(Dr. Niebuhr's Report)

EUROPE'S HOPE

As one who belongs, broadly speaking, to Henry Wallace's school of thought in domestic politics, 1 should like to challenge Wallace's foreign politics, as expressed in his recent attack on Secretary Byrnes's policy toward Russia. I would have thought it wrong in any event, but I had the advantage of recognizing its errors with particular vividness because I was in Berlin when it was made. I saw the uses which Soviet propaganda made of it and the disappointment and dismay it spread among democratic forces in Europe and in Germany. They had just been tremendously heartened by Secretary Byrnes's address in Stuttgart. . . . Europe's democratic forces are behind Byrnes and not Wallace. The confusion in American liberalism, of which the Wallace speech is the symbol, must be regarded as catastrophic in the Ight of the European realities. . . .

The Great Illusion. Many of us, even though we had few illusions about Russia, made the mistake of underestimating the dynamism of the Russian system. We believed that, having a wider geographic base than Naziism, the Russian system could afford a more static policy and ultimately find security in the wide belt of eastern Europe assigned to it. A trip through Europe . . . has convinced me that the Russians are not, and will riot be, satisfied with an system of eastern European defenses but are seeking to extend their power over the whole of Europe.

The Russian strategy can be seen at work on many fronts. In Austria the Russians claim 50% of all Austrian industry. In

Paris they fight for an arrangement which will allow Yugoslavia to dominate Trieste. In Berlin they carry on a continued press campaign against the Western World but ban our newspapers from their sector if they contain the slightest criticism of Soviet policy. . . . They always appeal to the Potsdam accord when it serves their ends and violate it when it suits their purposes. . . .

How War Might Come. In seeking to gain one concession after another from us, Russia hopes to profit by the well-known reluctance of democracies to risk war and the equally well-known ability of dictatorships to do so or at least to appear to be running the risk. Such a policy usually has a short-range advantage for the dictatorships. But it ultimately leads to war. The concessions, which the democracies make, pile up fears and resentments among even a reluctant population until the moment is reached when even democracies are forced to make a stand. Meanwhile the same concessions increase the boldness and the strength of the dictatorship until a point is reached when it thinks it can wage a successful war. The Russians are the more liable to overestimate their strength at some point because they underestimate the residual health of the democratic-capitalist world in much the same fashion as Hitler did, being fooled as he was by their own propaganda and the inability of a dictator's minions to tell him the truth.

The point of explosion in Europe would be reached when Russian power came within proximate domination of the Continent. At that point the instincts of survival in the West would prompt decisive action and a joining of the issue. The way to avoid war is not to allow this expansion. This is why the American public should, and generally does, support Secretary Byrnes's increasing and why the whole of non-Communist Europe is heartened by it. . . .

The fact is that had Russian terror not so completely discredited Communism, our stupidities would long since have discredited democracy. For example, in Bavaria the Socialists and Christian Democrats united in asking for the provision of a planning commission in their new constitution. Our military government ruled it out on the ground that it was incompatible with democracy. Amidst the awful shambles of the German cities such notions of "free enterprise" are as irrelevant as Communism is noxious. It was a very conservative Bavarian who wailed, "How do Americans expect us to rebuild these cities without planning?"

The Germans have encompassed the provisional defeat of Russia's ideological ambitions. But these gains cannot be held without a clear-cut and creative economic policy on our part. . . .

Secretary Byrnes hinted that if the economic unity envisaged at Potsdam were not achieved, we would have to re-examine our whole position, including our policy on reparations. It is now high time to elaborate these hints into a clear policy of economic reconstruction. It is on this point that democratic opinion in America must take hold. . . .

The Chance of Peace. Not only the Communists but all the fellow travelers and many misguided liberals will protest against such a program. They will regard it as provocative and as leading to war. But if the real threat of war with Russia is understood it will become apparent to all but the willfully blind that there is no hope of peace in a policy which plays into the hands of Russia's ideological strategy. The program may also be a target for some American conservatives who do not understand that the American identification of democracy with free enterprise is a luxury which Europe cannot afford. There is no possibility of saving freedom in Europe except by the support of political forces which stand to the left of American liberal thought. . . .

We do face once more the distinction between relative justice and tyranny. Our tyrannical opponent is as unscrupulous as tyrannies always are. . . . Since this new tyranny is not only unscrupulous but possesses the guile to exploit our moral and political weaknesses, it must be the business of a genuine liberalism not to relax our outer defenses but to make our political and economic life more worthy of our faith and therefore more impregnable. War with Russia is neither imminent nor inevitable if we have a creative policy. Let us, therefore, avoid hysteria even while we abjure sentimental illusions.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.