HOW STALIN CAN STILL WIN
How Stalin Can Still Win THERE WAS something curious-ly symbolic in the cry of anguish that rang through the United States enate the other day. Sen. Paul Douglas had just finished a two-hour...
...The source of that fear, the London Economist sees in the irresponsible smear campaign being directed against the State Department...
...President Truman's vigorous counter-attack on those most responsible for the smear campaign has received over here one loud, long cheer and has caused a revival of hope that the old American policy of mutual co-operation and diplomatic action can be restored...
...All our friends over here support enthusiastically the stated policy of winning peace by bargaining with the Russians through strength...
...Seeking the source of the muscle-bound condition of American diplomacy, Britain's leading diplomatic commentator, Edward Crankshaw, recently concluded that the word "appeasement" has come to exercise a tyranny over our minds...
...Douglas gave voice to a piercing cry of anger and anguish and fled from the chamber...
...3. A majority supported the President's policy in Korea, but a majority also thought he was wrong in removing Gen...
...As a nation we have developed the habit of slurring over the merits of an argument in favor of trying to determine whether a given proposal will help or hurt the Russians...
...Douglas had himself used on occasion...
...Our American diplomats appear not only to have lost the art of negotiating with our Allies, but also of negotiating with our opponents...
...Army found it necessary to issue a formal denial to the "charge" that he put his arm around a Communist officer at the Korean peace talks in Kaesong...
...Republican and an out-and-out conservative platform will be the country's choice in 1952 are much less convincing...
...It is a very real danger—above all in America...
...O'Mahoney, "that if I were to keep silent [Sen...
...Now, the belief is as strong over here as it is in America that the letter was a propaganda trap...
...It would be a mistake, of course, to take the poll too seriously, but it might be wise for thoughtful leaders of the Republican Party to look beyond the Taft-McCarthy axis for hope and inspiration as they plan for 1952...
...Paul utility operator, has been conducting a poll at the Minnesota State Fair for 14 years, with results that have proved remarkably accurate...
...The scientists were either unable or unwilling to comply with the multitudinous paper requirements and the legal hocus-pocus of the law, although the group included some of the most politically conservative and professionally brilliant scientists in Europe...
...George Gallup in his article, "What the GOP Needs to Win in 1952...
...Dwight Eisenhower, and 617 said they wanted Sen...
...Miss Morgan, a Quaker, said she thought the meeting was "just a group of housewives," and, in any event, she does not regret the speech because "people shouldn't shut up talking about peace because the Communists talk about peace...
...The latest case in point was the Shvernik letter from Moscow to President Truman, proposing five-power talks...
...In other words, if their candidate had been someone like Robert A. Taft, or more specifically, Robert A. Taft himself...
...O'Mahoney certainly could not have intended to impugn the patriotism or anti-Communism —the two have become synonymous —of so relentless a foe of the Soviets as Sen...
...No other periodicals put the case that bluntly...
...O'Connor, Maryland Democrat, demanded that Congress expel Russian correspondents from the Senate press gallery in retaliation for the imprisonment of William N. Oatis, Associated Press correspondent in Czechoslavakia...
...When choosing between the parties in Presidential years, independents have sided with the Democrats as more 'liberal.' " Moreover, Gallup adds, the Republicans can't hope to win in 1952 by selecting a candidate "solely because he's acceptable to regular party members," for there just aren't enough Republican votes...
...This must have been what Pearl Buck meant when she said recently: "We must put aside our defensive behavior and act with integrity and moral, as well as practical, leadership...
...Item—Residents of Washington, D.C., called the FBI to warn that Communists were operating in their neighborhood...
...We have aspired to the leadership of the free peoples of the world, but how can we hope to lead effectively if we are so corroded by fear that we whittle away our own freedom and imitate some of the worst qualities of our adversaries...
...Our anti-Communism has become so totally a national obsession that it colors and dominates all our thinking, all our planning, and all our name-calling...
...Item—A dozen of the world's leading chemists were unable to obtain visas to attend the International Congress of Pure and Applied Chemistry in New York because of restrictions in the McCarran Act...
...But the signs that Mr...
...Her concern is shared by some of our best anti-Communist friends abroad...
...What is needed the paper says is not a negative rebuff, but a positive statement of terms, leaving the world in no uncertainty about our desire for peace...
...Would the independents, or enough of them, vote for Taft to assure Republican victory...
...Item—Sen...
...Gallup, and this description hardly fits Robert A. Taft...
...We find ourselves doing and saying things which reveal a lack of confidence in ourselves and a crippling fear of the Communists...
...Taft...
...John T. Lyons, a St...
...The fear is, the magazine says, that we are building strength not to bargain from, but from which to present Russia with an ultimatum that would mean war...
...In other words, if they had had someone more militantly anti-New Deal or Fair Deal than Wendell Willkie or Thomas E. Dewey...
...The conservative magazine, Spectator, lor example, accuses the American secretary of "ineptitude" and writes "there is no reason thus for abandoning a persistent and tireless search for bases of understanding...
...We no longer give much thought to what is better for America, but rather what is worse for Russia...
...The superintendent's position is in the best tradition of an old-fashioned Americanism that seems to be fading fast...
...We have tended more and more to tell our Allies, rather than consult them, as in the case of rearming Germany, declaring China the aggressor, bringing Franco Spain into the Western camp, and working with Chiang Kai-shek...
...it is safer just to say No to what the Russians suggest...
...And this must have been what Edward Crankshaw, the distinguished British expert on Russian Communism, had in mind when he warned in his new book, Cracks in the Kremlin Wall: "Should the day come when we are afraid to pursue each and every enlightened course of action because the Communists, for their own deplorable reasons, are associated with them, too, then Stalin will have won...
...Item—Residents of a San Francisco suburb protested the renting of a house to the Soviet delegation for the duration of the Japanese treaty conference, and police found it necessary to warn the Russian staff against taking walks in the woods because "feeling was running high over their presence here...
...This is the only way in which the Kremlin can still conquer us, and that without war...
...II The whole incident struck us as a ramatic example of a state of mind which ranges far beyond the Sen-ate...
...If "the only thing she did was to address the Communist Party, that doesn't warrant charges...
...Why not...
...Almost everyone in Europe," the paper writes, "is asking whether the American official machine is any longer geared to the desire for peace...
...O'Mahoney's response to Sen...
...Fear of being labelled Red is causing, it says, diplomats abroad to avoid either engaging in diplomacy which might be called "appeasement" or sending frank and useful reports home for fear of future investigation and of being right in morose predictions about where present trends are leading us...
...So, if Gen...
...Douglas' conscientious effort to squeeze a billion dollars worth of extravagance out of the military bill was only one—and by no means the most flagrant—manifestation of an emotional disturbance which is corroding the American character...
...The conservative Economist writes, "Only the Kremlin will benefit by being able to say its proposals were dealt with summarily at a press conference...
...William Jansen, superintendent of schools, said he could see "no basis of any charges" if she merely "advocated peace by negotiation...
...The all-embracing character of our anti-Communism robs us of perspective and balance and common-sense, and actually weakens us for the real test against Communism...
...I can imagine," said Sen...
...But by dismissing it so lightly, the belief is also, we have fallen into that trap, leaving friends and enemies with the impression that we have no positive terms for settlement and are not very interested in finding any...
...The labor magazine, New Statesman, gives expression to some of them...
...Let us do so without blame to others...
...Item—Andrei Gromyko, chief of the Soviet delegation, was met at Grand Central Station in New York by a crowd of booing Americans, and by a similar reception when he boarded his ship to return home...
...II Another recent survey of public opinion must give pause to GOP strategists who are convinced that a sled-length attack on liberalism will win in 1952...
...And diplomats so fear to be called "appeasers" that they simply refuse to do any kind of talking at all...
...These are not the hallmarks of a free, strong people...
...A recent Gallup Poll in Look Magazine disclosed that 40% of the people canvassed listed themselves as Deftiocrats, 31% as Republicans, and the decisive 28% as "independents...
...At an occasion so informal as a news conference Secretary Acheson disposed of that proposal as a "propaganda plot...
...I can bear with equanimity the rantings of Russians in public places, but I cannot endure the same behavior, I do not expect it, from our American representatives...
...In the absence of such an assurance, some ugly suspicions are growing in some quarters...
...He tried it again this year, with these results: 1. Although rural participants outnumbered those from the cities two to one, a majority of those voting expressed their preference for President Truman over Sen...
...The word has been made to include all diplomatic practises, bargaining, compromising, settling, reaching an accommodation...
...Two recent surveys of public opinion lead us to doubt out loud that if the die-hards have their way with the politicians they will be able to make it stick with the people...
...The signs are multiplying that Robert A. Taft will be the Republican choice for President in 1952...
...But in the heat of the debate he reached out for a much abused weapon—and one which Sen...
...Paul Douglas had just finished a two-hour analysis of the waste and extravagance in the sixty billion dollar military appropriations bill when his Democratic colleague and fellow liberal, Sen...
...Taft...
...For a disturbing commentary on that vital point we urge you to read the brief commentary by Howard K. Smith, European director of the Columbia Broadcasting System, on the next page...
...Deeply wounded by the implica-tion that his words might give com-fort to the Kremlin, Sen...
...Item—A major-general in the U.S...
...Hopeful Exception AHOPEFUL exception to the incidents cited above occurred in New York City recently...
...Dwight D. Eisenhower isn't available—still a big "if"—the Republicans might do better by taking "a new leader, a new face," says Dr...
...So is Miss Morgan's advocacy of "peace by negotiation...
...Joseph C. O'Mahoney, took the floor to reply...
...MacArthur...
...Their cause of alarm: a group of Quakers turned up in the capital's slum areas and offered to paint and clean the slum homes free if the owners would furnish the paint and promise not to make the improvements an excuse for raising rents...
...But the near unanimity with which the others put a similar case in a more diplomatic manner indicates the uneasiness is widespread...
...III Several incidents during the past fortnight or so illustrate this state of mind...
...Perhaps none is terribly important in itself, but together they seem to add up to something pretty frightening...
...Now, Sen...
...But more and more, lately, we seem to have forgotten the end—of bargaining—in the headlong pursuit of the means—rearming...
...The totals were 6,027 over 5,389...
...Douglas' words might be] broadcast behind the Iron Curtain as an indication of a lack of faith that American members of Congress have in the men who work, who fight, and who die for them...
...2. Of those who said they were Republicans, 862 preferred Harold Stassen for President, 782 were for Gen...
...The most effective argument in official debate or personal argument is the assertion that Communists favor a course of action someone is proposing...
...Means and Ends By Howard K. Smith (European Director, Columbia Broadcasting System) London There is no anti-Americanism to speak of in non-Communist Europe, but there is a latent, yet widespread uneasiness about our direction of foreign policy for the West...
...IV The list of items could be multiplied a thousand-fold if there were space...
...4. Asked whether Sen...
...Worry for the GOP OLD GUARD Republicans are fond of saying their party might have won the last time, or the time before, or the time before that if they had not had a "me too" candidate...
...Hardly, replies Dr...
...They all tell the same depressing story of fear and suspicion —and most of all, a terrifying tendency to ape the very intolerance and fear psychosis of the totalitarian society we profess to despise...
...Joseph McCarthy should be impeached, 4,203 answered yes and 3,782 said no...
...This is true not only in the field of foreign policy, but in the case of such domestic issues as health insurance, public housing, racial segregation, and civil liberties...
...Some of the landlords thought anyone who would offer to work free must be a Communist...
...While we have effectively added the armed numbers of Franco Spain and Nationalist China to our own and are pushing hard to get those of Japan in order to create strength, we have muffed one opportunity after another to do what all this is aimed at—namely, bargaining...
...Rita Morgan, chairman of the speech department at Benjamin Franklin High School, was hauled before school authorities because she advocated "peace by negotiation" in a speech before a section meeting of the Communist Party in East Harlem...
...Acheson's action has caused a loud press outcry from organs usually friendly to us...
...But there is another source of uneasiness...
Vol. 15 • October 1951 • No. 10
