TVA SHOWS THE WAY
Douglas, William O.
World Revolution TVA Shows the Way By William O. Douglas THE revolution surging over two-thirds of the world has presented the United States with a magnificent opportunity, but our negative...
...The result is that rains and snow water run off in torrents, washing top soil away...
...India's future is bright...
...All of this vast domain is practically treeless...
...They must have ideas of freedom for which to fight...
...Moreover, the TVA proWILLIAM O. DOUGLAS, associate justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, has made himself one of the best-informed Americans on the Middle East by devoting most of his summer-long vacations to intensive study of the people, the politics, and the land of many of the strategic areas of Asia...
...The idea of the TVA can become even more than that...
...The TVA is a great political invention of the century...
...In New Delhi, Nehru, Prasad, and other high officials of India spoke enthusiastically about their many projects of reform...
...Today 200 men own and control Iraq...
...In the propaganda which they beam to Asia or spread by word of mouth, they do not talk of collective farms...
...East of the Anti-Lebanon is Damascus, an oasis that sits on the edge of a vast desert steppe running 461 miles to Bagdad, Iraq...
...If we are bold enough to make this device an instrument of our Asiatic foreign policy, we can take the political initiative away from Soviet Russia, turn the tide, and win country after country for the democratic cause...
...We strive for stability in governments when there can be no stability...
...If we are to regain the initiative, we must be prepared with equally idealistic and equally specific programs of reform...
...If a TVA is built, American capital will largely build it...
...But the people of Asia are not bothered by labels...
...The aim of the Soviet influence is to produce native armies that will fight for the projects of Soviet Russia...
...They will not rise up and fight for their landlords...
...but it too comes and goes in a roar...
...Today the peasants in these countries have little to fight for...
...The Anti-Lebanon runs south to form the Mountains of Moab, where Moses is buried...
...It is an empty domain where anyone but a Bedouin would get lost and die of thirst...
...It is easy to reverse the trend...
...But to do so means we must abandon the negative doctrine that anti-Communism is enough...
...Deep in the hearts of each of Asia's peasants is the desire to own land...
...We can, however, save it from Communism by a liberal, aggressive, positive program of reform...
...It carries revolutionary overtones the world around...
...Soviet propaganda about America, these peasants often told me, has proved correct...
...In spite of our expenditures the democratic world has been growing smaller and smaller...
...gram can be utilized as one of the major influences to turn back the tide of Communism which today threatens to engulf Asia...
...We can begin by utilizing the idea of the TVA as the political instrument for remodeling the economy of Asia...
...Some call this socialism...
...They cannot be expected to form reliable armies in defense of the system which has held them in their lowly estate...
...and one thing they like about TVA is that it is a device which avoids exploitation of the many by the few...
...Armies that fight to the bitter end are armies that fight for ideas...
...In ancient days the interior was rich in oak and juniper...
...II East of the Lebanon Mountains is the Anti-Lebanon range guarded over by Mount* Hermon of Biblical fame...
...There is still time to recapture the moral and social initiative that has slipped away from us...
...Moreover, such a program would supply the largest part of the answer to the population problem...
...We must take over the guidance and direction of these revolutions if we want a free world...
...It's the kind of revolution America once brewed...
...If we in America knew the facts and appreciated what was at stake, we would be on the side of these miserable tenants...
...It is the center of the ancient Mesopotamia...
...While the Soviets are talking, we of the Western World can promote actual projects...
...She has, for example, richer iron deposits than we ever knew in America...
...We can be the promoters of living TVAs in this entire area which will make the farmers the landowners...
...It is, however, a product of our wholly negative attitude...
...Below Bagdad I saw 50,000 people homeless by reason of a flood...
...To the people of this area TVA means the harnessing of floods, the storing of rain water, and the installation of modern irrigation systems...
...Moab, like Judea, has been scrubbed clean of trees...
...It represents an idea that at this juncture of history can be utilized on behalf of civilization against the threat of totalitarian communism...
...Her 400,-000,000, located on tired and saturated land, seem to us to create an insoluble problem...
...It inspires millions of Asiatics to the hope of a better life...
...The goat, however, ate the seedlings...
...We associate ourselves with the status quo...
...Poverty, lack of medical care, and illiteracy are, indeed, the first to meet the eye of the newcomer to that area...
...Unfortunately, we do not do that...
...Its geography tells in part the interest of the people of the region in the TVA...
...Her electric power potential is unequalled...
...we intend no such consequences...
...They, too, had heard of the TVA and wanted one for themselves...
...Communists exploit the situation, stirring every discontent and making the pot boil...
...In Asia change is certain;, but it is not necessarily a change to Communism...
...World Revolution TVA Shows the Way By William O. Douglas THE revolution surging over two-thirds of the world has presented the United States with a magnificent opportunity, but our negative attitude and our total engrossment in providing a defense against Communism have lost us the initiative...
...We have been so relentlessly anti-Communist that we have rushed to the support of every group that opposes Soviet communism...
...A force is gathering for a mighty effort...
...The peoples of this vast area are much better informed than we realize...
...It can be made the major influence for obtaining in Asia a verdict against Communism and for civilization...
...By and large the governments of Asia are of the landlords, by the landlords, and for the landlords...
...Yet their eyes lighted up the most when they mentioned India's four new TVAs that come into operation this year and the great TVA on the Kosi River (still in blueprint) that will overshadow anything we in America have ever known...
...But for the goat new forests would have grown when the old ones were cut for lumber and charcoal...
...We of the Western World have sacrificed our strength in Asia because we have been purely on the defensive...
...Her natural resources are great...
...The Middle East and southeast Asia are areas which have long been exploited...
...TVA means more than this...
...In between Moab and Judea runs the Jordan...
...There is no reason why India cannot enjoy as high a standard of living as our own...
...III Yes, the TVA has caught the imagination of all the people across this broad belt of Asia...
...We, too, must use our ingenuity to invent ways to aid the peasants in their revolutionary aims...
...They have concrete programs of political action in every country...
...I was asked about it many times as I traveled the length of the Tigris and Euphrates...
...TVA also means to them increased productivity of the land, new forests, the end of erosion, modern methods of farming...
...few profits have ever been left for social and economic development...
...The basic condition is that every man who works the land shall own it and that no man shall own more than, say, 30 acres...
...Beyond it to the east 200 miles are the Zagros Mountains which form the western border of Persia...
...There is no reason why the democratic world cannot do the same...
...It requires astute handling at the political level—the best we can muster in skill and understanding...
...We therefore can attach conditions to it— conditions similar to the ones that settled our own West and that prevented for all time the ancient problem of landlordism from haunting this nation...
...It could create an economy based on a democratic rather than a communistic foundation...
...They think of it as a device for insuring crops in a land where crop failures mean death from starvation...
...Persia, 100,000,000...
...and America becomes identified in the eyes of the peasants with the forces that hold them in eternal serfdom...
...The Lebanon Mountains rise from the Mediterranean and form a high barricade where moisture collects...
...The region is treeless because of the goat...
...The revolutionaries are hungry men who have been exploited from time out of mind...
...This range, once covered with juniper, pine, and the famous cedars of Lebanon, is now mostly bare...
...Unrestricted grazing and uncontrolled cutting of trees produced erosion the like of which Americans have never seen...
...If we had insisted on reforms as a condition of our help and supervised the expenditure of the great wealth we poured into China, the chances are China would not be Communist today...
...Revolution is brewing...
...The concept of water control and land utilization which the TVA embodies can become the solvent of the main problems of Asia...
...There are rumblings in every village from the Mediterranean to the Pacific...
...A TVA on the Tigris and Euphrates could quickly alter this condition...
...India's TVAs can start vast industrial projects...
...and the part of the world on which Communism has not fastened itself will become ¦ smaller and smaller as long as our policy is merely negative or dominated by military thinking...
...Three million five hundred thousand people are the poverty-ridden, diseased, and illiterate employes of this group...
...hundreds of thousands of acres have been despoiled...
...The truth is that we cannot save the world from Communism by dollars...
...But the future of Asia is bright if we will only study its potential...
...The TVA is a community project whereby the benefits accrue to all the people, not to a few promoters...
...And the alliance of Asia to the democratic front can be steadfast, if we heed the warnings and sponsor liberal political groups rather than reactionary ones...
...The Communists are not merely anti-srarus quo...
...In our foreign policy we are merely anti-Communist...
...The area of the world of which I write is the vast underbelly of Russia that extends from Lebanon and Syria on the west through India on the east...
...It is no reflection on the military to deplore the fact that we have entrusted too much of our attitude to world problems to the Army...
...The Soviets know it...
...Some foreign power has for centuries bled those nations white...
...This is the century of their awakening and mobilization...
...Instead they promise every tenant his own farm...
...Several of Justice Douglas' major addresses on the problems of Asia --- have been widely reprinted in American magazines and newspapers, but this one, adapted from a major presentation before the General Assembly of Tennessee, appears here for the first time in article form...
...We have not become identified with the aspirations of the peasants of Asia...
...They know of our own revolutionary background, and they know, too, that we have developed skills and techniques that could guide them toward a better and fuller and more democratic life—if we want to...
...A Druse chieftain south of Damascus inquired about it...
...On their east are high plateaus and basins broken by minor ridges that run to Afghanistan and Pakistan and finally to India...
...We talk democracy and peace, but in our foreign policies support persons and policies that make democracy and peace impossible in Asia...
...Thus we have ended up as allies of some of the worst foes of the peoples of Asia...
...India's TVAs can greatly increase the fertility and productivity of the earth...
...We in America are inclined to think of Asia in terms of teeming millions who live in squalor and who are doomed to stay there...
...We think of India as overpopulated...
...This range is also mostly deforested...
...As a result of a combination of circumstances, we are mostly signed up on the side of the landlords...
...He wants to be able to fence it and call it his own...
...They have been too long exploited...
...Take the Tigris and Euphrates as an example...
...The reason the TVA can have that profound and revolutionary effect is due to the character of the problem that confronts Asia...
...Persia, 16,-000,000...
...In Persia I traveled the length of the Zagros Range—from the Russian border in the north to the Persian Gulf on the south...
...We let China go communistic, because we attached no conditions to the $2,000,000,000 we advanced to Chiang Kai-shek...
...For in Asia, Russia is the much-suspected neighbor whose Marxist philosophy has precious little appeal even to the masses...
...Most of the funds we have spent in Asia up to now have been wasted...
...and it is mostly wasted...
...It would at once spread the dividends of increased production among the broad base of the peasants and lay the foundation for medical care, schools, and all of the other necessities of healthy village life...
...Those ideas must be concrete and specific...
...The trees are all gone...
...People are the same the world over...
...Land ownership is a real passion...
...The TVA idea fits their needs and will go a long way toward solving many of their basic problems...
...Justice Douglas, now again in the Middle East, is the author of a forfhcominug book on his observations and adventures there—a fragment of which appeared in Life recently...
...The situation in areas like Asia is delicate and complex...
...If America sponsored the kind of TVA in Asia that we sponsor at home, the political tide would soon turn our way...
...The revolutions which are brewing are nor, however, Communist in origin nor will they end even if Soviet Russia is crushed through war...
...That has put us in partnership with the corrupt and reactionary groups whose policies breed the discontent on which Soviet Communism feeds and spreads...
...We would help them make their revolutions...
...There may be 40 to 60 inches a year...
...If a TVA were constructed, it could provide the conditions which would transform this poverty belt into a prosperous area...
...Today they will not form armies of strength and determination against Soviet Communism...
...It may come as a surprise to many Americans that their Tennessee Valley Authority program is not only well known to countless Asiatics, even in the remotest reaches of that continent, but has come to mean to them a symbol of a hopeful new way of life for themselves and their children...
...And we must stop relying on the military to do our thinking and planning for us...
...In practically every valley I heard the same plea, "We need a TVA...
...These are high mountains, rising 15,000 feet...
...Iraq today has 3,500,000 people...
...The opposite has in fact been the case...
...Some parts of this inland empire get only 20 inches of rain a year...
...Other sections, such as portions of India, are heavy with rain...
...As a consequence of our negative attitude and military approach to problems, the tide of Soviet Communism has picked up momentum...
...the grass is going...
...We would help them make their revolutions in the pattern of our own American Revolution...
...Our task is in many respects easier than Russia's...
...With proper land utilization Iraq could support 40,000,000...
...This undertaking would have profound effects on both the problem of the standard of living in this area and on the problem of population...
...Nehru, however, is convinced that India is underpopulated...
...This criticism of America is not fair...
...Bagdad sits in between the Tigris and Euphrates and not far north of their confluence...
...To Asiatics we appear to be against change...
...Huge profits have been taken out of the region...
...and yet no water is left for the growing season...
...We think of that force as Communistic...
...Everywhere I went people asked, "Why can't we have a TVA...
...It is the result that counts...
...Judea too has long been shorn of trees...
...The trend will continue...
...The rock bottom of Asia's problem is landlordism...
...There are grumblings in every village I have visited across this broad belt...
...India under Nehru is an exception, for Nehru is splitting up the huge estates and distributing the land on an installment basis to the peasants...
...Now one can ride horseback for days on end and see no trees except date orchards in Iraq or peaches and apricots in Persia or such poplars as may have been planted in a village...
...and after seeing India's potential I am inclined to agree...
...The TVA is even more than that...
...It extends south and becomes geologically the Mountains of Judea where Jerusalem sits...
Vol. 15 • August 1951 • No. 8
