POWER VS. CONSCIENCE
POWER vs. CONSCIENCE The Clashing Faiths Of Churchill And Boh La Follette EDITOR'S NOTE: The Progressive reprints below the full text of the leading editorial in the June 5 issue of Life Magazine,...
...The major liberal and internationalist groups felt the same way...
...If war, as Clausewitz said, is the continuation of politics by other means, Mr...
...Power, Naked And Unashamed It will not surprise LIFE readers to learn that expediency is the favorite tool, and national power the prime post-victory objective, of British, Russian, and American leaders in this war...
...Radicals are supposed to respect conscience more than power...
...Our 'Ideology' Is Freedom As such, they will never come to power...
...Churchill, however, exceeded the most realistic expectations of his American admirers...
...That is one of the merits of our two-party system...
...He hopes for "fraternal association" with America, but his 20-year alliance with Russia "is the foundation of our policy...
...Perhaps, bemused by the new power game, the American conscience is asleep...
...Meanwhile, of course, the Republican or Democratic U. S. Government will cooperate with Mr...
...Well, what party...
...They favor a federated Europe and an attack on what they regard as the causes of war...
...Churchill's, is not "well-trained...
...Sure...
...To read it is to know that it is nothing of the kind...
...For evidence that this kind of radicalism still exists, turn to Wisconsin...
...Not the Republicans...
...Now it is quite true that peace cannot be maintained without power...
...Impractical...
...It would be unfair to single out this remark if the rest of his speech were not one long substantiation of it...
...America, whether Republican or Democratic, is not likely to shrink from this game...
...It was one of Churchill's very best speeches, full of candor, eloquence, and news...
...His only guides through the subject, said he, are "singleness of purpose and a good, or at any rate, well-trained conscience...
...Yet neither Franco, nor Britain's rule in India, nor our own many shortcomings, nor any form of tyranny is permanently safe so long as America harbors her La Follettes, her democracy, and her beliefs...
...Churchill did not dispel the world's ideological confusion...
...they are reluctant to seem anti-British...
...Practically all Americans realize by now that they are in the game of international power politics for good, and that joint action with Britain and Russia is the best way for them to play it...
...This platform has been called a rebirth of Midwestern isolationism...
...Roosevelt is playing too much the same game...
...In one place (Greece) we support a King, in another (Yugoslavia) a Communist...
...But transmuted into the practical politics of a major party, the Progressive ideals will be heard from yet...
...Nor is this necessarily a crime...
...Yet there is in America a deep, old strain of radicalism which neither the Communists, nor the internationalists, nor the liberal and labor leaders really represent...
...There is no attempt by us to enforce particular ideologies," said Mr...
...That is the true function of a radical party: to discern reforms which are in the main stream of American progress, and to start fighting for them before they are practical...
...Too morally ambitious for a sinful world...
...But the news and the candor seemed deliberately chosen to blast away any wisps of idealism that may still cling around allied war aims...
...On the very good chance that the Progressives are still performing this function, their 1944 platform is worth looking at...
...As was pointed out on this page last week, nationalism can be an instrument for progress toward internationalism, and at the present juncture of human affairs it is probably the best possible instrument...
...Even if Americans could not reason this out, they would feel it in their bones...
...They hate and fear imperialism and cartels...
...It is against regimentation "of right or left...
...A Freedom-Minded Radical Not the Communist...
...Just now, yes...
...Quite wrongly, they opposed the President's- pre-war aid-to-Britain policy, hence earning the label of isolationist...
...Indeed, few Americans of any party, radical or conservative, seemed greatly perturbed...
...Howeyer, there is more to world peace than power...
...He not only offered small comfort to believers in the Four Freedoms...
...IN his speach to Parliament on British foreign policy last week, Mr...
...It is the indigenous radicalism of the frontier, whose goal is not merely peace, prosperity and slum-clearance, but economic justice and individual freedom...
...They may be what President Conant of Harvard asked for in his plea for a native American radicalism last year: ". . . the missing political link between the past and the future of this great democratic land...
...We have been a bit Mortimer Snerdish about it in the past, but we can take care of ourselves and we have an almost unlimited stack of chips...
...By chasing "ideology" out of the United Nations cause, Mr...
...And by such forces, they don't mean Churchill...
...When the American conscience reawakens, and power without "ideology" turns out to be not good enough, we will be able to thank the Progressives for keeping alive and uncorrupted an American "ideology"—belief in universal freedom...
...Churchill is "in no position to define...
...CONSCIENCE The Clashing Faiths Of Churchill And Boh La Follette EDITOR'S NOTE: The Progressive reprints below the full text of the leading editorial in the June 5 issue of Life Magazine, which has resulted in a gre«t deal of national discussion...
...The world is to be dominated by Russia, Britain, and the U. S. If lesser nations have a voice, it is to be as members of an assembly whose relations to the "controlling power" Mr...
...For the American conscience, whether better or worse than Mr...
...They still favor self-determination for small nations...
...One would expect some, political party or other, at least in America, to display an outraged conscience at the Churchill cynicism...
...They also favor international cooperation "with the forces which share their ideals for political freedom and economic opportunity...
...The Progressive's platform favors the prosecution of all monopolies, the reform of the patent system, a rebirth of small and independent enterprise, a program of planned public works and the use of government power to secure "full production and full employment" and "equality of opportunity for all...
...Churchill made the most cynical remark recorded of any allied leader in this war...
...His war aim, he made clear, is not so much permanent peace as permanent victory...
...he went out of his way to discourage them...
...It is an old Progressive boast that practically all the planks in its platforms, beginning in 1908, get adopted by a major party and turned into national legislation sooner or later...
...Some radical party, then...
...The labor leaders intent on reelecting Roosevelt paid no attention...
...but their reason was neither cowardly nor ignoble: they suspected a diversion from the New Deal's domestic reforms...
...Said Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Not by aggression, but but the naked fact of existence we are an eternal danger and an unsleeping threat to every government that founds itself on anything but the will of the governed...
...To prove it he appealed out- -right for kindlier feelings toward Franco, the fascist dictator of Spain, in whose internal affairs "it is not for us to meddle...
...Not the Democrats...
...Politically, Wisconsin is confused, but not ideologically...
...They now fear another Peace of Versailles, which "betrayed the common people" of all countries...
...The Progressives are a radical party...
...In power, the Progressives might indeed lead us into isolationism, of the dangerous monastic kind that fears to sully American ideals by contact with the Churchills and Stalins of this, world...
...Churchill sees peace as the continuation of victory by the same means—i.e., armed might...
...They took exception to Churchill's Franco line, but in general, said the Daily Worker admiringly, "it is clear that the spirit of Teheran is working...
...La Follette thinks the Roosevelt Administration, which he has supported in the past, has been practically taken over by "the forces of monopoly and reaction...
...We can even go along with him in keeping hands off Franco, if necessary, on the fine old grounds of "nonintervention," a cornerstone of international law...
...In foreign policy, Progressives oppose any compromise with fascism, and take bows for having: warned against Pearl Harbor...
...There Senator Robert M. La Follette's Progressive Party, which has run Wisconsin off and on for years and still holds some shreds of power in Wisconsin, recently came out with a new 1944 platform...
Vol. 8 • June 1944 • No. 24
