THE EDITOR RESERVES THE LAST COLUMN
The Editor Reserves . . . The Last Column RAYMOND CLAPPER, the Washington columnist, was pounding out his syndicate stint the other day when the newsboy came around with the evening paper. One can...
...But we are never told how the same men who are charged with all manner of global knavery are somehow to become knights in shining armor when they begin to run a world state instead of national states...
...Hull & Eden the- post-war boundaries of the Soviet Union on the grounds that the question is none of our business...
...Far From Hopeless Despite this indictment of what Churchill and Roosevelt are up to, Mowrer is a boiling advocate of a world police system which will stand guard over just such deals as he loathes...
...Split Personalities Now, Mr...
...The insistence that the Allies have every right to regard us with suspicion is abandoned for the new complaint that American internationalists "find ourselves left a bit limp by the absence of reciprocation from our Allies," and the absence of any willingness to revise old policies...
...Samuel Grafton, a daily columnist who seemed to have placed all his eggs in the basket of a world police force, made this astonishing comment the other day: "There is a tendency here to shy away from the realities of the moment (I mean the realities of today, this week, this month) and to escape to the future by embarking on long, cozy discussions of a world police force, a world court, etc., etc...
...Churchill and Roosevelt and the other half demanding a world police organization to enforce these deals...
...When confronted with this contradiction, people like Mowrer argue that a world federation will somehow resolve all our difficulties, abolish the inequalities, and stamp out the causes of war...
...Metaxas," and is "giving the impression of readiness to deal with any despot who is ready to desert the Axis and come over to our side...
...The prospect of getting American commentators to shake their schizophrenia and face the world realistically is far from hopeless...
...Roosevelt is "backing Churchill in encouraging a king of Greece who, just a few years back, deliberately accepted the debasement of his people by pro-fascist, pro-German Gen...
...There is Edgar Ansel Mowrer, for instance, the former foreign correspondent...
...Clapper's column undergoes an abrupt change...
...M.H.R...
...Mowrer said he didn't expect any coherent program for democracy from Churchill...
...This suspicion is shared by the New Statesman And Nation, Great Britain's outstanding liberal weekly, which noted the other day that the closer victory comes, the stronger becomes the trend toward "the restoration of a status quo ante helium agreeable only to vested capital interests...
...The cranky appraisal of the "poison" brewed by the "isolationists" is left where it was when the newsboy arrived...
...But we did hope for such coherent guidance from President Roosevelt—and we have not had it...
...Mowrer has been bitter in his contempt for "the Roosevelt-Churchill line" as having "nothing to guide it but expediency...
...Mowrer resents the fact that Mr...
...The New Statesman is an ardent advocate of international organization, but it is much sounder than its American colleagues in pressing for realistic treatment of the causes of war...
...It was not so many years ago that he told an Italian audience that if he were an Italian, he would be a Fascist...
...One can put his finger on the exact sentence Clapper was writing when he was interrupted, for the whole tone and theme of the column change after the columnist has had a chance to scan the latest news...
...I emphasized in my article on "Progressives And The Peace" that it was becoming too tragically clear that the principal mission of a world police force, of the type now being urged upon us, would be to restore and freeze for years to come the intolerable status quo as it existed in Europe before 1939...
...The column, you see, had started out to be a tirade against the "isolationists," and how they were responsible for driving a wedge between us and our allies and how right our allies were to mistrust us and our intentions...
...Clapper's schizophrenic tendencies, when he comes to the subject of international relations, are far more common than you might expect...
...Most of the commentators, in fact, are much harsher than we are in evaluating the Roosevelt-Churchill maneuvers, but they are vitriolic in condemning anyone who argues, as we do, that we ought to hold out for concrete improvements and for a realistic attack on the causes of war instead of squandering away our bargaining power and writing a blank check for the power boys to do as they will...
...Just then the "evening newspaper comes to my desk" with the announcement from Moscow that the Russians have no intention of discussing with the Messrs...
...I mentioned one form of it a couple of weeks ago in my frontpage piece, "Progressives And The Peace," when I pointed out that many a well-meaning liberal expends half his time and energy denouncing the political deals and settlements being made by the Messrs...
Vol. 7 • November 1943 • No. 44
