Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin Big-Two Meetings: Trap or Opportunity THERE ARE both opportunities and dangers in the experiment in personal diplomatic, exchanges with the Soviet...
...Appeasement may be defined as one-sided yielding under the pressure of force or threat of force and as the sacrifice of an ally in the vain hope of buying security for oneself...
...This process now reaches its climax with Premier Nikita Khrushchev's visit to the U.S...
...The International Press Institute was all set to condemn a number of violations of freedom of the press in Turkey when the word got about that maybe an amnesty for imprisoned journalists would be the result of withholding any such condemnation...
...A curious letter from an Englishman named Anthony Amery appeared in the August 9 issue of the New York Times...
...I am afraid we were tricked...
...The PEN Club action brought it nothing but dishonor...
...But that hope was quickly dashed...
...Another advantage is that visits behind the Iron Curtain project the image of America more effectively and dramatically than do jammed radio broadcasts...
...a request for clemency was quickly turned down...
...The international literary organization known as the PEN Club, in its congress at Frankfurt in July, voted to re-admit Hungarian representatives...
...There would certainly be no legal basis for preventing peaceful demonstrations...
...and President Eisenhower's forthcoming visit to the Soviet Union...
...There was a similar, though less flagrant incident, at the recent session of the International Press Institute in West Berlin...
...At the same time, the new course has its serious dangers, of which the clearest is the possible stimulus to the spirit of complacency and appeasement...
...But as a representative of the Institute ruefully said: "Since the meeting closed, we have heard no more of an amnesty...
...Yet he was able to reach at least some Soviet citizens with a statement of the American case that could never be found in Soviet newspapers and radio broadcasts...
...Undertaking to admonish Americans on the proprieties of receiving Khrushchev, the author wrote: "By all possible means, for goodness' sake, prevent any brainless individuals from parading with inane placards...
...Perhaps the most plausible argument in defense of this action was the suggestion that the Hungarian dictatorship might release the prisoners in response to this gesture from the PEN Club...
...The cards were, naturally, stacked against Nixon in Russia...
...he seems to have taken away a very distorted idea of what kind of country it is...
...This organization has as one of its goals the exposure of violations of freedom of the press and has published, among other studies, a useful analysis of press control methods behind the Iron Curtain...
...That last pejorative word deserves definition, especially as it is often disguised by such respectable pseudo-synonyms as "flexibility" and "realism...
...This, despite the fact that the PEN Charter speaks out strongly for freedom of speech, and that some of the foremost Hungarian writers, such as Tibor Dery and Gyula Hay, are serving long prison terms for taking part in their country's fight for freedom in 1956...
...Finally, there is the press chief of the Social Democratic party in Germany, Franz Barsig, who urges the Bonn Government to fall into the bear trap labeled Rapacki Plan, which would have the Poles, the Czechs, the Hungarians and the East Germans (whom Khrushchev would never dare to arm with such weapons anyway), as well as West Germany and the foreign troops stationed there, renounce nuclear weapons...
...This would tip the scales disastrously in favor of the Soviet Union...
...Four unrelated items that have recently come to my attention show how this spirit of appeasement, so often discredited by experience, continues to crop up in various places throughout the world...
...If Khrushchev should speak to an American workman, make sure he won't reply with 'murderer,' 'blood bath' or 'captive nations.'" Although Amery says he spent three months in the U.S...
...One of the worst offenders in the non-Communist world against the principle of freedom of the press has been the authoritarian Government of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes in Turkey...
...And if Khrushchev should speak to an American worker, there would be no means to prevent the latter from telling the Soviet dictator just what he might think of Ukrainian purges, the Hungarian Revolution and the imposition of a hateful tyranny on Eastern Europe...
...One advantage is that such meetings afford the opportunity, at the highest level, to warn the erratic and impulsive Khrushchev in the most solemn terms that aggression, whether in West Berlin or Laos or Quemoy, will be met by effective counter-force...
...WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin Big-Two Meetings: Trap or Opportunity THERE ARE both opportunities and dangers in the experiment in personal diplomatic, exchanges with the Soviet Union that began with the visits of Soviet Deputy Premiers Anastas Mikoyan and Frol Kozlov to the United States, and the return visit of Vice President Richard Nixon to Moscow I followed, as a happy afterthought, by his visit to Warsaw...
Vol. 42 • September 1959 • No. 34
