NEW EMPIRES FOR OLD

...while the United States plays fairy godmother...

...THE most serious thrust against the empire comes from the militant nationalist-Communist imperialism of the Soviet Union...

...Full fledged propaganda drives and "prol-eltarian" educational efforts are being made in the Lebanon and Palestine...

...England will probably retain imperialistic control over Libya (in return for allowing grabs by Russia...

...Maybe not England herself...

...Europe simply had to be federated or else be amalgamated by force or else disintegrate in strife and lowered standards...

...And all over the world, of course, we are seizing mighty advantages in air transport, which in time may be as significant as the previous seizure of Panama and Suez...

...The partition of Germany promises less peace than did earlier partitions of Poland...

...But despite such loot, the life-lines are frayed in many directions...

...True, the scheme to set up a separate state in Sicily, the way Portugal long ago was carved out of Spain, fell through...

...We have European bridgeheads and military bases...

...Also the British have given us- an oil sphere in Saudi Arabia, which is good insurance for our armed support in the future...

...Today the parallel with the ancient world parts company, for in Europe the West and the East met along the embattled line of the Elbe in central Germany...

...The Mediterranean today is more a British lake then ever, and the line to India is anchored nearly everywhere with more hooks...

...But on the basis of power politics the Soviet Union is justified in taking everything she can get...

...Too often when we have talked of a free China or a free Asia, we have merely meant a restoration of traditional imperialism...

...Free plebiscites under international control rather than forcible annexations or puppet governments imposed by bayonets...

...In all eastern Europe, economic and communistic unity are being imposed, under one formula or another, by the Soviet Union...

...But in what is left this side of the Elbe, there is still no unity, no federation, and every sign points to increasing economic and political confusion...

...the territory and oil of the Near East were seized, and a string of buffer states was pushed north from puppet Greece through the Balkans clear to the Baltic to prevent either Germany or Russia or both together from dominating the mighty Eurasian heartland...

...In that process of bargaining and jockeying—with small nations and the peace of the world used as pawns—it is desirable that some effort be made to liberalize British colonial policy to allow for future political independence...

...Civil liberties and the free gathering and dissemination of news...

...If we persist there, so far from our shores, we thereby automatically justify the Soviet Union someday claiming the right to fortify the Farallones right off San Francisco harbor, j * * * ALL this is the raw stuff of military and power politics...

...It is the stuff of war now and in the future...

...World War I saw several million more square miles and millions of people brought under the British yoke...

...If we do not like the Soviet advance through Turkey, Greece, and Iran upon the Near Eastern oil fields, then let us set aside the recent Anglo American oil settlement for the world, which despite its fine phrases, sets up a cartel blockading the Soviet Union and coercing weaker producing nations...

...In his newspaper eolumns Sumner Welles has repeatedly warned against allowing England to attempt once more to create a strong Germany...

...The flouting of small nations does not make for peace...

...Each meeting of the Big 3 registers new advances and a more far-flung sphere of influence...

...It should be made by appeasement, not appeasement to improper claims, but appeasement to international justice, fair-play, and civilized principles...

...and England keeping everything she can get...

...And since Russia will soon have the only great land army left on the continent, all Europe can scarcely escape her overlordship...

...In this tragic imperialistic game, the United States nibbles around the fringes of the great Eurasian heartland...

...and despite the many British monopolies, competition in nearly all lines made the outlook gloomy...

...ON the other hand the French may never get back into the Near East...

...The Soviet Empire is still expanding...

...England has emerged from the conflict as a relatively insignificant land power and a third rate sea and air power...

...And so, pending the socialization--of England, the Soviets push hard at the Mediterranean "life-line": Trieste, Tangiers, Macedonia, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Suez...

...As much as does anything else, British anti-Russian policy largely explains the growth of Germany to world power, the contemptible between-war policies of France, the rise of Hitler, the alliances with Japan and Turkey, the betrayal of the Arab world, the occupation of southern Iran and of Afghanistan, the push into Thibet...

...In all but name, Canada is now an American colony, industry 60 per cent owned by American corporations...

...If we don't like the Soviet militarization of the Dardanelles—and that strait is quite as important to her as is Panama to us—we should lay other cards on the table: the immediate internationalization of Suez, Cyprus, Malta, Gibraltar, and the Panama Canal...

...True, England had to grant strategic bases in the Atlantic to the United States, may have to grant others in the Pacific, but she will probably harvest in a few more islands...

...Certainly we shall have to abandon our open door policy for China...

...Also we may retain a strategical wedge in that' part of China not wholly absorbed by Russia or England...

...New Zealand and Australia are well on the same road, and American capital has gone heavily into India...

...The imperialistic dream of an all-British Cape to Cairo railway came true...

...The Soviets are likely to oppose our permanent occupation of Okinawa or future bases in the Kuriles, in fact the Soviet Union reportedly has demanded them in the final settlement in the Orient...

...Ethiopia, the tree Mussolini watered with blood, has dropped like ripe fruit into the British imperial apron...

...The day.when England could keep Europe divided in order to conquer and rule the rest of the world was done for...

...The quid pro Quo for Turkey is to be Aleppo in Syria...

...It was gone with air transport that was soon to make London a suburb of Moscow and vice versa...

...No monopolpjof the air...

...Imperialistic expansion does not make for any just peace...

...The new empire of peace is worth fighting for...

...We are now trying to sequester permanent bases in Ecuador and elsewhere...

...It partly explains the Crimean war, the occupation of France in 1870, the Russo-Japanese war...

...It is merely the old picture of the 3 treasure hunters quibbling over the loot and lucky to come out with whole skins...

...The seizure of far-off bases in the Pacific does not make for peace or true national security...

...This had been the dilemma of the Greek city state world, and failing to meet it, that world went down before the Roman legions...

...Though Rhodes and the Doda-canese may go to Greece as promised, quite likely British garrisons will remain there and on various Aegean islands along the Turkish coast, all pointing up toward the strategic Dardanelles...

...Let us forego our recent grab in Saudi Arabia...

...Some of its postulates might be: Steps toward universal disarmament...

...Open covenants openly arrived at...

...Later we may continue to hold military outposts, so to speak,' in England and Iceland, though revolution in England may make this an illusion...

...THE Soviet Empire has been expanding for centuries...

...Unfortunately the British Labor Party may be less amenable to such a change than it is to the further imperialistic advance of Russia...

...The new Rumanian Odessa pipe-line, constructed with American Lend-Lease materials, will help power the drive toward even greater oil fields,- the greatest in the world...

...Particularly we might mention: Oil, tin, rubber, quinine, camphor, tea, bismuth, copper, diamonds, iodine, jute, mercury, molybdenum, nickel platinum, quebracho, radium, tungsten, manganese, platinum, zinc, etc...

...IMMEDIATE peace, though no long-range peace, depends on the shake-down of the 3 empires...

...Also, we are expanding across the Pacific to the Asiatic mainland, a process begun back in 1898...

...In the Far East there is some indication that French Indo China will be permanently occupied by Chinese and British troops, a move reportedly encouraged by Moscow in return for her own territorial grabs in northern China...

...Quite amicably the United States pushed Russia out of California and Alaska...

...For a peaceful Europe was no longer possible if broken into small quarrelsome fragments...

...For the moment we occupy part of the continent militarily, but our position there grows untenable...

...But the march of economic forces did not halt because British imperialists waved the wand...

...We have put our toe into the Near Eastern oil mess...

...The tentative British prewar infiltration into Thibet in interior China has become practically full-fledged Occupation, thanks to American Lend-Lease and American engineers building roads, hospitals, and airfields, so that the partition of China, begun when Hong Kong was first seized as an opium port, continues unabated by friends and foes...

...Throughout the 19th Century the Anglo-American world, particularly Britain, fought Russian expansion through repeated war, blockade, diplomacy, and trade...

...The sweet camouflage for this age-old greed is the covenant of the United Nations...

...By strategical additions you eat your idealistic cake and have it, too...

...Internationalization of all important waterways...

...A federated Europe of free peoples...

...Once established on that almost impregnable plateau, the Soviets, in case of future hostilities, could easily at any time cut the pipe-lines of Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and probably seize Suez itself, where already they have inherited control seats...

...How are we going to chide England about India or the Dutch about the East Indies when we have treated Puerto Rican Nationalists far more brutally and unfairly than England has been treating Indian nationalists...

...And so, the battle for peace begins at home as well as at the Dardanelles...

...Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, British textiles were half closed down...

...The seizure of Finnish Baltic, Czechoslovakian, Polish, Turkish, Greek, and Chinese territory does not make for peace...

...For England, the only question mark in this war has been Hong Kong, and the British seem likely to get back that and her other southeastern colonies in Asia...

...This was avoided in Argentina, where England flatly refused to permit marked pounds (her version of Aski marks) to be used for buying up utilities by Argentineans...

...Apparently we intend to consolidate our island gains, despite President Truman's denial that we seek territorial additions...

...But some of the previous processing and shipping monopolies of the empire are forever gone...

...Although her world-wide cartels, so much more numerous and powerful than anything devised by the Germans, are still fairly intact, some dents have been made in tin, oil, platinum, industrial diamonds etc...

...It may retain special footing in French North Africa and the Belgian Congo...

...The breakdown of the Austro-Hungarian and Turkish empires this century intensified the historic struggle, creating political anarchy, making a tinder box of eastern Europe...

...How can we oppose Soviet seizure of northern Norway when we are busily trying to force Ecuador to cede us permanent bases...

...Too often what England and the United States have meant when they talked about a free world, was a world free for monopoly...

...From Turkey, to go into only one tense situation, the Soviets have demanded territory for Bulgaria, the Soviet militarization of the Dardanelles—this to parallel probable seizure of Salonika on the Aegean—and the ceding of the eastern Turkish provinces of Kars and Ardahan...

...AND so, perhaps more important than anything else, is the need to institute proper international control of all strategic materials now monopolized by cartels, mostly British and American...

...Many of her investments overseas are gone...

...The real fact is, eastern Europe is being brutally hammered into one unit...

...It is not based on principles of freedom or international law...

...In addition, the United States has somewhat, but not too effectively, strengthened its strategic sphere in Latin America...

...But this should hot be done in any spirit of blind opposition and fear...

...Plans for colonial freedom...

...and her rubber and quinine monopolies, thanks to synthetics, have gone with the wind...

...The small national units, product of British power politics, no longer answered the requirements of modern industry and communications...

...Let us set out to make strategic materials in the world available to all rightful comers on a free basis...

...The seizure of Aleppo would just about shatter British prestige in the whole Arab world...

...In our day it began with sharing partition of China with Japan, and in Europe with the occupation of the Baltic states and seizure of part of Finland...

...It was gone with the rise of mass production based on mass markets...

...Certainly every effort should be made to check Soviet imperialism...

...He is beating a dead horse...

...the ship building industry was coated with cobwebs...

...iron and steel production had been far surpassed by Germany and Russia...

...With each new Soviet gain, weak satellite states are pushed militarily toward the British and American spheres, encouraged to make brazen grabs on their neighbors...

...But at a time when England should have helped shape a better world, it could not afford the competition of a healthy Europe...

...New Empires For Old By CARLETON BEALS THOUGH British industry, in output and techniques, has been in relative decline for half a century, amazingly the empire has come through the most critical war in its history relatively intact territorially, in fact again has expanded...