THE GREAT DUMBARTON HOAX

...The German and Japanese peoples are expected to surrender without even knowing what peace terms will be imposed on them...

...It is precise enough to serve as a very effective moral yardstick for the peace to come...

...License For Aggression But the claim of the Dumbarton Oaks conference* to be taken seriously as an experiment in establishing world security was vitiated from the very beginning by the adoption of the principle that force to restrain aggression could only be used by the unanimous agreement of the "Big Four...

...Congress Must Stand Alert Inasmuch as coalitions are always formed against strength, not against weakness, it seems most unlikely that the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union will be tightly bound together for all time by the common idea of holding bombs ready to drop on a Ger-"-many and Japan that will be reduced to complete military impotence if even the mildest of the postwar plans for dealing with them are put into effect...

...Just in what quarter of the world does he see the signs of "a lasting, liberal, democratic peace that will not be unfair to any nation, great or small...

...Only China, condemned to the prospect of being an aggressee, rather than an aggressor, by its lack of capacity to produce airplanes, tanks, and other efficient lethal weapons, put in a suggestion that "a party to a dispute, whether or not a permanent member of the council, shall have no right to vote in any decision relating to the dispute...

...Will these peoples really have the chance, assured them under the Charter, "to live out their lives in freedom from want and fear" ? The omens can scarcely be described as encouraging...

...It ought to be debated on its merits, or demerits, on this basis, without any befuddling and misleading phrases about world security...

...The Soviet veto would have prevented any collective action against the aggressor at that time...

...What is emerging is not any plan that will promote either the security of the world or the security of the United States...

...Nor can it be taken to exclude Indians, Burmese, Indonesians, Malayans, Annamites, and Tonkinese...

...At that time the Soviet Union had concluded the treaty of non-aggression with Germany that soon turned into a pact of mutual aggression against Poland...

...Will it remain a rare monument of fraudulent hypocrisy, or will there be a serious ef-: fort to embody its ideas in the postwar settlement ? The time for a decisive answer to this question is growing very short...

...Hitler was a product of the breakdown of German democracy...

...The Versailles Treaty, to put it mildly, was not an aid to the successful functioning of this democracy...

...And during the twenties the great majority of the German people rejected the "stab in the back" legend of the nationalist fanatics...

...Atlantic Charter Betrayed The time is approaching when the relevance of the Atlantic Charter to the peace settlement will be put to the acid test of fact...

...The Great Dumbarton Hoax By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN ONE of the most conspicuous weaknesses of the American people in discussing international affairs is the tendency to confuse pleasant words and phrases with hard facts...

...What is coming out of the secluded discussions in the old Georgetown mansion is a power politics coalition of the crudest kind...

...There have apparently been minor differences of opinion among the participants in the conference...

...annexation of overwhelmingly German regions by foreign powers, the artificial partitioning of Germany, the destruction of the industry upon which millions of Germans depend for livelihood would prevent the emergence of a super-Hitler is not exactly convincing...

...These details should be carefully examined from the standpoint of whether they make for enduring peace and whether they accord with such ideals of American foreign policy as refusal to recognize territorial changes brought about by force...

...How little the Dumbarton Oaks formula would add to world security is obvious if one considers how it would have worked in September, 1939...

...Another aspect of the Great Dumbarton Hoax is the attempt to impose on the United States Congress the same terms of Unconditional Surrender that have been proclaimed for the Axis, and that have certainly contributed to the prolongation of the war...

...This is not surprising, in view of Stalin's record as a swallower of small nations up to date, with Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia already in the capacious maw of the Soviet Union and what is left of Poland, Finland, and Rumania, together with several other countries in eastern and southeastern Europe, marked out as dependent satellites...

...It is only in the light of this weakness that one can understand the possible temporary success, in hoodwinking public opinion, of the solemn farce of creating an alleged international security scheme at Dumbarton Oaks...

...If the American people are not to be drawn into a scheme for world domination fantastically different from the picture of the brave new postwar world painted by our poetic interventionists the resistance must come from an independent upsurge of popular feeling, along non-partisan lines...

...The American and British delegations have shown a little more surface consideration for the rights of small nations than the Russian...

...But, as Louis Fischer pertinently remarks in a'recent issue of The Nation: "This deviation was put down to Chinese ignorance of Western civilization...

...Is it perhaps in India, where conditions shocked a conservative diplomatic observer like William Phillips...

...There have been shyster lawyer attempts to represent it as inapplicable to this or that or the other nation...

...The main responsibility for the unsatisfactory peace outlook must rest with the man who has possessed the power and responsibility of directing American foreign policy...

...Inasmuch as it would be difficult to conceive of a government pronouncing itself an aggressor, this unanimity rule is a license to unlimited aggression on the part of the only three powers which, after the present war, will be in a position to launch large scale hostilities, the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union...

...Is it in hungry, desperate Italy, where it is a matter of general agreement that the armistice terms are so ruthless that no Italian Government could survive their publication ? Is it in Finland, that small democracy so glowingly hailed by Roosevelt and Churchill in 1940, now forced to cede to Russia an area near its capital that disrupts its communications and food supply...

...Many intelligent and educated Americans apparently still believe that we have been fighting for the Atlantic Charter and the Four Freedoms, blissfully unconscious of the ever widening abyss between these ideals and the smash-and-grab realities of the peace settlement that is already in the making...

...Vice President Wallace in a recent speech expressed the view that Roosevelt is better qualified than Dewey to "cooperate with Churchill, Stalin, and the Generalissimo in writing a lasting, liberal, democratic peace which will best preserve American interests without being unfair to any nation, big or small...

...It is a design by three major powers, with a fourth given courtesy inclusion, for domination of the world...

...A far more brutal, revengeful, and cynical peace than that of Versailles is in the making, supported by some extremely bad history and bad logic...

...Myths are being circulated, with high official'sanction, to the effect that Versailles was a "soft peace," that the Germans "did not know they were beaten" in the last war...

...In the same way the American Congress is supposed to ratify a bogus world security scheme without being informed as to what kind of peace settlement will be made, what sort of territorial, economic, and other settlements America will be obligated to underwrite...

...There is no such assurance in the blueprint of Big Three dictatorship which has been taking shape...

...Surely America is making no contribution to its own or to world security by entering into a compact that could be so easily and cynically nullified...

...It is hard to see on what basis Poles, Finns, Letts, Estonians, and Lithuanians could be excluded from this category...

...All the men in all the lands" is a phrase that certainly includes Germans, Japanese, and Italians...

...Any scheme that supposedly advances the cause of peace and international security is eagerly and uncritically accepted by many people, without any serious investigation of the validity of its credentials...

...Stalin's name, and Churchill's, as well as Roosevelt's are signed to the principles of the Charter, As late as the present year America's allegiance to the Charter was reaffirmed by such authoritative sources as Secretary Hull, the national platform of the Democratic Party and President Roosevelt, in his acceptance speech...

...But Dewey offers no genuine challenge in the field of foreign policy...

...Roosevelt's acquaintance and contact with Churchill and Stalin have been singularly unproductive as yet in obtaining from Great Britain and the Soviet Union the smallest sacrifice of nationalist and imperialist interests for a just and enduring peace...

...It must be made effective by the mass protest of Americans who know that true peace cannot be achieved by selfish and exclusive alliances, who will not sanction the underwriting by the American Government of a settlement that dishonors and violates American ideals of right, justice, and liberty...

...This design is not mitigated either by any code of international law, to which the participants must conform, or by any compulsory arbitration procedures, or by any automatic definition of aggression...

...Gromyko as "Andrei...

...There must be a sincere effort to determine whether there is harmony with the war aims to which President Roosevelt committed this country in the Atlantic Charter, self-determination of peoples, equality of economic opportunity for all states, "great or small, victor or vanquished" in the matter of access, on equal terms, to the trade and raw materials of the world, a peace "which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want...

...The phrasing of that question raises the question whether the Vice President reads the newspapers or is aware of the obvious hard facts of international life...

...It is to be hoped that the American Congress will not allow itself to be placed in the category of a defeated enemy and will refuse to give any consideration to the so-called security scheme until all the details of the European settlement, at least, are known...

...The theory that a^uper-Versailles, with such features as the...

...Is it in Poland, more and more clearly designated as the victim of a "made-in Moscow" puppet regime...

...But the plain wording of the Charter dispels both these impressions...

...Anyone who was in Germany immediately after the last war knows that despair, defeatism, despondency were at a high pitch...

...The solemnity has been relieved, if one may trust some bootleg news reports, by the antics of Mr...

...The Great Dumbarton Hoax, as a scheme of world security, is far inferior to the imperfect pattern of the League of Nations...

...As the last election was a round of insincere shadow-boxing on the issue of involvement in the war, with both candidates saying one thing and meaning something else,, the present election shows all too many signs of shadow-boxing on the issue of peace, with all the hard fundamental questions carefully dodged by both candidates...

...Apologists for a peace of spoils and vengeance, a peace that will rivet the chains of imperialism on peoples who wish to be free, that will deprive of their liberty many of the European small peoples who acquired national independence after the last war, like to represent the Atlantic Charter as something vague and in^ capable of precise realization...

...The League assured its members protection of territorial integrity and independence against external aggression...

...We must free ourselves from the slavery of semantics and examine every plan for "peace" and "security" on the basis of its substance, not of its phraseology...

...Stet-tinius, who felt that he was advancing the cause of international amity by addressing the slightly scandalized Sir Alexander Cadogan as "Alex" and the distinctly bored Mr...