THE ISSUE IN JAPAN

...Why...

...Germany, and Japan, and all the other nations liberated from the yoke of brutalitarianism will have a far better opportunity to build a free society for themselves if we make a clear-cut distinction between the guilty leaders and the enslaved masses, and if we lend a helping hand to the forces working for political and economic democracy within those nations rather than attempt to force on them a State Department policy at gunpoint...

...THIS Army officer told newsmen in Berlin that the Russians "may withdraw the Red Army from Germany before any of the Allies...

...The State Department boys are in a tizzy over the MacArthur policy because they prefer to be vague and vacillating and to carry water on both shoulders, as in the case of Spain,, rather than to pursue a direct, clear-cut, forthright course of action...

...It's unnatural and synthetic," said this officer, "and this kind of policy only creates hatred and prejudice...

...Even if Germany never regains its real national status—if it continues divided into various foreign-controlled zones—the present 80 million unhappy, dissatisfied, wretched people in the center of Europe will become a potential danger to the rest of the world...

...Despite all the belated assurances that the State Department does have a policy—on paper—the lack of integrated planning and overall policy is forcibly emphasized by the fantastic exhibition last week when President Truman endorsed MacArthur's policies while his Acting Secretary of State,- Dean Acheson, let loose with a petulant blast against those same policies...

...Conversely, the United States is pursuing a policy of keeping our slice of Germany disorganized and poverty-stricken...

...The answer is important—"because Russia is already proceeding along a realistic path by creating the nucleus of a centralized German government inside the Red Army zone...

...THIS on-the-spot judment of our course in Germany underscores the need for giving Mac-Arthur a fair chance of working out a totally different policy—one which recognizes that the hope for peace in the world and the hope for democracy in Japan—and all through the Orient—rests on a program of tolerance and justice, not hate and vengeance...

...MAC ARTHUR has made it clear that his ac- tions in Japan are purely military and for occupation purposes only, and that the basic policy of dealing with Japan politically is one that must be decided "upon the highest diplomatic level of the United Nations...

...The war is over, and no propaganda can make the average GI believe those kids playing in the sand and those women carrying bags of wormy potatoes, are equally guilty with Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels...

...The results of what was supposed to be a "realistic" policy in Germany are summed up best in these two headlines in the New York Times during the past two weeks: MORALE OF U. S. GI's IN GERMANY IS NOW AT THE VANISHING POINT NAZIS STILL HOLD KEY JOBS IN REICH It is no longer a secret that American occupation forces in Germany are thoroughly fed up, not only because they naturally want to go home, but also because there is no clear-cut job for them to do, and what little they know of our policy—Revenge and dismemberment—they thoroughly detest as only those who must carry out that kind of assignment can detest it...

...For years the leading economists, financiers, and politicians have expanded the theory that a millionaire cannot live happily next door to the poorhouse...

...IF any evidence were needed to support Mac-Arthur's basic occupation policy for Japan, it is to be found in Germany where we have been pursuing the reverse course with disastrous consequences...

...The jingoist press is shrieking because it believes that the only way we can prove that we are superior to the fascists and militarists is to act like them—-on a greater scale...

...The fact that the United Nations organization, established at San Francisco last Spring, still exists only on paper, and the fact that the Big Five's Council of Foreign Ministers, meeting behind locked doors in London, hasn't yet been able to decide on a policy for Italy, let alone Japan, is hardly the fault of the American forces in Japan who are doing magnificently the job they were assigned...

...The simple fact that the MacArthur policy has proved itself thus far—by permitting a bloodless occupation, by making possible a sharp reduction in future occupation forces, by enlisting the cooperation of the rank-and-file of Japan, by providing for the arrest of those designated as war criminals, and by achieving the demobilization of the Japanese Army in phenomenally brief time—all this seems only to infuriate the critics...

...Douglas MacArthur's policies in occupying Japan is one of the most depressing developments in many months...

...The only way we can teach Germans free- dom is by showing them what real freedom is, and not by perpetuating a regime of force and punishment and tyranny...

...The brass hats are furious because MacArthur's forecast of early reduction of occupation forces imperils their cozy little game of keeping an Army big enough to provide enough soft jobs for the officers...

...An American officer associated with Allied administration in Berlin expressed the reaction of the American GI's in Germany in words that every American ought to ponder: "This Winter we face starving Germans, freezing Germans, and food rioting Germans...

...Americans are not vindictive or vengeful...

...We hope that MacArthur will not be swayed by the jingoists and imperialists at home, that he will stick resolutely to his original course of occupying Japan with a policy based on justice, tolerance, and freedom, and not one founded on the revenge, hatred, and dismemberment advocated by the hate cult...

...I don't know what will happen if American soldiers are ordered to shoot famishing, frost-bitten civilians for breaking into food depots...