SKELETONS AT 'SECRET CASTLE'

...and to wonder why, in a democracy, leaders are afraid to trust the people with the facts of global life...

...If Russia gets the idea that those isolationist sneers and insults foreshadow future American policy toward Russia instead of a continuation of the present collaboration," pontificated Mr...

...After all, we do have our honest differences, and they won't be resolved if we insist on making skeletons of them and hiding them in the closets of "Secret Castle"—to borrow from PM—of if we insist on trying to silence honest critics with cries of "isolationist," "obstructionist," and "Anglophobe...

...Few countries possess the freedom of expression existing here...

...O'Flaherty (in the Daily News) ''From an American point of view, the wall of silence seems unnecessary and, no doubt, had this meeting been wholly under the control of the Americans, the details of the discussion would have been made public...

...Chiang Kai-shek, writing on the same subject of India, expressed best what I've been trying to say...

...Suspicion is a natural consequence of secrecy...

...Reports leaking out of the heavily guarded conference room have indicated that the United States will be called upon to provide at least 400,000 soldiers to police the zone assigned to us, but every, attempt to learn what kind of settlement we are to police is brushed aside as "isolationist" or "obstructionist" interference...

...Why, for instance, all the secrecy at Dumbarton Oaks, where representatives of the United States, Great Britain, and Russia are trying to fashion the instruments of power with which they hope to enforce whatever peace settlement emerges...

...Americans have a right to wonder what schemes are being concocted in star chamber gatherings, to wonder, with the editors of the Christian Century, the liberal weekly, "what hope of permanence can be placed in arrangements which can be wiped out with a breath of publicity...

...In a letter to President Roosevelt appealing for United States intervention in the struggle to liberate India, the Chinese leader made it clear that British imperialism was a major stumbling block in the war against Japan, and that it was time for America to assert her democratic role...

...words of sincere advice, though unpleasant, should guide one's conduct.' "I sincerely hope that Britain will magnanimously and resolutely accept my words of disinterested advice, however unpleasant they may be, and believe they are voiced in the common interests of the United Nations...

...No, in the truest sense it is pro-British, for in England, too, there are many who believe this and who speak out their belief with urgency...

...But on the same day that Mr...

...Also, on tha same day the Associated Press reported in the Daily News that "the Russians have rejected a British request to use Russian bases on the Italian-Soviet shuttle run for sending aid to the embattled people of Warsaw, waging open war against the Germans while the Red Army is poised a few miles away...

...Frederick Kuh, the alert London correspondent for Marshall Field's newspapers, recently attacked with great force "this orgy of secrecy and censorship...

...When newspapers allude "to the substance of the discussions going on in these hushed surroundings, such publicity is resented as an outrageous intrusion...

...The war aims of the United Nations and our common interests," wrote Chiang to Mr...

...Binder who has no faith at all in Soviet-American partnership, because he reveals in two paragraphs that he fears "a few isolationists" can actually wreck an arrangement which presumably must be based on the enlightened self-interest of the two nations...

...Too many shortsighted Americans say 'Britain owns India, Britain is our ally, it would bd silly to interfere with India.' Silly for the short present, perhaps, but very wise for the long future...

...And, finally, on the same day came another report from Dumbarton Oaks that the Soviet delegation was opposed to giving small nations the full rights proposed by Britain and France...

...THE sneering references in the PM piece to the ineptitude of the American delegation appeared in an article which generally criticized the enforcement of secrecy at Dumbarton Oaks, admitted that President Roosevelt has "bobbled the ball on foreign affairs," and referred contemptuously to the spacious estate at Dumbarton Oaks as "Secret Castle...

...There a small group of men is deciding on zones of occupation in Europe, especially Germany, and determining how many men from each of the three victorious powers will be required to police a conquered Germany...

...Inevitably she wrote that freedom for India was a basic requirement for any kind of peace that was to be just and lasting...

...This Orgy Of Secrecy* Equally indefensible is the secrecy invoked in London at the star chamber meetings of the European Peace Commission...

...My point here is simply this: It isn't the rantings of red-baiters or the criticism of "isolationists" that create hostility and suspicion, but rather the policy of the totalitarian liberals of ducking and dodging free and open debate on major issues between Allies...

...All these stories appeared on one day, and on the day that Mr...

...Binder chose to announce that if our partnership with Russia collapses, it will be because Stalin and his associates were frightened off by "a few isolationist radio broadcasters and politicians...

...The truth is that India has become the business of the Allies, and is no longer the possession of any country...

...Roosevelt, "make it impossible for me to remain silent...

...Our American soldiers are being sent there in unknown numbers...

...In a way, the Dumbarton secrecy" is a face-saving device to hide the ineptitude of the American delegation when it comes to negotiation and persuasion...

...THE official suppression of news has been accom--L panied by a quasi-official and unofficial attempt to suppress critical comments about our Allies and especially their demands in the postwar settlement...

...And yet, curiously enough, while these same editors fume and splutter in their editorial columns about the attempt by the "obstructionists" to "create suspicion against our Allies," their own news columns, by merely reporting facts, do a far more effective job in hoisting danger signals than the "isolationists" can...

...Inevitably she came to the question of India...

...Conversely, a program of international cooperation in which there is a free and open give-and-take, a willingness to take criticism as well as to dish it out, and a developing awareness that the one common denominator of worldwide peace is political and economic freedom—this type of foreign relations ean become the cornerstone of the kind of peace for which the plain people of all countries yearn...

...Thoroughly aroused by the persistent employment of the phony excuse of "secrecy required by reason of military security," Kuh stated bluntly that "the issue at stake is . . . whether American and other Allied peoples shall be gTven at least an outline of the peace contemplated at the hour when the end of the war appears near...

...The Commission shaping the future of Germany and Europe, he reported, "is working behind a dense smoke screen...

...Newspaper editors have appointed themselves vigilante committees to smear and coerce any American who dares to pose basic questions to Britain and Russia...

...Binder, "it may feel justified in terminating the partnership when the job for which the partnership was formed has been completed...

...Some of the more recent criticism, however, has come from reporters and publications whose devotion to internationalist principles is unquestioned...

...A foreign policy based on secret diplomacy and a hush-hush approach to one's Allies is so weak and flimsy, so devoid of a basic foundation, that it cannot long survive...

...If we cannot prove to India that our soldiers are there for freedom, then India will believe they are there for empire...

...This period of the great hush-hush is marked not only by interminable official conferences behind locked doors -—secret conferences which are determining the form of the postwar world and the disposition of millions of conquered peoples—but also by unofficial pressures to refrain from criticizing, however constructively, certain sins of omission and commission by our Allies...

...And inevitably, she knew she was running the risk of being called anti-British...

...This, it seems to me, is the only honest and the only realistic course to an enduring basis of friendship and understanding among nations...

...The dispatch, filed by the non-committal Associated Press, revealed that the Soviet delegation at Dumbarton Oaks was blocking agreement by insisting that Russia and Russia alone must settle the Polish question without interference from her Allies...

...Here, side by side, are the results: Bolle* (in PM) "The British strongly objected to the secrecy invoked for the Dumbarton Oaks conference, and the Russians did not ask for the secrecy...

...As we arre hosts to the visiting delegations, their antipathies to publicity naturally have had to be accepted and, if necessary, defended...

...This article alone shows the extent of disgust with the practice of secret diplomacy, for generally PM's olfactory nerve is not working when there are malodorous developments in the Roosevelt Administration...

...Here is what she said : The Only Honest Course "It is unwise when Americans today say that India is not our business...

...After all, reasons the man whose principal equipment is common sense, they wouldn't have to hide out behind closed doors if their organization were based on democratic principles and their peace settlement on the Four Freedoms and the Atlantic Charter...

...The Experts Explain Why all the hush-hush on the eve of military victory ? Why all the secrecy at conferences which are mapping plans which will affect vitally every one of us...

...As a consequence, the RAF attempted to take supplies direct to Warsaw from British bases, and is reported to have suffered very heavy losses on the return trip to England...

...On the same day there was another story—this one from Washington...

...Hence, the growing suspicion in the nation that the peace settlement and the world organization are not taking the shape promised by our leaders...

...Some time ago Pearl Buck wrote a brilliant argument against the white man's imperialism in the Orient for the New York Times...

...Skeletons At 'Secret Castle' By MORRIS H. RUBIN THE foreign policy of the United States and the postwar plans of the United Nations are currently being hidden from "the prying eyes of the people" by a barrier of secrecy and censorship so ruthlessly efficient and airtight that it might well be the envy of an imperial potentate or fascist dictator...

...A psychoanalyst might conclude from this outburst that it is Mr...

...Is this anti-British...

...Two experts sought to explain recently, one in the New York newspaper PM and the other in the Chicago Daily News, both strongly internationalist papers which have already approved whatever may come out of Dumbarton Oaks...

...Blair Bolles took up the matter of secrecy in PM and Hal O'Flaherty did the same in the Daily News...

...Secret diplomacy is in the saddle not only at the Three Power talks at Dumbarton Oaks, in Washington, but at the meetings of the European Advisory Commission in London, where a handful of men are deciding, in an atmosphere of total secrecy, the postwar disposition of Germany and her former satellites...

...The British press—influential publications like the Manchester Guardian, the London Economist, and others—have been demanding that the doors be opened and the public be informed of the general terms of the peace settlement that its blood, toil, and tears are making possible, but their clamor has been to no avail thus far...

...The United States Government insisted on it, just as it has made a secret of previous conferences at Hot Springs, Atlantic City, and Bretton Woods...

...Last week, for instance, Carroll Binder, foreign editor for the Chicago" Daily News, lashed out at "a few isolationist radio broadcasters and politicians who sneer at and insult Russia...

...This counsel—calling us to make common cause with the progressive forces in Allied nations instead of merely fawning approval of evei-ything done by the ruling group—is so fundamentally sound that it must eventually prevail, evemamong the war liberals who checked their minds and hearts and consciences when the guns went off...

...They can go as soldiers of empire or as soldiers of freedom—these are the two alternatives...

...Everywhere the doors stay closed, but there is not the slightest reluctance to shout "isolationist" or "ap-peaser" to those who will not be bound by secret covenants, secretly arrived at...

...An ancient Chinese proverb says: 'Good medicine, though bitter, cures one's illness...

...Binder nervously plastered the "few isolationists" who raise questions about Russia, his own paper carried, in its news columns, three items of special interest to students of Russo-American relations.' The first, a cable from "London from the Daily News' own correspondent, featured this headline: RUSSIA PULLED FAST ONE, SAYS BRITISH EDITOR The story quoted at length from an editorial in the Manchester Guardian which criticized Soviet thrusts in the Balkans and strongly implied what many an American felt, too, that the Red Army veered suddenly down the Balkans a fortnight or so ago in order to pave the way for Moscow's control of the area...

...The answer is not clear...