WHO'S TRAPPING WHOM?
Who's Trapping Whom? A MONTH ago Kent Cooper, executive director of the Associated Press, returned from Europe with the report that "Europe a afraid to death of our defense rogram—afraid that it...
...We trapped ourselves by our refusal to show the slightest interest, and that is where we multiplied our failure on the moral and psychological levels of the world struggle...
...Among the principal entries listed on the debit side by the ACLU were these: 1. Passage of the McCarran Act —"the worst departure since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 from the central principle of American law that a man is accountable only for his own illegal aefs, not for mere association with persons who hold obnoxious opinions...
...We merely shouted "trap," and we put our foot in to prove it...
...Like its distinguished predecessors of other years, this 30th annual report avoids the extremes of whitewash and shrill alarms in favor of a factual, coolly objective appraisal of the credits and debits on our national ledger of' liberty...
...The agreement to permit Japanese rearmament seems equally unrealistic...
...The first great step to improve the chances for peace is for persons with authority to act for the government on both sides to get together more often to talk over their disagreements...
...Even if they don't agree that history has a wayward habit of repeating itself, isn't there a lesson in the history of the past ten years for those who make our policy...
...But the cameras will not show the heavy hearts of many a delegate with grave forebodings regarding the content and circumstances of the treaty...
...But if they were bluffing, wouldn't it have been smarter to call their bluff...
...It is not newness that makes the cooper-Weir reports significant, but other their timing, for they came at as the Soviet Union was em-ping on a new peace offensive M the United States was trying I sneer it off with cries of "trap" id "phony-peace talk...
...The State Department knows all this, of course, and yet Dean Ache-son's surly rejoinder to the Soviet proposals sounded to the peace-hungry peoples of the world like the deadening legalisms of a stuffed-shirt lawyer...
...We said we wanted no part of the Five Power conference because we are committed to the pursuit of peace through the United Nations...
...Peace for Japan...
...This is the trap which fastens us to the policy that military strength alone will stop Communism and save us from destruction...
...There is," said the report, "a growingly inclusive and pervasive social atmosphere of fear and intolerance, stifling the good old American habits of speaking one's mind, joining the organizations one believes in, and observing the principles of fair hearing and of holding a man innocent until he is proved guilty...
...But, the report warned, there is still a great job to be done, especially in the enactment of a national Civil Rights program...
...But two other considerations do give us grave concern...
...One was the absence in treaty-making of the two most powerful nations on Japan's flanks—Soviet Russia and Communist China...
...Ten years ago we were pouring our wealth into building up Russia and China so they could stand against Germany and Japan...
...All in all, it is clear that the ACLU's report finds that things are not so bad as they might be but not nearly so good as they should be in the all-important realm of civil liberties...
...Japan is unable to pay for a military establishment without lowering the standard of living and bringing on the misery and tension that will give Communism its chance to take over...
...Congress will pass anything that provides more arms and suspect everything that would deal with the social, economic, political, and psychological sources of Communist power and expansion...
...Its total rejection of totalitarianism of any form or color has enabled it to go into every battle for freedom with clean hands...
...Soviet Russia has decided to send a delegation to San Francisco, but the fact is that both she and Red China had no voice in the preparation of the treaty...
...But, it added, "the vast amounts of money, energy, and time spent might better have been saved, or concentrated with greater benefit to the national safety on strengthening security in 'sensitive' positions closely affecting the conduct of military affairs or international policy, and improving the work of law-enforcement agencies in counter-espionage and other related measures...
...Progress was counted in court decisions opening the way for truly equal facilities for Negroes in higher education, passage of FEPC's at local and state levels, outlawing of segregation in the National Guards of half a dozen states, prohibitions against discrimination in housing projects, and slight improvements in voting and fair trial procedures...
...We didn't...
...It is fearful that talk of peace will dilute acceptance of a massive military program among the people at home and among allied peoples...
...Equally important, in our judgment, is support of the American Civil Liberties Union which continues to do a superb job in guarding our freedom in a time of hysteria...
...To meet the threat of even greater inroads on our American freedom, the ACLU urges every one of us to exercise our own civil liberties, support other citizens in the exercise of their rights, and be alert to require government officials to observe and enforce those rights...
...We have been pursuing a totally negative policy—the containment of Communism by armed might...
...Of course the Soviets are building traps for us...
...In a statement released to the world but suppressed, for the most part, by the American press, these Japanese lawmakers, all members of the Japanese League of Women Voters, emphasized these basic objections: "1...
...4. The Supreme Court's upholding of the Smith Act in the case of the 11 convicted top Communists in the United States...
...2. Concern over national security "accelerated our advance toward effective equality for Negro citizens...
...But must we always walk into them...
...To all of this we could only blubber back that it was a trap to lull us into relaxing our armament program...
...This has led, inevitably, to a sterile kind of propaganda appeal in which arms, arms, and more arms are emphasized to the exclusion of almost every other consideration— and the people of Europe and the rest of the world know that every armaments race in history has ended in war...
...It will be a target again for atomic bombing, against which neither its own troops nor even the United States would be able to furnish protection...
...II Recent and current peace overtures by the Soviet Union provide a striking explanation for this fear with which other peoples view our conduct...
...Remilitarization will bring these old elements back into power and Japan will once again become a curse to other peoples...
...Until our government recognizes how completely we have failed on the vital level of selling the world on our peaceful purpose—Cooper and Weir are only two witnesses— its rasping negative will continue to deprive us of the leadership for peace to which we aspire...
...Whether this was the result of a genuine spirit of compassion and Christian forgiveness, or a desire to soften up Japan for her role as our ally against Communism, is a point we are not disposed to haggle about here...
...Actually, e seemed to walk right into the up by turning a completely cold soulder to the Soviets and thus in-asifying the world's fear that America may stumble into war, ragging the rest of the world with Obviously there is something ter-|y wrong, either in the policy it-if or the way in which it is pre-ited to the world—or both—if careful, cautious observers find relatively friendly, non-Communist areas of Europe "afraid to death" that we are more liable to provoke war than are the Russians...
...The smiling faces you'll see on television and newsreel screens will be genuine enough—if they are American faces—for we have pretty much had our own way in drafting the treaty...
...Of course the Soviets are anxious to slow down our arms program and shake our alliances...
...My own conviction is that the indictment is valid on both counts...
...It is afraid that talk of peace would cripple support of the rearmament program...
...As a result, its pursuit of peace by rearmament cannot tolerate talk of peace until military supremacy is achieved...
...While the report does not go in for box-score comparisons with other years, it seems clear enough that the ACLU is convinced that the past year saw a greater retreat in vital areas of American freedom than had been the case in any other recent year...
...But the most treacherous trap of them all is one we have built ourselves, and in which we have trapped ourselves...
...How completely we get ourselves trapped is evident from the fact that peoples on our side of the ideological struggle are fearful that we are blundering into war...
...5. The "all-embracing federal employment loyalty program...
...Peculiarly in Europe," he said in a recent speech, is felt that if war comes it is more likely to result from some ion of the United States rather Russia...
...While reiterating its abhorrence of Communist tyranny," the ACLU stressed the act's "penalization of opinions rather than overt acts...
...Until our government frees itself from its own trap, it will continue to fall into every trap made in Moscow...
...Other debits listed in the ACLU report are local bans on free speech and a free press, state and local "loyalty" oath requirements, censorship exercised by private pressure groups in the radio-television industry, inroads on academic freedom, curtailment of liberties in certain trade unions, and the harsh treatment of conscientious objectors...
...That is precisely what we do every time that we coldly turn our backs on their overtures...
...I mean the prime ministers and the foreign secretaries...
...Another conservative American, with equally pronounced anti-Com-aunist convictions, Ernest T. Weir, steelmaster, came to much the me conclusion after a journey though Europe...
...Suspected persons have received inadequate specifications of charges, inadequate acquaintance with evidence against them or its sources, inadequate opportunity to confront unfavorable witnesses...
...On the credit side of the ledger the ACLU posted these entries: 1. The American people, drawing on their faith in freedom, are still keeping "many of their civil liberties in good working order...
...Japan under its former militarist rule inflicted vast suffering on mankind...
...IN A FEW days the world spotlight will swing over San Francisco for the signing of the peace treaty with Japan...
...A MONTH ago Kent Cooper, executive director of the Associated Press, returned from Europe with the report that "Europe a afraid to death of our defense rogram—afraid that it might turn into an aggressive policy...
...There is much in the treaty that makes abundant sense, especially the complete rejection of any revenge motif and the absence of provisions for back-breaking reparations...
...His accusations," the report noted, "were marked by complete disregard for fair and orderly procedures," but the harm was "somewhat limited by the fairness of the Tydings investigation of his charges 3. The un-American tactics of the House Committee on un-Ameri-can Activities and its offshoots in some state legislatures...
...UN himself, has said: "There must be negotiations all the time, and on all levels—the top level, the middle level, and the lower level—inside the UN and outside the UN...
...The ACLU found it has been "efficiently, and on the whole, justly administered, granted the conditions imposed on those conducting it...
...For all its oratorical gestures to the common man, our government doesn't believe that people who live beyond the Potomac are smart enough to recognize the need for preparedness even while negotiations are going on, and wise enough not to confuse talk of peace with the real thing...
...This exclusive reliance on total preparedness has left us without a moral leg to stand on, and without an effective instrument to combat the successful psychological appeals for peace by the Soviets...
...It seems fantastic that the treaty's sponsors can hope to make it stick without the participation of Russia and China, with both of whom Japan must live and trade if she is to survive and break out of her present desperate economic plight...
...One needn't for a moment minimize John Foster Dulles' great effort in the preparation of the treaty, or slur over the arrogant refusal of the Soviets to engage in sincere negotiations to recognize the long-run futility of a course of action based on the notion that, "Since we don't like the facts of life, we refuse to recognize them...
...Joseph McCarthy, Wisconsin Republican, in broadside smear of government officials...
...That is why it is so universally regarded as the watchdog of American freedom...
...The other is the agreement to permit the rearmament of Japan, notwithstanding the constitutional prohibition against arms which we ourselves imposed on Japan five years ago...
...Until our government accepts the need for building moral, social, and psychological positions of strength, along with military preparedness, it must not be surprised to learn from so ardent an anti-Communist as Ernest Weir that "Europeans believe that Russia is much more disposed than we suspect to arrive at some basis for world peace," and that "if war comes it is much more likely to result from some action of the United States rather than Russia...
...The reasons were best stated by a group of Japanese women who are members of the Japanese Parliament...
...If we didn't like the sound of their suggestion for a Five Power conference, wouldn't it have been wiser to propose our own constructive alternative...
...2. The damage done by Sen...
...But the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, Point Four, and the Atlantic Pact are damning reminders that we prefer to work outside the UN when it suits our purpose...
...There is nothing strikingly new the Cooper-Weir warnings, for eir findings confirm the conclusion many other thoughtful travelers, . Europe and elsewhere in the world, that the conduct of Ameri-!an foreign policy has not only led to convince friendly and neu-al nations of our peaceful purpose, it has actually created a real fear hat our policies might explode in ft war everyone dreads...
...It has been a powerful force for the best American principles...
...Moreover, there is nothing in the UN Charter that proscribes such conferences...
...The Kremlin's summer peace offensive included the launching of a new publication designed to emphasize the potential compatibility of the Communist and non-Communist worlds, proposals for a new Five Power peace conference to lessen world tensions, and the raising of the Iron Curtain sufficiently to permit statements by President Truman, Sen...
...Our government has trapped itself into doubting the mature common sense of its people...
...Regarding the parent committee of Congress, the report said: "Despite considerable improvement in its methods, the House Committee continues to exact a much higher cost than a free people can afford to pay in terms of reduced due process and free speech, with insignificant gain for national security compared with the results of the expert and relatively quiet work of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies in ferreting out present and continuing treason of really deadly sorts...
...Guilt by association, or— worse—by innuendo, is abroad in the land...
...In fact, Trygve Lie, Mr...
...Our government is so completely —and sincerely—dedicated to the proposition that only supreme military power will preserve peace that it can brook no interference with its primary goal...
...Ledger on Liberty THE American Civil Liberties Union, watchdog of American freedom, has just issued, in its annual report, a sobering balance-sheet of the state of our liberties...
...Today we are prepared to pour our wealth into building up Germany and Japan so they can stand against Russia and China...
...Brien McMahon, and British Foreign Minister Herbert Morrison to be published in full in the Soviet press and broadcast on the Soviet radio...
...Our failure to build moral, social, and psychological positions of strength, along with military power, has left much of the world worried if not downright convinced that we're rushing on to war...
...Thus rearmament means death for the Japanese nation...
...It is bound to be drawn into an East-West war, if such occurs...
...A rearmed Japan will be regarded as a threat by China, Russia, and other nations...
Vol. 15 • September 1951 • No. 9
