal NATO allies...
...Policy-Worst Since Yalta By William Henry Chamberlin Not since the dark days of Yalta has an American who views imperialist Communism as the supreme threat to freedom in the world had so much reason to feel ashamed of the policy of his government...
...The genocidal crimes of the Soviet tyrants in Hungary filled to overflowing the cup of tolerance of the civilized world...
...The feebleness of the UN and U.S...
...reaction to the challenge of Hungary, where the issue between right and wrong was as clear as any such issue has ever been, is in painful contrast to the zeal which we showed in forcing the speediest possible British, French and Israeli withdrawal from Egypt...
...There was hardly a free country where the anniversary of one of the great 20th-century misfortunes, the Bolshevik Revolution, was not marked by protest demonstrations against Soviet installations or Communist newspapers...
...I do not start from the assumption that there is a United States obligation to back up Great Britain, France or any other foreign country in any policy or attitude it may adopt...
...An observer from Mars might have wondered what great services Dictator Nasser had rendered to the free world to warrant the tremendous U.S...
...There was no emphatic gesture, such as the recall of our Ambassador from Moscow or a letter from President Eisenhower to Bulganin and Zhukov, giving forthright expression to the horror which every civilized human being fell about the abominable combination of cruelty and perfidy that marked every step of Soviet behavior in Budapest...
...We have not to put it mildly, contributed to that solidarity by our one-sided championship of Nasser's cause...
...We maintained an attitude of self-righteous, sulky aloofness when, after the cease-fire, a sympathetic readiness to confer on the highest levels would have been infinitely more helpful...
...Senator Knowland seems to have been a lone voice in urging the suspension of the Soviet Union from the United Nations until it purges itself of flagrant contempt of that organization by withdrawing troops from Hungary and permitting the holding of free elections...
...The reliable hard core of resistance to Communism lies in the close solidarity of the free peoples of the Western world...
...Some of our officials seemed so intent on applying the screws of oil sanctions against our allies that they bad no time or interest for action against our mortal enemies then on the rampage in Hungary...
...But this was not the case...
...Had the Anglo-French-Israeli action been in the same moral category with the Soviet massacres and deportations in Hungary, there would have been sound reason in our policy...
...But in this case we were mainly at fault, on several counts...
...We refused to put into effect, until our demand for unconditional evacuation was met, measures which would have relieved Europe's oil shortage...
...Israel acted under overwhelming provocation, Great Britain and France under grave provocation and after months of fruitless effort to obtain a just and peaceful settlement of the Suez Canal issue by direct negotiation and by reference of the case to the UN...
...I was present when a large audience of Harvard students spontaneously rose in greeting to a Hungarian student who had taken part in the fighting and cheered to the echo, even under the handicap of an inept translator, everything he had to tell about the glorious days of the Hungarian Revolution...
...We never gave proper consideration to the British-French case for assured free navigation of the Canal, to the Israeli case for border security and free use of the Canal...
...By insisting on evacuation without satisfaction, we aligned our policy with that of Moscow and the fanatical Arab nationalists...
...Readers of this column may recall some sharp words of criticism addressed both to Britain and to France in the past...
...But this rare psychological opportunity to take the offensive against the Soviet Union was missed...
...Up to the end of November, United States policy was a horrible example of misplaced emphasis, soft toward the enemy, stern toward our natural friends and allies...
...Official statements were cold and lukewarm...
...Veteran Communists tore up their party cards, resigned from their newspapers, renounced their false creed...
...How long is this humiliating farce, with the Soviet Union exercising all the rights of membership in an organization which it flouts whenever this suits its convenience, to go on...
Vol. 39 • November 1956 • No. 51
