THE EDITOR RESERVES THE LAST COLUMN
The Editor Reserves ... The Last Column THE delicate question of suppressing or distorting facts because their publication might play into the. hands of an avowed enemy is one that every editor...
...But I hate to think that the royalties he's collected from me go to finance his Germanphobia and help set him up in business as an "expert" on world affairs...
...The Tribune had published an eye-witness report of deplorable conditions under four-powered Allied rule in Austria...
...Stout is sincerely interested in uprooting Nazism and making its revival impossible, his complaint, the logical Nero Wolfe would tell him, is with the Allied officials whose revenge policies are playing into the hands of Nazis by providing a climate of despair and defeat in which fascism thrives, and not with The Progressive, which is exposing those policies in the hope that they will be reversed before the damage is done...
...The world has learned the hard way that appeasement does not pay...
...As I interpret Mr...
...world cooperation, as for all human relations, is truth, no«mat-ter how unpopular for the moment truth may be...
...The Progressive has dared to tell the truth about Allied" occupation policies in Germany and Austria, and for this Rex Stout, the bearded high priest of the Hate-Every-Last-German Cult, has lately called me a lot of assorted nasty names and has hinted rather darkly that The Progressive is playing into the hands of the surviving Nazis and is fanning the fires of Fascism...
...George Orwell, the distinguished British left-wing journalist, wrote himself a thoughtful article on the subject for the Nov...
...But before making this claim one ought to realize where it leads...
...Every revelation about slums or social inequality, every attack on the leaders of the Tory party, every denunciation of British imperialism, was a gift for Goebbels...
...British Communists, for instance, want complete exposure of capitalist injustices . in Britain, even when it may play into the hands of fascist groups at home and abroad, but they rise up in anger and scream "Fascist," "Red-Baiter," "warmonger," and the whole lexicon of vituperation, if the same critic seeks to expose Stalinist injustices in Russia...
...As Orwell asserted in replying to Communists and fellow-travelers who resented the London Tribune's exposure of conditions under Soviet occupation in Austria, the argument that one mustn't speak up because it "plays into the hands of" this or that sinister influence is dishonest in the sense that people only use it when it suits them and their particular, immediate cause...
...And it could hardly be otherwise, for it is chiefly in the Left-wing press that serious criticism of British institutions is to be found...
...What do we mean by reaction...
...hands of an avowed enemy is one that every editor wrestles with almost every day, with varying results...
...Commenting on this phenomenon in an article entitled, "Through A Glass, Rosily," Orwell wrote: "Now, if one divides the world into A and B and assumes that A represents progress and B reaction, it is just arguatfte that no fact detrimental to A ought ever to be revealed...
...The only enduring foundation for...
...Well, the people in this country who gave most ammunition to the Nazi propagandists during the war are exactly the ones who tell us that it is 'objectively' pro-Fascist to Criticize the ,U.S.S.R...
...International relations based on polite lies, drawing-room humbug, and suppression of the truth will collapse like a house of cards when a real issue develops...
...Stout writes a pretty good mystery yarn and I for one have been a paying fan of his Nero Wolfe stories...
...WRITING from long, and doubtless bitter experience, Orwell accurately pointed out that "anyone who has ever written in defense of unpopular causes and been the witness of events which are likely to cause controversy, knows the fearful temptation to distort or suppress the facts, simply because any honest statement will contain revelations which can be made use of by unscrupulous opponents...
...Stout's full-page diatribe, he is not at all concerned with the injustices and weaknesses of the Allied vengeance policy in conquered countries, but is distressed only by the fact that The Progressive has the gumption to report what's actually happening...
...Concealment, in the long run, does far greater damage than honest reporting...
...M.H.R...
...BUT leaving Stout to his hates, I want to get back to the question of suppressing facts because, for the moment, they might be useful to avowed enemies...
...I am not referring to the Communists during their anti-war phase: I am referring to the Left as a whole...
...I suppose it would be agreed that Nazi Germany represented reaction in its worst form, or one of its worst...
...Happy New Year...
...If Mr...
...The result was "a spate of angry letters" which, besides calling the Tribune's Vienna correspondent a fool and a liar, went on to insist that he ought to have kept his mouth shut even if he knew he was speaking the truth...
...Now Mr...
...And not necessarily a worthless gift, for German propaganda about 'British plutocracy' had considerable effect in neutral countries, especially in the earlier part of the war...
...23 issue of the London Tribune...
...By and large, the Nazi radio got more material from the British Left-wing press than from that of the Right...
Vol. 9 • December 1945 • No. 52
