THE EDITOR RESERVES THE LAST COLUMN
The Last Column ONE of the dreariest developments of the past year or so has been the appearance of«an almost brutal cynicism in the ranks of tired liberals and erstwhile crusaders. Every...
...Winston Churchill once said, "Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace, and those who could make a good peace would ever have won the war...
...Winston Churchill himself started it in May when he conceded the war was becoming less and less ideological...
...Dorothy Thompson summed up the situation most succinctly the other day when she observed that "aS the war approaches its end, it becomes a naked struggle for power and position, as between the Allies...
...I have never expected that the War would result in an extension of freedom and a widening of the area of political and economic democracy, and yet I have been shocked again and again by the betrayal of the most elementary principles of justice...
...This new "realism"—which is only a kindly way of expressing surrender of principle—originates directly in government itself and is embraced with almost pathetic eagerness by those who have grown tired of the struggle for justice and find salve for their surrender in the thought that they have become stern "realists...
...Every renouncement of just and honorable peace aims, every betrayal of the Atlantic Charter, and every defiling of the Four Freedoms is shrugged away with the weary comment that we must be "realistic...
...Churchill only served as official confirmation of what had long been apparent to those with first-class sources of information...
...Tut, tut, child," said Lewis Carroll's Duchess to Alice, "everything's got a moral if only you can find it...
...They shrug their shoulders when I object to the abandonment of ideology...
...Much of what I've said here is based, I suppose, on personal reactions...
...The anti-imperialist who wanted to rid the world of exploitation and absentee ownership has now become the "realist" who sticks pins on the map to show what bases we must keep 10,000 miles from home to "protect our shores...
...Churchill thought warmakers could not make good peacemakers—they have exhausted themselves and have become so engrossed in short-range planning that they can no longer take a larger...
...On the other hand, some friends of mine who were for war from the beginning and talked so lyrically of liberation and freedom, are callous beyond description to unfolding developments...
...Churchill, I would put it this way: Those with war fever who were full of crusading zeal and bursting with ideals at the outset should not be setting the ideological pace as the war nears its end and peace approaches, whereas those who were reserved about the war's objectives and disinclined to see Utopia at the end of a road of mangled bodies might be better equipped to salvage some justice from the holocaust...
...If I might paraphrase this wonderfully shrewd comment by Mr...
...Now the abandonment of principles and ideals has become a subject for discussion by "respectable" citizens as well...
...Now they are "realists...
...Naked Struggle For Power' This burst of candor from Mr...
...longer view...
...The crusader who wanted to free Poland, Norway, and the other small nations from Hitler's brutal grip is now resigned to Russian domination of virtually all the small nations of eastern and central Europe...
...But those who went into the conflict with their eyes open, totally unconvinced that it would result in the establishment of the Four Freedoms "everywhere in the world"—they are far less bruised by betrayal, far less bemused by official dogma, and thus, far more prepared to fight at least a rearguard action against the disciples of naked power...
...Statements like Miss Thompson's and Daniell's no longer shock the ex-liberals and erstwhile crusaders...
...Foe somewhat the same reason that Mr...
...Why...
...The liberal who wanted America in the war because "militarism must be destroyed" is now reconciled to permanent peacetime conscription even for America...
...They, the original "this war is a crusade" school, object loudly and "realistically" When I, who was so cynical about war's achievements, want to salvage a crumb or two from their late crusade...
...In addition, the crusader who is tricked and betrayed becomes a frustrated, cynical ','realist".—too beaten and tired to utter more than a recurring "me too" to what his war government says and does...
...I was opposed to American intervention in war until war was thrust upon us...
...And from London, Raymond Daniell, the able and quite impeccable chief of the New York Times' British bureau, cabled this revealing dispatch this month: "What is emerging as the smoke of battle dies away and the hope of peace draws nearer fulfillment is the old familiar power politics in which the smaller nations are asked to place their faith in benign force rather than in law and justice...
...For a time it was only the incorrigible cranks like the editors and writers of The Progressive who were croaking publicly about the Jack of meaningful, democratic peace aims...
...The fact that the war itself has degenerated into a sheer struggle for power and preferment is both the source and the keynote of the new realism...
...They're realists now themselves and a little bit ashamed, it seems, of their old idealism...
...M.H.R...
Vol. 8 • October 1944 • No. 43
