THE GREAT AWAKENING

...Two months ago, in "An Open Letter to Secretary Acheson," we pointed out that the uproar generated by Sen...

...The Progressive has hammered hard for months at the Acheson concept of peacemaking through tough talk and armed strength...

...David Lawrence, the conservative editor of the U. S. News and World Report, launched his discussion of the problem by quoting another conservative, John Foster Dulles, special adviser to the State Department, who had said: " Today our nation is relying greatly on material and military might...

...Joseph McCarthy's unprincipled smearing of the State Department was obscuring the vital fact that many thoughtful Americans who have nothing but scorn for the character and content of McCarthy's attacks are nevertheless gravely concerned over the soundness of the Acheson foreign policy, especially the negative, sterile aspects which have done so much to lose us the friendship of people around the world...

...I assembled much of the material for this composite box-score on the thinking of American commentators during the period of Trygve Lie's conferences with Western and Soviet leaders in his heroic attempt to reach a live-and-let-live basis for negotiation between East and West...

...President Truman showed that he is at least faintly aware of the need for mentioning peace now and then when he spoke up the other day with the observation that the world is closer to real, permanent peace than at any time for the last five years...

...So military-minded is the Ache-son-Truman approach to foreign policy that professional soldiers are beginning to sound almost like pacifists in contrast...

...Consequently, French officials have grown increasingly desirous of placing the main emphasis upon peace and economic strength as the aims of whatever Western unity is to be created...

...The commentators disagree among themselves on most issues of domestic policy and many phases of foreign policy, but they are remarkably united in their deepening concern that: 1. The United States is steadily losing the support of many peoples around the world who should be our friends...

...Indeed, we have helped the propaganda by incendiary utterances from the Pentagon, from the State Department, and from Congress...

...Irving Pflaum, foreign editor of the pro-Administration Chicago Sun-Times, condensed his interpretation into these four sentences: "It is difficult to arouse enthusiastic, sustained support for peace solely through preparations for war...

...These themes run repeatedly through the commentaries of such liberal columnists as Marquis Childs and Thomas L. Stokes, conservative commentators like Walter Lippmann and David Lawrence, New York Times analysts like Anne O'Hare McCormick, C. L. Sulzberger, and Harold Callender, and usually pro-Acheson dailies like the Christian Science Monitor, St...

...Why this continued missing of opportunities to seize the propaganda initiative and nail the olive branch to the standards of the West...

...Joseph C. Harsch, chief of the Washington bureau of the Christian Science Monitor, wrote regretfully of Secretary Acheson's automatic rejection of Trygve Lie's peace program...

...Brien McMahon and Millard Tydings . . . . Lately a tendency has been noted in the Administration to whip up a sort of saber-rattling jingoism which does not become us, with less emphasis upon the leadership for peace, to which we are obligated...

...The material provides at least a part of the background for Robert Root s story of Lie, his mission, and its aftermath, on the next page of this issue of The Progressive...

...We see mediation as futile unless the other side surrenders abjectly...

...But, on the same day, he used ominously warlike language in a message to Congress, and in his next three speeches slammed the door on the Russians with vitriolic language which enabled headline-writers to emphasize anew the inevitability of war...

...It is amazing how few attempts to mediate the dispute between America and Russia have actually been made . . . . We act as if we believe war is the only way out...

...Couldn't he help Trygve Lie a little...

...It was just 'Washington reflex' for Mr...

...Acheson also add just a small attempt at reducing mutual fears of war by talking with the Soviets...

...This country has hardly begun to realize the extent and the depth of the loss of confidence in our wisdom and even in our motives...

...The Great Awakening By MORRIS H. RUBIN STRIKING EVIDENCE of a major American soul-searching over the ice-cold character of Secretary of State Dean Acheson's foreign policy of "total diplomacy" has been piling up in impressive volume in recent weeks—unnoticed perhaps even by those who are writing the lines for what has all the makings of an unorganized rebellion...

...Acheson to meet the Lie proposals by asserting what is, of course, perfectly true, that the Russians have long been blocking every forward move of the UN...

...Anne O'Hare McCormick, the widely respected foreign analyst for the New York Times, summed it up this way: "The Administration and the American public are just beginning to realize that Russia is winning the propaganda war...

...Decisions taken at the London conference can mean much for the future security of the West...

...But his speech before Congress was the same old stuff...

...In spite of the protestations of President Truman and his Secretary of State, the impression is apparently spreading outside the United States that the policy of this country points toward war...

...And thus the Russians get one more free ride on the propaganda merry-go-round...

...The contrast between Acheson's speech of the same week—a civilian emphasizing military might—and Marshall's—a soldier emphasizing moral purpose—was striking enough to draw from the London Times an expression of wonder over this "curious difference...

...George C. Marshall, in a memorable talk on Memorial Day, while agreeing with the need for preparedness, found it necessary to warn that "We should not place complete dependence on military and material power...

...The answer is perfectly clear, and it is time to name it...

...There isn't space to quote, even briefly, from all, or nearly all, of those who have spoken up during the past month, but I have assembled a representative cross-section of comment to provide readers of The Progressive with at least an impression of the extent of the great awakening to the fact that American foreign policy has chilled the hearts of the peoples of the world and played into the hands of the Soviets...

...Several weeks ago I began to clip comments from some of the nation's foremost interperters of public affairs...

...The cumulative effect of comments like these, and countless others like them, here and abroad, carries a terrific enough wallop to merit attention from the State Department, but there hasn't been any indication that it hears or knows what is being said about it, except by McCarthy & Co...

...Harold Callender, reporting for the same paper from Paris, had this to say recently: "The key to the French attitude is to be found in the anxiety aroused in France by the constant talk in the United States of the 'cold war' and the resulting tendency to concentrate attention on military preparations...

...This is dangerous.' Said Lawrence on his own: "The first step [in the pursuit of peace] is honest mediation...

...We have allowed ourselves to become identified with the idea that war is inevitable...

...Marquis Childs wrote in a series of syndicated columns: "We are doing little to preserve the peace, if it can be preserved...

...Thomas L. Stokes noted in his syndicated column from Washington that there has been "a hardening of the Administration, which is reflected in its discouragement of fresh and bold proposals [for peace] from two Democrats—Sens...

...It is important to remember that Soviet strategists have won more battles in this cold war by propaganda than by force...

...2. A substantial part of the cause for this unhappy development is our over-emphasis of military preparedness and our under-emphasis of moral leadership and spiritual concepts in peacemaking...

...Confirmation of our conviction has been accumulating at an extraordinary rate...

...Gen...

...Frederick Kuh, London correspondent of the Chicago Sun-Times, added the report that even among Labor members of Parliament, who have responded coolly to Winston Churchill's pleas for top-level conferences with Russia, there was criticism over Acheson's "stressing of creation of immense military power without any parallel suggestion of seeking a peaceful understanding with Russia...

...So long as there remains a conference table around which the nations can gather, the United States should be the first to attend and the last to retire...

...Walter Lippmann put it this way: "The Administration's foreign policy has during the past year created the impression here and abroad that it places virtually complete dependence on material and military power...

...It is true, but to assert it before giving the Russians one more chance to show their obstructionism is to put the West in the position of obstructionist...

...They are alarmed at the spread of the legend that the United States is a warmonger...

...The plain fact is that we have allowed Russian propaganda to associate us with the intolerable evil of war...

...Louis Post-Dispatch, and Chicago Sun-Times...

...We have played right into the hands of Soviet propaganda by explaining that everything we do, every decision we make, is based on the strategical calculation about war...

...But they will be meaningful only if there is much, much greater action here, first, to convince the peoples of the world that we want peace...

...Couldn't Mr...

...The Administration in Washington is so accustomed to getting from Congress what it considers necessary in the name of fear and crisis that it no longer knows any other way to play the hand...

...Soon I had a thick sheaf of critical expressions of the Acheson foreign policy...

...Douglas Mac-Arthur found it necessary to emphasize recently that the Russians are not bent on war, at least for the present, that they are doing well enough and whipping us to a fare-thee-well in the ideological struggle...

...The intensifying conflict is first and last a battle of ideas...