THE TEST FOR MR. TRUMAN
Crawford, Kenneth G.
The Test For Mr. Truman By KENNETH G. CRAWFORD Washington, D. C. IT is a tribute to the sturdiness of American democracy—and a tribute that needs recognizing right now—that President Truman has...
...Diplomatic observers and the press are carefully excluded...
...He is still uncertain...
...Here President Truman hasn't the familiar guideposts to follow...
...She held out for a promise of independence to colonial peoples...
...There has been no disorder and little uncertainty...
...Even his appointments have not disturbed the continuity very much...
...The optimists insist, perhaps with some reason, that the situation is not this bad—that Russia, once she has established her cordon sanitaire in reverse, will cooperate on the level with the United States and Britain...
...Ever since taking office he has been interviewing persons who attended the Yalta Conference and reading written reports from others who should know something about it...
...But Fiume is a minor complication compared with Germany and Austria— and in the future the Far East, whether Russia comes into the Pacific war or stays out...
...Instead of permitting a reorganization of the Polish Government, as specifically agreed, it has frustrated every effort to bring democratic elements from the London Government or from the underground into the Lublin regime...
...Moreover, the Russian Constitution promises democracy sometime and meanwhile the Russian people are getting a fair share of their nation's wealth and enough education to read and write...
...he probably doesn't know just what is in it...
...The new President seems determined to insist upon full performance under the Yalta pledges, insofar as he can find out just what they were and to what extent American influence can be made effective to this end...
...Truman is not even sure what his predecessor's commitments were...
...Japan's defeat cannot be far off...
...Defaulting On Yalta Foreign policy is something else...
...What she seems to be grabbing is most of the Balkans and Eastern Europe, with parts of Western Europe, the Dardanelles, and large pieces of Asia left over for the next snatch...
...She does all this quickly and in a blackout...
...That was a promising beginning and, so far as Fiume is concerned, seemed to work...
...And, besides, maybe she has something on those Poles...
...By announcing that Russian Lend-Lease policy would be reexamined when the present protocol expires and by approving a show of American force at Fiume, when Marshal Tito, Russia's Yugoslav agent, threatened to take it by force in violation of his previous promises to the British, Truman indicated that his line with Russia would be at least firm...
...This pattern has now become familiar all the way from Rumania to Austria...
...In the last analysis, the efficacy of the organization set up at San Francisco will rest on the power and will of the Big 3. It was conceived around a core of Big 3 power and will to peace...
...Insofar as there is any conflict between Russia and the Anglo-American Allies, they assure us, it is a contest between progressive social democracy as represented by the Soviets and wicked capitalist imperialism represented by Churchill and his Washington yes-men...
...After all, the Russians did permit an election in Finland...
...There is just enough half-truth in all this to make it plausible to the wishful...
...The primary purpose of the Joseph E. Davies mission to London and the Harry Hopkins mission to Moscow is to find out more about British and Russian understanding of the Yalta agreements and to get more information about subsequent events stemming from those agreements...
...If they mean anything beyond new faces and energies in Washington, they mean a tightening of Democratic organization control...
...Those who read into them a turn to the left or the right have to strain their perceptions...
...He who has no intention of paying can promise anything...
...Whatever the merits of the governments so established, however persuasive Russia's contention that she must surround herself with friendly neighbors, to establish governments without consultation after agreeing to consult is to play the outlaw in international affairs at the very time when the rest of the world is straining to establish a basis for international law and order...
...Some of the territory grabbed will yield facilities for precisely the kind of industrial products which might otherwise be provided by American industry...
...A Choice Of Imperialisms What seems obvious, in the light of Yalta default, is that Russia is determined to grab everything she can get in Europe with one hand while thi-owing dust in the eyes of her Allies with the other...
...But the fact remains that Britain is still a place where people can say what they think, write what they will, and elect their public officials...
...She raised her voice against the admission of Argentina on the ground that Argentina harbored a Fascist regime...
...Poland under the colonels was an archaic, almost feudal state, and almost anything is an improvement...
...It must be fought by means short of war if civilization is to have a chance...
...The overwhelming weight of public information is that Russia has systematically and deliberately defaulted on the Yalta agreements...
...Neither Britain nor the United States wants or intends to fight Russia...
...the British Empire still practices a pretty tough brand of imperialism, and American oil companies are not lily pure abroad...
...What if thousands become slaves in the process of guaranteeing enough bread for the partially free ? Into this struggle between systems of government and ways of thinking President Truman now finds himself plunged...
...Yet means short of war always threaten to break over into war itself...
...The Russian revolutionary method finds its most avid adherents in this country among tired liberals who tire sick of the struggle for security and freedom and decency—who are willing to throw it all overboard in favor of a dictatorship that will relieve them of responsibility—even of responsibility for thinking...
...Against this background the self-righteous role played by the Russians at San Francisco would have been entertaining farce had it not been so tragically set against the world's aspirations for a permanent peace...
...There will be more shifts of this kind as Democratic Chairman Robert Hannegan spreads out, as he certainly will...
...A Labor Party which takes a poor view of some imperial policies will soon have a chance to make its complaints to the people at the polling places...
...Clark for Biddle was most conspicuously an exchange of the Party regular for the political maverick...
...If the word of one partner is worthless, then the organization becomes useless...
...The British, after all, still have our way of doing these things, of gradually reforming social and economic conditions while at the same time preserving what is good in their system...
...His public statements and his messages to Congress, if less eloquent than Mr...
...The Russian apologists add, with less apparent reason, that Russia has not deliberately broken her word—that she only misunderstood the Yalta settlement...
...President Roosevelt was still improvising in this shifting field, and the new President, either himself or through his Secretary of State, must break his own furrow...
...Even with American goods, they tell us, Russia will need 20 years of peace to build up her war-ravaged economy...
...So far he has not shown his hand...
...There are no safe short cuts...
...It is all one world now, even if nothing makes it so except long range rockets, and there is no escape from the responsibility of trying to make it safe...
...Time will tell whether this is a dangerous tendency, inviting Hardingesque scandal, or a healthy development, pinning down party responsibility...
...Indeed, it has added insult to injury by arresting the Polish underground delegation whose members understood that they were revealing themselves for purposes of negotiation under a firm guarantee of safe conduct...
...If, as seemed apparent, Russia had no intention of paying any heed to her international commitments anyway, her morality was easy virtue...
...The new President made it clear at once that he would carry on, so far as domestic policy was concerned, where the late President left off...
...As between British imperialism and Russian expansion, it may seem at first blush that there is little to chose...
...Roosevelt's mi'vht have been, have nevertheless held firm to the New Deal line...
...She can apparently have both peace and territory, at least for the time being...
...Perhaps that $6,000,000,000 worth of business will shrink a few digits...
...And also, there is that little matter of a proposed $6,000,000,000 credit to Russia, which would make her the best foreign customer of American exporters...
...This has been most effective in softening the American attitude toward Russia on the extreme Right...
...What Truman will do about his foreign policy problem is uncertain...
...Meanwhile, Russia's fifth columns throughout the world, including the United States, set up the diversionary cry that the fascist-inclined American State Department and the imperialistic British Foreign Office are trying by sinister means to frustrate Russia's hope of setting up independent social democracies in Eastern Europe and the Balkans...
...How Truman handles his foreign relations will be the test of his Administration and probably of several administrations after his...
...With the exception of England, it is doubtful whether any nation in the world could have made the transition of the last 100 days as smoothly if left leaderless in similar circumstances...
...Russia took the moral lead...
...Russia's Mission At the same time, the Russians have gone on, contrary both to the Yalta and to previous agreements, setting up their own governments in so-called liberated nations without even a pretense of consultation with their Allies...
...The weakness in this reasoning is that Russia's grabbing up to now has not involved her in war with her Allies and doesn't threaten to...
...In the countries grabbed, she not only sets up puppet governments, but takes out the humans she wants for forced labor in Russia and executes troublesome opposition leaders, whether Fascists or Social Democrats...
...What does it matter how many pjople lose the right to speak, think, and work freely...
...Germany, the common enemy, has been beaten...
...But the struggle between democracy and totalitarianism will go on...
...The Russian excuse that these Poles have been guilty of dangerous military activity behind the Russian lines seems on its face too fantastic to be taken seriously...
...He wants Government reorganization, extension of the social security system, continuation of price control, tariff adjustment by executive action, and other measures Roosevelt would have wanted...
...Truman By KENNETH G. CRAWFORD Washington, D. C. IT is a tribute to the sturdiness of American democracy—and a tribute that needs recognizing right now—that President Truman has been able to take hold of the controls of government in time of crisis and carry on almost as though nothing had happened to the master operator...
Vol. 9 • June 1945 • No. 23
