The Battlefields of Peace

Every month brings a calamity graver than most major battles. Millions pass into slavery between one week and the next. The fate of whole continents swings with a day's news. A fifth of the world's people are involved in actual war. No place, from the Congo to Spitsbergen, is safe. Nobody is secure.

What kind of a peace is this?

How Firm? The smiles of Potsdam slowly froze into "patience and firmness." And firmness began, with the announcement of the Marshall Plan, to become more than a word.

But--so far--not much more.

This was the situation last week on the various fronts of peace:

P: Czechoslovakia went under after a struggle much feebler than optimists had hoped for; it was plain that though the Czechs loved freedom, they had no confidence in its defenders (see below).

P: The Finns, pressured, got ready to bow their once-stiff necks.

P: In Greece, the Communists, with military help from their Slav comrades across the borders, were winning. No matter how much purely economic aid the U.S. put in, the Reds could probably overrun Greece whenever they decided to try hard.

P: In Italy, Communists & friends had a good chance to win the April 18 elections. If they lost, they might start a civil war in the north, which would be harder for the West to win than the Greek war, and more essential.

P: In France, last year's decline of Communist strength had stopped.

P: In Western Germany,, the U.S., Britain and France were still thrashing about in a diplomatic and bureaucratic maze.

P: Britain's heart was stout, but her aim was confused and her economy holding on by the fingernails.

P: In the Arab world, trust of the U.S. had "gone down from 108% to 8%" as a result of the tragic fiasco of U.S. policy on the Palestine issue.

P: Zionists were calling the U.S. traitor for not helping them more.

P: Turkey was still menaced by Russia, still unable to demobilize its army.

P: Persia was the same old political and economic morass--easy picking for Russia.

P: India was somewhere between chaos and nationhood (probably much nearer the former).

P: China--all China--might be lost in a year; the north in a few months, the rest at Communist pleasure (see FOREIGN NEWS).

P: Latin America, generally, was more friendly to the U.S. than it used to be, but it was economically shaky, and Communist influence had not been eradicated.

P: In the U.S., Communist influence had declined; but it was strong enough to be an important factor (via Henry Wallace) in the presidential campaign.

Peace, in short, was wonderful.

The Atomic Pillow. After the Czech crisis, a number of people woke up (or said they did) to what the peace was. The talk about a Western Union in Europe, which had been droning off to a snore, buzzed up again. But what the Czech crisis mainly did in the West was to increase anti-Communist sentiment, of which there was a large unused surplus already at hand.

The great awakening that came with "the second Munich" tended to take the form of rolling over from one kind of political escapism to another. Heads formerly buried in complacency were now pillowed on the atomic bomb.

"One of the best informed women in the U.S. on international affairs" wrote a letter to J. M. Roberts Jr., foreign affairs analyst of the Associated Press. She had been all in favor of appeasing Russia. But now: "We should start an 'unprovoked' war, use atom bombs."

Mrs. Grundy in Politics. Here was the other side of appeasement's coin. Kiss 'em or kill 'em, but don't come to grips with reality. Don't let the troops in Greece fire a shot--somebody might get hit. Don't worry about essential oil supplies in the Middle East--somebody might make a profit. Don't get into the China war--the government is corrupt. Don't give Western Europe a military guarantee against Russia--it might have to be kept. Don't speak up for U.S. ideals of democracy-- rude persons might laugh. Stay out of the dirt and danger (where civilization will be won or lost), but drop a nice clean atomic bomb.

Nobody knows better than Stalin that the U.S. drop-the-bomb talk is mere "sentiment," an outgrowth of political prudery that refuses to face the facts of politics. In This Week Cartoonist Ray Helle neatly ticked it off with this sentiment: two parrots are sitting on a perch; behind them is a cat; says one parrot to the other, "Stop worrying about the atom bomb and keep your eye on the cat."

Like Poor Old Benes. The Marshall Plan was not a futile gesture. Indeed, its preliminary success probably forced the Kremlin strategists to move in Czechoslovakia and Finland while the moving was still easy. The Marshall Plan was, however, an incomplete gesture. Greece won't be won by canned pineapples nor China by made-in-Washington land reforms. The Czech coup might not have been tried if the U.S. had not looked helpless in Greece, helpless in China, and silly --or worse--in Palestine.

Last week the hand-wringers were pointing out that the U.S. could not have acted in the Czech crisis because Prague was so much nearer to Russia than to the U.S. That was all too true. Austria, Italy, Germany, the Middle East, China, Korea and Japan were also nearer to Russia. The point was that their fall would bring Russia much nearer to the U.S. not only in geography but, more importantly, in degree of power.

The Western nations had scores of possible answers to the Czech move. Instead of getting France to join last week in the kind of protest note that helped Hitler to power, France might have been induced to stop stalling on the question of Western German industry. Two U.S. Army divisions to Greece--with orders to clean up that mess--might have convinced the Italians that the U.S. was a friend worth having. People who live in threatened nations (and who doesn't?) need more than food; they need to have some assurance that the U.S. intends to win the peace. Paul Verdon, a Parisian restaurant keeper, spoke for millions when he read the Czech news last week: "Either this is the American century or the Soviet century," he said. "But I would certainly like to know which." An opportunist's view? Yes, Verdon would like the opportunity to go on living.

News from the battlegrounds of peace will continue to be calamitous as long as the anti-Communist powers sit back waiting for the next Communist move. Marshall created a crisis for the Russians when they had to decide last summer whether they would take part in the ERP meeting in Paris. They didn't, but it was a bitter pill for their satellites to swallow.

Since peace broke out at Potsdam, the Paris meeting has been the only crisis created by the West, the only time anti-Communism has taken the ball. The rest of the time the West has been waiting--like poor old Benes in Prague--and every day of waiting the cat creeps closer.

Cats are, of course, vulnerable to atomic bombs, but that way out might lead to a peace that would make this peace look like peace indeed.

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