TIME TO TELL THE TRUTH
Rubin, Morris H.
Time To Tell The Truth By MORRIS H. RUBIN (Editor Of The Progressive) IT IS TIME to rip to shreds the curtain of secrecy which conceals American war aims from the American people. It is time for...
...More than a year after Mussolini fled for his life and Italy capitulated, the people are kept in total ignorance about the terms of that armistice...
...We Americans can promote motor cars and refrigerators marvelously...
...If this ignorance of a" free people is allowed to continue, if the officials of our Government permit or encourage this unfortunate state of affairs where not absolutely essential to military security, we shall find ourselves a disunited people who will but add to a confusion worse confounded among the other nations of the earth when the last shot is fired...
...Herbert L. Matthews, the highly regarded Rome correspondent for the New York Times, wirelessed last week that American representatives in the Balkans and the Mediterranean area are operating without direction from Washington, without a coordinated program, and without cooperation from such major agencies as the Foreign Economic Administration and the State Department...
...Neither OWI broadcasts, nor any other governmental information agency, is really reaching the French people...
...They wanted to make Italy an accepted, working member of a Western community of nations...
...They are turning to Russia...
...second, they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned...
...Our continued insistence on Unconditional Surrender and our announced determination to dismember Germany have clearly played into Nazi hands and enabled Hitler, Goebbels & Company to whip the German Army into a far more formidable fighting machine than it was several months ago...
...There is probably not one liberated country in Europe," he reported the other day, "where the United States is getting a fraction of the credit for its share in the war—chiefly because we fall down so inexcusably on the job of informing Europeans about what we have done and why...
...The occasional comments from the State Department, which appear to, but actually do not, disavow the imperialist policies of our Allies, have only served to bewilder the people more...
...It is time to redeem our democracy—so long in hock under the guise of wartime emergency...
...Their determination to fight the war through to a successful conclusion, to reject all compromise with the forces of Fascism, and to salvage a just and workable peace from the mud and blood of the battlefield is as firm as ever...
...For us the significance of this turn is not simply that Italy is 'going Communist,' or that Italy is rejecting the forms of democracy as we know it...
...We had forgotten a very important thing about ourselves and our country: America is still an idea...
...Stowe's question goes to the very heart of the problem...
...ONE more example—this one from France—adds a significant chapter to the story...
...After two decades of Fascism and the ravages of a losing war, Italy at best could hardly have adopted and sustained an all-out democracy on our exact model...
...AFULL year after the momentous conference at Teheran—where the Messrs...
...Fresh from an extended tour of liberated Italy, Osborne confirmed what many,an American has long suspected—that by-playing the tail to Britain's imperial kite, we have lost ground greatly with the Italians and have succeeded thus far only in driving many Italians into Communist arms...
...Quite apart from the actual determination of the boundary dispute itself—which has deep-going ethnic, geographical, political, and historical roots—it is obvious that the decision to give Russia a chunk of Poland, without resort to a plebiscite of any kind, violates the first three pledges of the Atlantic Charter: "First, their [the signatories to the Atlantic Charter] countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other...
...There was a time when a sufficient momentum of incentive to carry on this bloody war had not been developed in the thinking of some of our people, and our leaders desired to inspire the American people with a vision of the kind of world for which they were being called upon to pour out their last measure of devotion...
...It still is...
...All excuses that the terms of the armistice must be kept secret for reasons of military security have long since lost whatever validity they may once have had, and yet we are still not privileged to know what political commitments we have made...
...The"* British, through Churchill, Eden, and Bevin, express pained surprise whenever Americans show they are shocked by the course of political events in Europe, but they seem not to realize that the feeling of shock and disillusionment is based not so much on innocence as on ignorance—an ignorance which the Roosevelt Administration has maintained by its policy of secret diplomacy, its policy of giving lip-service to the Atlantic Charter while secretly acquiescing in the emasculation of that Charter...
...John Osborne came back from Italy convinced that there is...
...It is time for President Roosevelt to break his long silence and discuss freely and frankly the commitments our, Government has made with other powers...
...John Osborne, a senior editor for Time, told an even more melancholy story in Life recently...
...The result is that the United States is furnishing almost all the material and money, but is not directing their use," he reported...
...Unfortunately, the very raising of this issue in question draws the unmerited and unjustified charge that honest and sincere criticism, questioning, or expression of concern fosters disunity at home and abroad, increases the danger of a separate peace by our Allies, violates the necessities for military security and secrecy, interferes with the war effort, aids arid comforts the enemy, or encourages the acceptance of a soft peace, when as a matter of fact this is an issue of life and death for America and the peoples of the world...
...These charges might have been true at a time when military considerations alone were determining our hope of survival, but we have now reached the place in the conduct of the war where the mightiest political, and hence military, weapons in our possession— our peace aims—have been effectively silenced...
...But America has failed to make that idea intelligible to persons who hunger to know and understand—and to translate that idea into action in their own countries...
...And our continued acquiescence in the imperial designs and territorial grabs of our Allies not only robs us of a moral weapon of warfare, but provides a treacherous foundation for the peace...
...But, as he wrote in Life, "the sound was there...
...Reluctantly, "but unmistakably," Osborne noted, the Italian people are "turning away from us...
...Why can't we sell ideas...
...Leland Stowe, noted war correspondent, cabled to his American papers that not only was the United States silent on democratic peace aims, but was actually mute on this nation's fantastic contribution to the war effort...
...They are equally ignorant that rationing exists in the U. S., that our people are really making sacrifices, that our war costs are terrific, that our taxes will be terrific for many years...
...When Secretary of State Stet-tinius issues a statement indicating we do not entirely approve Britain's high-handed methods in Italy, and British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden retorts that "the British Government has a perfect right" to do what it is doing, the average American can only wonder why he isn't allowed to know, at this late date, the terms of the Italian armistice out of which the whole dispute arises...
...GUY GILLETTE, Iowa Democrat, who recently made a fruitless run for reelection at the Presi- ¦ dent's request and is shortly to be rewarded with the chairmanship of the Surplus War Property Disposal Board, could not refrain from expressing what is in the hearts and minds of countless Americans when he took the floor of the Senate the other day...
...The continued resort to secret diplomacy is having serious effect on the nation's morale, and unless bold action is taken soon, the result can only be a tragic prolongation of the war...
...In this week of Christmas, when the universal longing for peace finds dramatic expression in the very spirit and meaning of the holiday, countless Americans are trying earnestly to break through the fog of secrecy and diplomatic double-talk to determine whither they are drifting...
...The recent development over Poland (See the War in Review, Page 2) is a clear case in point...
...The one crucial issue America now confronts," he said, "is whether we can make and keep this war worth the winning...
...But the startling events of the past few weeks have convinced many an American that our political and psychological conduct of the war is not only needlessly delaying the end, but is also endangering the hope for enduring peace...
...The first step for the Administration is to begin now to tell the truth—to reveal to the people of this democracy the whole story of our secret diplomacy thus far...
...It is time, in short, to tell the truth...
...and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them...
...He, like every informed American in Europe, is worried because we have not heard "the sound of a belief in America and the American idea...
...If the present trend in international affairs continues, the military victory which is certain to be ours will be lost politically...
...Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill met for the first time—the people are still in the dark on the decisions reached...
...But we have bungled opportunity after opportunity, Osborne wrote...
...Gillette, a supporter of the Dumbarton Oaks security scheme and a militant advocate of the proposal to abandon the requirement for a two-thirds vote of the Senate for treaty ratification, was nevertheless disturbed enough by the tragic turn of recent events to demand in the Senate that the Administra-tion end its present policy of secret diplomacy...
...The proof is that the French are staggeringly ignorant about what America has contributed toward winning the war...
...But it is a tragic truth that just in proportion as we as a nation have moved from relative weakness to strength as a military machine these original ideals have either been obscured or discarded...
...SEN...
...The average Frenchman does not know anything about Lend-Lease, either...
...Is there still time...
...Most of the information which reaches Americans on their Government's foreign policies comes from foreign sources—London, Paris, Rome, and Moscow...
...Sen...
...EVERYWHERE, and especially in liberated Europe where American influence and American principles should be charting the road to a democratic peace, the story is the same...
...The belief was there...
...third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live...
...Why can't we promote good will...
...Regardless of the merits of the various controversies now raging in Allied circles—over Greece, Italy, Poland, Belgium, and France—one fact emerges with painful clarity—that the United States has no clear-cut program of action, no democratic alternative to the power politics and imperialism now so much in vogue again...
...Osborne sounded an urgent note in his Life article-The great majority of Italians wanted to be our friends-"With a longing which people who have always had freedom can never quite understand, they wanted freedom...
...Deep as my own convictions are that a genuinely international organization must be established to promote justice and peace among the nations when the fighting ceases, America is now confronted with the question of whether our contribution to this cause is to be continued on the basis of an imperfect or re-, stricted knowledge of the facts for our people...
...We now confront a situation where the American people themselves are no longer sure of the goal for which they are fighting...
...The next step must be to fashion now—while there is still time—an affirmative, democratic American foreign policy which will appeal to freedom-loving people everywhere—those who want no part of imperialism or totalitarianism, whether of the right or the left...
...The meaning for us is that the Italians are losing their confidence in us and the democratic spirit...
Vol. 8 • December 1944 • No. 52
