THAT ELASTIC CHARTER
Villard, Oswald Garrison
That Elastic Charter By OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD WHEN Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Minister, was asked in the House of Commons the other day as to whether the Atlantic Charter and its...
...It also does not apply to some nondescript peoples, betwixt and between, who have been run over by the chariot of war...
...As a matter of fact, however, there is still another limitation on the workings of this epoch-making Charter...
...some of the Ukrainians want to be free of Stalin...
...Stalin has changed all that...
...The wicked nations, quite naturally, he would say, are out in the cold where they belong...
...The Germans thought they had salted away a good deal of new territory, including the Ukraine...
...Russia, being still with us, continues among the good nations—until and if it makes it plain that it is, no longer with us but against us...
...Hands Off Good' Nations But Russia, in the person of Mr...
...Here we have a noble Charter of the new order which adds to its other qualities a most worthwhile and impressive elasticity...
...Yet on almost the very day that Anthony Eden made his declaration cited above, it was announced in London that there was great alarm there over the latest Soviet demands which cover sections of East Prussia including the city of Koenigsberg...
...As for Germany and Japan, they are beyond the pale...
...It meant simply that there was to be no trespassing upon the lands of any of the good nations...
...But obviously the Atlantic Charter does not apply to them...
...Stalin may have perhaps forgotten the terms of the Atlantic Charter...
...Thus, when Uncle Joe Stalin signed that other clause which says that he respected "the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live," he naturally understood it to mean any peoples but the Germans, for they obviously are not capable of choosing the form of government under which they should -live, and wouldn't select the right kind if they had the choice...
...Not as good as I believe Walter Lippmann and the New York Herald-Tribune said it must be when it surrendered and they declared that the whole Italian Army must turn around and fight with the United Nations or they would not be considered to have anything like complete immunity...
...The status of Italy at this moment is somewhat in doubt...
...In other words the Atlantic Charter was meant, to apply only to the good nations, the good nations being those who are on our side...
...See What It Means...
...So it is now perfectly plain that when the Atlantic Charter said that the contracting parties "seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other," it did not refer to any praiseworthy desire of one of the signatories to take a part of Germany and redeem it...
...Many a great state document has suffered in the past from the rigidity of its form, the limitations it developed with the lapse of time because its creators looked narrowly at certain definite objectives...
...It was a very bad nation indeed, very black and wicked...
...According to the London Observer, "it had been believed that Poland would be allowed to take all or most of East Prussia from Germany, as compensation for loss of territory East of the Curzon line," but now Mr...
...The Ukraine wants to be free...
...The second clause reads: "They desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned," and the third added this thought: "They respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live...
...As for the enemy states, why should anybody waste ,any sympathy on them...
...1, 1942, or maybe in the rush of his fine business of driving the Germans out of Russia in such hot haste, Mr...
...If Mr...
...There are the Poles, for example...
...That Elastic Charter By OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD WHEN Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Minister, was asked in the House of Commons the other day as to whether the Atlantic Charter and its provisions applied to the enemy countries or not, he stated with complete frankness that they did not...
...Hence, no one has any excuse today, for not understanding exactly what the Atlantic Charter meant— at least so far as the enemy states are concerned...
...For example, the first clause of the Charter reads that the countries of the signatories "seek no aggrandizement territorial or other...
...now it is halfway good...
...No one can blame him for retaking the three little Baltic States because they were his property before the Atlantic Charter was signed, and therefore plainly did not come under its provisions...
...They had their chance and helped themselves to a good deal of territory, and now they have lost it...
...Really, the more the Atlantic Charter is studied the more one must bow down before and admire the statesmanship that wrote it...
...Stalin, doesn't quite seem to have understood the language of the Atlantic Charter to which it signed its name on Jan...
...It can be turned and twisted and bent as circumstances dictate...
...Eden has kindly come forward and elucidated the situation once and for all...
...Of course there is a little difficulty in this simplification of the world situation, and that is that good nations become bad overnight, and bad nations can become good...
...Stalin desires to take over more of Poland than, he had after he marched in in the Winter of 1939-40, I hope everybody will understand that this is just merely a little matter of straightening out of boundaries...
...and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them...
...Now, in order to clear up the misunderstanding on this point, Mr...
Vol. 8 • March 1944 • No. 13
