BEHIND THE HUSH-HUSH ABROAD: IMPERIALISTIC BETRAYAL
BEALS, CARLETON
Behind The Hush-Hush Abroad: Imperialistic Betrayal TROUBLE ZONE: BREWING POINT OF .WORLD WAR III? By Leon Dennen. Ziff-Davis. $1.50. Reviewed by Carleton Beals IN wartime people turn to faith...
...We should make real the assurance "that all men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want...
...He reveals the American appeasement to all this, step by step, down to the trough of shame...
...He knows most ftf the languages...
...How about a few concrete achievements...
...That is fine, but there is some rather definite rubbish to be cleared out of the way in the meantime...
...How about a little food instead of destroying Europe's-capacity to produce...
...the implantation of dictatorial one-party totalitarian regimes by foreign armies...
...for until the truth.is known, there is no possibility of meeting the challenge...
...Dennen tells of the betrayal of Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece and Roumania...
...Increasingly as the war progressed, we were bombarded in press and radio by glossy pictures of the beautiful world awaiting us just around the corner—everything from " new-style cork-screws to the final perfect brotherhood of man...
...Truman on Navy Day, merely muddy the waters and make the world n!3re suspicious of the intentions of the United States...
...This is an inevitable by-product: only thus do human brains become reconciled to the tragedy of mass death...
...the liquidation of all the democratic parties and leaders...
...since the war he has been engaged in relief and emigree problems right on the scene...
...In short, here are the conflicting claims of world imperialism: Russian, British, and American, in the sweep of which freedom is being strangled, human beings cast out upon the highways to starve and die, while statesmen lay down smug points about peace and universal justice...
...History teaches, of course, that after wars, despite many technical gains, moral and social conditions are worse, that many human liberties are lost and can only be regained through great effort...
...Part of his education was acquired in that part of Poland since seized by the Soviet Union as part of the spoils of victory...
...If the picture is discouraging, that is no excuse for hiding it away...
...Anyway, Mr...
...He saw the men who had fought against overwhelming odds to roll back the Nazi invasion in turn hunted down and destroyed by Soviet and British forces...
...IN Mr...
...This is equivalent to our great Secretary of State going to a call-house hotel with a companion and signing the register as Mr...
...Is that day gone...
...May your shadow grow longer...
...No one is better qualified than Mr, Dennen to speak...
...ONCE upon a time a free American people would have staunchly stood for the freedom of such nations...
...He gives a sympathetic and understanding account of Turkey's role during the war and an account of Palestine and the Jewish immigration problem...
...Dennen's discussion of Palestine is entirely too sketchy, and I feel his chapter on Greece is far from conclusive or satisfactory...
...and of course two wrongs do not make a right...
...How about saving a few European refugees rather than talking so nobly about the rights of human beings...
...Byrnes smugly orders England to erase American labels from such materials...
...How about cutting some of the barbed wire on the horror camps of the liberators...
...By wartime leaders, this promise of the pot-of-gold at the end of the gory rainbow is definitely fostered to keep up morale and make people believe the sacrifices will not be in vain...
...And in this betrayal of more than 100 million people in eastern Europe—at a time when even a great physician whom I could name could not get a passport or travel priority—all the Middle Eastern area, right in wartime, was "full of American oil prospectors and business representatives . . . with their broad-brimmed hats and fat cigars . . . a familiar sight on the terraces of the international hotels...
...Reviewed by Carleton Beals IN wartime people turn to faith in utopias...
...Why not quit using Japanese troops and Lend-Lease supplies to put down the independence movements of Indo-China and Java...
...In plain language—with background, names, dates, eye-witness accounts—Mr...
...Eventually that problem has to be faced by everybody concerned...
...Dennen, it's a darn fine book...
...How about the shameful London conference...
...Dennen's general picture is not a pretty one, but it is a good sign of the times that at last we are beginning to get realistic and factual observations like this volume, rather than pap and propaganda which has been our daily diet for so long...
...Here is the historic Russian Drang nach Sud for control of Iran and the Dardenelles and eventual seizure of Suez...
...Dennen's solution is that we try to implement the Atlantic Charter, that it is still not too late...
...Dennen's book, so honest and forthright—and in these days of hush-hush, really courageous—he dips into the rajnbow pot and finds there something besides the gold of utopiav Here he brings together the tangled skein of politics in the Balkans, and by study and direct observation he lays before us the actual record of events, clearly, simply and fearlessly...
...Likewise, although he is pretty antagonistic toward the manner in which the British are running things in Palestine, he does not indicate in any plausible way how the Jewish homeland is eventually to work out from under the initial handicap of having been founded as an outpost of British imperialism and as a betrayal of British pledges in World War I to the Arab world...
...His dislike of Soviet military and political methods in the Balkans leads him to shy off from any-pointed statement regarding British mistakes in Greece...
...and during the war he cooperated with the underground movements of the countries he writes about...
...MR...
...At the time Turkey broke with Germany, his headquarters were in Istanbul, and he watched the liberation of the Balkans and saw "their subsequent re-enslavement by their liberators...
...And here—at least hinted at—is the new economic imperialism of the United States: oil and air and trade, an aftermath of similar behind-the-scenes grabbing during and right after World War I. Until such conflicts are reasonably ironed out, the issuance of more glittering generalities, sweet and smug declarations such as those of Mr...
...Smith...
...Here, then, is the actual picture of- individual and political liberty in the great war for Four Freedoms in the sorely beset lands at the eastern end of the Mediterranean— the things so many people suspect but don't-wtent to hear about, yet which they must know if any sort of decent international system is to be built or even a- half-way peace be salvaged from the wreckage...
...Here is the intricate pattern of British imperialism : on the one hand, trying to block Russian expansion ; on the other, faced with the surging world of political freedom demanded by the peoples of the Near East, in which Arab is played off against Jew and vice versa...
Vol. 9 • November 1945 • No. 45
