SOME QUESTIONS FOR THE SPHINX

...The Great Sphinx meditatively lifted its left eyebrow...

...Where there is hatred Let me sow love Where there is injury, pardon...

...The fate of Poland, of the Baltic Republics, of perhaps much other territory in Eastern and Southeastern Europe would seem to depend on a very different consideration: on the ability of the Soviet armies to overrun it and hold it down by force...

...I decided I had been presenting too local and temporal events for the consideration of a creature that had witnessed the long span of history from Rameses to Rommel, that had seen the Pharoahs pass, and the Roman and Byzantine Emperors and the Arab conquerors...

...So it occurred to me that it might be worthwhile to pose some of the questions that have not been answered by anything that has yet been published about the results of Moscow, Cairo, and Teheran to that timeless and mute native of Egypt, the Great Sphinx, that rock figure 189 feet long with a lion's body and a human head...

...Then I turned to what seemed to be a matter of crossed signals as between two eminent elder statesmen...

...and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them...

...Where there is doubt, faith Where there is despair, hope...

...In view of the lack of detailed specific information, there is room for a good deal of argument as to who got the best of these conferences...

...On Aug...

...They desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned...

...We whine not for thy mercy— To slay: God make us wise For slaves who shun the issue We do not ask thy aid...

...25, 1939, this promise was expanded in an Anglo-Polish Agreement of Mutual Assistance, pledging each party to give the other "all the support and assistance in its power" in the event of either "becoming engaged in hostilities with a European power in consequence of aggression by the latter against that contracting party...

...For it is in giving that we receive It is in pardoning that we are pardoned And it is in dying That we are born to eternal life...

...Why was there not at least a reiteration, with special application to Japan, of Clause 4 of the Atlantic Charter, promising "the enjoyment by all states, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity...

...Stiffening Jap Morale Apparently Americans are scheduled for a leading role in driving the Japanese from these lands...

...Then There's Poland I passed on to another subject...

...To be understood as to understand...

...With the others down and out and herself the mistress of the continent, her power will not only be great on that account, but it will be still greater because the Japanese Empire will also have gone the way of all flesh...

...Some Questions For The Sphinx By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN WHATEVER may be the merits of the Moscow, Cairo, and Teheran agreements, they most emphatically do not conform to Woodrow Wilson's definition of "open covenants openly arrived at...

...Crossed Signals Again the Great Sphinx remained impassive...

...THE PRAYER OF ST...

...After all the Sphinx couldn't and wouldn't talk, so it was a good symbol for any conference of high democratic leaders and dictators...

...There isn't much else in common between them...

...Great Britain undertook to support Poland against "any action which clearly threatened its independence" in April 1939...

...Or is the prospective outpouring of American blood in these remote Asiatic lands to be vindicated by some result more constructive than the mere integral restoration of an imperialist system that was giving strong signs, even before it tumbled down like a house of cards before the Japanese onslaught, of being moth-eaten and wornout...

...But when I mentioned British treaty obligations to Poland and recited the sonorous words of the Atlantic Charter, the provoking creature solemnly and deliberately winked at least twice with its left eye...

...As relevant evidence in the case I submitted two poems, one a recent production of the redoubtable Gen...

...To thee we trust our spirits, Our bodies unafraid...

...To be loved as to love...

...And when one considers the rich Dutch empire in the East Indies and the rich Belgian empire in Africa the plan involves a land grab, "territorial aggrandizement," to cite the Atlantic Charter again, on a scale that would have made Clive or Cecil Rhodes or any other great empirebuilder envious...

...If this drastic treatment is good for the Japanese Empire, why wouldn't it be good for other empires, the British, the Dutch, the French...

...FRANCIS Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace...

...In that trinity (the United States, the Soviet Union, the British Empire) you will have two partners of immense power and resources—Russia and America—and you will have this island, the heart of the Empire and of the Commonwealth, weak in her European resources in comparison with the vast resources of the other two...

...So the astute Marshal Smuts proposes to redress this "unequal partnership" by absorbing into the British Empire the smaller democracies of Western Europe, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Norway...

...Is the symbolic little episode at Tarawa, where thousands of American Marines were killed and wounded and then a British officer who accompanied the expedition triumphantly hoisted the British flag as a sign that one bit of British Imperial territory had been reclaimed, to be the pattern all over East Asia...

...Finally, what about the effect of the Cairo Declaration as a notable means of stiffening the Japanese morale and making the American military task in the Orient longer, more difficult, and more costly in human lives than it need have been...

...Independent comment from the scene of these conferences that are supposed to be reshaping the world in the interest of its peoples was most rigorously suppressed...

...Again I set out to refresh the memory of the Sphinx with quotations from Smuts that harmonize with Mr...

...Again we seek thy counsel, But not in cringing guise...

...They respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live...

...But would any Japanese be willing to surrender, short of complete physical inability to go on fighting, when the prospect for the future of Japan, as envisaged at Cairo, was one of the bleakest poverty in overcrowded islands, with literal starvation a probability for many of the Japanese whom their native land cannot support...

...George S. Patton, Jr., the other composed by Saint Francis of Assisi about 700 years ago...

...Progress: Reality Or Illusion...

...Where there is darkness, light And where there is sadness, joy...

...As the clauses are fairly short, I quoted them to refresh the Sphinx's memory: "Their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or otherwise...

...You will have Russia in a position which no country has ever occupied in the history of Europe...

...From pride and foolish confidence From every weakening creed From the dread fear of fearing Protect us, Lord, and lead From doubt and fearsome 'boding Still thou our spirits guard, Make strong our souls to conquer, Give us the victory, Lord...

...So I pressed the Sphinx for an answer to a more general question...

...Cairo and Teheran, as well as Moscow, showed some of the expert Muscovite stage-management, down to the discovery of an alleged plot, the circumstances of which were pretty obscure, but the suspected participants in which, one may be sure, in view of effective Soviet military and police controls, were duly "liquidated...

...In the face of this torrent of questions the Great Sphinx remained in its recumbent, slightly bored, and quite detached pose...

...There are moderate elements and groups in Japan, clearsighted enough to know when the military position has become hopeless, which might well have been willing, after the fall of Germany, to conclude peace on a basis of the renunciation of Japan's conquests since 1931...

...But the sole reaction of the Sphinx was a slight elevation of the right eyebrow...

...Gaps In Logic So an inquiring reporter, no matter how convincingly he might prove that he was a "common man" or even a "forgotten man," stood no chance of putting any direct questions to the "Big Three" or the "Big Four" while they were engaged in the process of carving up the world and settling its future arrangements, presumably in the interests of the common man and the forgotten man...

...If Koreans and Formosans are entitled to self-determination, what about Indonesians, Indo-Chinese, Malays, Burmese who formerly lived under the rule of British, French, and Dutch overlords...

...Hull's statement had barely subsided when Marshal Jan Christian Smuts, Prime Minister of South Africa and a man of great influence and prestige in the councils of the British Empire, committed himself in a public speech to a conception of halance-of-power politics on a truly Gargantuan scale...

...Is human progress a reality or an illusion...

...O Divine Master, grant that I may Not so much seek to be consoled As to console...

...If China is entitled to the retrocession of Formosa, which Japan took by force after the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, why isn't it also entitled to Hong Kong, which Great Britain took by force after the "Opium War" of 1839-42...

...Believe it or not, for a good many people seem to have forgotten it, the Second World War began on the issue of maintaining inviolate the frontiers of Poland...

...Churchill had not been so relentless in maintaining a starvation blockade of these countries, the Smuts project, to quote his own words, certainly contains "explosive stuff...

...The treatment of the press was according to the best standards of the totalitarian Soviet Union, not according to the traditions of the democratic United States and England...

...When Cordell Hull returned from Moscow he assured an applauding and delighted Congress that the Moscow conference had laid the foundation of a new world which would make unnecessary balance-of-power politics...

...My first question was prompted by what seemed to me certain gaps in the logic and consistency of the program for reconstruction in East Asia announced after the Cairo Conference...

...It thinks in terms of a none too friendly Anglo-Russian condominium over the whole area of continental Europe...

...Therefore any check or balance that might have arisen in the East will have disappeared...

...Hull's "no balance-of-power" theory about as well as Stalin's prospective annexations in Eastern Europe harmonize with the principles of the Atlantic Charter, After brushing into oblivion France, Italy, Germany, and Japan the Marshal declared: "Russia is the new colossus on the European continent...

...But I thought I detected a twinkle in the right eye when the Atlantic Charter was mentioned...

...Apart from the fact that Belgian, Dutch, and Norwegian enthusiasm for this scheme might be greater if Mr...

...But in the matter of procedure Stalin won hands down...

...Japan is to be stripped of all its possessions on the mainland of Asia and of Formosa and reduced to the limited area of its original volcanic islands...

...GENERAL PATTON'S PRAYER Great God, who through the ages Hast braced the bloodstained hand As Saturn, Jove or Woden Has led our warrior band...

...The first three clauses of the Atlantic Charter, to which the Soviet Union is a signatory, would seem to reinforce this position as regards both Poland and the three former independent Baltic Republics, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia...

...A long sanguinary war may be defended as a means to an enduring peace, but certainly not as an end in itself...

...Both, curiously enough, are in the form of prayers...

...An unequal partnership, I am afraid...

...But Moscow and Teheran were strangely silent about the practical implementation of these noble principles in Eastern Europe...

...But the joy excited by Mr...

...But I could obtain no other indication of its judgment as to the balance-sheet of a "progress" that included indiscriminately radios, printing-presses, sulfa drugs, passenger automobiles, and airplanes, along with ever bigger and more lethal tanks, cannon, blockbuster bombs, and rocket-guided missiles of death...

...It would seem to be a logical implication of this treaty that Polish boundaries should not be changed, except by the freely expressed will of the population affected...