ARMED RESISTANCE-HOPE FOR FREEDOM
Schlesinger, Arthur Jr.
America Must Choose Armed Resistance—Hope for Freedom By ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, Jr. DR. MUSTE'S main contention is that our current attempt to provide for the military security of the United States...
...He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance...
...Muste is not a true pacifist...
...We would condemn to slave labor and death the heroic men and women in Europe who are today on the firing line against totalitarianism...
...The poet's, the writer's duty is to write about these things...
...Schlesinger must seek to combine the kind of thing that is being done in Korea today with a policy of support for popular revolutions in Asia...
...This has always been so...
...I believe and have to try to prove that the "absolute" of love, the ethic of non-violence, is not a private indulgence but is relevant to' the political situation...
...He goes on to suggest that the renunciation of force would strengthen our position in Asia...
...I take it from his concluding remarks that, if war mobilization itself is the evil, he must regard the military defense of Europe as being quite as wrong as the military defense of Asia...
...that of his puny, inexhaustible voice, still talking...
...There are no longer problems of the spirit...
...he is saying that pacifism is not only morally necessary but (in the best American hucksterish way) Pacifism pays...
...so I admired President Truman's decision to enter Korea in 1950, whatever the defects of Syngman Rhee...
...It is significant he says nothing about Europe...
...I am disturbed because | think that the crypto-pacifists—the fellow-travelers of pacifism, those muddle-headed people who think you can combine the best features of both pacifism (no armaments, no generals, no taxes) and of resistance (n o Communist tyranny) — are among the most hopelessly confused and irresponsible people on the American left...
...I imagine that Dr...
...but he should remember the rest of the quotation—the part about losing the world...
...So this award is only mine in trust...
...If these are not, in last resort, the alternatives, Dr...
...Clearly world politics have never been a place for purists and perfectionists, any more than domestic politics...
...But, when he argues that by the act of disarmament we can resign from the global conflict and presumably be safe from the dangers of Soviet expansion...
...but I do respect it...
...He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid...
...There is only the question: When will I be blown up...
...Abroad, it alienates the people of Asia...
...And I think it can be safely said that, where the Administration and the Department of State have been following right-wing policies, they have done so, not because they want to, nor because they believe that American interests require it, but because Congressional pressure forces them to do so...
...nor the free world would have any alternative but surrender before Soviet force...
...In France a major aim of our policy is to keep de Gaulle out of power...
...It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past...
...Abroad we must gravitate toward the Chiang Kai-sheks...
...I agree that this revolution seems so massive and so deep-laid that there is very little that the U. S. can do about it...
...Labor and progressives generally," he writes, "can regain their freedom and power to work for democracy at home as well as against oppression in Asia, only by withdrawing support from American militarism...
...Aggression is a blow to world peace irrespective of the nature of the regime attacked...
...in an age when the material requirements for the good life are in man's hands as never before," he is, in my judgment, corrupting the essential moral intransigence of his own pacifist position...
...His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars...
...No matter how much the decent nationalists in the Philippines, India, and Indonesia might at first be heartened by a total American withdrawal, they would soon discover that they could not hold off Communist imperialism by their bare hands...
...and that "then the creative energies of the people can express themselves...
...Taft would give a thought about what happens to the decent people of Europe...
...Far from immobilizing itself by getting behind the defense effort, labor would really have immobilized itself if it had opposed measures of national protection which practically every one in the country agrees to be necessary...
...But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing...
...In the very nature of the case, human beings always have to strive to "get the best of both worlds...
...He is the author of "The Age of lack-son" and "The Vital Center" and is pre sently on a leave of absence from Harv-ard while completing a biography of Frank-lin D. Roosevelt His articles have appeared in many publications here and abroad, including Harper's, The Nation, Partisan Review, and the London Times...
...MUSTE'S main contention is that our current attempt to provide for the military security of the United States is a fatal mistake...
...I venture to disagree...
...He must learn them again...
...Let us examine the implications of Dr...
...And, once you concede the necessity of drawing the line, obviously, if you want to minimize terror, killing, and destruction, you should draw it at the first practicable position, and not at the last...
...I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail...
...Muste must know, one of the main Republican complaints against the government is precisely that it has not backed Chiang Kai-shek...
...However we may regard Tito, I suppose that only Stalinists would call him "anti-revolutionary...
...but I would not think that Dr...
...Muste when he has espoused an intransigent pacifism and candidly faced its consequences...
...SCHLESINGER'S comment on my article is as fair as it is forthright...
...Muste's position: EUROPE...
...I am disturbed when he makes what seems to me the less candid argument of his preJj ent piece...
...Muste suggests that labor is in for a long, dark night...
...I am not one of those who believes that aggression is O.K...
...Living in the real world inevitably involves compromises and dubious associations...
...Bao Dai, Franco and Salazar...
...I cannot accept it...
...Muste does this because he is enough of a realist to recognize that the effect of his policy would be to turn Europe over to the Soviet Union...
...at home, we must deliver everything to big business...
...Muste's effort here to get the best of both worlds—to suggest that pacifism is not only morally correct, but that it is also the best practical policy...
...I doubt whether we can capture the revolution, and I am certain that we cannot stop it...
...Our basic policy must be political, economic, and educational rather than military...
...that when the last dingdong of doom has changed and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound...
...At home, "military security" means the triumph of business and finance...
...when conducted against reactionary regimes and to be deplored only when conducted against progressive regimes...
...Muste says that an exclusively military policy would dangerously weaken our position in Asia...
...These are surely Dr...
...I doubt whether this cold war will prove any exception...
...But the facts hardly support the cliche...
...I agree with him...
...He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion...
...3. So long as the government spends tens of billions on war but not even a million in a study of what Gandhi called the science of nonviolence, and so long as hardly a single political scientist engages in a serious study of the possibilities of non-violent resistance to aggression and tyranny, the case for non-violent means to resist and overcome the menace of Stalinism has not been scientifically disposed of...
...I decline to accept the end of man...
...Hard humanity, t do not expect that Mr...
...If it does not, our freedom will not survive...
...Our relations with Peron have never been worse...
...Both of us have a tough job on our hands...
...Muste's alternatives: resistance or Soviet occupation...
...Greece and Turkey have both moved steadily in a democratic direction since the Truman Doctrine...
...and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed—love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice...
...Muste argues, inevitably commits U. S. policy to the support of reaction abroad and at home...
...Muste admits, a failure to respond in Korea would have invited aggression elsewhere...
...Until he does so, he labors under a curse...
...Muste's Final Comment DR...
...The end would inevitably be sporadic resistance, brutal extermination, and the establishment of a Communist empire...
...It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure...
...Would he have us stand by impotent while Communism destroys not only reactionary regimes in Korea and the Philippines but also progressive regimes in India and Indonesia...
...Hoover or Sen...
...But this does not mean that military force has no role to play in our Asia policy...
...Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man...
...ASIA...
...Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it...
...It will not deserve to survive...
...I should like to ask the reader to keep the following points in mind as he weighs the propositions: 1. I have so often stated that an attempt to apply non-violence in political situations involves the gravest risks, that pacifism does not "pay" in a quick and uncostly sense, that I did not think it necessary to stress the point in this article...
...upon the occasion of accepting the Nobel prize in literature...
...When Dr...
...Muste suggests that we must turn pacifist to save our souls, he may well have a case...
...The cliche about our support of reaction abroad is so well entrenched that it is probably futile to dispute it now...
...Yet he completely passes by the implications of our military withdrawal from what is, at present, the area by far the most vital to our security...
...Radical pacifism, when it is prepared to accept the full implications of the absolute renunciation of violence, is a consistent and honorable position...
...As for the home front, Dr...
...Muste had said that resistance had seemed to him so terrible that he preferred to deliver the free world, including the United States, to the domination of the Soviet Union, his position would at least be logical...
...Schlesinger is a national vice president of Americans foe Democratic Action...
...Why should Truman and Acheson, who obviously have no use for Franco, be held accountable for policies toward Spain forced upon them by the cotton lobby, by religious groups, and by the GOP in general...
...I have long respected Dr...
...it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail...
...Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat...
...Muste promises us everything on earth and heaven too...
...If they are the alternatives, I choose resistance —and I am confident most of the free world will make the same choice...
...I refuse to accept this...
...Muste's recommendation that we throw off the burden of "militarism," if we were to withdraw militarily from Europe, we would be presenting the Kremlin an invitation to aggression on a silver platter...
...the cold war has not changed anything...
...It can be pointed out that the labor movement in the U.S...
...Muste wants us to abandon, neither the U.S...
...The realistic consequence of total military withdrawal by the U. S. would be the swift expansion of Communism, accompanied by cruelty and bloodshed far worse than anything committed by the British raj...
...William Faulkner...
...So, it seems probable, do Truman and Acheson...
...Muste argues with great force and cogency about the social revolution in Asia...
...We similarly have no choice but to support Bao Dai unless we wish to hand Indo-China over to Stalin...
...He writes not of the heart but of the glands...
...As for China, as Dr...
...As he concedes even about the Far East, "It cannot be denied that if U. S.-UN had offered no resistance in Korea, this would have improved the power position of the Communist bloc for the time being and in a sense 'encouraged' aggression...
...Unless you are prepared to take the radical pacifist position and interpose no resistance to aggression at any point, you must be prepared to draw the line somewhere...
...Any large-scale military commitment on the mainland of Asia would be a great mistake...
...I do not see that this result would strengthen either the American position in Asia or improve the freedom or the security of the Asian masses...
...As for Salazar, if amiable relations with Portugal were compatible when we were waging hot war against Fascism, they certainly ought to be compatible with the cold war against Communism...
...I must object, however,- to what seems to be Dr...
...U. S. POLICY...
...Militarism," Dr...
...In Italy we have maintained de Gas-pari in a middle-of-the-road position and are now (if belatedly) bringing pressure for land reform...
...I cannot imagine a worse act of treason ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, Jr„ the Harvard historian, is well known as a sympathetic interpreter of New Deal' Fair Deal liberalism...
...Without the program of military defense which Dr...
...Through a good part of Europe we have dealt happily with socialist governments...
...Here I cannot follow him...
...When he says that, by turning pacifist, we could reap all the material advantages which the advocates of resistance claim for their policies, he is betraying his own position...
...The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man...
...I strongly regret the recent gestures toward Franco...
...He has to prove or hope that out of the evil or compromised means of atomic arming and war, good may come or at least not be prevented...
...If Dr...
...has been strengthened by every recent war in American history...
...Muste would like to have it on his conscience...
...It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin...
...2. It is correct that my pacifism is ultimately a moral and religious one...
...Just as I admired both the courage and the wisdom of the British decision to aid the reactionary Beck regime in Poland in 1939...
...As Dr...
...What this indictment boils down to, indeed, is Syngman Rhee and ". . . man will not merely endure: he will prevail" "I feel that this award was not made to me as a man but to my work— a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before...
...But I have never been able to hold that the personal or moral and the social or political are in two separate compartments—that what is "morally correct" is, almost ipso facto, not "the best practical policy...
...This leaves Franco...
...If we were to follow Dr...
...There is absolutely no inevitability in the situation—nothing that a liberal victory in 1952 cannot cure...
Vol. 15 • May 1951 • No. 5
