NOT MERELY GOSSIP
Hanighen, Frank C.
Not Merely Gossip By FRANK C. HANIGHEN* FRIENDS of Gen. Marshall report that he is very angry about the blame assigned to him by the Army and Navy Reports on Pearl Harbor. They claim that...
...If this policy of internationalism should once more fail, however, we should have to reconsider our position...
...By this time, Marshall is said to be placing the responsibility for the Pearl Harbor disaster on the late President...
...Per Albin Hansson, Swedish Socialist Premier, declared to a meeting of his party on August 19: "The feeling of Northern affinity was never deeper than during the days when Denmark and Norway were liberated...
...Marshall, his friends insist, was not kept informed of the gravity of the diplomatic situation with Japan, nor of various pieces of secret information regarding Japan's belligerent intentions...
...that President Roosevelt promised that he would see that the Army Report would do likewise...
...The journal also charges that America and Russia do not care about the results of the ruin of Germany and Europe...
...THE Goncourt brothers, famous French men-of-let-ters, in their Journals, under date of April 7, 1869, made a penetrating and prescient entry concerning atomic energy: "At Magny's dinner...
...For Sweden it would mean a return to neutrality, in that we are opposed to becoming engaged in any combination of powers directed against another...
...The bombing of Nagasaki, on the other hand, was a "purely experimental matter...
...Messieurs, on ferme...
...Meanwhile, students of the voluminous reports note that the Army Report questions the importance of the fortification of Guam...
...THE London Economist criticizes the Allied policy towards Germany, saying: "The truth is that the prosperity of Western Europe has depended to a great extent upon the existence of a great wealth-producing industrial concentration in the Ruhr...
...They said that Berthelot had predicted that in a hundred years of physical and chemical science man would learn to know the atom, and that with this knowledge he would be able, at his will, to dim, extinguish or re-light the sun like a Carcel lamp...
...The inhabitants of Nagasaki were our guinea pigs...
...These Army circles are shocked by Nagasaki and say that we cannot deny that we have perpetrated the biggest atrocity of the war...
...To say that the ruin of Germany is the ruin of Europe would not raise in Russia more than a sigh of relief that both should be weakened together . . . (The American attitude) has in it an element of contempt for a world from which so large a part of America's population has escaped and an element of love for the drastic solution of any problem, especially if it means destroying traditional relationships and building new ones...
...SOME military circles who defend the atom-bombing of Hiroshima, now say that the dropping of an atom bomb on Nagasaki served no military purpose and played no role in the ending of the war, which they say was virtually brought to a close by the destruction of Hiroshima...
...We Scandinavians have always been more realistic than romantic...
...Copyright 1945 by Human Events, Inc...
...Claude Bernard, for his part, is said to have announced that with a hundred years more of physiological knowledge we would be able to make the brganic law ourselves—to manufacture human life, in competition with the Creator...
...They claim that Secretary of the Navy Forrestal promised that the Navy Report would take into account Marshall's side of the story...
...That wealth-producing machinery is now almost completely idle and all of Germany's western neighbors are bearing the consequences...
...that we cannot now, without hypocrisy, accuse the Nazi authorities of Buchen-wald of "death experiments" on the prisoners of those concentration camps...
...But we Thave no high-flying schemes...
...scientists wanted more data on atom bomb results...
...Now it is clear that even if they had taken such measures, they would have had no effect on the strategic situation in the Pacific, as the following paragraph from the Report shows: "As a consequence of the foregoing (Japanese fortification of the mandated islands which lay between Guam and Hawaii), Japan gained the enormous advantage of a string of naval and air and army bases across our lifeline to the Philippines and rendered futile and impotent any fortification of our own islands, such as Guam, Midway, Christmas and the Philippines...
...As has often been proved, Congress had no responsibility for the failure to fortify Guam...
...For our part we did not raise any objection to all this talk, but we do believe that at that particular stage of scientific development, the good Lord, with a flowing white beard, will arrive on Earth with his chain of keys and will say to humanity, just like they do at the Art Gallery at five o'clock, "Gentlemen, it's closing time...
...But it is also based on the more conscious knowledge that no policy which requires a long period of planning is easy for the United States to accept and that a once-for-all, sharp and sudden remedy is to be preferre...
...This is the foundation on which we shall now resume and extend our normal relationships...
...The Economist urges that the western democracies (Britain, France, Holland and Belgium), should restore this Ruhr area to economic normalcy...
...We also belong to the great family of nations, and it is my understanding that all the Northern countries are prepared to make their contribution to the success of the new world organization...
Vol. 9 • September 1945 • No. 38
