Power Politics

It cannot be said too strongly that casual, offhand remarks at a press conference are the worst possible way to deal with matters of such great moment. These are things to be done carefully and thoroughly . . . not things to be tossed off in this fashion. Mr. Roosevelt is indulging in a petty vanity, which is that he is very smart. . . . Mr. Churchill, who has as good a brain as Mr. Roosevelt, does not do it, and President Wilson did not do it. . . . If the President is wise, he will henceforth confine his press conferences to domestic questions and to . . . action taken. . . .

With these words, Pundit Walter Lippmann last week reprimanded Franklin Roosevelt for talking out of turn about religious freedom in Russia. Certainly the President was not very smart in arousing Mr. Lippmann and others. But perhaps the President was a little smarter than Walter Lippmann knew.

At a press conference President Roosevelt was asked about a letter from Polish Ambassador Jan Ciechanowski, revealing that over 100,000 Polish soldiers fighting with the Russian Army have been allowed to keep their Catholic chaplains, that a Roman Catholic church and a synagogue, both for Poles, are to be opened in Moscow. The President reminded newsmen that he had suggested, several weeks ago, that they read Article 124 of the Russian Constitution.

Asked a reporter: "What does that say, Mr. President?''

Franklin Roosevelt laughingly remarked that he had not learned it by heart. He offered a rough paraphrase: freedom of conscience . . . freedom of religion . . . freedom equally to use propaganda against religion.

This, said the President, is essentially the rule that applies in the U.S., except that we do not put it quite the same way.*

These words had hardly left the President's lips when U.S. churchmen started ramming them down his throat (see p. 46). Wrote Charles Clayton Morrison, Editor of the rabidly isolationist Christian Century:

"His attempt to give the Soviet regime a clean bill of health in respect of religious freedom ... is far more shocking than the tactical faux pas of Mr. Lindbergh, who mentioned the Jewish influence as a factor in pushing this country into war."

Snorted Representative Martin Dies of Texas, no churchman, but the piety-loving Chairman of the House Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities: "Freedom of religious worship is, and always has been, as nonexistent in Soviet Russia as freedom of speech ... in Hitler's Reich."

But the President was not done. Two days later he expressed his hope that "an entering wedge" for the practice of religious freedom in Russia is "definitely on the way." Next day he broke the news that he had instructed W. Averell Harriman, chief of the U.S. mission to Moscow, to take up the question of religious freedom with Joseph Stalin.

It was a fair guess that his personal envoy to the Vatican, onetime Steelman Myron C. Taylor, had discussed the same question with Pope Pius XII. At week's end Mr. Taylor, just back by Clipper, waited to make his confidential report to the President.

It was hinted in Washington that Dictator Stalin may soon issue a decree specifically declaring the right of religious freedom in Russia. But in Moscow, Russian Spokesman S. A. Lozovsky merely reaffirmed the Constitutional fact that freedom of worship exists in Russia.

"Religion," said he, "is a private affair for the Soviet citizen."

In Washington, friends of the President looked pained.

All this added up to an elaborate diplomatic maneuver on the President's part to get Russia to guarantee religious liberty in exchange for Lend-Lease aid, to get religious support at home and abroad (especially among Catholics) for U.S. aid to Russia. Myron Taylor had stopped in London on his return. If the Pope could be induced to endorse the way of the democracies and Russia as just, the repercussions in Italy, in the U.S., and among Catholics in Europe (Germans particularly) would be tremendous. And then perhaps Catholic Eire would come through with those much-needed bases for the U.S. or Britain.

If all or only part of this could be brought off it would be a first-rate political victory for the alliance against Hitler. In spite of his bungled first remark there was. as usual, something more up the President's sleeve than his good right arm.

*Article 124 of Russia's 1936 Constitution reads: ''In order to ensure to citizens freedom of conscience, the Church in the U.S.S.R. is separated from the State, and the school from the Church. Freedom of religious worship and freedom of anti-religious propaganda are recognized for all citizens." Virtually the same guarantee was contained in Russia's earlier Constitutions (1918, 1923). But nothing in Article 124 confers freedom of religious propaganda. A Soviet decree of 1929, still in force, makes it a penal offense to proselytize publicly for a religious organization.

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