THE BASIC QUESTION

...Now that the election is over, it is more important than ever that America call upon the peoples of all countries to unite now behind an international program worth fighting for...

...He wrote himself a piece quoting a letter from the late Wendell L. Will-kie, in which the latter expressed concern over the possibility that "isolationist" Bob La Follette might become chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee...

...Both people are, as it happens, near the lowest ebb of their strength...

...The Chinese are exhausted by seven adverse years of war, while the Indians, sullen, defeated, and torn by their sectarian divisions, have rarely felt, in their long struggle for freedom, so helpless and apathetic...

...Frederick Kuh, crack London correspondent for the Marshall Field newspapers, cabled last week that in progressive political circles in England "there is a growing uneasiness that the present 'fashionable' detraction of China is paving the way for new imperialism in the Far East though it may differ from the old...

...In other words, the world organization conceived at Dumbarton Oaks would amount to little more than a reactionary force dedicated to the single proposition of coercing acceptance of an imperial, anti-democratic status quo around the world unless there is an affirmative policy which "aims genuinely at the political freedom and social welfare of the colonial peoples of the region...

...Our Government must assert, to use Bob La Follette's language, "an affirmative faith in freedom and democracy so great that the voice of the American people will be as effective in the councils of the world as our armies on the battlefields and our productive genius on the farms and in the factories...

...This is precisely what Bob La Follette had in mind in his article in the Oct...

...Reporting on the complaints of the Chinese that the "Western Allies have done singularly little to help," and on the concern of India over her chances of freedom, the New Statesman said : "The feelings of Indians and Chinese are relevant factors in the strategical problem, which leaders of insight and imagination would not ignore...

...La Follette openly crossed swords with the Administration, he was not only taking a leaf out of the book of his late father . . . but in the view of competent observers here, he was also following his own convictions and his own political astuteness...

...The Basic Question THE current political explosion in China, which Harry Paxton Howard analyzes in his frontpage article this week, has served to raise afresh the basic question of Allied peace aims in the Orient...

...16 issue of The Progressive, "America Must Speak Up Now," when he warned that the fruits of victory will wither in our hands if we compromise on basic principles and allow power politics and imperialism to dictate the peace settlement...

...There has been no evidence so far that either Mr...

...On the opposite page, for those who hated the Elder La Follette and still regard him as a member of that "isolationist, wilful few," PM has an opposite slant—Bob is taking "a leaf out of the book of his late father...

...A Perfect Example NEW YORK'S nervous tabloid, PM, was chosen recently by the Washington newspaper correspondents to rank with the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald as the papers which most distort the news to make it fit their editorial opinions...

...The editors of the New Statesman summed up the problem of the Orient with a forthrightness that one does not often encounter in the liberal press of America...

...ASIGNIFICANT editorial in the London New Statesman and Nation, written prior to the Ch'iang-Stilwell episode, warns that the lack of a 6>mocratic, anti-imperialist program for Asia may not only cost us dearly in support and prestige in the Orient, but may also "destroy the unity of the Great Powers' Council before there is a chance to develop it into the representative Authority which the world needs...

...The current issue of the London Weekly Tribune expresses this concern when it warns of "signs that the great Western Powers are looking on China as an object for 'arrangements' among themselves in the postwar period, especially if there should be a renewal of civil war—as is only too probable—and that some kind of a division into spheres of influence might be contemplated...

...On one page, PM plays for the admirers of the late Robert Marion La Follette, Sr., by sneering at the contrast of Bob, Jr., "with the power and principles of his father...

...Churchill or Mr...

...In Great Britain, where progressive forces are less bemused by the prospect of playing power politics than are the liberals of this country, there is mounting concern that the present policy of "getting tough" with China may presage a rebirth of the traditional Western program of keeping China weak and divided—an easy prey for imperial exploitation...

...PM's editor, John P. Lewis, promptly proceeded to live up to PM's new ranking...

...Neither of them has said or done anything that suggests a wish to win the trust of the Asiatic peoples...

...Roosevelt is aware of this problem of leadership...

...IN the light of this background, and at a time when the outlines of the security organization fashioned at Dumbarton Oaks were being announced, the New Statesman, a fervent believer in effective world organization, offered the melancholy judgment that "it is only too easy to interpret the pattern of power that seems to be emerging from the*Dumbarton Oaks Conference in an imperialistic sense...

...But unless these two nations—and, with them, the other peoples of Southeast Asia—can be induced to feel that our coming victory over Japan is also theirs, it will not bring to Asia the stimulus anrl the hope it ought to bestow...

...Catledge on Page 5 "When Sen...

...Lewis's story, appearing on Page 4, leaned heavily on a story written last May by Turner Catledge for the New York Times, a photostatic copy of which PM carried on Page 5 of the same issue, with this result: Lewis on Page 4 "La Follette, I am told still more recently by those who see Wisconsin politics from the inside, cuts a pathetic figure these days in contrast with the power and principles of his father...

...There you have it—a perfect example of what the Washington correspondents, trained to detect and expose frauds, fakes, and phonies, meant when they lumped PM with the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald as the most unreliable newspapers in the land...

...Thus, on one page of PM, Bob La Follette is portrayed as a "pathetic figure," and on the opposite page, Bob La Follette is presented as a man of "political astuteness" who isn't afraid to "cross swords openly with the Administration...