The Supreme Question

Charles Habib Malik, Lebanon's delegate at U.N., is a Christian (Greek Orthodox) Arab and a onetime professor of philosophy at the American University in Beirut. His voice of clear faith often rises above U.N.'s shallow bickerings. The current issue of The Christian Century publishes a recent speech in which Philosopher Malik defines, better than most Western leaders, the urgent challenge and the tremendous opportunity which Communism presents to the West. Excerpts:

Man Dehumanized. When Marx and Engels launched their wild attack on all known and existing patterns of life, the opening words of their Manifesto--"A specter is haunting Europe--the specter of Communism"--were by no means a description of an existing situation; but today, exactly a century later, these same words are more than completely fulfilled . . . And yet, the dangers latent in Communism need not have awaited the developments of this whole century to be fully realized; they were already there ... for the whole world to read, decades before Communism had at its disposal the world's most highly organized war machinery. At the outset. . . men failed to realize the full character and magnitude of the challenge of Communism mainly because their sight was concentrated on the political and the quantitative . . . The spiritual significance of Communism simply eluded men's vision . . . Today ... those who see only the political, social, economic and military threat of Communism miss its true challenge as pathetically as did their predecessors . . .

Communism is predicated on the emphatic rejection of God . . . Communist man ... is pathetically dehumanized . . . severed from his divine origin and divine destiny; denied the spiritual principle which gives his reason access to the truth, which endows his conscience and will with the craving for the good, which empowers his heart to love; imprisoned hopelessly in this world of strife and frustration, here to center all his hopes and here to erect his paradise . . . He is but a passing shadow of no duration, a fragment of no intrinsic or ultimate worth . . .

Communism is not only a total doctrine which is at absolute variance with the deepest persuasions of the West; it is--and this is its importance from the viewpoint of war and peace--a total state . . . absolutely determined to spread its outlook, its system, its power, throughout the world ... by force and subversion and every conceivable subtlety.

Can There Be Peace? Communists usually offer one aspect of their teachings to a group or an individual--to the underprivileged masses, it is equality and security and what they call economic justice; to the peoples fighting against colonialism, it is emancipation from their imperialist masters; to soft pacifists, it is attacks against warmongers and petitions for world peace; to oppressed races, it is racial equality; to the cosmopolitans, it is the supranational world scope of Communism; to the intellectuals, it is the lure of the ideal of equality and justice; to the liberals, it is what they call the struggle against fascism. Now so far as they go, these partial emphases of Communism have each a germ of truth. But they are not the whole truth about Communism . . . Nor can the abstract good in them stand up, white and radiant, outside the dark shadow of the whole system. These various aspects of Communism are offered as a bait, cunningly prepared to suit the victim . . .

Can there be real peace, with Communism so entrenched and so determined? Can the West get along with this sort of thing? . . . My answer to all these questions is categorically in the negative. Obviously I cannot get along with one whose whole being not only contradicts mine, but is bent on destroying mine. Therefore when anybody in the West says . . . "We can get along with Communism," then one of four propositions is true: 1) either he is a Communist himself; 2) or he is an appeaser; 3) or he does not know what he is talking about; namely, he does not know the nature of the thing with which he says he can get along; 4) or--and this is the most grievous thing--he does not know the supreme values of his own heritage, which Communism has radically rebelled against and desires to extirpate.

For I assure you it isn't only your soldiers in Korea who are embattled today: it is the highest attainments of mind, spirit, and being of the last four thousand years.

Stubborn, Irreducible Facts. The question therefore is not: Can we get along with Communism? . . . The question is: whether it is possible to induce, and how to induce, the necessary modification in Communist theory and practice whereby the West then can get along, not indeed with Communism as such, but with the Russians. This is the supreme question of the present generation.

This modification will never take place so long as Communism passes from triumph to triumph. Only when Communism comes up against hard facts like, for example, Yugoslavia, facts which it cannot alter but which it can fit only by altering itself, will this basic modification emerge. Only then will . . . the policy of live-and-let-live become a possibility. It is the task of the non-Communist world and especially of the Western world for the sake of peace to create those stubborn and irreducible facts which will force Communism to change itself and to live at peace with the rest of the world.

Four orders of stubborn and irreducible facts must be created. I call them the balance of power, the balance of justice, the balance of mind, and the balance of spirit. The Balance of Power. Europe ... the Middle East. . . Asia and the Far East are weak and exposed . . . Consequently the balance of power at those places must be redressed if there is going to be honest, peaceful coexistence ... Communist China [and] the Soviet Union . . . taken together will in time constitute a most formidable combination of strength . . . Therefore, the real problem of war or peace today, so far as the Far East is concerned, is the problem of the independence of China. He works for peace today who works for the independence of China . . .

What is true of the Far East is also true of Europe . . . Unless not only the sheer military balance in Europe is redressed, but also the European spirit develops an absolute faith in its values and a determined will to fight for them, I see no possibility of real peace . . .

The Balance of Justice. There are appalling conditions of privation and poverty throughout Asia and many other portions of the world. So long as Moscow means, truly or falsely, hope for the masses, and the Western world does not mean so with the same clarity, it is idle to speak of ... live-and-let-live . . .

The Balance of Mind requires that there be some equality in the accessibility to truth and information between the countries of the Iron Curtain and the rest of the world . . . There can be no peace until . . . there is equal intellectual and social intercourse between the Communist and the non-Communist worlds . . .

The Balance of Spirit is in a sense the most important task. For a man, no matter how weak or poor or ignorant, will be exceedingly strong and rich and wise if only he has an idea for which he can die and therefore for which he can live. Communism provides such an idea. The Communists have a purpose in life beyond their immediate cares and worries. The non-Communist world does not have such a sense of mission. There is, therefore, so far an unequal spiritual struggle between it and the Communist world. So long as this is the case, peaceful coexistence must remain a pious hope. For there will always be an uneasy tension in the minds of men afflicted with the widespread malady of purposelessness. They will always feel they are unjustly cheated of something . . .

The Western world . . . trusts far more in gadgets and in the manipulation of the emotions than in the truth and potency of ideas . . . The ideal of taking a college degree, getting married and settled, rearing a family, having a dependable job, making lots of money and having a solid and ever expanding bank account--this ideal conceived purely in these terms is not good enough. It is ... a very timid ideal. It is not dangerous enough; it does not answer to man's deepest hunger for truth and community, where going out of one's self is a joy, and where it is more blessed to give than to receive. Confronted with this ideal alone, Asia--if I must be frank with you--is not impressed. In fact, despite all her darkness and misery, Asia can still do better. And an Asian who knows something of the [West's] highest values . . . can turn to the West and say, "You can do much better also."

If the thirsty souls of honest, seeking men throughout the world are going to be satisfied, a mighty living true faith must be discovered or created to balance the militant faith of Communism ... He does not know the infinite positive hidden riches of the non-Communist world in Asia, in Europe and in America, who does not believe that such a faith can be released in it.

In East and West alike our spiritual and intellectual leaders will seek new dimensions and they will find them . . . And they will bless the names of Marx and Lenin, not indeed for what they did and meant, but for having roused the rest of us from our slumber and forced us to inquire after our good and return to our God.

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