ONE WORLD BUT MANY BARRIERS
Holmes, John Haynes
One World But Many Barriers Bv JOHN HAYNES HOLMES THE American Civil Liberties Union has been pressing upon the San Francisco Conference the importance of free international communications. The...
...But they told a story strangely unreal...
...Yet Russia is our ally in arms, and our colleague in conference...
...and freedom means communication of mind and tongue and pen as open as the wide spaces of the air...
...This condition is that at present we have pretty much of a closed world—closed not only from without but from within...
...Apart from the Russian newspaper men, all were free to tell the real story of San Francisco...
...White had a right to make his report on Russia, whatever it was, and submit it to the consideration of his readers...
...If we are to have peace, then barriers must come down—the barriers interfering with the free and open interchange of ideas as well as of goods and services...
...The result on both sides is a vacuum into which rush curiosity, suspicion, prejudice, fear, hostility—all the devils of confusion and perversity which sooner or later provoke the hell of war...
...If ever outside of Nazi Germany a book was burned, this book is Report on the Russians...
...Wherever Russian arms have gone, light has been blotted out...
...But it is also a condition under which alone peace can be maintained between the nations of the earth...
...It is not impossible that the San Francisco Conference may take action to the end of recording at least a judgment that the peoples of all countries should be free to listen to broadcasts, to see movies, and to read newspapers, magazines, and books...
...It is not only a system of government, a tradition of international habit, which we face, but our own minds and their adequacy for the task of freedom...
...But not until we are ourselves free as men and citizens are we going to get anywhere...
...Are journalists, radio commentators, news photographers, ready to practise the freedom of which they prate so much...
...Why talk about the establishment of free international communications when the very communications long since established here at home are denied by those who should understand them best and cherish them most...
...Poor Conditions For Peace Into these countries no photographers, reporters or observers of any kind are allowed to enter...
...If we are to live at peace, it must be in freedom...
...Reporting From San Francisco One more illustration—this time the San Francisco Conference...
...I am thinking at the moment of the treatment accorded to Mr...
...Thus only can this world be made truly "one world...
...The blackout is complete...
...White's own professional colleagues, many of them, who may be presumed to have some concern for freedom of the press—the right of any man to say his say, and therefore to publish...
...This would seem to be elementary in a democracy...
...England, America, France, the Scandinavian countries, know nothing of what is going on in the Soviet Republic and her tributary states...
...Here was plenty of free communication...
...That peace can be maintained under such conditions is of course impossible...
...How much do we know today about these far-flung areas of the world's life...
...Are we fit to use it...
...In raising this question, I am not thinking of the technical efficiency of the reporters' work...
...If ever in the realm of freedom a man was lynched, this man is Mr...
...In all fairness, it should be said that what is true here of Russia, is true also of other states...
...Even government officials of Allied countries are banned...
...What is going on in these vast territories of eastern and central Europe nobody knows, except only the authorities in Moscow...
...Travel into and out of these densely populated regions is forbidden, except under the strictest limitations...
...When was there ever a more inadequate piece of reporting than that done at San Francisco by the representatives of the press...
...This is an elementary human right —the extension to the international field of those basic liberties long since established in the world's democracies...
...Free communication is a noble theory...
...The Russian people, on the other hand, thanks to the totalitarian control of every medium of information, know nothing of what is going on beyond their borders, except only what the Kremlin wants them to know, or to believe, for reasons of its own...
...So far as the dissemination of information is concerned, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Albania, no longer exist at all...
...The question of free communications, in other words, has a practical as well as an ideal side...
...He has not only courteously acknowledged their receipt, but has gone out of his way, so to speak, to express his interest in and sympathy with their purposes...
...But not today...
...There was never a time, after the opening public sessions, with, their flapdoodle speeches, when the conference was not wrapped in gloom...
...Was it succeeding or failing...
...It is not only a matter of principle, of freedom among men, but it is quite as much a matter of expediency...
...Here they are in effect, in the attempted denial of the right of free thought and speech to an honest man and a good reporter...
...This was of an extraordinarily high order...
...There is no place in this modern world for closed doors or barred frontiers—not at least if the world is to survive...
...Yet, as a consistent policy through those tragic weeks, the representatives of the press sent cheerful dispatches to their^papers, deliberately doping the public into believing that San Francisco, under whatsoever difficulties, was successfully breaking a way through to peace...
...Yet only in some of the comparatively small weeklies, such as The Progressive, the New Leader, the Call, etc., did I find clear statements of what was happening, or rather not happening, at the Golden Gate...
...Even in these early days of military rule, following the surrender of the enemy, it is becoming increasingly difficult to preserve concord among the victor powers, as witness the incredible Trieste affair...
...But it is a condition and not a theory which confronts us today...
...Resolutions, even laws, are all to the good...
...One does not have to swing the actual rope, or kindle the actual flame, to perpetrate an atrocity of this kind...
...What was it accomplishing...
...Alas for the harvest of disillusionment which will spring from this sowing...
...In the Dark Ages, men could live in walled castles, with moats, drawbridges, portcullises, and all the rest of the paraphernalia of isolation...
...Here was where the reporters let us down...
...But Europe is not the only vacuum...
...White...
...But, assuming the truth of every charge brought against the book by its bitterest critics, I still insist that Mr...
...The gloom was nowhere thicker than in the acutely observing minds of the correspondents...
...The right of peoples everywhere to exchange information and opinion by press, radio, the movie, and by unimpeded travel across frontiers and boundaries...
...These men knew what was going on—how failure was capping failure, to a final failure deftly concealed, with no real hope for humankind...
...No man liveth unto himself—and no nation either...
...Why have open avenues of thought and speech if those for whom they are prepared have not open minds and honest hearts...
...White has been assailed as though he were guilty of some crime, just because he did not find in the Soviets a pure white lily and proceed to gild its hues...
...The armies of the United Nations may not enter Vienna or Berlin...
...Yet Mr...
...That such action, aimed at making this earth a market-place of thought accessible to all mankind, is sorely needed, is shown conclusively by the threatening situation now existing in Europe, in the territories conquered and held by Russia...
...there was never a time when the public was not intelligently informed as to the ideas and even phrases which were under debate...
...At the very time these optimistic stories were being published, I had personal reports from San Francisco that the newspaper men, who knew the facts, were in despair...
...But suppose we have this free international communication, for which the Civil Liberties Union is working...
...pressing issues of quite exceptional complexity were interpreted and made plain...
...White's book, its accuracy and fair-mindedness, I say nothing, for I do not know...
...Not a word passes into the outside world apart from the propaganda which, in Russia as elsewhere, is deliberately calculated to deceive...
...It is heartening to report that the petitions addressed to Secretary of State Stettinius on behalf of free international communications have met with an encouraging response...
...William L. White's recent book, Report on the Russians, not merely by the RussophileSj from whom one may expect nothing but the grossest partisan hysteria, but from Mr...
...Hermit kingdoms, quarantined regions, imprisoned populations, all have become impossible...
...As to the merits of Mr...
...Intricate problems were ably analyzed...
...The United States may not have diplomatic representatives in certain of these occupied states...
...Not once did I see a report in the daily press which told the actual truth...
...What of India, China, Argentina, and the islands of the seas...
...But where was the conference going...
...What is lacking as between Russia and the rest of the world is knowledge, which is the only sure basis of understanding and good will...
...Out of these countries no information or comment is allowed to proceed...
...From however worthy a motive, the reporters on the scene scattered abroad the seeds of false hope which is in essence misinformation...
Vol. 9 • June 1945 • No. 24
