THE EDITOR RESERVES THE LAST COLUMN
The Editor Reserves The Last Column DURING the past week I was fortunate enough to spend an evening with a visiting Chinese official and another with an American professor lately returned from...
...Norway needs from America, he told an interviewer, "not only technical equipment, but most valuable moral help...
...in Germany another...
...Precisely the same point was made recently by Bishop Eivind Berggrav, primate of the Norwegian Lutheran Church, who was a prisoner of the Nazis for three years...
...The American professor just back from interviewing German civilians for our Government reports that countless Germans are hungry for some kind of democratic direction but will soon become victims of frustration and despair if we don't give them some encouragement to make a fresh start...
...I know that the injunction of Jesus to turn the other cheek is too "soft" for our time, but the fact remains that if we can't accept such a policy for its own sake, for what it does to us and our late enemy, we ought to embrace it for the very practical reason that it is the only policy that "pays off" over the years...
...But it hasn't worked, and it doesn't work today...
...Perhaps the most revealing commentary of all came in an Associated Press dispatch from Berlin...
...But America can, and must, lend a helping hand to people everywhere who want to fight for freedom in their own countries...
...Consider those words-f or a moment: "A short range political necessity...
...Our current, two-faced policy of dealing with conquered peoples bears out what I'm driving at...
...The AP correspondent asked the British and American officials who have the responsibility for putting into effect the revenge-minded Potsdam policy for the future of Germany what they thought of their assignment...
...Europe and Asia, and the whole world, have felt the military might of America...
...America is not God...
...We have become a party to the dismemberment of that country...
...in Germany we are pursuing a policy of revenge, dismemberment, and hatred...
...We have tried the other way, and we still are trying it today, in Germany...
...Their replies were unanimous and simple: The policy of dismembering Germany "is a short range political necessity but a long-range economic absurdity...
...The Christian Science Monitor correspondent reports that we are squandering away our priceless opportunity to spread the democratic ideology because we don't dare trust the Germans to read...
...Does America have the spiritual conviction and the moral fibre to lead a global crusade for freedom...
...Solely, of course, to satisfy an hysterial hunger for vengeance, which, in the long pull, can only mean an "economic absurdity," which, in turn, could be the rallying call for a new and even more detestable Hitler...
...We have gutted its industry and wrecked its national economy...
...We have refused to let it have its own national government...
...I like to think so, but often I wonder—wonder how we can expect to come into the court of world opinion with soiled hands, with vows of vengeance and hymns of hate, and still look at ourselves as leaders of the struggle for freedom, justice, and tolerance...
...MacArthur's policy of entering Japan, not as an oppressor, but as a liberator of the Japanese people from the cruel yoke of militarism, has been subjected to the most virulent abuse by press and radio commentators who lust only for vengeance, for a policy of kicking and spitting at the Japanese in order to prove our superiority...
...In Japan, we are eschewing a policy of distrust, malice, and hatred...
...The Editor Reserves The Last Column DURING the past week I was fortunate enough to spend an evening with a visiting Chinese official and another with an American professor lately returned from Germany where he had spent several months questioning German civilians in behalf of the American Government...
...This we can do best not by decreeing democracy from afar, but rather by acting in the finest traditions of democracy—which are expressed in the words, freedom, justice, and tolerance— wherever we have influence, whether as an occupation force in a conquered nation or an associate in the councils of our Allies...
...In Japan we are pursuing one policy...
...The New York Times reports that the morale of our American occupation troops is at "the vanishing point" because they just can't see what their job is...
...Now they need our material help for relief and rehabilitation, but perhaps even more important for the long haul, they desperately want, according to my informants, the moral leadership of the United States in leading a great new crusade for the regeneration Of democracy...
...M.H.R...
...America cannot export democracy or manufacture revolutions for other countries...
...IS America equal to the challenge...
...Gen...
...Why...
...AMERICA'S role in the world, it seems to me from where I sit, is clear...
...They talked of different areas, different peoples, and different problems, of course, but each, on separate evenings, hammered home the same point —that, with all our faults, the United States is still the hope of the freedom-loving peoples of the world, that, with all our faltering in world affairs, our reservoir of good-will is still enormous...
...We have invoked the doctrine of original sin for a whole people in order to justify our lust for vengeance...
Vol. 9 • September 1945 • No. 38
