The Home Front:
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn The Old Men and the Smart Boys: Who Has the Right Slant on Berlin? IN MY MORNING PAPER I just read about half-a-dozen columns produced by rather smart boys....
...There is little truth in this suspicion, however: The old love the twilight time as much as the young love the dawn...
...If we really stand up, these ancients believe, there will not he any war over Berlin...
...He need face no election: His regime will be brought to an end only by his death or violent replacement...
...Apparently the image of Nikita Khrushchev, his breast covered with medals and his mouth full of words, is enough to instill fear in their bones...
...They have been told by the scientists that one Russian bomb could destroy New York in a matter of seconds, and a series of nuclear explosions could destroy a large part of the country in a few minutes...
...Indeed, Khrushchev controls a very large fraction of the human race, including a good chunk of the technically advanced part of Europe...
...There was a lot of hollering on both occasions about what the Germans would do to us, and many Americans didn't want to enter either war...
...What my friends remember best, though, is that if we had been ready to fight sooner, or if we had clearly stated in advance that we would fight, there probably never would have been either of the two world wars...
...Now I admit that the rotund First Secretary has most of the qualities of previous dictators who struck terror in the Western world...
...But it looks now as if the United States, from the President on down, is truly ready to back up freedom around the world...
...We, of course, cannot surprise any possible enemy and would probably not want to do so...
...They admit, of course, that there are uncertainties...
...After all, to the old a couple of years or months may not be worth fussing about...
...This time the West is not threatened by an array of rude outsiders...
...Another important advantage enjoyed by the bespangled Soviet Premier is his absolute rule...
...They have murdered people, their own and others, by the millions...
...they have read a good many books...
...My octogenarian comrades have a much better reason for not being afraid of Khrushchev and his legions...
...And what I gather from this amalgam of thought and experience is that the Berlin crisis has these writers scared to death...
...war can be initiated whenever it suits the dictator's puTpose...
...It is easy to understand, therefore, why many of the public's advisers, including the columnists I have been reading, are scared right down to their typewriters...
...they have interviewed great statesmen...
...This prospect is certainly more terrifying than any other mankind has ever faced in its striferidden history...
...All this brings me to an observation I have been making these last few days...
...They clearly recollect Kaiser Wilhelm in 1914 and Adolf Hitler in 1939...
...Great hordes of human beings can be mustered on a moment's notice...
...Some may suspect my friends are able to remain calm during the present crisis because they have so little to lose...
...They have been all over the world...
...Our enormously expensive war preparations are based upon the theory that, in any future conflict, the Russians will attack first...
...The Communists also enjoy a set of morals quite different from ours...
...As all Europe once quaked before militant Islam, the Huns, Napoleon, the Kaiser and Adolf Hitler, so now do many tremble before the leader of world Communism...
...Their diplomacy is little more than an elaborate system of deception, in which "official statements" do not state what is really meant...
...And I find that my old friends are distinguished by their lack of alarm over the imminence of war...
...Being pretty well along in years, I naturally know a number of old men (in my eyes a man is a mere youth until he has reached the neighborhood of 80...
...the Russians possess most of our own secrets and perhaps a couple that we have not yet uncovered...
...To them a lie is merely a way of attaining a desired end...
...They seem quite able to look Khrushchev straight in the eye, as it were, and tell him to go to hell...
...That is why the old men are not shaking in their boots...
...In 1961, according to my aged buddies, America is alive and alert, ready to stand up to any enemy of liberty...
...And the fact that the men in the Kremlin are so different from us in this important respect makes us fear them as we might fear a pack of strange and powerful beasts whose ways and powers we had no way of estimating or successfully opposing...
...He also has great masses of followers...
Vol. 44 • July 1961 • No. 29
