THE WRONG ROAD
The Wrong Road SOVIET Russia's denunciation of her 4-year-old neutrality pact with Imperial Japan has rightly been acclaimed in America and throughout the Allied world as a heartening indication...
...Now, however, he has shifted his ground for reasons we are not privileged to know...
...The newspapers, which normally believe "firsts" make news, made no point of it in briefly reporting the incident, but the corporal is the first Nisei soldier in uniform to become a target for a civilian...
...The French network of alliances, buffer states, and special spheres gave her a false sense of safety and lulled her into a fraudulent feeling of impregnability behind the Maginot Line...
...And most of all, The Progressive wants to reassert its conviction that no peace settlement can last, no matter how towering the structure of spheres of influence and buffer states, if it is based on a foundation of hatred, imperialism, excessive reparations, and the old social and economic dislocations which are part of the status quo the Big 3 seem determined to maintain...
...The Progressive is more than ever convinced that a harsh peace for the German people will be a soft peace for the Nazis or their successors, since it will provide them with the same appeal to desperation that gave Hitler his start...
...No American soldier, whether Negro, Nisei, or of other minority ancestry, should have to live in a foxhole in his own land...
...And while the Army is about it, it might announce that this policy is also meant to apply in the South, where Negro soldiers have not been safe from the terrorism of white supremacists...
...The Wrong Road SOVIET Russia's denunciation of her 4-year-old neutrality pact with Imperial Japan has rightly been acclaimed in America and throughout the Allied world as a heartening indication that the Big 3 may yet be as united in the war against Japan as they are in the struggle against Nazi Germany...
...This brings us to a second objection to current Soviet policy, and here, too, the analogy with France of a quarter of a century ago is painfully clear...
...One dark night recently some night-riding patriot fired a rifle into a house Kawamoto was visiting near Madera, Calif...
...The strength of the Red Army lies in the fact that it does not and cannot entertain racial hatred for other peoples, that it has been brought up in the spirit of respect for the rights of other peoples...
...The Progressive, which fought for recognition of Russia when the Messrs...
...Since none of the basic problems of Europe was solved by Versailles, the whole system exploded in disaster when Nazi Cermany rose to challenge the old order...
...Stalin was on unassailable ground when he took this long-range view, and The Progressive was among the first to applaud his position...
...IT was only two years ago that Stalin enunciated a far sounder and more statesmanlike policy when he announced that it was a Soviet aim to help rebuild Germany when the war was over and give her people an opportunity to build a sound, strong economy which would enable a democratic Reich to take her place in the family of nations...
...OUR current concern with Soviet policy is based on the conviction that the Kremlin is pursuing a course which can give her only a false and treacherous security and ultimately plunge the world into a new war when the scars of the present war have healed a bit...
...The bullet failed to come close to him, but another shot struck within 6 inches of his brother-in-law, Minoru Ohasi, an honorably discharged Nisei veteran with service in Italy...
...Harriman, Stettinius, and Lamont were still hurling stench bombs at Stalin from their Wall Street foxholes, is convinced that a straight-from-the-shoulder exchange of views and a cards-above-the-table method of dealing alone can make for enduring cooperation...
...The Progressive still believes that it is not a question of what Germany deserves, but what the rest of us can afford as we build for the future...
...History shows that Hitlers come and Hitlers go, but the German people and the German state remain...
...France, and the world with her, are paying an awful price for this shortsighted reliance on a harsh peace, and yet today Soviet spokesmen are vying with the hate cult in Britain and America in demanding the dismemberment of Germany, the enslavement of millions of Germans to meet the bill of "reparations in kind," and in refusing to distinguish between the Nazi gangsters and the masses of the German people...
...Quite apart from the military considerations, which are still largely guesswork since the Moscow-Tokyo agreement has a year yet to run, the Kremlin's action is bound to have a salutary effect in making for better understanding between the people of the United States, who have borne the brunt of the war against Japan almost single-handedly, and the people of Russia, who have paid a frightful price in the war against Hitlerism...
...The War Relocation Authority, through its director, Dillon S. Myer, asked the War Department to investigate and determine what action it will take to aid California and local law enforcement officials...
...But so was France's after World War I, and Russia today is pursuing the same illusory course of developing spheres of influence and surrounding herself with satellite nations that France took in her quest for peace and security...
...Night Riders At Madera CORPORAL Y. A. KAWAMOTO has good reason to wonder why he fights...
...But lasting friendship and genuine cooperation cannot be built on a patchwork of compromises, evasion of basic issues, or an attitude of whimpering endorsement of every pronouncement that comes out of the Kremlin or every editorial that turns up in the controlled Soviet press...
...It would be ridiculous to identify Hitler's clique with the German people and the German state," he said then...
...The French insisted on dismembering Germany, saddling the young republic with impossible reparations, and denying the Reich an opportunity to build a sound economy which could have stood as a bulwark against upstart Hitlerism...
...That there will be urgent need for friendship and cooperation between Russia and the United States when the war ends is clear to anyone who ponders the realities of our time and who recognizes the simple fact that these two nations will emerge from the present holocaust incomparably the greatest powers on earth...
...The WRA, it is reported, also believes the Army should issue a public declaration stating that the uniform of the Army of the United States must be respected no matter what the race, creed, or color of the wearer...
...Anything less is fawning, fraudulent, hypocritical, and thus obviously cannot last...
...Two Russian policies illustrate our point...
...The Soviet Union's desire and need for a long period of peace is unchallenged...
...A War Department statement of policy of this kind would help if reinforced by a similar accompanying declaration from the Army's Western Defense Command...
Vol. 9 • April 1945 • No. 16
