Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR INTERVENTION The sense of guilt of my friend John Roche, or his regret for his—and my—anti-war stand in 1939, has led him somewhat to misinterpret the open letter to President...
...I think there is...
...Are we to surrender to Communism rather than prepare ourselves militarily, economically, socially and ideologically...
...I can assure Roche that I am devoutly thankful that I was mistaken in believing in 1939 that war would mean the "suicide of democracy...
...would be a disaster in every sense...
...The democratic forces there are readier than ever to move under our leadership, if only we provide it...
...it would make Cuba, and perhaps other Latin American states, our Algeria...
...Certainly we should negotiate with Premier Khrushchev or anyone else about control and inspection of atomic and conventional weapons, if there are any prospects of success...
...Certainly Soviet Russia and Red China are greater danger now...
...We cannot do that without producing a nuclear holocaust...
...Is there then no chance for action against the forces of tyranny, no place for democratic dynamism in international affairs...
...In any event, ideological competition is the only field of struggle in which the ends of freedom can still be achieved without the employment of means that negate freedom together with human existence...
...It was by no means a condemnation of all types of intervention at all times and under all circumstances...
...in close cooperation with the Organization of American States, and especially of Venezuela, Costa Rica and Mexico, whose progressive governmental leaders are our good friends...
...I was not mistaken in my general approach to peace as World War II was being won, an approach that led the Communists to try to muzzle me by appeals to the Government—and to mob in Seattle—in 1944...
...The crux of the matter is that Cuba is the main advance base for militant Communist political and psychological warfare against democratic values and prospects in the Western Hemisphere- The fact that it is also an armed Communist camp only gives dramatic force and impetus to the primarily political nature of the lowering danger it represents...
...and he makes the astonishing proposition that if the USSR can afford to have Yugoslavia, Turkey and Iran on its periphery, "we can afford Communist Cuba...
...Berkeley, Calif...
...But American military intervention against a social revolution, even a social revolution perverted by totalitarianism, would—in this thermonuclear age of the cold war—disastrously impair our moral position in the world...
...But since you can't expect me to be all sweetness and light and no tartness, I want also to point to what I believe is a fatally crippling flaw in John Roche's otherwise brilliant piece on Cuba...
...today the same posture means warning him that he should not overestimate our sanity...
...It has gone through many printings since then, and in January we reissued it, with new prefatory material, in a new edition, as part of our Civil War Centennial publishing program...
...Such statements, even if qualified by a general exhortation to "prudence" and by the assertion that "we must take every possible step to avoid war," seem to imply a moral obligation to intervene whenever and wherever liberty is threatened...
...we cannot write off our liabilities there for the simple reason that the Communistharnessed Fidelista movement in the Southern Hemisphere will not let us...
...I was not mistaken in my attack on the use of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki...
...But the horrors are now on a. different level, and the hydrogen bomb has ruled out global war as a means that can be rationally used for any purpose, whatever its value...
...To be sure, he asserts that nuclear devastation terrifies him as much as anyone else, but then he speaks as if we still had to face a situation in which the horrors of war were of the same kind as in Coventry, Anzio, Iwo Jima and Normandy...
...The pacifism of Norman Thomas in 1939 was outmoded then...
...In the event, we chose massive folly twice...
...DEAR EDITOR INTERVENTION The sense of guilt of my friend John Roche, or his regret for his—and my—anti-war stand in 1939, has led him somewhat to misinterpret the open letter to President Kennedy which 76 of us signed and to which we would have been proud to add his name ("Confessions of an Interventionist," NL, May 15...
...Roche advocates "moratorium" on Cuba...
...If intervention, then, what kind, in what circumstances, when...
...But I held that American military intervention would make things worse...
...today...
...This "intervention," by demonstrating through example and by spreading through the spoken and written word the knowledge of how good it is to live in freedom, can be made more effective, and this is the task on which to concentrate...
...In any event, however, such ultimate measures cannot be taken for purposes other than defense...
...And in saying this, I was joined by men like Roger Baldwin, Reverend John Bennett, James Baldwin, Father John LaFarge, Patrick Gorman, Emil Mazey, A. Philip Randolph, Edmund Wilson and Frank P. Zeidler...
...But I was not mistaken in condemning President Roosevelt's intervention in favor of General Francisco Franco, not only by refusing the Spanish Loyalist government any right to purchase arms but also refusing to impose any embargoes on war material for Italy and Germany...
...Back in the '30s, many of us, including myself, rejected this solution because the process on which it relies is agonizingly slow: under like circumstances I would reject it again...
...He is professor emeritus of English at the University of Ceylon.—Ed...
...I do not have the slightest intention of minimizing the sacrifices which such inaction involves, but I believe that we should not indulge in "dreams" which "may turn into radioactive ashes...
...There is no parallel between that sort of intervention and U.S...
...It is, I think, far and away the best political weekly or bi-weekly in the U.S...
...On both counts, I happen to be among those who have consistently opposed military intervention in Cuba, and who have instead favored a massive, integrated political, psychological, ideological and economic program stimulated and bolstered by the U.S...
...New York City Carolyn Anthony, Publicity Director, Longmans, Green E. F. C. Ludowyk, who reviewed The Greatest Problem by F. L. Lucas (NL, April 24) was erroneously described as a professor of English at London University...
...It was, however, not only vigorously critical of the Central Intelligence Agency's criminal mismanagement, but of any "Yanqui" military intervention in Cuba...
...Despite the impeccable reasoning with which he advances his admirable cardinal principle—that it is inherent in the liberal posture to take a stand, to "intervene," against tyranny and for democratic values—the prudential conclusion at which he arrives is very far indeed from either realism or idealism...
...The situation, I submit, is not irretrievable if we eschew military amateurism and proceed with will, energy and vision to blunt the cutting edge of Communist penetration and subversion in the hemisphere...
...New York City Moshe Decter CORRECTIONS We read with much interest the fine review by Allan Nevins of Colonel G. F. R. Henderson's Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War (NL, May 15...
...I am convinced that the latter threat has to be retained in our arsenal—that we cannot afford to assure our potential enemy that we shall always act sanely and rationally...
...I did not acquit Fidel Castro of guilt when I criticized our whole handling of Cuban affairs...
...But I feel that Roche, like many other writers, refuses to see the change which nuclear weapons have brought about...
...Our great task, if we or democracy are to survive, is not a passive retreat into our shells but an effort to find an alternative to war now that thermonuclear war according to both former President Eisenhower and Premier Khrushchev is "unthinkable" and the fires of limited war are so likely to kindle a great conflagration...
...I agree with Roche that "the very existence of a free society is a form of intervention in the internal affairs of a dictatorship...
...And I am not now mistaken in saying that we need more, not less, government intervention in many trouble spots by moral pressure and economic help as well as more intelligent and vigorous action to build UN and an Organization of American States capable of proper police action in certain situation...
...This eliminates wars of liberation and—for the foreseeable future—freezes the status quo in such parts of the world as Eastern Europe...
...A victory won by armed might would not be a triumph for democracy...
...Previously, to threaten a despot with armed force meant warning him that he should not underestimate our courage and our will to sacrifice...
...action in World War II...
...New York City Norman Thomas John Roche's article provides the kind of thinking on foreign policy that liberals urgently need...
...I would support even military intervention to help the majority break the rule of small, despotic minority, provided that this could be done without terminating civilization by a nuclear war and provided further that we had not previously pledged our "word to refrain from such action...
...its leadership would be largely taken over, as was the Cuban invasion, by selfish interests, economic and political...
...intervention anywhere should generally be geared to two considerations: (1) the nature of our interests and of the particular threat to them, and (2) the will and capacities of our true friends in any given area...
...And do we have to be reminded again, 15 years after the fact, that Turkey and Iran, with Greece, were the earliest exemplars of the West's defensive containment of Soviet expansionism...
...A far larger proportion of the wealth of the Communist bloc is being allocated to weapons of destruction than in the democracies...
...By Roche's own reasoning, this is a situation that we can surely not afford...
...This is not the place to catalogue the extreme situations in which we should either use nuclear weapons or undertake action for which we must expect nuclear retaliation...
...But is it not obvious that the new threat must be used far more sparingly than it was right, proper and necessary to use the old one...
...Nazi Germany, with its expansionist policy, its so-called theory of the master race and its application of that theory, was already menace to peace...
...Until that purpose changes, we have to combat it, not by military preparations alone, but by uniting the free world and warring on poverty, disease, inequality and social injustice...
...Longmans first published Stonewall Jackson in 1898...
...Neither Yugoslavia, Turkey nor Iran represents any kind of political or military threat to the Soviet Union: Yugoslavia's dissident Communist regime is one with which Moscow, if not Peking, can coexist in relative comfort...
...But the aim of Communism, its ultimate victory over the world, will remain...
...it could trigger a third world war in which civilization and democracy would perish even if some miserable human beings might survive...
...Carl Landauer As an old New Leader hand, both as a reader of many years' standing and as a former Managing Editor, I should like to pay tribute to the energy, skill and devotion which have guided the course of the magazine in the face of the extraordinarily difficult challenges imposed by the death of the lamented S. M. Levitas...
...We stated our reasons...
...I believe that U.S...
...Roche says that "for liberals to stand silent and frozen in the face of injustice is to reject the obligations of their values...
...So a "moratorium" on Cuba is exactly what is not in order...
...he urges us to "write off our liabilities" there...
...I should immediately add that once the decision was taken for military action, it should at least have been executed properly...
...I am so unrepentent that I am now insisting that military action in Southeast Asia by the U.S...
...I would say that, issue for issue, the magazine has in the past few months maintained a higher level of consistently stimulating and informative articles than at any time in its history...
...This assertion blurs over the fundamental distinction between those three countries and Cuba and, more important, reflects grave misunderstanding of the threat which Cuba poses to the interests of United States and Latin America...
...Perhaps, however, the process can be speeded up in the world of today and tomorrow, in which change is and will be still more rapid than in the interwar period...
...Philadelphia Walter R. Storey There are several statements in John P. Roche's article to which I would gladly subscribe...
...Our fight against the evils of Communism cannot thus be won in this age in which we live...
...If we announce to the world that we accept an obligation which in fact we shall not fulfill because fulfillment would be too dangerous, we shall re-enact the tragedies of East Germany in 1953 and Hungary in 1956, when freedom fighters were led to believe that we would assist them by force, and were left to die alone...
...More than one-third of the human race is under Communist rule...
...I myself am not an unconditional anti-interventionist on moral grounds...
...I am glad Roche goes as far as he does with us in condemning the Cuban invasion...
...This hook is, however, a publication of Longmans, Green, not, as it was credited in The New Leader, a publication of the Indiana University Press...
Vol. 44 • May 1961 • No. 22
