NOVEMBER 30, 1953 25¢

Was Stalin Insane? By Two Former Soviet Officials

Red Bridgehead in the Guianas

What Elects Republicans

Lids on the German Economy

How Many Other Harry Whites? Photol/raph /ill lIoll'(//'d MAKE WAY FOR CONSTRUCTION!

If you vvant to see a typical example of American skill, energy and enterprise at \vork, take a look around your community. Chances are you will see several types of nevv construction going on. The dynamic construction industry, working with improved methods and equipment, is building America at an unprecedented rate. Construction of housing, high\vays, public utilities, public buildings, airports, industrial plants and other projects has increased until the total has reached a volume of • over thirty billion dollars a year! The construction industry has also contributed to the growth and progress AMERICAN ~uullidCOMPANY of Alnerican Cyanamid Company as a teader in the chemical ReId. Several new Cyanamid plants, offices, warehouses and other facilities are now being built or have recently been completed. These will help Cyanamid supply 30 ROCKEFELLER PLAZA, NEW YORK 20, No Y additional materials and services to more than 200 industries vvhich, in turn, manufacture products used in building and construction. Here is another example of how American business works to strengthen and expand our national economy. THE A. Fortnightly Our Contributors For SERGEI PRAVDIN and MIKHAIL BOROV are the Individualists pseudonyms of two Russian refugees now living reeman in the West who were previously intimately connected with persons close to the Politburo. Editor HENRY HAZLITT They have been recommended to us on the mast Managing Editor FLORENCE NORTON trusted authority as absolutely reliable. Further clues to their identity must be withheld at pres­ ent in order to as,sure their personal safety.

M. K. ARGUS, a member of the staff of the Rus­ Contents VOL. 4, NO.5 NOVEMBER 30, 1953 sian-language daily, N ovoye Russkoye Slovo, published in New York City, is a regular con­ tributor of satirical pieces to the FREEMAN. Editorials A Slight Case of 'Treason 149 NATHANIEL WEYL spent some years in govern­ ment ,service as a specialist on Latin American How Many Other Harry Whites? 151 affairs. He is the author of Treason and The An Uncertain Trumpet 152 Battle Against Disloyalty. Whose "Voice" Is It Now? 153 Priv'ate Atomic 'Energy 154 C. DICKERMAN WILLIAMS until recently Solicitor in the U. S. Department of Commerce, is espec­ Articles ially known to FREEMAN readers for his recent articles on the Hiss case (September 7) and Was iStalin Insane? Congressional investigations (September 21). SERGEI PRAVDIN 'and MIKHAIL BOROV 155 The Big Three Meet M. K. ARGUS 157 JACQUES GERSZUNI, Russian-born, for many years a French citizen resident in Paris, is a regular Red Bridgehead in the IGuianas NATHANIEL WEYL 159 contributor on economic and political subje«ts ,., What Elects Republicans C. DICKERMAN WILLIAMS 162 to papers in France, Switzerland, and Germany. Can We Trade with Malenkov? He has also prepared a number of scripts for The East-West 'Trade Illusion JACQUES GERSZUNI 164 Radio Liberation for broadcast behind the Iron Economic Strategy RAYMOND ARON 165 Curtain. Lids on the German Economy VOLKMAR MUTHESIUS 167 RAYMOND ARON is one of "the better known French writers and s'cholars with a wide rep­ Books and the Arts utation in this country. He is a professor at Art 'and Man's Fate JAMES BURNHAM 170 the Institut d'Etudes Politiqu~s in Paris and Moscow's Hands Abroad the leading political columnist of the Paris WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN 172 newspaper, '-';e Figaro. His comments on East­ A Primer in Ecology JAMES RORTY 173 West trade in this issue (p. 165) appear also in a. just published book edited by James Burn­ Middle E·astern Dilemma SERGE FLIEGERS 173 ham, What Europe Thinks of America. Briefer Mention 174 Of Continuing Interes,t 175 DR. VOLKMAR MUTHESIUS, distinguished German An American Architect SERGE FLIEGERS 176 economist, is co-editor of the financial jOlilr­ nal, Zeitschrift fur das Gesamte Kreditwesen, Poem published' in Frankfurt.

To Each His King FLOYD DELL 169 FLOYD DELL, former newspaperman and editor, is the author of a number of novels (includ­ This Is What They Said 166 ing Moon-Calf), plays, biographIes, and several volumes of verse and essays. From Our Readers 178 New .. Reprint Available

The enthusiastic res,ponse we have received to THE FREEMAN is published fortnightly. Publication Office, Orange, Conn. Editorial and General Offices, 240 Madison Avenue, New Yo.rk 16, N. Y. Copyrighted in the United the article "Why Socialize Niagara1" by Robert Sta-tes, 1953, by the Freeman Magazine, Inc. Henry Hazlitt, President; Lawrence Fertig, Vice' President; Claude Robinson, Secretary; Kurt Lassen, Treasurer. S. Byfield, which appeared in our issue of Entered as second class matter at the Post Office at Orange, Conn. Rates: Twenty·five November 16, has led us to make reprints of it cents the copy; five dollars a year in the United States; nine dollars for two years; available for those readers who would like to six dollars a year elsewhere. The editors cannot be responsible fo-r unsolicited manuscripts unless return postage or, share it with their friends and business ac­ better, a stamped, self-addressed envelope is enclosed. Manuscripts must be typed quaintances. Copies are now available at the fol­ double·spaced. lowing rates: single copy, $.10; 12 copies $1.00;

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MONDAY, N'OVEMBER 30, 1953

A Slight Case 01 Treason

It was an appalling revelation that Attorney Gen­ Taking up this strange case chronologically, we eral Brownell made on November 6: "I can now an­ come next to President Eisenhower's extraordinary nounce officially, for the first time in public, that press conference of November 11. Some reporters the records in my department show that White's seemed to forget that their sole function there spying 'activities for the Soviet government were was to elicit information, ,and not to air their own reported in detail by the FiBI to the White House opinions. Anthony Leviero of the N ew York Times by means of a report delivered to President Truman actually began his "question" by saying: "Mr. Pres­ through his military aide, Brig. Gen. Harry H. ident, I think this case' is at best a pretty squalid Vaughan, in December of 1945. In the face of this one." (And what he apparently thought "squalid" information, and incredible though it may seem, was not that the Truman government had harbored President ITruman subsequently, on January 23, and promoted a spy af,ter it had been officially in­ 1946, nominated White, who was then Assistant formed he was a spy, but that Mr. Brownell had Secretary of the Treasury, for the even more im­ finally accused the Truman government of it.) portant position of executive director for the Uni.ted The press conference was also rem,arkable' for the States in the International Monetary Fund." confusion and. lack of knowledge ,that it revealed Now this is a fact. With all the irrelevancies that on President Eisenhower's part. Like Harry have been dragged in and the counter...charges that Vaughan, "he didn't know who was White." Yet in have been huded to obs'cure the main issue, nobody addition to what was known about White by every has denied this fact. Mr. ITruman's memory of it, at informed Washington reporter, Mr. Eisenhower first, turned out to be as nonexistent as Harry had been in a position to have special information. Vaughan's. "I know nothing about any such FBI A former Treasury Department official, for ex­ report," he said. Yet he immediately added: "As ample, Fred Smith, reported in an article in the soon as we found White' was disloyal we fired him." United Nations World of March 1947, that Eisen­ Here was at least an admission that White was hower (then Suprem'e Allied Commander in Europe) disloyal and that Mr. Truman 'finally knew it. That had met with him, Secretary Morgenthau, and Mr. Truman "fired" him, however, i-s dis'proved by Harry Dexter White in a .tent in England on August the record. He failed to withdraw the \Vhite nomina­ 7, 1944, to discuss the so-called Morgenthau Pian tion to the Monetary Fund post even after a second for the pastoralization of Ge'rmany. FBI report on White delivered .to General Vaughan Next at the press conference, Mr. Eisenhower on February 4, 1946. Governor James F. Byrnes of answered that he would not have subpoenaed Mr. South Carolina, who was then Secretary of State, Truman or Chief Justice' Clark. All he needed to has, in addition, flatly declared that he drew the have done was to s.tand on his first· reply-that he second FBI report to Mr. Truman's attention on was not a constitutional lawyer. February 6, 1946, and urged him to withdraw Finally, when Mr. Eisenhower was asked at the White's nomination. Yet not only did that nomina­ press conference whether he felt that President tion go through, but in ,a letter written April 30, Truman had "knowingly appointed a Communist 1946 Mr. Truman accepted White's resignation as spy to high office," he replied that this was "incon­ Assistant Secretary of the Treasury with "regret," ceiv,able"-instead of pointing out, as he should adding that he was "confident" .that White in his have done, that the real damage was that a Com­ new position would "add distinction to your already munist spy was appointed to and retained in high distinguished career with the' Treasury." And even office, knowingly or unknowingly; and that it was when White finally resigned from this new job in up to a congressional inquiry, and not to him, to turn, Mr. Truman wrote a public letter on April 8, determine the extent of Mr. Truman',s knowledge or 1947, accepting the resignation "with sincere re'gret lack of it. and considerable reluctance." This· brings us to the next step in the case.

NOVEMBER 30, 1953 149 Harold It. Velde, chairman of the House Commit­ mittee on August 13, 1948, the committee got no tee on Un-American Activities, acting ill-ad.. public help whatever from the Administration. visedly but certainly not illegally, served a sub­ And even after White died, three 'days later, the poena on former President Truman to appear Admin.istration revealed nothing. before the committee. At first Mr. Truman indi­ In short, even on this story, high officials, of cated that he would respond; but encouraged the Administration, including the President, con­ and assisted by Mr. Eisenhower's public dispar­ spired to conceal and suppress the whole case of agement of the subpoena, changed his mind and Harry White. They were able to keep it sup­ declined to comply. He got Samuel Rosenman to pressed for nearly eight years. And whenever any draft a reply citing as alleged precedents the rude Congressman raised the question of Com­ cases of sixteen Presidents who declined to re­ munists in government they denounced him for spond to congressional subpoenas. Yet the New "McCarthyism." York Times, after diligent search, reported that Where does this leave us? Mr. Krock admits "no authority could be' found to support Mr. Tru­ that even if the version of the story that he pre­ man, as a private citizen, in his refusal to appear sented is true, "Attorney General Brownell, Jr. before the commirttee." would have been on solid ground ... had he as­ It is also significant that Mr. Truman's list of serted, not that Mr. Truman had promoted a Rus­ sixteen Presidents studiously avoided the name sian spy and knew it, but thait Mr. Truman had of Andrew Johnson. This would have reminded commissioned a man who he knew the FBI had the country that the alleged constitutional "in­ decided was a Russian spy." The defenders of dependence of the Presidency" is considerably Mr. Truman are entitled to whatever satisfaction less than complete. One of the most important they can derive from this technical amendment. provisions in the Constitution is the power given But let us hope that they will not continue to to Congress to impeach the President for "trea­ raise irrelevancies and create diversions. son, bribery, or other high crimes and misde­ meanors." Mr. Truman stands accused of 'a dere­ The White affair destroys the whole case of the liction of duty so gross that it imperiled the Truman Administration on the issue of Commun­ security of the nation. Such a dereliction, if it ists in government. That case has been built on occurred, is at least an impeachable "misde­ ,the argument that congressional investigations meanor" within the meaning of the Cons1titution. of suspected disloyalty in the government service What a President in office could be impeached for, are not only "un-American" but unnecessary, be­ an ex-President, as a private citizen, can certainly cause this was the function of the FBI. But in be questioned about. Mr. Truman preferred to the White case rthe FBI made' an investigation, make 'a radio and television talk. But that is not and put its evidence and its adverse verdict in a substitute for testimony under oath, and sub­ the hands of the supposedly responsible officials; ject· to cross-examination. and its report 'was ignored or suppressed. Mr. Truman's response to the accusations of The defenders of Mr. Truman began by resting Attorney General Brownell,as we have seen, was practically their whole case on the contention to say first, "I know nothing about any such FBI that it had not been proved that Mr. Truman report" and, se,cond, "As soon as we found White knowingly appointed 'a Communist spy to office. was disloyal we fired him." Both of these replies The adverb is important so far as Mr. Truman is w,ere promptly destroyed by the facts of record. concerned. But it isa.subordinate issue so far as So Mr. Truman's friends and the high Democratic the security of the nation is concerned. For with comm'and had to bring forward a new one'. This or without Mr. Trum~n's knowledge, the country was firslt unfolded by Arthur Krock in the New was betrayed by the Whites and the Hisses in York Times of November 14. This story was that, high government positions. 'sure, Mr. Truman knew all about the FBI report If an automobile driver runs over a woman and on White, but ,after consulting with Attorney kills her, it makes an important legal difference General Clark, Secretary of the Treasury Vinson, to him whether the court decides that he did it and J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, decided with premeditated intent, in which case it is mur­ on their advice not only to keep but to promote der in the first degree, or whether he was merely White so they could get further evidenee on him. drunk or reckless or incompetent, in which case Even if this astonishing story could be made it is merely manslaughter. But in either case the to stick, what are its implications? After Mr. victim is dead, and cannot be brought back to life. Truman knew about the FBI report, White was And we now know that if only through incom­ promoted, kept in office for fourteen more months, petence, blindness, or gullibility, the Roosevelt and and finally allowed to retire with effusive public 'Truman Administrations appointed Communist expressions from Mr. Truman of "sincere regret spies to high office. Keeping them there,after the and considerable reluctance." When White, as a FBI and others had brought in their evidence, can result of charges by Elizabeth Bentley, was called only be described, in view of' the appalling risks before the House Un-American Activities Com- that were run, as criminal negligeli'ce.

150 THE FREEMAN How Many Other Harry Whites?

Harry Vaughan certainly must have kept his head disclose that there had been a still earlier Morgen­ close to the icebox in those good old White House thau Plan, also produced by Harry White. On days. Not only had he never seen the now famous November 17, 1941, White submitted a memoran­ FBI reports. He had never even heard of Harry dum to Secretary Morgenthau, who the next day, Dexter White, he said. True enough, General over his own name, sent it on to the President. Vaughan was a busy man, and a lot was passing The contents of this memorandum reappeared as over, and under, his desk. A little item like an the Ten Point ultimatum that was issued to Japan official notification that a top government official on November 26. Even Langer and Gleason agree was a Soviet spy could easily get lost in-shall that with this document the last chance of avoid­ we say?-the shuffle. ing immediate, all-out war with Japan disappeared. And make no mistake about it: Harry Dexter Harry White, we must grant, was quite a plum White was in literal truth a top official. From 1941 in Moscow's Washington pie. Sitting in their corner, until 1946, when President Truman appointed him the Politburo members must have had quite a U.S. Director of the International Monetary Fund, chuckle when Harry Truman pulled him out of it was generally known that Harry White was the Treasury and stuffed him in as U.S. (and running the supremely important foreign opera­ therefore controlling) Director of a Fund with ti0ns of the Treasury, and was takiuir quite a nearly $8,000,000,000 at its disposal. share in running the government as a whole. In December 1941, an official Treasury Depart­ But one plum does not stand out in a pieful. ment order, signed by Mr. Morgenthau as Secretary, Attorney General Brownell has focused public at­ read: "'On and after this date, Mr. Harry D. White, tention for the moment on Harry White. That is Assistant to the Secretary, will assume full re­ all to the good-and high time it is. It should sponsibility for all matters with which the Trea­ not be allowed to obscure the terrible truth that sury Department has to deal having a bearing on there were scores of Harry Whites. The truth about foreign relations." In February 1943, by which many of them was known to the FBI, and was time White was a full-fledged Assistant Secretary, communicated to the proper officials of the execu­ he was assigned "full responsibility" in connection tive branch. with "the operations of the Army and Navy and There were several dozen names besides Harry the civilian affairs in the foreign areas in which White's in the secret 1945 report to which Mr. our Armed Forces are operating or are likely to Brownell referred. In almost all the cases the re­ operate. This will,·. of course', include 'general liaison ports got the same 'brushoff that was applied to the with the State Department, Army and Navy, and Harry White information. other departments or agencies and representatives In the same Monetary Fund of which White was of foreign governments on these matters." controlling director, the chief administrative Harry White was official Treasury representative officer, at $20,000 a year tax free, was Virginius on nearly every important wartime agency and Frank Coe. He was a protege of White's, his suc­ committee, from the Board of Economic Warfare cessor in the Treasury as Director of the Division to the OiSS Advisory Committee. of Monetary Research. He was named in the same Elizabeth Bentley was the first to mention that 1945 secret report as a collaborator in espionage. the "Morgenthau Plan" for the pastoralization of In 1948, before the Un-American Activities Com­ Germany was a Harry White product. In his 1948 mittee, he followed White in singing the same appearance before the Un-American Activities "What a good boy am I!" song. A year ago, still Committee, White modestly acknowledged his Secretary of the Fund, he refused on the ground authorship. This was the Plan designed to eliminate' of self-incrimination to answer questions put to him German heavy industry for all time and to turn by the Internal Security Subcommittee. He could Germany into a farming country with a population never have acquired or held that job except on the cut in half. Secretary Morgenthau took it to the initiative and support of the Treasury and the Quebec Conference, where, under President Roose­ White House. velt's urging, it was accepted "in principle." By Harold Glasser, also of the Treasury, a special the best of luck, it was never applied 100 per cent adviser of General Marshall at Moscow, was also in practice, but its spirit remained to bolster named; Edward Fitzgerald and Harry Magdoff, top the Unconditional Surrender demand and the policy officials of the Department of Commerce; and all of vengeance that was pursued in Germany during three continued for nearly two years to advance the first three postwar years. into the top bureaucratic levels. Messrs. Langer and Gleason, in their recently Consider the still more startling case of Nathan published official history, The Undeclared War, Gregory Silvermaster. The sworn testimony in 1945

NOVEMBER 30, 1953 151 names him a:s chief of one of the principal This in 1942. But Silverma'ster continued his espionage cells (one for which Harry White was a rise in government ranks, into a $10,009 (P-8, "source"). According to the testimony, the docu ... highest civil service cate'gory of those days) post ments were "processed" and photographed in the in the War Assets Administration. He resigned 'basement of the Chevy Chase house where he ",without prejudice" only in December 1946. resided with William Ludwig Unman, who at the Part of the explanation is on record. Lauchlin Pentagon had access to virtually all Air Force in­ Currie intervened for Silvermaster with Robert P. formation. Patterson, then Undersecretary of War. Patterson Three years before that, in 1942, Generia! George thereupon cleared Silvermaster. Currie, it will be V. Strong, for Army G-2, had submitted a report on recalled, was one of President Roosevelt's confiden­ Silvermaster, when he was up for a Foreign tial White House assistants. For some years he has Economic Administration job, which concluded: been uninterruptedly located in Colombia, South "iG-2's opinion having been asked in relation to America. Mr. Silvermaster, we adhere to our opinion that he Alas, these facts about Alger Hiss, Harry White' should not be employed where he has access to & Co. do rather alarm the public. They suggest confidential or secret information." (June 17, 1942.) that a substantial conspiracy has existed, and This was mild enough in the light of the report still exists, to subvert and de'stroy our government. itself, which, after an exhaustive history of Silver­ How wise ,the New York Times, Washington Post, master's career, summarized as follows: "The and Eleanor Roosevelt are in their oft-repeated overwhelming amount of testimony from the many advice to shut off the congressional investigating and varied witnesse's and sources, indicates beyond committees! Why, if it hadn't been for these nosey, reasonable doubt that Nathan Gregory Silverm-aster applecart-upsetting committees, we wouldn't have is now, and has for years, been a member and a known' a thing about these dreadful goings-on. leader of the Communist Party and very probably And, of course, what we don't know can't hurt us. a se'cret agent of the O.G.P.U." Or can it? An Uncertain Trumpet

"For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who some intense and serious thinking on the subject shan prepare himself to the battle?" of how to combat this menace would not seem out St. Paul, First Epistle to the Corinthians of place. But where is the evidence of this alleged almost exclusive concentration of the American A ,good example of the trumpet with an uncertain mind upon the problem of Communism? Certainly, sound which the great Apostle deplored is the ,as Peter Viereck showed brilliantly in his Shame recent pronouncement on Communist issues by the and Glory of the Intellectuals, the' American in­ General Council of the Presbyterian Church. For, telligentsia, quick to see the evil in Nazism and ;behind a smokescreen of inconsistent and contra­ Fascism, were disgracefully slow in recognizing the dictory statements, this message lends the authority evil and danger in Communism. And one wonders and prestig'e of an historic church to many of the how many educated Americans even now would fallacies, exaggerations, and half-truths of anti­ get a passing mark in an examination in the basic anti-Communism. ideas of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin, in Communist 'The introduction to the pronouncement ,is 'alto­ methods of government and infiltration and direct gether sound and invalidates much of the succeed­ and indirect expansion. ing content,s. It is stated that Communism is a The authors of the letter go quite off the deep me'nace, that its leaders aim to subvert the thought end in describing some congressional inquiries as and life of the United States, and that ,congress­ "inquisitions which find their historic ,pattern in ional committees have rendered some valuable medieval Spain and in the tribunals of modern services to the nation. totalitarian states." T,his is eXiaggeT'ation fantastic ISO f'ar, so good. But most of the remainder of to the point of irresponsibility. H'as there ever ;the message is an amazing non sequitur. The au­ been a case in the Soviet Union, Red China, or the thorscall on Protestant Christians to t,ake a ,grave s,ateHite states where witnesses insulted and brow­ view()f the situation which is being created "by beat the members of the tribunal or got off scot­ the almost exClusive concentration of the Amer­ free by invoking a "fifth column amendment"? ican mind upon the problem of the threat of Com­ The letter contains gratuitous slurs on the munism." truthfulneS's of ex-Communists who have helped to Now if Communism isa menace committed to sub­ bring the facts of Communist conspiracy to light. verting the life and thought of the United States, Tt further deplores "fanatical negativism" -in

152 THE FREEMAN relation to Communism and makes the sensational It could have affirmed faith in the ultimate suggestion, quite unwarranted by any observable triumph of righteousness, in the survival of our fact in American life, that a fascist tyranny, in great heritag'e of Roman-Greco and Judaeo-Chris­ case of a national crisis, could occupy the "empti­ tian civilization. ness" of our national life. Ag,ain one is puzzled To a clear message of this kind there would have by the contradictory sounds of this very uncertain been a clear and resounding echo. What a pity that spiritual trumpet. To a logical mind, there would the Presbyterian leadership chose' to playa trumpet seem to be something amiss with the capacity for with an uncertain sound and many fa'lse quavering moral judgment of a person who had not a negative notes of appeasement and anti-anti-Communism. attitude toward Communism in view of its proved and unvarying record in every country where it has seized power. A negative attitude toward Com­ munism is inherent in a positive attitude toward Whose "Voice" Is It Now? the spiritual, human, and cultural values of our civilization, aU of which would be lost should Com­ The new United States Information Age'ncy has munism sueceed in its grand design of world now put out its shingle. It has taken over most domination. of the functions, including the Voice of America and the other propaganda activities, of the State Finally, the authors of the letter, who seem Department's old Division of Publiic Affairs. It is strangely oblivious both to the teachings of recent nowsuppos,ed to operate as an independent agency history and to current news dispatches, call for under the Operations Coordinating Board. us "always to be ready to meet around a conference Theodore C. Streibert, the first chief of U.S. table with the rulers of Communist c~untrie's," LA., has begun business in the approved public "to employ the conference method to the full in the relations manner, with a press rele:ase and an in­ settling of dispute,s with our country's enemies," terview. As compared with his State Department "to take the initiative of seeking face-to-face en­ predecessors, who were formidable competitors in counter with our enemies." There is no intimation the fie'ld, he has a'lready set one new record-for that this is just what the Western powers have been the amount of nonsense per paragraph. trying to do, only to meet one rebuff after another Under him, the agency is going to avoid "going from the Kremlin. violently anti-Soviet." Mr. 8'treibert seems to be lIn a climax of futility the letter asserts that the world's most unprejudiced man. "Where there the United Nations sitands between us and war are two sides to a question here we shall be sure (although the U ~N. was the formal sponsor of our to give both sides." We had been under the im­ only large venture in pos1twar hostilities), and pression that as taxpayers we were supporting an recommends "talk, unhurried talk ... talk which organization that is supposed to popularize one takes pla'ce in private" as "the only kind of ap­ particular side, the American side, of a question proach which can lead to saniity and fruitful under­ in dispute~ That was no doubt a re'actionary, right­ standing." wing prejudice on our part. What about all the private "talk" at Teheran, The reporters asked Mr. Streibert: "Can you Yalta, and Potsdam? The results could hardly be define for us what the 'enemy' is? ... Is it called "fruitful understanding." Russian expansionism or world-wide Communism?" There was much that the leadership of the Mr. Streibert replied with a figurative shake Presbyterian Church could have said that would of his rhetorical head: "It is Russian expansionism have been heard around the world asa clear rallying and imperialism. I wish we knew more about why call to the ,defense of the basic principles of moral it e~ists. It may be through fear on the'ir part of order. It, could have expressed horror at the denial another strong power ... that they feel threatens of the right to worship God freely behind the Iron their existence. It may be the old Russian imperial­ Curtain and sympathy for the victims of religious ism ... 'That is the target of our effort, not persecution in the' Soviet Union, in Communist Communis'm as such." China, in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the other satelHtes. So Communism is all right by us from now on. It could have called attention to the scandal When the two were celebrating together the recently created by the Dean of Canterbury and his imitators signed Pact, Molotov observed to Von Ribbentrop on both sides of the Atlantic who 'abuse' their posi­ that "N'azism is a matter of, taste." We now tion in the Chris,tian ministry to act as propagan­ (officially speaking) add "Communism" to the list dists for atheistic and barbarous dictatorships. to which the tolerant rule applies: De gustibus non It could have expressed sympathy for the in­ est disputandum. numerable victims of Communist totalitarianism, What kind of political novice has the President and for the anti-Communist Chinese and North appointed to this post, so important to the nation Koreans who have been undergoing a cruel and for future good or ill? This man seems to think unnecessary ordeal at Panmunjom. he can talk to the Soviet peoples without "taking

NOVEMBER 30, 1953 153 a stand" on the one fact that determines their lives promises to be enormous. According to Dr. entire existence; namely, that they live within a Alvin M. Weinberg, who directs the Oak Ridge Communist society. He knows so little about Com~ National Laboratory, "one large truck load of munism that he apparently believes it to be in no U-235 would power N'ew York City for a year," basic conflict with a philosophy and society of and "one pound of ordinary uranium, at a cost freedom. Even about "Russian expansionism," he of $10 per pound, has the same energy content is willing, it seems, to accept or half accept Moscow's as $10,000 worth of coal." standard line: "fear on their part of another strong We might have atomic energy ready for private power." If so, then the way to straighten out use ten years from now. But will the government Soviet-American relations is presumably for us continue to finance atom plants? Will industry to disarm at once and completely, to blow up our be permitted to own, or at least be able to use, own atom plants, and to bury all A- and H- bombs fissionable material, which is now exclusively in at the bottom of the sea. official hands? Will private companies be forced And if that' is so, there is surely no need for to hand over to the government all atomic patents, us to spend our money saying it. Those ideas are even those developed by their own research staffs? already well enough handled by the Voice of These are some of the questions Congress will Moscow and, still more exactly, by the Voice of have to answer. Luckily, the data for such an Belgrade. In fact, if we really mean that our answer is now available. The joint congressional target is not "Communism as such," we could get hearings have produced a wealth of solid infor­ the new agency off to a running profes,sional start mation.Conscientious legislators still have plenty by farming it out to Tito. of time to study the subject in its entirety.

No one, in or out of government, seriously doubts that private operations would spur peace­ Private Atomic Energy time atomic development. But the details of govern­ ment-industry relations must now be worked out. When Congress meets next January, it will have to What, then, are the next steps? take a good look at the Atomic Energy Act. Mean­ The Atomic Energy Commission is now consider­ while, congressional leaders have' several reasons ing a series of amendments to existing legislation, to study revisions of the government's atomic de­ designed to ,change the framework of future gov­ velopment program. One reason is the exhaustive ernment-industry relations in the field of peaceHme hearings which the Joint Congressional Committee atomic development. These amendments include held during the last session; the other is .the provisions whereby private industry might either Administration's announcement that it will ,have own or rent fissionable material, and own and its first full-scale atomic energy plant, entirely operate power reactors under government control. geared to pe'ace use, complete within four years; The suggested legislation would give the Commis­ a third is the Atomic Energy Commission's pro­ sion greater discretion in the exchange of atomic posed amendments to the Atomic Energy Act of and thermonuclear information. It would liberalize 1946. the patent system, so that private industry may The Administration's announcement was made by eventually benefit from its own patents. It would Thomas E. Murray, speaking for the A.E.C. Mr. do away with the difficult "Q clearance" for gen­ Murray did not duck the controversial question of eral laborers before they are permitted to work private or government control over peacetime on atomic energy projects. It would also extend atomic energy. He said that government must coverage of the act from the atomic energy field sponsor and finance full-scale power plant develop­ to the thermonucle'ar program, which includes ment "initially," but that "the cost-cutting drives, production of the hydrogen bomb. the know-how, skills and competition of m'any If adopted, these changes will open the way for segments of America's business and industry" are eventual integrated, and effieient, goverment­ essential ;for the future. industry relations in the field. It is worth remember­ Mr. Murray also said: "As privately financed ing that is was David Lilienthal, a staunch energy­ efforts gain momentum, the work should gradually by-government pioneer, who said that "industrial be transferred from the federal government, so developnlent of atomic energy simply won't happen that eventually industry will be carrying the greater until business management, the engineering and part of the burden of this industrial development." chemical professions-and some Edison-type in­ While the government's peace,time atomic power ventors-have their chance for a crack at it, in a plant ,gets under way, the basic controversy re­ wide-open competition of ideas, based on wide-open mains in the lap of Congre'Ss. A number of electric access to knowledge." and chemical companies say they are even now Before the door to private atomic energy is ready to produce atomic energy for private use'. opened wide, it has to be opened a crack. Congress All this means a lot to every American, because now will have to decide jus,t how wide a crack it the eventual impact of atomic energ-y on our daily shall be.

154 THE FREEMAN Was Stalin Insane?

By SERGEI PRAVDIN and MIKHAIL BOROV (Translated and adapted by Robert Donlevin)

The following article presents for the first time a hypothesis which, if confirmed, could cer­ tainly be recorded as recent history's grisliest joke: the clinical insanity of Joseph Stalin. The report comes from two former Soviet officials now living in western Europe who, of course, must write under assumed names. These men claim that before the war they were acquainted with people close to the Politburo later shot because they knew that three erninent Kremlin physicians liquidated in the thirties had diagnosed Stalin as a paranoiac. It is impossible to check their story in detail. However, it comes to us from the highly reliable French fort­ nightly B.E.I.P.I. (Bulletin de l'Association d'Etudes et d'Informations Politiques Inter­ nationales), a publication of documents and analyses of world Communism prepared by a staff of experts unrivalled for their intimate knowledge of events behind the Iron Curtain. Other experts on world Communism in this country who have read the report and met Stalin, are conv'inced of its plausibility. The FREEMAN feels justified in running this as yet unverified report as a guidepost for further research. THE EDITORS

The fantastic announcement last January of a without distinction. It would also explain the fact widespread plot against the lives of the' top Soviet that he com,pelled people to equate him with Socrates leaders, involving the most eminent Russian physi­ and Aristotle, with Karl Marx and Lenin, with cians, flabbergasted many a Western observer Goethe and Pushkin. He declared himself the great­ already hardened to the weird ways of the Stalin est of scientists, philosophers, writers, linguists, regime. But confusion was compounded when, in statesmen, and finally had himself proclaimed the the tumultuous months following Stalin's death, the supreme genius of the human race. The parallel indicted doC'tors were set free and their accusers with !Galigul,a is obvious. publicly charged with extracting confessions by The case was of special interest to one of the torture. most eminent physicians attached to the Kremlin No satisfactory explanation has yet been found in the thirties, Dr. Dmitri Dmitriovich Pletnev, for the so-called "doctors' plot." Could it be that who had ample occasion to observe Stalin. The the doctors were in possession of some terrible doctor often accompanied the dictator to his retreat secret dange'rous to the Stalin regime? A secret in the Caucasus. He knew that his Number One which Stalin believed they were about to break­ patient, who was able to

NOVEMBER 30, 1953 155 accuse,d, the "bourgeois" countrIes of sending behind to catry a weapon when in the presence of Stalin. the lines of the tSoviet Union three times as many Another thing that he'ld the despot's lieutenants spies as they sent into other countries, and also from acting was the possible effect of the reve­ "saboteurs, troublemakers, and as'sas'sins." lation on the Soviet people and on the Communist IGeneralWalter Krivitsky, one-time chief of parties ,abroad. Nevertheless, several hardy men' Soviet· intelligence in western Europe, who escaped did ,try to do something. Molotov's a.ssociate, Ian to the United States, wrote of this meeting that Rudzutak, Vice President of the Council of Com­ Stalin's henchmen listened in terror; nor were missars, suggested that a secret meeting' of the their fears idle. After this speech a mass exter­ Central Committee be convoked without Stalin's mination began, directed by :Stalin himself. Tens knowledge. The Committee should then draw up of thousands were shot, hundreds of thousands a petition signed by all members, humbly begging deported to slave labor camps. Stalin liquidated Stalin to 'give up his office until he had "regained members of· the Foreign Office, Politburo 'and Five­ his health, damaged by the strenuous work he Year Plan Administration; ambassadors, marshals, had accomplished for the good of socialist society." army commanders, ,scientists, writers, artists, en­ It is not known to whom Rudzutak dared confide gineers, directors of trusts; Comintern members his suggestion, but Stalin soon got wind of it and and other foreign Commu~ists who had come to the the unhappy Vice President was liquidated as a U.S.S.R. to help the ",chief of the world proletariat" spy ,and an enemy of the people. The same fate build the Communist regime. In the person of befell the second Vice President, V. Shubar, who Yagoda and all his deputies he exterminated the apparently favored a solution similar to that of top personnel of the Commissariat for the Security Rudzutak. The third Vice President, V'alerian of the State, which Stalin himself had called "the Me'zhlauk, also perished for having transmitted vigilant guardian of the revolution." In the army abroad inteUigence concerning Stalin's mental ill­ he 'annihilated seven deputies to the Defense Com­ ness. He was rumored to have been killed by missar, thirteen out of fifteen army commanders, N.K.V.D. chief Yezhov himself. 80 per cent of the corps and divi'sion comm,anders, News of Stalin's condition did get abroad, first 40 to 50 per cent of the re,gimental commanders, in 1937 and then in 1938. Not more than three over ten thousand field and junior grade officers. or four peo,ple knew of it, only one with all the These purges went far beyond any stated pur­ details. But they did not see fit to divulge it, pose'S of maintaining security and discipline. They allegedly because they '\vere afraid it might com­ tore apart all Soviet society and struck at many of promise the coming :tlght against Hitler-althoul"h the staunchest Stalinists. Many purgers were them­ it seems .strange that they held this attitude dur­ selves purged. To those around Stalin it became ing the two years of the Stalin-Hitler Pact. In clear that there was no rational explanation. They, any 'case, the original recipient of the details died who had never blanched ,at the thought of the most during the war, probably in one of Hitler's cre­ ruthless suppression of any real threat to their matories. However, close relatives of this person power or regime, could find only one answer. The'ir knew important fragments of the story, from chief was mad. which this article has been reconstructed. Some of the information which follows has passed through Fear Held Them Back several hands, thus the quotations may not have word-for-word accuracy, although the substance But how does one get rid of an apparently mad is vouched for. dictator who has built himself up to be the most Stalin often reproached Pletnev and other Krem­ powerful human being the world has ever known? lin physicians for not being able to do anything Merely raising the question of Stalin's mental for his insomnia or for the horrible nightmares health would be enough to insure arrest and he would have when he ,finally did get off to sleep. liquidation. Petrified by fear, they kept quiet and But the most disturbing' thing about the dictator went along with all the chief's wild projects, hiding was his constantly repeated accusation that Plet­ their thoughts from one another. Even if the le1aders nev, Yagoda, and Dr. Levin, dean of the Kremlin could have agreed on some action, it would have physicians, were preparing to kill him. been extremely difficult to carry out. Stalin's Dr. Pletnev had always rigorously obeyed the pathological distrust of everybody had led him N.K.V.D. ruling never to discuss anything that to devise the most elaborate measures for his happened in the Kremlin and especially never to own protection both inside and outside the Kremlin. talk about what Stalin did, what he said, or how When he went to his 'resort home at Sochi on the he felt. But now, terrified by Stalin's threats, he Black Sea, two trains left Moscow. No one knew in decided he had to talk to someone he could trust. which one Stalin traveled. When he motored to and He chose Dr. Levin, whom he had known for years. from his villa in the environs of Moscow, only his Levin enjoyed the confidence of .Yagoda and personal secretary knew which of a whole line of was also the N.K.V.D. chief's personal physician. In cars he was in. Absolutely no one, not Molotov, a heart-to-he'art talk Levin admitted he had sus­ M:alenkov, VoroshHov, or even Beria, was permitted pected Stalin of being mentally ill for over a year,

156 THE FREEMAN but he was horrified to hear that his own name Soviet leaders. The doctors who, in 1938, had been had been dragged into the chief's persecution com­ terrorized into testifying falsely against their in­ plex. Deciding that their situation was so des­ dicted colleagues were themselves among thoseac­ perate that they had little to lose, they went to cused in 1953. In nei.ther case was any really con­ Yagoda. Levin saw him first alone, then with vincing evidence introduced to support the charges. Pletnev. It is not known how many meetings they What reason could there be for purging doctors held (one included Dr. Khorodovski, then head of who had no active part in the country's political the Kremlin Health and Sanitation Department, life? What could the doctors have hoped to reap and later shot) but they told Yagoda everything from their "plot" that could possibly offset the they knew. The ruthless police chief, then ,at the tremendous risks they were running? The com­ apogee of his power, was badly shaken by the plete l'ack of logic-even Soviet logic-in these news that Stalin had mentioned his name as a two cases seems to indicate they had no rational possible conspirator. The two doctors told Yagoda cause. Both purges could well have been the the disease might finally drive Stalin entirely mad, products ofa diseased mind which for a quarter killing him. 'The only way out would be a complete of a century held the reins of the most powerful rest. But to make sure' their diagnosis was ac­ dictatorship the world has ever known. curate, they suggested a consultation with some After Stalin's death the new directorate scat­ of their colleagues. Yagoda. cons,ented, and in the tered a few crumbs of reform in an attempt to meantime decided to try to fortify his position improve relations with the Soviet population and by seeking support in the Politburo. He had to countries abroad. The problem was how to pre­ wait for the right opportunity. serve the herita'ge created by an abnormal mind, iSoon he had it. Orders came down from Stalin's and still keep the vast reserve of power Stalin secretariat to purge Ordjonikidze's right-hand man, had accumulated. The idea of personal dictator­ Piatakov. Ordjonikidze, a Ge'Orgian like Stalin, was ship has been consistently attacked in the Soviet probably the only man in the Kremlin who dared press by the new regime. But those on both sides talk back to the dictator. When he heard that a of the Iron Curtain who hoped for any realaban­ purge was planned for Piatakov, he was furious donment of Stalinism have been sadly disillusioned. and stormed in to see Stalin. 'Upon Stalin's re­ The Communist explanation that the German riots fusal to save his man, Ordjonikidze raged: "You're were instigated by Western "imperialists," and crazy. I know it now. You are mentally ill. . ." the sudden overthrow of Be'ria showed that Stalin's This interview probably 'took place a few days n1ethods, if not all his madness, remain in vogue. before Ordjonikidze's sudden and suspicious death. Stalin is de'ad, but St,alinism lives on. Pletnev himself was called when the bold Georgian suffered a heart attack. When the doctor arrived with his assistant, Mrs. N. M,agus, who is now a refugee living in the West, he found Ordjonikidze The Big Three Meet lying on the floor, breathing with gre'at difficulty. They put him on a couch, but before they could By M. K. ARGUS do anything for him they were ordered out of the room by a person unkown Ito them. They learned London, April 1954 from Ordjonikidze's wife' that just before the at­ The conference between President Eisenhower, tack he had had a stormy telephone conversation Prime Minister Churchill, and Premier Malenkov with Stalin, who told him that Yezhov was coming continued in Moscow yesterday. Premier Laniel, to arrest him. faced with threats of a new ministerial crisis and Stalin learned through his own private spy net­ a general strike, was forced to remain in Paris. work of the Pletnev-Levin-Yagoda me'eting. Ya­ Mr. Eisenhower had reluctantly agreed to partici­ goda was s'ensationally removed from office. and pate in the informal discussions after the Soviet given a minor position. Dr. Pletnev was next. He Union had acceded to his demand that, prior to the was framed on charges of having attacked a sick meeting, the Russians show their good intentions. woman who came to be treated by him. Later Vishinsky, thereupon, delivered a speech in the he, Levin, and another Kremlin physician, Dr. K'aza­ United Nations General Assembly without once kov, head of the Institute for Medical Research, referring to the Americans as cannibals or bar­ were brought up on charges of having murdered barians but caHing them only imperialists and half a dozen eminent patients. warmongers. The speech made a profound stir in 'There is no need to deal with the many con­ certain American and British political circles, and tradictions in the charges and the parrotlike twenty-eight Laborite members of the House of fashion in which prosecution witnesses repeated Commons even discerned in it portents of a new their stories. It is, however, interesting to note era of inteTnational good will and collaboration. a striking similarity between the doctors'plots Malenkov also met a condition by Sir Winston, of 1938 and 1953. In both cases the men arrested who declared his readiness to travel East but in­ were top physicians charged with having murdered sisted that Malenkov meet him halfway. The Soviet

NOVEMBER 30, 1953 157 Premier then agreed to hold the'meeting in Moscow Malenkov. The committee should consist of one which is exactly halfway between Siberia and representative of the United States, one' repres~nta­ London. tive of the British Commonwealth, and one repre­ The first of the informal meetings was attended sentative of the People's Democracies. only by the three principals and their translators­ Eisenhower. Agreed. one American, one British, and ninety-five Russian. Malenkov. We therefore nominate to the committee Premier Malenkov opened the meeting. the following persons: Mao Tse-tung of the People's Democr,acies, Paul Robeson of the U.S.A., and Jtlalenkov. We are assembled here to find ways and J awaharlal Nehru of the British Commonwealth. means· of easing international tension. Eisenhower. If I hear that Nehru mentioned again, Churchill (to Eisenhower). If I had his ways and I'll scream. your means I wouldn't be here. Churchill. You, at least, can scream. How do you Malenkov. The Soviet Union stands .in the fore­ think I feel? front of all· peace-loving nations. We are always Eisenhower. What about the F'ar East? willing to discuss proposals that are acceptable to Malenkov. What about it? us. But first we must have an agenda. Churchill. I know that the Soviet Union would Eisenhower. Why an agenda? Aren't our discus­ rather build its own prosperity than 'go to war. sions supposed to be informal? Jl;lalenkov. I'm glad you think so, Comrade Winston. Malenkov.Formal agendas for formal discussions. Thank you. Informal agendas for informal discussions. Churchill. You're welcome, Sir Georgi. Your illus­ But there must be an agenda~ No agenda, no dis­ trious predecessor ... cussions. Malenkov. My who? Churchill. Very well. Let's have informal discus­ Churchill. Your illustrious predecessor· Joseph sionsabout an informal agenda. Stalin ... Malenkov. The unanimity of the peace-loving Soviet Malenkov. Joseph Stalin? Yes, I remember him. Union, capitalist America, and imperialist Great A most capable man. Britain is essential for the preserv.ation of peace. Churchill. Mr. Stalin ,always said he believed in We have already prepared the agenda. As its first the possibility of friendly coexistence of adverse item we propose another banquet tonight. regimes. Eisenhower. Oh no, not another banquet! Malenkov. I also believe in the friendly coexistence Churchill. We've barely survivf'd last night's re­ of the Soviet regime with all other regimes that ception in the Kremlin. are wiHing to a,ccept our friendly advice and Malenkov. I see that you wish to sabotage our guidance. The Soviet Union, as is well known to friendly endeavors. In the Soviet Union we work the entire world, never interferes in the internal for peace, not for war. We do not spend money on affairs of other nations. guns and atom bombs but on caviar. Tonight's Eisenhower. But what about the Far East? banquet will be given in your·· honor by our late Malenkov. We do not have any Far Eastern ques­ beloved First Deputy Chairman of the Council of tions on our agenda. Besides, there is no tension Ministers of the Soviet Union. in the Far East. There is peace in Korea. Discus­ Eisenhower and Churchill. Did you say "late"? sions are being held there now, and if the im­ Malenkov. Yes. The First Deputy Chairman of the perialists do not resort to obstructions, the talks Council of Ministers of theU.S.S.R. win be late will go on and on and on in the most peaceful for the banquet. He departed suddenly on an urgent manner. As for Indo-China, it is a recognized Rus­ mission in behalf of peace. sian province known from time immemorial as Churchill. May he rest in peace. Viet-Minsk. Eisenhower. I still have a hangover from last (Several of the Soviet translators suddenly begin night's affair. My head is very tense'. A peculiar to scratch themselves with utmost violence. Malen­ way of easing international tension! (to Churchill) kov looks at them, jumps up, and points an accusing After Yalta and Potsdam you have surely gotten finger at Eisenhower and Churchill.) used to the blood, sweat, tears, and vodka of nego­ Malenkov. Now you stand unmasked before the tiating with the Russians? progressive world. You have come here with con­ Churchill. I've gotten used to the blood, sweat, and cealed bacteriological weapons. I see some of my tears but not to the vodka. beloved fellow-countrymen suffering in agony. Malenkov. The next item on our agenda shall be (He leaves the room, followed by the ninety-five the unification of Germany and the division of translators, some of whom continue to scratch Austria. All the progressive people'S of the world themselves. Eisenhower and Churchill are left demand that Germany be united and Austria be alone.) disunited. We propose to select an impartial inter­ Eisenhower. You came here because you thought ;national committee to study the questions and make you .ought to meet Malenkov face to face. N'ow recommendations. you've seen his face. Well? Churchill. Sounds fair enough. (Iron Curtain)

158 THE FREEMAN Red Bridgehead In• the Guianas

The .strategy by whick the Communists seized Ipower By NATHANIEL WEYL in the British colony.must be known if we are to combat its .duplication elsewhe1"e in the hemisphere.

For 190 days the people of British Guiana have colony of Surinam (Dutch Guiana) is the world's been subjected to an interesting, and in some re­ le!ading bauxite producer. The two Guianas account spects unique, attempt to transform their slumber­ for about 45 per cent. of global output. Since ing equatorial colony into a Soviet-controlled "peo­ Surinam can· be politically dominated from British ple's republic." The revolutionary era began on April Guiana, the Communist regime was a clear and 27 when Guiana held its first general elections present danger to the free world. under a new constitution which gives the suffrage Under quiet conditions the bauxite industry in to all adults except Bush Negroes, Caribs, Arawaks, both colonies could have been harassed out of and other savage inhabitants of the jungle hinter­ existence. Given a major war crisis, the P.P.P. land. The election resulted in overwhelming victory government could have swiftly disabled bauxite for the People's Progressive Party (Communist) production by blowing up the crushing plants, load­ over a weak, confused, divided, and directionless ingmachinery, and wharves, and by closing the river opposition. Eighteen out of twenty-four seats in arteries along which this vita'l material must flow. the House of Assembly and all elected Cabinet posts Political control by the Soviets of more than went to P.P.P. leaders. half the free world's bauxite supplies represented The first legislative act of the new regime was a very real threat to the American and British to resolve that Her lVIajesty's Government should aircraft programs. Our domestic ore production is intercede with President Eisenhower to save the low grade and runs a poor third to British Guiana. Rosenbergs. From that revealing moment until While rich ore reserves await exploitation in Africa October 9-when the Guiana constitution was sus­ and Jamaica, the time lost in developing ports, pended and British warships ,steamed into George­ roads, docks, and mine camps would have meant town to suppress a perhaps imaginary armed up­ a major setback to 'aluminum output. rising-the young and gifted Communist leaders of the ,colony worked to seize power by political Land and People encroachment and calculated economic wrecking. The Guiana strategy differed from that employed If bauxite is the key to the struggle for the in eastern Europe because the geographical situation Guianas, it is at the same time background to of the colony precluded Soviet military aid of any a drama that was played on the coastal plains. sort. The revolutionaries had to rely on their own This ~.ijuatorial colony is a place of paradoxes. resources. They. had to consolidate power quietly. Although as large as the British Isles, it is today They needed massive, well-organized popular sup­ scarcely able to support its 450,000 i,rrhabitants. port to forestall British intervention. In the eco­ Eighty-three percent of the colony consists of nomic field they worked to eject foreign capital, tropical forest-a dense green wall of vegetation wipe out the middle class, and bankrupt the piereed by narrow, deep, tea-colored rivers. economy. This policy not only weakened the class The population is concentrated on the coastal enemies of the Communist program, but brought plains. Some 283,000 acres are tilled by more than havoc 'and hunger to an already impoverished 100,000 Guiana sugar workers and small peasants people. Economic disintegration and successive growing wet rice. Land hunger has recently been political crises fanned the anger of the masses, accentuated because the Guiana population is today strengthened their desire for rebellious action, and growing at the prodigious rate of 2.8 per cent per thus served to strengthen the power of the P.P.P. annum as against a prewar 1.5 per cent. The hero The stage on which this revolutionary program (or villain) of this rapid multiplication of human was attempted differs from the banana and manana numbers is Dr. George Giglioli, chief 'health officer republics in one important resource. In 1952 British of the sugar estates, who in 1945 inaugurated the Guiana produced one-fifth of world supplies of first mass civilian campaign in history to eradicate bauxite. The ore is mined, dried, and calcined at malaria with insecticides. Infant mortality was Mackenzie sixty-five miles up river from the capital slashed; the 'birth rate went up dramatically. city of Georgetown, and it comprises 30 per cent Potentially ,available to the increased population of the colony's exports and 15 per cent of its are 800,000 uncultivated acres of excellent alluvial government revenues. Moreover, the neighboring and coastal land. However, the Guiana coastal

NOVEMBER 30, 1953 159 belt is either below sea level or subject to tidal British Lahor Party. If so, it was a naive one, inundation. Before these acres can be tilled, massive for it ignored the unreasonably bitter hatred of the sea walls (or polders) must be built to hold off English which seems to pervade the population. the water. Early. this year British Guiana was granted a Nevertheless, the economic and political prospects new constitution. lit provided for a lower chamber of the colony were generally favorable. The bauxite of twenty-seven members, all but three of whom interests (a subsidiary of the Aluminum Company were eI'ected. The upper house, controlled by the of Canada) were committed to expansion as were Governor, had no power to initiate legislation, the high-cost ,sugar producers whose product flowed but had a suspensory veto of a year. The Governor to the sheltered British market. Gold, oil, and retained his prerogatives of assent, diss'ent, and columbite-tantalite concessions were being actively declaration, but could normally exercise them only explored. Between 1942 and 195'1, the 'gross national on the advice of the Executive Council, which was product of the colony advanced from $56,600,000 domina'ted by the lower chamber. To add to the to $150,600,000. During that time living costs on general administrative complexity and confusion, the sugar estates doubled, but wages more than the elected Ministers were to function through a trebled. The budget was balanced and revenues permanent 'civil iservice free of politics. were increasing. In early 1953 the International Meanwhile, the Jagans and Burnham had launched Bank proposed a five-year $66,000,000 development the P'eople's .Prog,ressiv'e Party. Beginning in program to open up land resources for family farms November 1950, Soviet liaison was established by and modernize transportation. Private s'avings were sending P .,P.P. leaders to the world congresses of to provide most of the capUal; enterprises were to Red-front organizations. In the las,t two ye'ars be transferred from ,public to private hands; the ten leaders of the P .!P.P. made tri.ps hehind the emphasis was on building a strong middle class. Iron Curtain. These pilgrimages provided opportu­ Although the trend has been upward, the work­ nity for private conferences with responsible leaders ing class lives in squalor and congestion. Families of the Cominform, for working out directives and of ten and more live in ramshackle one-room huts for clos'e Soviet scrutiny of the Guiana leadership. perched on stilts for protection against ground In the ele'C'tion campaign last April, P.P.P. water and insects. A measurement of the poverty leaders attacked the new constitution and the in­ of the people is that 1951 per capita income was tentions of the British. The Party swept to victory. $302 ,per year. Ja!gan, the first Communist Prime' Minister in the Americas, polled 82 per cent of the vote in his Rise of the Communist Movement district. Contrary to normal Communist eleotoral experience, the P.P.P. was carried to power in Tn 1943 Janet Rosenberg, an unusually attractive Guiana largely by women's votes-a result of Janet twenty-three-year-old member of the American Jag1an''S organizational ability and popularity. Young Communist League and student nurse in Of decisive help to the P.'P.P. was its success a Chicago hospital, met Dr. Cheddi J agan, the son in uniting ,the Negroes and Hindus. A'bout 47 per of a Guiana sugar foreman of British Indian cent of the population is of African blood, 45 per extraction, and turned down four other suitors to cent of Indi'an extra'ction. The' Hindus were im­ marry him. J,agan had worked his way through ported as indentured labor to cover the labor short­ Northwestern and made a brilliant academic record. age caused by emancipation of the slaves. The The couple settled in Guiana, where J agan practiced Negroes consequently tend to regard the Hindus dentistrY,earning enough to send a brother and as immigrants and fear their growing competition sister through college. for ,proflessional and business jobs in Georgetown. After a few years Janet J agan founded and A further source of fear is that the Indian pop­ edited a Communist papeT called Thunder. Very ulation is growing more' rapidly than the Negro and soon a Red organization mushroomed around her. will soon become the majority. The sugar hands The key spirits were men such as Dr. J. P. Lach­ are largely Negro; the rice garden plots belong to mansingh, who formed a Guiana Industrial Workers Hindus. The P.P.P. unified the:se two groups. To Union to challenge the power of the anti-Communist do so required skillful compromise' and adjustment, Man Power Oitiz'en's Association, which had including relinquishment of a ministerial portfolio brought trade unionism to the colony and controlled by Janet Jagan to one of the Negro leaders. la'bor in sugar, bauxite, and other key industries; A former Fabian, Governor Sir Alfred Savage Ashton Chase, who had heen sent to London to entertained the illusion that ministerial responsi­ study trade unionism at Ruskin College and had bility would sober the "radicals" of the P.P.P. On studied Communism instead; Lindon F. S. Burn­ May 1, H. Vance Nichols, Managing Director of ham, another Ne'gro leader, a barrister and a Demerara Bauxite Company, told the' pres'S: "Indeed scholarship '. winner. there are good sound people in the P.P.P. who 'The nuclear organizatiotl, in short, comprised are interested in seeing this country prosper." He radical intellectuals. Perhaps the expectation was added that labor was entitled to a fair wage and that this colonial intelligentsia would follow the that the key to prosperity was production. That

160 THE FREEMAN same day the P.P.P. led a great May Day demon­ M'eanwhile, as the Party pushed events towar:d stration with enormous plaeards hailing Stalin and crisis, .it consolidated its orgallization and began to M,alenkov. penetrate the key areas of state power. There had It would be quite superfluous to repeat the been a hiatus-a sort of stagnation in.the drive massive evidence that the P.P.P. is a Communist toward power-during the month of May because Party. Jag'an prophesied that socialism, having Janet Jagan was visiting Denmark and Rumania replaced capitalism, would "itself evolve' into the for political instructions. She returned with a • higher communist society." The young leaders of directive that the P.P.·P. be reorganized on the the state repeated all the cliches of agit-prop; they basis of small, tightly knit cells and fractions. The • followed every pretzel twist of the line; they spoke Party consisted of perhaps 6,000 m'embers and of "the camp of socialism"; they organized Guiana 400 cadres. A vigorous effort was now made to branches of the major international Red front transform the general membeTship into revolu­ groups. Speaking of Mau Mau terrorism in an tionary material, to educate them in Marxism­ election speech, J agan said: "In Kenya the Africans Leninism, to ensure security and secrecy for the are not only killing white men who took away Party's operations, and ,to set up flexible, swift their land, but are killing their own people who methods of liaison and chain of command. turn stooges, and that should be done to stooges At the same time, the P.P.P. introduced measures (here) ... who are fighting the cause of the gov­ to strip the Governor of his power to refuse entry ernment and not the people." to subversive aliens-the purpose being to set up apparatuses under the direction of experienced The Road to Power foreign Communists in Georgetown. The P.P.P. sought to break down the civil service system and As distinct from Socialists, Communists are the' various independent commissions of govern­ trained that the core of every political issue is ment and subordinate them to Party control. Party power and the' business of the Party is to conquer cells were set up among the police-the strongest and consolidat'e that power. The electoral program potential combat force in the Colony. of the P.,P.P. blueprinted the road that was to be followed. Translated into the language of power, The Crisis and its Aftermath the decisive goals ,vere these: to force landowners to develop their acreage and provide for their The decisive crisis occurred when the sugar tenants and to couple this with "agrarian reform." strike failed. The Ministers introduced a bill to In short, the spine of the sugar companies was to force employers to recognize any union which ob­ be snapped by compeUing them, on pain of ex­ tained 52 per cent support of the workers by ballot. propriation, to develop huge irrigation systems on The calculation was that the power and prestige idle acreage and to invest their capital in clearing of the Ministers would be exerted to swing the land for thousands of squatters, many of whom majority of the workers into the Red unions. The did not 'even work on the sugar e1states. This Ministers, as trade union leaders, would then urge process was to be expedited by a land redistribution labor to make unreasonable demands. When col.. progr'am. lective bargaining broke down, the trade union The chief weapon of action was the trade unions. leaders, as Ministers, would arbitrate in favor of The anti-Conlmunist Man Power Citizens' Asso­ labor. This operation would be used to gain con­ ciation (M.p.e.A.) represented the large' majority trol over the industries and bend them to the will of the sugar workers. The government threw its of the Party. support to the rival Guiana Industrial Workers The P.P.P. introduced this bill in the House of Union (IG.I.W.U.), led by Dr. Lachmansingh, who Assembly on September 24 and demanded that also doubled as Minister for Health. In the' first the rules be suspended and it be acted on that day. four months of 1953, there were three minor vVhen the speaker refus'ed, the Party organized a stoppages in the sugar industry. From May to demonstration of 5,000 supporters, who invaded 8eptember-the period of P.P.P. control-there the legislative chamber. were sixty-four. This was the turning point. Meanwhile, the The first great blow for power was a demand process of economic wrecking had reached signifi­ that the sugar industry give exclusive recognition cant proportions. The columbite and gold conces­ to the minority G.I.W.U.The latter countered with sions were abandoned and two North American a proposal for dual recog-nition-iG.!I.W.U. for field oil companies bowed out of the picture. Even more hands, M.P.C.A. for mill workers. Without replying, important was a decision by the Canadian parent the P.P.P. called the workeTs out on strike, closed concern of Alcoa to shift bauxite expansion plans the industry for over three weeks, and cost the from British Guiana to Africa. The building trades colony the loss of about 5,000 tons of sugar. This stagnated because of political fe'ar, and lumber was followed by a demand for general strik~in mills reported output declines of 12 to 40 per cent. which the Communist ministers again abandoned Sir Winston Churchill's dramatic intervention their desks to serve as union organizers. in British Guiana and the subs'equent suspension

NOVEMBER 30, 1953 161 of the new constitution and dismissal of the se'rious. The great advantage that may be obtained Ministers were too thoroughly reported in the press from· this somewhat bungled situation is establish­ to require any resume here. The Party had ex­ ment of the principle that any Communist govern­ pected intervention on a limited scale and had, ment set up by any means whatsoever within the in a sense, prepared for it. The Jagans had met free-world area will be suppre'Ssed and ousted, with other leaders to perfect plans for wholesale its capacity for, and commitment to, evil having arson in the event that the Governor arrested any of no relationship to the techniques by which it gained the Ministers. Following this me'eting, large sales . and fortified its power. of ,gasoline were reported to Guiana citizens who happened to lack automobHes. What the Party _was not prepared for was a swift, overwhelming display of force. In the crisis, the leaders vacillated What Elects Republicans between cries of defiance, appeals for mass action, and the role of innocent liberals who merely wished By C. DICKE,RMAN WILLIAMS to present the'ir case before Commons or the United Nations. "[Mr. Padrutt, the Republican candidate] ran on the The British Labor Party moved and rather nar­ basis of complete support for the Eisenhower Admin­ rowly lost a vote of censure against the Conserv­ istration." ative government on its handling of the Guiana U. S. News and World Report, reporting on the matt'er. It is worth noting that Clement Attle-e, special congres,sional election in Wisconsin,' 1953 after a long interview with Dr. Jagan, expressed "[Mr. Hetfield, the Republican candidate] asked the himself as thoroughly satisfied as to the latter's voters to elec't him as a sign of confidence in the intellectual dishonesty and that the Labor Party Eisenhower Administration." conceded that the P.P.P. had "us'ed methods tend­ The New York Times, reporting on the special congressional election in New Jersey, 1953 ing to the establishment of .a totalitarian regime." It based its proposed censure on its belief that the The Republican setbacks in rercentcongressional evidence ofa Communist plot to seize power by elections are susceptible of various inter.pretat'ions. insurrection was inadequate and that no sudden One negative conclusion, however, cannot be denied. emergency had arisen which justified suspension Republican candidates, running in heavily Repub­ of a colonial' constitution. lic,an districts, 'cannot be elected on a pledge to cast -On the charge of insurrection, P.P.P. Minister their votes as members of Congress in support of Burnham retorted: "For a coup you must have the program of the President, whartever it may be. arms and I do not know that we have any arms." This irresistible conclusion should dispose of the This seems to be the plain truth. Neither the demand of many commentator,s of New Deal per­ geographical nor the political situation of the suasion that Congressmen should accept White Guiana Communists made armed uprising possible House proposals irrespective of their own judg­ as a road to power. ment. Such commentators are greater champions of The justification for suspension of the consti­ Presidential power than the President, who, accord­ tution is a different one. The suppression of even ing to a semi-official statement by the Vice Presi­ the most "democratically established" Communist dent, "does not want a rubber-stamp Congress." government is justified, since its ultimate purpose A favorite argument of such commentators in is to suppress future freedom of political choice. support of their demand has been that the 'election Democracy, in short, has a dimension in time as returns of 1952 show that the people voted for well as in space. Eisenhower and not for a Republican Congress. The pieces are now being slowly picked up. This theory does not stand analysis; a careful The flight of funds from the banks stopped in examination of the 1952 returns supports the con­ early November. Mr. Stassen is giving serious con­ trary view, strongly confirmed by the' special elec­ sideration to a $300,000 technical aid appropriation tions of the last few weeks, that the w,ay for a for Guiana workers' housing. The International Republican candidate to get elected is to have Bank development plans will probably go through. definite convictions of his own, and to run on Every effort will be made to coax back alarmed those convictions. concession holders and check the spiral of economic IThe contention of the proponents of the thesis decay. As for the political situation, it is not im­ that it is the duty of -a Republican Congressman to probable that a few truant P.P.P. leaders will be be a rubber stamp has been that the Republican invited into a caretaker cabinet while the consti­ candidates in 1952, if taken as a group, barely won tutional issue is being studied. the election, whereas the President was swept into The striking power of the P.P.P. is still formi­ office by a large majority. It is even suggested that dable and ,will become more so as the initiative the Republican members would not have got in at drops from the grasp of London. We can expect 'all had it not been for the enthusiasm caused by the strikes, political agitation, demonstrations, possibly Eisenhower candidacy. Proponents of this argu­ sabotage. The economic setbacks to the colony are ment 'cite figures 'showing 33,824,351 votes for

162 THE FREEMAN Eisenhower to 27,314,987 for Stevenson, 'a majority that the congres,sional candidates were carried into of 6,509,364-as against 28,543,334 for the Repub­ office on Eisenhower's popularity. Yet consideration lic'an candidates for Congress to ,28,178,682 for the of individual Congressmen shows that most Repub­ Democrats, a majority of only 364,562. (The term Hcans had personal 'Convictions necessarily known "Congre'ss" is here us'ed to mean the House of to the voters because they had repeatedly elected Representatives; as there were elec,tions for the them, beginning long before Eisenhower had be­ Senate in only thirty-three st'ates, nation-wide come a politi0al figure, and that they won by very comparisons 'are' impossible.) large majorities. That veteran die-hard, Clare E. At first glance these figures seem persuasive, Hoffman, elected continuously since 1934, won by but there is a catch: in the eleven states of the 87,703 to 43,350; Jesse P. Wolcott, long known 'as former Southern Confederacy the conservatives a foe of controls, in Congress since 1931, won by vote Democratfc, and the Republicans run few 101,936 to 66,699. Other forceful Republic'an per­ candidates. sonalities from Michigan, old in congre'ss'ional I'll the thirty-seven Northern and Western states service and easy winners, are Dondero and Eisenhower received 29,710,808 votes to Steven­ Shafer. Their constituents can hardly have elected son's 22,891,764, a m,ajority of 6,819,044; the Re­ these men to office term after term without know­ pu'blicancongressional candidates got 27,518,484 ing and 'approving their convictions. The reason votes to the Democrats' 22,319,739, ,g majority of that the total congressional vote in Michigan was 5,192,745. These majorities are roughly comparable, fairly -close is that the Democrats who were ele-cted especially since about 5 per cent of the voters in the also got large majorities. Thaddeus M. Machrowitz, Presidential race in these states failed to vote for for instance, won by 118,695 to 21,442. any congressional candidate. In thirty-four of these Another illustration is the victory of Represent­ states Eisenhower's majorities were greater; in ative Daniel A. Reed of New York, perhaps the three, those of the Republican c'andidates considered most unyielding of Republican Congressmen at the as a group. session of 1953. He won in 1952 by 91,534 to 44,276. Reed, who has served in Congress continuously The "Republocrats" since 1919, when the President w'as a young lieu­ tenant, would perhaps be astonished to be told that Now it is well known that, from a New Deal point he "rode into Congress on the coattails of Eisen­ of view, Southern Democrats are as bad 'as Repub­ hower." ,One can only think that he is in Congress licans-with perhaps a few exceptions such as because his district knows him and his ide'as, and Lister Hill of Alabama. It was the New Deal com­ wants him there. mentators who 'coined for them the word "Repub­ ,Of the 221 Republicans elected to the House of locrats." If we 'add the vote for 80uthern Dem­ Representatives in 1952, more than three-quarters ocratic Congressmen to that for the Northern (174) had been members of that body before Pres­ Republicans, ,the total is 33,371,427. This figure ident Eisenhower entered politics. N'ecessarily they compares very respectably with Eisenhower's 33,­ had election winning programs of their own. If 824,351, when 'we consider the slightly smaller candidates Padrutt and Hetfield had given more aggreg,ate vote cast for congressional candidates consideration to such a program, they, too, might than for Presidential eandidates. have been elected. It is significant that in each in­ A New Dealer who challenges this reasoning stance the successful Democratic candidate ran on a might be asked to 'interpret Tex:as. There Eisen­ platform adapted to his district-in Wisconsin, hower got 1,102,878 votes, and Martin Dies, run­ isolationism; in New Jersey, internationalism. ning for Representative-at-Large on the Democratic Certainly neither pledged himself to vote according ticket, 1,979,889. Does this show that Dies is almost to the views of Adlai Stevenson as such. twice as popular as Eisenhower and 'should be al­ The basic fallacies of the New Deal commentators lowed to control the Texas delegation? New Deal are two: they disregard the situation in the states commentators, who regard Dies as highly objec­ of the Southern Confederacy, and they make their tionable, don't seem to ,have made that claim. A comparisons on a group and nation-wide hasis. But principal explanation of his much gre'ater vote is Congressmen are not elected as a group, nation­ that Dies had no opposition. Correspondingly, in wide; they 'are 'elected as individuals in particular comparing the total Presidential and congressional districts. To get elected they must, as individuals votes, should not weight be given to the fact that and not as Presidential robots, offer programs that in most Southern districts the RepubHeans ran no appeal to the voters of their districts, not programs candidates at all? adapted to nation-wide elections. This, of course', To analyze what is more 'important, the position is not to say that their own progr,ams may not be of individual Republican Congres:smen, let us illus­ based on considerations of national welfare. tratewith Michigan. In that state the Republican The Constitution does· not provide, and President candidates for Congress in the aggregate had a Eisenhower does not desire, that members of Con­ margin of 142,603; Eisenhower had a majority of gress imitate the deputies to Hitler's Reichstag or 320,872. T:hiscomparison might seem to suggest Stalin's Supreme Soviet. The voters agree.

NOVEMBER 30, 1953 163 Can We Trade with Malenkov?

lnspired by what they believe is a more conciliatory policy in the Soviet Union since Stalin's death, economic prophets in England and France-and some in this country-are holding out! the hope that business between the free and the Com­ munist-dominated countries can n~w be accelerated. We present here two views on the question by European authorities. THE EDITORS

The East-West Trade Illusion By JACQUES GE,RSZUNI

One of the most motheaten panaceas being peddled (E.C.E.) at Geneva. A recently published E.C.E. in western European Communist, crypto-Commu­ r,eport concluded that an increase in the export of nist, and neutralist circles this year is the illusion timber, grain, and other food products from the of East-West trade. It is significant that those Soviet Union would be a useful contribution toward who believe that increased trade with the Soviet the solution of western Europe's dollar deficit. It bloc is possible in view of changed policies unde'r was a rather unrealistic conclusion in view of the Malenkov are often the same people who advocated fact that the only development of East-West trade more trade with Russia in the Stalin era. Last indicated by contacts between repre'Sentatives of year they said the economic and political needs of the two blocs would be an accentuation of the the West called for the development of commercial export to the Communist empire of capital goods relations with the Iron Curtain countries. This and machine tools. The Soviet bloc is continuing year it is Malenkov's emphasis on more consumer its industrialization program at full speed, and an goods for Soviet citizens which the London Econo­ the premature conclusions now being drawn in mist, in its issue of August 15, sees as making him Paris and London about the alleged desire of the "at least temporarily dependent on two factors Malenkov regime to raise the standard of living.at not wholly under his control-a continued inter­ home certainly will not make the Red overlord national detente, and more trade with the West." decide to effect any radical changes in the structure The fre'e world, the British review believe's, should of Soviet foreign trade by switching to the importa­ "do some intensive rethinking" on the subject. tion ,of raw materia1ls and food products. Arguments run something like this: western In connection with the recent view expressed by Europe must bridge the dollar gap by seeking to both the Economist and Dr. Myrdal, it is interest­ replace present imports from the dollar zone with ing to note that in December 1952 the Economist imports from other areas. Because little has been doubted the ability of the Soviets to balance any done to implement the "trade, not aid" slogan, the purchases from the West with deliveries from their only other areas likely to be able to fill this need side of the Iron Curtain, and cited such inability are in the Soviet bloc. The products bought from as an obstacle to the development of East-West the East are mainly certain raw materials and trade. The E.C.'E. made a similar estimate of the foodstuffs: timber, grain, and coat England is situation in 1952. There is no possibility of the the Soviet Union's best customer for timber. France Soviet Union's exporting capital goods or machin­ also buys very small quantities of furs from Russia, ery. Of the exports it might make-timber, coal, coal from Poland, and glassware from Czecho­ and grain-the' only one that offers any prospect slovakia. But even if there were no bars to trade for development is timber. 'There has been no with the Soviet bloc, such commerce would not, change in the volume of coal exports since before under pre2entconditions, balance western Europe's the war. The only country that continues its ,coal dollar deficit. Rubber, petroleum products, copper, deliveries-principally to Scandinavia-is Poland. and some machinery must a1lways be bought from Soviet grain exports are now made up principally the dollar zone. of 'secondary cereals, not breadstuffs. In the satel­ lite countries, where economic unrest is a factor Wishful Thinking to be reckoned with constantly, the use of any grain reserves is determined only by the maintenance The illusion that a satisfactory substitute for and extension of Communist power. The .U.S.S.R. missing dollars can be .found in the East was prefers to direct its "planned" grain surplus to the furthered, as might have been expected, by Gunnar countries of the East. Myrdal of the Economic Commission for Europe There is also the question of the willingness of

164 THE FREEMAN the Soviet bloc to deliver. The Iron Curtain regimes disposed to give the green light to these private look at all trade from a political rather than an transactions. In England there seems to be a economic standpoint, and thus prefer to do their stronger sentiment in favor of granting licenses exporting to and importing from the backward for transactions with Communist China, but areas of the world where they may reap political "British realism," 'so often referred to in the Com­ profit from such activity. munist and crypto-Communist press, certainly isn't An ana'lysis of the existing pattern of trade with going so far as to favor trade' with the Communist the Soviet bloc gives a good idea of just how little world. No government could take the risks of back­ the economic health of the West depends upon such ing up the business operations of its own nationals commerce. The following figures on East-West trade who are trying to find cracks in the economic Iron were given by the E.C.E. The East is composed Curtain. of the U.S.S.R., Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, FinaUy, even if the West imposed no restrictions Rumania, and Bulgaria. at an to East-West trade, the profound gulf between the economic and political systems of the two blocs Millions of Dollars would make the establishment of any large-scale Western Europe's Western Europe's economic relations between them practically im­ imports exports 1949 925 798 possible. Furthermore, it is high time that economic 1950 745 600 considerations should not be simplified too much, 1951 295 602 or separated too far from considerations of another 1952 900 653 kind, which determine the life or death of the peoples and nations that still remain free. Taking 1938 as a base year, western Europe's imports from the East have diminished 70 per cent (from $3,170,000,000) and western Europe's ex­ ports to the East have diminished 45 per cent (from $1,137,000,000). Before the war the West sold 6 Economic Strategy* per cent of its exports to the East and bought 9 per cent of its imports from the East. Today these By RAYMOND ARON figures are about 3 per -cent in both directions. The fact is that the Communist economies simply are What is to be our attitude toward East-West trade, not at present capable of handling any significant trade between the' West and the Soviet sphere? increase in the volume of trade with the West. The One fact should be noted at once. Many in the commercial agreements such as those signed with free world believe that the United States opposes, France are mere drops in the bucket. and the Soviet Union favors, East-West trade. This has by no means been the case, at least at the Unfounded Hopes outset. We need only study the statistics to see that countries which enter the Soviet system are com­ We often hear of how a developed East-West pelled to reorient their foreign trade. trade would benefit the economies of the West. In In 1938, Czechoslovakia had hardly any commer­ France, for example, there is a lot of talk about cial relations with the Soviet Union (1 per cent of easing the pressure of German competition in its total fore'ign trade). Before the coup d'etat foreign markets, or that the restrictions imposed on (1948), almost all of its trade was with the West. French exports to the sterling area would disappear Today, it has been more or Iless integrated into the after an increase in trade between England and Soviet bloc, with 60 per cent of its foreign trade the U.S.S.R. However, the only too justifiable going to Iron Curtain countries in 1951, as against doubts about the potential size and conditions of 11 per cent in 1937. any such operations make these suppositions seem The reduction of East-West trade fits in with a quite unfounded. number of Moscow's plans. The policy of forced In reality, the economic factor plays a secondary industrialization eliminates the surplus of food role in this whole busine,ss. Political and military products and some of the surplus of raw materials motives underlie every Soviet attempt to increase which the East European countries used to export. East-West trade. Last year's economic conference At the same time it forbids the importation of in Moscow proved that Soviet interest was only in manufactured products from the West. The Soviet strategic materials. The campaign carried on in bloc must be as nearly as possible self-sufficient, Paris and London for the revision of the Battle and the Soviet Union proposes to organize trade Act list "B" of goods not to be exported to the inside the' "socialist world'" according to its own Soviet bloc is certainly more politieal than economic. interests. Moreover, in Stalin's words, the break­ The orders brought back from Communist China down of the unity of the world market aggravates by French and British businessmen do not justify the crisis of capitalist economy. More simply, the the illusion of a significantly expanded Ea'st-West tensions within the world economy are aggravated trade, and French authorities are not yet favorably * Copyright, 1953. by lame» Burnham

NOVEMBER 30, 1953 165 to the extent that the region open to free (or freer) trade is restricted. The Moscow theore'ticians T_H_IS_IS_W_H_A_T_T_H_E_Y_S_A_ID__ have never made a secret of what they call "social­ II II ist encirclement." Capitalism will be condemned to death on the day when it is confined toa sufficiently Due Process for Harry White narrow area of the world economy. Doe'S this mean that the Soviet planners want to The death of Harry White, the former Treasury eliminate all East-West trade? Obviously not. They Department official who was accused before the want to get from the West the means of production Un-American Activities Committee of engaging in and the raw materials which they lack, while sell­ treasonable activities ,ag,ains1t his Government, has ing the smallest possible amount of those raw made it impossible for these charges ever to be fully material~ which the West really needs. East and answered. He alone could have done that. Mr. West manage to agree about some exchanges that White was granted his brief "day in court" by the serve the interests of both parties, but there isa Committee, where he la'beled as "unqualifiedly pe'rmanent lack of harmony between the. trading f,alse" the unsubstantiated testimony that had been aims of the two camps. The Soviet wants to buy given against him. But he had not been granted the least possible quantity of manufactured goods, an opportunity to confront his accusers in a court whereas the West wants to seH the most possible. and he was charged, by inference, outside of recognized legal procedure, with commission of an Goods or Armies? infamous crime. First the Committee and now death denied him that due process of law which The United States did not initiate the restric­ is one of the most precious rights of 'an American tions on East-West trade. It was led to impose its citizen. own set after 1949 and especially after 1950 be­ Mr. White's death was due to a heart condition cause it justifiably wished to block the sale of brought about by years of 'arduous government certain products that were considered strategic, service and aggrav,ated by the orde'al through which capable of directly and immediately increasing the he had to pass during the committee hearings. military and economic potential of the Soviet Union. The Committee cannot be charged with responsi­ Moscow naturally tried to get around these re­ bility for an illness so caused and of such long strictions. The United State'S is especially concerned :st,anding. But it can be charged with having denied about the risk of helping Soviet economic con­ him the due protection of the l,aw, with having struction by furnishing such products as machine permitted witnesses to make unsubstantiated state­ tools and ball bearings, both of which the Soviet ments of which the accused learned only through Union lacks. . public sources,and by so doing ignoring the Bill Without denying the importance of such strategic of Rights and outraging our American sense of produets, Europeans wonder whether the complete justice. separation between the two worlds does not in Whether Mr. White and other former government officials named before the Thomas Committee were reality serve Soviet interests as these are summed 'guilty of anything except working too hard for up in the doctrine of socialist encirclement. (How less ,pay than they could have earned in civilian can Japan, for example, have a viable economy if employment we do not know. Mr. White cannot now cut off from China?) make his plea. We seriously doubt that we will The choice between the two conceptions depends ever find out much more through the proce!sses of on one's hypothesis concerning the development of the Committee on Un-American Activities, which the cold war, on the relative weight assigned to only at this late hour, apparently, is seeking sub­ economics and to armies in the struggle between stantiation of the charges made before it, by some Communism and the free world, and on the basic of its witnes~es, against ,Mr. White ,and the others. strategy that is adopted. This procedure is not the AmeriC'an way of doing If, as the Wes't has been doing up to now, we things. It is the un-American way. We believe that try to lessen the great schism gradually through unless it is corrected it places in jeopardy a fun­ the effects of time, and hope for the weakening of damental concept of American life. the virulence of a religion come to power, then THE NEW YORK TIMES, Editorial, August 18, 1948 controlled and limited trade between East and West will be to the advantage of both sides. In any case, even if the American leaders judge Chicago, Nov. 6-Attorney General Herbert Brown­ it desirable to stop East..;West trade almost ell Jr. said today that former President Truman entirely, they should still feel some responsibility had promoted an official to a high ,Government post toward the difficulties thereby imposed on Japan in 1946 despite a report by the Federal Bureau of or Great Britain. Economic strategy toward the Investigation that the man was spying for Russia. Soviet bloc must be made part of that world Mr. Brownell identified the spy as the late Harry economic policy which the United States alone is Dexter White.... in a position not merely to conceive but to carry out. THE NEW YORK TIMES, November 7, 1953

166 THE FREEMAN Lids on the German Economy

West GernwnY"s recovery so far .has been .the result By VOLKMAR MUTHESIUS of its removiUl of econom,ic controls, but for full 'recovery a full return to free enterprise is needed.

The economic revival of western Germany has been rrhe absolute figures do not adequately show so remarkable that many consider it a "miracle"; the extent of the market drought. The mortgage yet it is merely the result of a relatively consistent bonds were mainly sold not to private holders application of the principles of free' enterprise. It but to public banks-the authorities which supply is thus nothing but the fruit of the liberation of money for public housing "social home construc­ human energies. This economic success, however, tion" through institutions is,suing loans on real would be even more remarkable if free enterprise estate. This is not a genuine formation of capit,al, in the commodity markets were now followed by but a sort of window-dressing for an already com­ free enterprise in the money markets. pleted compulsory formation of capital by taxation. In Seelisberg, Switzerland, in September, one of Profes1sor Miiller-Armack, one of the most impor­ the participants in the conference of the Mont tant economic policy advisers to Ludwig Erhard, Pelerin Society (an international group of econo­ has practically conceded this. mists adhering to the philosophy of free enter­ prise and representing a dozen different countries) Why Securities Sold Poorly pointed out that a country with foreiign exchange control, and with. its money market and housing The Germans are no longer afraid of a currency also under government control, can hardly be called reform. Such a fear cannot be the explanation of a country of free enterprise. And, in fact, a country the very poor sale of securities prior to the winter where the three most important groups of prices of 1952-53. The real explanation is much more are controlled can certainly not be called "liberal" the irra'tional and unjust progressive income tax, in the full sense of the neo-liberal terminology. which collects 35 per cent even of an annual in­ If what still remains of wartime government come of 25,000 marks (approximately $6,000). controls were now removed, the econolny of west­ Another most important explanation is the pre­ ern Germany would be provided with an additional posterous interest policy, which is influenced by impulse which might increase prosperity even rent control and public housing policies. Thus we f,as'ter than it is increasing now. And this is pre­ have an interesting example of 'the contagious ef­ cisely the aim of the economic policy of Ludwig fect of any government interferenee within an Erhard, federal Minister of Economics. The economy. Any government interference leads to strengthened position of the government, as a unintended secondary effects; these in turn force result of the September elections, should offer him further interferences in neighboring fields, and the political opportunity to achieve it. so on. In this 'Case, housing control has encroached 'The absurdities which still distort the West upon the money market. The legal freezing of rent'S German economy are illustrated most clearly in is the reason why the interest rate on capital has the money markets, and particularly in the stock not been allowed to develop freely. market. 'True, the formation of capital has made !The rent freeze was thus followed by an in­ considerable progress,espe'cially through saving'S terest-rate freeze. For 'the better und.erstanding deposits and insurance. But savings reflected of this, one should take a close look at the housing through the stock market are far behind. There development in western Germany. More than one are only 'about a third as many new issue'S as quarter of the' homes available at the beginning those recorded after World Wiar One and the of the war had been destroyed by air raids, and, currency stabilizat,ion at that time. Then an an­ after the war there was a severe housing shorta'ge. nual average of about 3,000,000,000 DM (Deutsche This was intensified by the influx of refugees from Marks) in 'Securities we're sold on the open market, eastern countries. For political reasons it was de­ not much le-ss than half of which were mortgage cided not to correct this shortage by creating pri­ certificates. Such certificates in the past have al­ vate incentives for home construction through the ways played a dominant part in the financing of free movement of rent'S and prices. On the con­ home construction. Since the currency reform in trarY,even after the currency stabilization, rents 1948 an annual average of only a little more than remained frozen. The natural result was that pri­ 1,000,000,000 DMin open market certificates hav-e vate capital for home building either became en­ been sold. Less than half were mortgage bonds. tirely unavailable, or w,as used only in connection

NOVEMBER 30, 1953 167 with great public

168 THE FREEMAN work income," because the moral ~tigma put on him creasingly dangerous-the .so-called "distant ob­ by the Nazis is still felt. jective." This phrase is now very fashionable. Only slowly is this atmosphere of suspicion, pre­ The reasonable and simple object-the freely judice, and misunderstanding beginning to lift. functioning market-is theoretically and platonical­ But here also the tax problem is perhaps even ly confirmed, but only as a "distant objective" more important. The double taxation of a cor­ which must be reached step by step because the poration's e'arning,s is no German s'peeialty, but presumed social and political obstacles are too in view of the German tax rates it is especially great. hard. For the corporation itself the profit is taxed This fre1quently emphasized "distant objective" at practically 80 per cent (because of some pe­ reminds one of the well-known prayer of St. An­ culiarities of the very complicated revenue law). tonius, who, as a young man, and when he waH The 'amount distributed as dividends is taxed 30 no saint at all, used to ask the Lord every night: percent (this likewise for the enterprise itsielf). "Heavenly F'ather, give me chastity, but please' not And when it 'gets into the hands of the receivers at once." German economic policy has been acting of dividends and the shareholders, the distributed in accordance with this formula in thos'e fields amount is subject to the individual income tax, where the 1948 and 1949 le'ap into liberty was with its rate as high as 75 per cent in the top not ventured-especially on the money market. bra,cke'ts. This is illustrated by the following ex­ Will Ludwig Erhard be able to insist that here, ample: A shareholder at the 50 per cent income­ too, Germany must now seek the restoration of tax level receives from 6 per cent gross dividends freedom? 3 per cent net. But in order to distribute these dividends, the corporation must earn 20 peT cent on its capital, 17 per cent of which goes to the Treasury. In other words, investm'ent capital from To Each His King new shares becomes so costly for the enteTPrise that this method of financing becomes virtually When Richard Lovelaee lay in gaol, prohibitive. On the other hand, this forc:es the He still could laugh and sing; contracting of debts, and leads to forced "self­ They let him drink in wine and ale financing" by high prices. Thus taxes are losing The heaUh of Charles the King. their character of profit taxation, and become addi­ So careless-kind the Roundheads were, tions to costs of production. And kinder still, the Fates: Althea came-none lovelier!- The Task Facing Erhard To kiss him 'through the gates.

'Thus, now that the September elections have en­ And what had Richard Lovelace done dor,sed his economic poHcy, Ludwig Erhard has a To win his prison laurels? wide and important sphere of action still before' Was he by inadvertence one him. It will not be easy for him to carry through Embroiled in civic quarrels? a more realistic economic poJiicy, because the op­ Was his, perchance, a poet's ,crime­ position is still strong. Nevertheless, it is im­ Did he, in frolic jest, portant at the present time to see the situation Inflame the Puritans in rhyme as it is. Germany still retains a tax system hostile With Venus half-undressed? to private property and enterprise. The efforts to avoid paying genuine interest rates for c1apital He, faithful to the sword he wore, obstruct the' stock market',s ability to function as And answering to his summons, far as demand and supply are concerned. It is A Royalist petition bore doubtful whether normalization is possible unlesis From Kent unto the Gommons: housing control is removed either previously or And hence a prisoner, his name simultaneously. Is written on the scroll Anyway, at the present Hme the posit'ion of the Of those who kept, whatever came, stock market represents more than a mere aesthetic The freedom of the soul. defect in West Germany's conception of economic policy. A spread of this disease might in the long The roll is long: to each, his King: run even endanger the functioning of competition To some, the prison gates: on the commodity market. Certainly no one can And ever may Althea bring hope for an influx of capital from abroad-as Love's counsel to the grates! many German entrepreneuers and politicians do­ And courage still from you we' take, if the domestic market has not previously been High-hearted prison-sage: brought once more into a fre'e economic order. "Stone walls do not a prison make, Many people in West Germany today are in­ Nor iron bars a cage." clined to believe in a phrase which may become in- FLOYD DELL

NOVEMBER 30, 1953 169 Art and Man's Fate By JAMES BURNHAM I

Seven years ago the Book-of-the-Month Club "It is to our interest ... to negotiate directly distributed Thunder Out Of China, of which with the Communists in Indo-China." Theodore H. White was co-author. In that earlier "We must turn quickly and shrewdly, our wounds book, the attitude, estimates, and proposals that still aching, with sorrow in ten thousand homes, from the American side eased the Communist con­ to offer Mao Tse-tung an exit out of the Russian quest of China were expressed with journalistic world into a larger and freer one where he can skill and color. Not without reason was it hailed in make his own decisions and act in his own interest." the general press by reviewers L. K. Rosinger, "By postponing the arming of Germans, or John K. Fairbank, and Edgar Snow. The Daily yielding on it altogether, we can exact an enormous Worker, referring to a small group of "excellent price." books about China," found it appropriate to list it We must drop all ideas of "a crusade" for "lib­ next to the books of Guenther Stein and Agnes eration" or anything foolish of that sort, and take Smedley, two journalists much praised in that day, the path of "negotiation." There will be enough who later emerged as memhers of the' Sorge negotiating to keep everyone busy, because our espionage ring. "deal" with Moscow is going to consist of "myriad 'This month the Book-of-'the..Month Club is once little deals... separate, individual adjustments at again distributing to hundreds of thousands of points of greatest mutual irritation." homes a book by Teddy White. (Fire in the Ashes, We can expect positive results because "the by Theodore H. White, 405 pp., William Sloane new Communist leadership that emerges is quite Associates, $5.00.) Because the earlier book was so different from that of the rough, hard-bitten, accurate in its prognosis of the future, because it earthy men who brought the revolution to power may even have played its modest part in making under the cruel and brilliant leadership of a hand­ the future, w,e will do well to read Fire in the ful of intellectuals." Now we have middle-aged, Ashes with some care. To get at the foundation Victorian-type conservatives whose basic aim is ideas, we must dig through a good many layers of just to stabilize the internal regime that upholds journalistic plaster, which is put on with a smooth their privilege'S. "If one substitutes the term 'busi­ and expert trowel. ne'Ssman' for the Russian word 'engineer' or 'econo;. I shall confine myself to a small list of items that mist,' what emerges is a governing class dominated somehow struck me. by the Ru~sian counterpart of the Weste'fn busi­ "Were it not for the Germans, Western Europe nessman-producer." So naturally American busi­ would already be united." nessmen can get along with their Russian similars. "The rules of American politics ... made it The negotiations .and deals will in time clear impossible to approach the subject as the two other up that little problem of the Communist "theory" grand partners, Britain and Russia, would have about running the world. "Their philosophy cannot preferred." (My italics. The subject is postwar be penetrated by our ideas and faith except by policy.) prolonged contact and the education of negotia­ Commenting on American objections to an al­ tion." The myriad deals will expose them "to the leged Anglo-Russian deal on Rumania and Greece: seepage of questions... which ultimately, we hope, "This obscure incident must, almost certainly, have will erode their system of politics, at home and been one of the initial shocks to Russian diplo­ abroad, into impotence." macy." Meanwhile, in order to carry out the program, "A morbid, almost hysterical suspicion of West­ American "leadership" must be free to act "with­ ern intent ran from top to bottom of the Soviet out impossible daily Congressional interference." world." Please don't get the idea that Mr. White has, "These were the measures that provoked the written a pro-Communist book. Why, you never famous Berlin blockade." read a book that is fuller of anti-Communism­ At this point lam beginning to feel so sorry enlightened anti-Communism, of course. What it's for the Russians that I will skip to the short prac­ mostly about is the nature of the Communist tical program of action with which Mr. White threat and how to meet it. concludes: Somehow, though, if I were Malenkov, and Carry through the "final negotiation" of the wondering just what sort of book would best serve Korean war. to influence American public opinion along, the

170 THE FREEMAN line that I was currently pursuing, I would con­ For his "museum without walls" Malraux has sider the publication of Fire in the Ashes a most ravaged history and the earth. The devil art of happy coincidence. dark primitives is here, and the serene reconcilia­ It is much better written than the Daily Worker, tion with the universe of Chinese scroll painting. and with the help of the Book-@f-the-:Month Club Siva, the cave paintings, the art of Khmer and of I should imagine that it will be more widely read. Nara are brought into a whole with the carvings of New Ire'land, the porch statues of Chartres, the In recent years, "'art books" have multiplied wonderful metal art of the Steppes. like the leave'S in autumn. Everyone knows that This lavishness in the quantity and kind of re­ their manufacture has become something of a productions is not merely display. In the Dialogue racket. With recent technica'l advances they are which Malraux and I composed several years ago too easy. All that is necessary is to assemble forty (The Case for De Gaulle, Random House, 1948), color reproductions of some painter or "school," he stated his conviction that the development of hire a professor to write a five thousand-word es­ the techniques for reproducing works of art (music, say, and float the volume at fifteen dollars on the painting, sculpture, etc.) was of critical human Christmas market. importance. As it applies to plastic art, the "theory Of Andre Malraux' new work, let me first insist of reproduction" is a recurrent theme in The that it is not an "art book" (The Voices of Silence, Voices of Silence, as it was in The Psychology of by Andre Malraux, 661 pp., Doubleday and Com­ Art, the earlier and shorter form of this present pany, $25.00), though it contains no less than 465 book. reproductions, fifteen of them in full eolor. Nor is Through museums, which are the product solely it a history of art, though not a little art history is of Western, post-Renaissance culture, through incorporated within it. The Voices of Silence is, in easier world-wide travel, and now through. repro­ truth, not about art, but is rather itself a work of dllctions, modern man, unlike any of his predeces­ art, and of the highest order. Like all 'great works sors, claims all art, of all times and peoples, as his of ,art, it is unique, a new forming of reality. own. Of course, past or exotic works of art, when In the conventiona'l art book the reproductions they come to modern man as exhibits in a museum and the verbal text are separate, with only the or as reproductions, are not the same things that "subject" ('Renoir, the School of Fontainebleau, the once existed in a particular place and were under­ Metropolitan Museum) as a formal connection. stood in terms of a particular, no longer felt scheme This link is, one might say, external: the repro­ of life. The head has left the torso; the fresco the dU0tions "illustrate" what is said explicitly and wall; the pillar no longer supports the temple; the adequately by the words. The meaning of the brightly painted classical world is without color. words is a complete whole to which the pictures All the objects undergo what Malraux calls a are a useful but nonintegral addition. With no 1netamorphosis. For us, the creative' metamorphosis mor,e than a few minor changes, the verbal text which we impose on all the objects turns the1J1 from could be (and often is) published without the whatever they once were-acts of piety, symbols "Hlustrations." of the dream, tools, shelters, pastimes-into, pre­ Malraux' text could not conceivably exist without cisely, works of art. Only for us have- they· all the reproductions. The words and reproductions do existed as works of art, part of "this new realm of not "illustrate" each other, or say "the same thing" art ... as though our excavations were revealing in differ,ent mediums. Each is part of the essential to us not so much the world's past as our own structure of his meaning. future." And these reproductions, incidentally, are of a As the modern range expanded, subtlety and splendor that is not quickly realized. Our eyes are jaded by the large-size many-colored . .. a fundamental concept, that of style, was in­ volved. .. For us, a style no longer means a set of reproductions that are principally in fashion. The­ characteristics common to the works of a given page dimension of this volume, which was made in school or period, an outcome or adornment of the France under Malraux' direct supervision, is an artist's vision of the world; rather, we see it as the ordinary book size, and 97 per cent is black and supreme object of the artist's activity, of which living forms are but the raw material. And so, to white. It all seems rather mode'St and minor at first the question, "What is art?" we answer: "That glance, until you suddenly grasp that you are see­ whereby forms are transmuted into style." ing things, and groupings of things, unlike any­ thing that you have known before: shadings and That quotation is far too abstract to suggest this textures that you would not have thought possible bo~k. Almost always Malraux directs his sentences in black and white photography; astounding ob­ toward concrete objects or artists. Or through a jects tha't, when you investigate, are the details of concrete image he illumines: miniatures or coins blown up; a rock crystal skull Stained glass ... . replaced the mosaic set in a of the Aztecs facing an Athenian frieze; big things gold ground as the free light of day replaced the made small, and statues seen from perspectives furtive glimmer of the crypts ... unavailable to human eyes. The art of Byzantium, which owed its being to

NOVEMBER 30, 1953 1 71 the insistent pressure of an oriental God wearing Lawrenee, has so intimately figured as actor as down indefatigably the multitude of his creatures, well as artist. after becoming petrified in the mosaic, branched out in two directions: towards Chartres and towards I have often seen the Malayan seas at night Samarkand. In the West, the window; in the E:ast, starred with the phosphorescent medusas as far as the carpet. eye could reach, and then I have watched the I remember very well the evening in Paris when shimmering cloud of the fireflies, dancing along the hillsides up to the jungle's edge fade gradually out Malraux had just returned from Rome and his first as dawn spread up the sky, and I have told myself sight of the great apse of the Church of SS. Cosmas that even though the life of man were futile as that and Damian. He had found all the wonder of art short-lived radiance, the implacable indifference of and of man in the marvel of that mosaic, which, the sunlight was after all no stronger than that phosphores,cent medusa which carved the tomb of he here writes, explored the realm of color through the Medici in vanquished Florence or that which etched The Three Crosses in solitude and neglect ... an orchestration based on contrasts that main­ ... Though humanity may mean so little in the tained and amplified it, 'as flying buttresses were to scheme of thing,s, it is weak, human hands ... shore up, ever higher, the naves of the cathedrals. that draw forth images whose aloofness or. com­ Surely EI Greco felt a thrill of joy when he set eyes munion alike bear witness to the dignity of Man: on the red of those clouds billowing around Christ no manifestation of grandeur is separable from that against a starry background whose azure darkens which upholds it, and such is Man's prerogative. and deepens little by little into the profound blue All other forms of life are subject, uncreative, flies of the Roman night. without light ... Malraux ends with an assertion of the defiant And that hand whose waverings in the gloom are watched by ages immemorial is vibrant with one of Humanism that he has maintained before the ter­ the loftiest of the secret yet compelling testimonies rors of our century, among which he, like T. E. to the power and the glory of being Man.

Mr. Carr's scholarship is painstaking, and there Moscow's Hands Abroad is far more available material about these early years of the Soviet regime than one could find The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, by Edward about the period of Stalin's dictatorship. EspeC'ially H,allett Carr. Volume Three, 614 pp. New York: interesting is the light cast upon the evolution of The Macmillan Company. $6.00 the Communist movement in Germany and the Imperial Communism, by Anthony T. Bouscaren. attitude of the Turkish nationalist leader, Mustafa 256 pp. Washington, D. C: Public Affairs Press. Kemal Pasha, toward the Soviet regime'. He ac­ $3.75 cepted Soviet aid, but tossed the leading Turkish Communists into the Black Sea and informed The third and concluding volume of Mr. Carr's Moscow they had met with an accident. historical trilogy is devoted to the foreign relations The pre'Sent volume is perhaps the best of Mr. of the Soviet government during the' period of Carr's trilogy. It is not marred by any exihibition revolution and civil war and the first years of the of the soft spot which Mr. Carr cherishes in his New Economic Policy. heart for totalitarian politics and economics and The author is realistic in drawing no distinction which is reflected in· some of his other works. The between the activities of the Soviet Commissariat story is told with deadpan objectivity and with of Foreign Affairs and those of the Communist occasional bits of humor at the expense of the International; these were merely the right hand Communists. However, the general impression of and the left hand, subject to direction by the same the three-volume work is somewhat dry and ab­ brain in the Communist Party leadership. Trotsky stract because of the absence of human character­ declared in an interview shortly after the Bolshevik 'ization and because the author divides his work seizure of power that diplomatic intercourse is into watertight compartments. What Mr. Carr has necessary "not only with governments, but also constructed, with admirable and diligent research, with revolutionary soC'ialist parties bent on the is rather a history of Communist ideas and Soviet overthrow of the existing governments." institutions than a narrative of living events. The commitment of the Soviet regime to the While Mr. Carr shows the theoretical basis of ideal of overthrowing all non-Communist govern­ Communist subversive activity outside the Soviet ments and its disposition to break or evade any frontiers, Mr. Bouscaren's book gives a brief sur­ agreement to the contrary are amply documented; vey of what Communism has achieved, on a the author cites Lenin's decisive statement on this country-by-country rundown. The author compress­ point: es much useful information about the essentials of "It is inconceivable that the Soviet republic Communist revolutionary doctrine into limited should continue to exist for a long period side by space and his account of Communism in various side with imperialist states. Ultimately one or the countries supplements and brings up to date the other must conquer." . somewhat similar guidebook on international·

172 THE FREEMAN Communism by Martin Ebon (Communism Today, of our time. Today, as Mr. Storer points out, Whittlesey House). The author's perception of the the industrial civilization has achieved "almost Communist threat to America is clear and his unlimited power to destroy its environment and judgments are generally sound, although his treat­ almost unlimited power to multiply. These two ment of Spain and Yugoslavia might not meet a together add up to almost unlimited compulsion strict objectivity test and limited space makes his toward destruction of environment which eventu­ discussion of some of the other fields of Communist ally means self-destruction. While pursuing this activity a little sketchy. course the mass of mankind has become so far WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN removed from the soil that supports it that it little realizes the problem involved. Order1y natural law has given way to unregulated chance." A Primer in Ecology The book is greatly helped by a twenty-four page insert of excellent photographs. It is marred by The Web of Life: A First Book of Ecology, an incomprehensibly meager and haphazard bibli­ by John H. Storer. 144 pp. New York: Devin­ ography which fails to list even the work of Paul Adair Company. $3.00. Sears, Edward H. Graham, Charles E. Kellogg, and other outstanding scientists. JAMES RORTY Already a century ago Darwin used the word "ecology" and he even pointed out man's critical position in the fragile web that binds together all the life processes of our planet. Yet ecology and Middle Eastern Dilemma its applications-for the lack of which man-made The Arab World, by Nejla Izzeddin, 412 pp. Chi­ deserts march and civHizations die-is still rela­ cago: Henry Regnery Company. $6.50 tively new. Hence Mr. Storer's book is not only an World Without End, by Emil Lengyel. 374 pp. excellent primer but also in some' measure a "first" New York: John Day Company. $5.00 book in that it is one of the first to essay the diffi­ cult task of bringing together all the vast dimen­ William Ernest Hocking, in his foreword to The sions of ecology, from the behavior of the hydro­ Arab World, blithely derides the American who logic cycle to that of human beings, whose' wise or is "tied to his watch" and extols the Arab who unwise actions "lie at the very center of the earth's whiles away time near a sleepy water-wheel. great web of life." Unfortunately, however, the world today has no NaturaHy, so slender a volume can do little more time to watch the water-wheel. "The Arab lands," than expound by illustration. But the illustrations according to the blurb on Dr. Izzeddin's book, are well chosen and well interpreted. Even more "occupy one of the most vitally strategic regions gratifying is Mr. Storer's simple, unliterary style on the face of the earth...Courted by East and which never strains for a phrase and never pontifi­ West alike, the Arab nations today announce their cate'S. For this and other reasons educators will claims with a new note of confidence." welcome the book for supplementary college and These claims, we gather from Dr. Izzeddin, are high school reading. simple, but not modest. The Arabs simply want Since most contemporary landscapes have felt to everything their own way. They w'ant to do oil some degree the impact of technological man, most business with the United States, but they don't ecology is human ecology: a huge discipline that \vant the United States to protect these oil deposits inevitably must span the natural and social scienees. against Soviet aggression. The Arabs don't want And because ecology constantly confronts hUlnan to join in the defense of the Western world, but va1lues and choices, it is bound to be less, or perhaps they want the West to come to them "with cleaner more, than a science. heart and hands." But this reviewer-submerged 'The balances and successions of subhuman eeol­ in an avalanche of books by foreign authors urg­ ogy are re·gulated by natural law, and as Mr. Storer ing the West, and particularly America, to confess points out, in his early days man was controlled its sins, repent its crimes, and cleanse its heart­ by the same natural law. Famine, disease, and war would like to pit the cleanliness of American kept population close to the carrying capacity of hearts and hands against that of any in the the environment, and the chain reaction of ecolog­ Middle East or elsewhere. More than any other ical disaster was limited; when ancient civilization country, America has contributed to the develop­ destroyed their environments the sands of man­ ment of the modern Arab world. Yet America is made deserts buried them quietly-the Mayans of the pet whipping boy of Arab politicians and in­ Yucatan never heard what happened to Carthage tellectuals. Dr. Izzeddin, a woman who studied and to Babylon. at Vassar and Chicago University, should know Not until the twentieth century did our human better than to fall into the easy demagoguery of ecology become planetary in scale. Not until then the Cairo agitators who recently stenciled on the did te'chnological man precipitate the global ecolog­ walls of our diplomatic mission there: "This is ical criiis that underlies the chronic political crisis the Embassy of the Jew-S-A."

NOVEMBER 30, 1953 173 For the past few years our local crop of books of racial equality and the promise of relief from on the Middle East has featured criticism of the economic misery. This also serves as an ex­ Arabs and exaggerated sympathy for Israel. N'ow planation for his on-and-off flirtation with the we find a number of books taking the side of the Communists. That he embroidered his positive Arabs against both Israel and the rest of the world. \vork with a spurious cult of his own divinity, But none of these books, including The Arab World, his immortality, and his "pureness" (he claims, features much criticism of the Soviet Union. for instance, not to have any income when ques­ For my part, I would still like to see a frank tioned by the Internal Revenue Department) ,Mrs. study of the Middle East written with an eye on Harris seems to imply, is only. the other side of a the protection of the interests of the free world, basically valid coin. And she adds, somewhat and particularly America, in that region. Foregoing dramatically, "if Father Divine were to die, mass neither our friendship for the Arabs nor our sym­ suicides among the Negroes in his movement could pathy for Israel, we should know what to expect in certainly result. They would be rooted deep, not that territory. Professor Emil Lengyel, a Hungar­ alone in Father's relationship with his followers ian who has written extensively about the Mediter­ but also in America's relationship to its Negro ranean area, approaches the problem in World citizens." Without End. But aside from a useful expose of the importance of Communism in the Middle East, The Passionate Heart, by Beatrix Beck. Trans­ he, too, advises the United States to go East bear­ lated from the French by Constantine Fitz Ing nothing but gifts. Thus, we' are still waiting Gibbon. 210 pp. New York: Julian Mes,sner, for a book about the Arabs and the Middle East Inc. $3.50 written neither from a British, Arabian, or Hun­ There could be no more devastating reflection garian, but from an American point of view, hav­ on the current state of French literature than ing at heart the interests of America as well as the awarding of the esteemed Prix Goncourt to those of the free world. SERGE FLIEGERS this opus by Beatrix Beck. In a 'Conglomerate of vaguely surrealistic scenes, Mlle. Beck relays a rather confusing tale of sadism, mysticism, les­ Briefer Mention bianism, religious conversion, murder, and war, which, perhaps, is supposed to depict a slice of Father Divine: Holy Husband, by Sara Harris, "Life." Her heroine, widowed by war and trying with the assistance of Harriet Crittenden. 320 to survive in occupied France, is in love with an­ pp. New York: Doubleday and Company. $3.95 other woman. But eventually she transfers her affection to religion and her desires to a priest, "I was combusted one day in 1900 on the corner whom she fancies "spiritually sublime," "just," of Seventh Avenue and 134th Street in Harlem." and "charitable." He demonstrates these' qualities, Thus George Baker, the jovial little Negro and presumably the author's outlook on life, by preacher who calls himself Father Divine, ex­ saying that one must not take one's moral con­ plains his mysterious "coming" to the million of victions too seriously. And he adds with a certain exuberant followers who have given up sex and amount of candor that "there are people for whom sin and found an emotional-and often economic­ the most charitable thing that one can do is to haven in his million-dollar cooperative enterprise. blow out their brains." In her sympathetic yet detached biography, Mrs. Harris, a pr,actical sociologist, probes a bit deeper A Pass,age in the Night, by Sholem Asch. Trans­ into the obscured background of the now some lated by Maurice Samuel. 367 pp. New York: seventy-odd year old sharecropper's son from G. P. Putnam's Sons. $3.75 Georgia. She not only traces the phenomenal rise of this curious religionist in great, and often Sholem Asch's new novel begins as a gripping and amusing detail, but she also sets out to explore perceptive psychological study of a man's struggle the economic and spiritual climate of America's with guilt. Isaac Grossman, the hero, has risen Negro communities which made this phenomenon from the grinding poverty .of his youth to a possible. Based on extensive and sometimes rather position of great wealth and national respect repetitious individual testimony, Mrs. Harris through his integrity and brilliant business points out how this rambling "deity"-often acumen; but at the pinnacle of his success he is denounced as a charlatan and racketeer, and tortured by the knowledge that his career began wanted since 1942 in New York State for not with a theft-twenty-seven dollars. All his obeying a court order-came to fill a real need, achievements are meaningless to him, because he in his own curious way. For, Mrs. Harris main­ is convinced that he could I10t have attained tains, Father Divine not only operated one of the them by his ability alone, that they were made most effective relief missions in Harlem. during possible only by his crime-a crime which he the depression years, but he also gave his followers thinks ruined his victim',s life. His intensely re­ of "darker complexion," as he calls them, a feeling ligious upbringing and his belief in a vengeful

114 THE FREEMAN God convince him that unless he finds his victim and expiates his sin, he is damned to eternal Of Continuing Interest hell-1fire. But as Isaac begins his search, the story European Communism, by Franz Borkenau, $6.00. leaves his inner conflict, and becomes a chronicle A fresh, brilliant, and enlightening history of of the effects of his obsession on his family and Communist activities in non-Soviet Europe. friends, and of their efforts to halt the quest for a man they believe to be only the fiction of The Renaissance, by Will Durant, $7.50. A rich Isaac's sick and tormented mind. The delineation and readable account of the fabulous pageant of of a man's inability to live with guilt-which Renaissance Italy. is the original focus of the novel-is lost, and Cowhand, by Fred Gipson, $2.75. A true and lively other, more superficial characters take Isaac's story of Fats Alford, a working cowhand in the place on the center of the stage. This unfortunate range country wes,t of the Pecos. shift of focus makes faintly anticlimactic the final resolution of the sp.iritual struggle, and mars Paradise Prairie, by Cecil B. Williams, $4.50. the value of this otherwise forceful and original Recollections of an Oklahoma farm in the first story. decades of the century, written with realism and love. The Hill of Devi, by E. M. Forster. 267 pp. New Portrait of Andre Gide, by Justin O'Brien, $6.00. York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. $4.00 The translator of Gide's Journals has combined In 1912-13 E. M. Forster paid his first visit to a revealing biography with a critical survey of the Indian state with the odd name of Dewas all Gide's writings. Senior. Eight years later, in 1921, he returned The Communist Conspiracy, by Stephen King­ for some months as temporary private secretary Hall, $3.00. An excellent summary of the theory, to its ruler. He has now put together letters written methods, and history of this important subject. during the two visits 'and connected them with explanatory passages. This has been done with Memoirs, by Franz von Papen, $6.50. This apolo­ such skill that, combined with the narrative quality gia of Nazism's most famous fellow-traveler is of the letters and their grace of style, the whole in its own way a document of extraordinary in­ be!comes a continuous story. A story, indeed, with terest for the history of our times. a hero-the ruler himself, the MaharaJah of An Autumn in Italy, by Sean O'Faolain, $3.50. Dewas State Senior, whom Forster found "lovable Proof that a useful guide for tourists can be and brilliant and witty and charming and... com­ first-rate literature. plex." He provides plenty of evidence' to support his judgment of the m,an, and adds a plot besides, Containment or Liberation?, by James Burnham, involving two marriages, considerable intrigue, $3.50. A clear statement of the basic choice that strange and fascinating festivals, and finally catas­ confronts American foreign policy. trophe.Though certainly nota major work of The Spirit of St. Louis, by Charles A. Lindbergh, Forster's, nor intended as such, The Hill of Devi $5.00. The complete story of the great flight, is altogether pleasant and rewarding reading. written with accuracy and dignity. The Inward Journey, by Doris Peel. 241 pp. Bos- The Return of Germany, by Norbert Muhlen, ton: Houghton Mifflin Company. $3.00 $4.50. The most informative and most enlightened The outward journey forming the framework of book that has been written on postwar Germany, this book involves a rather complic'ated trip to East and West. Berlin from West Germany, and the Soviet World Brain-Washing in Red China, by Edward Hunter, Youth Festival for Peace in 1950, which the $3.75. A terrifying account of the calculated author attended as a member of the press. The destruction of men's minds in the Communist so-called "inward" journey is taken up with the orbit. attitudes and thoughts of the youth in both zones and an attempt to reach some common ground of The Captive Mind, by Czeslaw Milosz, $3.50. An understanding. The whole episode as reported by account of writers and artists in the captive coun­ Miss Peel consisted mostly of endless, gushing tries, beautifully written by a poet who escaped conversations on a nineteen-year-old level with to freedom. a miscellany of young things possessing strictly The Sociology and Psychology of Communism, by Germanic first names such as Pauli or Ernst or Jules Monnerot, $6.00. A profound general study Liesl and little else by way of individuality or of the nature of the Communist conspiracy. identification. There is a great deal of chaltter as weU as emotion about how we, must all be A Century of Conflict, by Stefan Possony, $7.50. friends. A less eventful or purposeful journey A thoroughly realistic study of Communism as a would be hard to imagine. system of power and violence.

NOVEMBER 30, 1953 175 and curlicues so dear to the heart of traditionalists. Their cry was for An American Architect functionalism ,and they c'arried off many victories in Europe, specially By SERGE FLIEGERS in the Scandinavian 'countries. But when Gropius and Van der Rohe moved to this country, their basically revolutionary concepts did not ac­ After reading F'rank Lluyd signed this year, or last. It appeared cord with the evolutionary character Wright's latest book (The Future u/' on Mr. Wright's drawing board in of Americ'an life. Young American Architecture, 326 pp., .LVe'w York: 1900, at a time when his contem­ architects with a feeling for their Horizon Press. $7.50), visiting his poraries still dressed by g,aslight, country's silhouette turned .in in­ current exhibition entitled "Sixty and spent their lives in dismal creasing numbers to Frank Lloyd Years of Living Architecture," an

176 THE F'REEMAN How You can back up the Revolt on the Campus

We received a sharp joH the other day. Visit­ and surround membership with an aura of ing an old friend we were present when his intellectual respectability. The liberal con­ daughter, who attends a leading Eastern servative professor is often derided as a re­ university, received her current copy of the actionary, even a "fascist." That is why dur­ Nation. She opened it with the remark: ingthe past twenty-five years the Nation "Now I can find out what really to think and the New Republic, with their average about what's been happening." In subsequent circulation of only 20,000 to 40,000, have conversation we learned that the Nation is been the major influences in forming political the only journal of opinion she reads-"We thought and attitudes in America. all do," she said-and that her ideas o'n the College reading tables everywhe're feature basic problems of our time are taken from these publications. In contrast the FREEMAN its pages. is rarely found on any of them. Now we offe,r you the opportunity to remedy this lack, to The left has always recognized that the bock up the revolt against the collectivist students of today are the leaders of tomor­ trend on our campuses. We have worked out row. For years collectivist and statist propa­ several plans whereby you can give students ganda has dominated the thinking on college and professors a chance to get the facts campuses. So-called "progressives" on the and arguments that expose the fallacies of faculty back student political action clubs collectivist and statist thinking.

Her'els how you can send a College Subscription of the FREEMAN to the fraternitYI sororitYI boarding club or dormitory reading room of your choice.

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.... 'N~;"~' ~i' ~~li~g~: 'f~~ie~~;i;: ~td.· .... Please send me complete information, CITY: ',' STATE: . including details of possible tax deduc­ tion features. policy of the National Education Asso­ union monopolies, subsidized railroads FROM OUR READERS ciation for many years, is following and truck lines with their protected II II religiously and hopefully, and so far rates. Only under some plan of price successfully the methods of infiltration support has the farmer any protection Spotlight on the P.T.A. and propaganda perfQcted by subvert­ against these inequalities. ers who accept as their creed socialism, McNabb, Ill. WALTER G. GRIFFITH In the November 2 issue of the FREE­ either of the Fabian or the Marxist MAN J0 Hindman ("Gag Rule in persuasion. ... Socialized ;Ballet? P.T.A.") stated: "Shocked by the in­ It would indeed be most salutary if structions [from the National Congress Seldom have I read a more childish those who feel Mrs. Hindman's report piece of criticism than Serge FHegers' of Parents and Teachers] to sing the overemphasizes the conditions, would review of the Sadler's Wells Company praises of UNESCO, many P.T.A. set up in their own localities an en­ ["Socialized Ballet," October 19], members rejected the literature." ... tirely unbossed group of intelligent and which, to me, epitomizes much of the In this case Mrs. Hindman shows unbiased parents to look into the critical writing in your magazine. unfamiliarity with the United Nations charges and prove or disprove them.... Without a doubt the accuracy and Organization, and complete unfamil­ Bridgeport, Conn. JAMES WESTBROOK timing of the Sadler's Wens Comp'any iarity with both the name and activities is reprehensible and a reflection of of UNESCO ... which deals only in Dewey vs. iJ),ewey . regimented socialism-just as, I sup­ education, science, and cultural affairs. pose, any inaccuracy or mistiming on The dominant a,ssum1ption of Mrs. Robert S. Byfield's devastating analysis the part of an American ballet troupe Hindman's remarks on the United of Governor Dewey',s turncoat position would be a glorious illustration of Nations is that it is a subversive and on Niagara's power development rugged American individualism and therefore dangerous organization. I ["Why Socialize Niagara?," November laissez-faire philosophy. 16] is characteristic of the FREEMAN'S find such remarks based on ignorance CAROLYN W. MALLISON of even basic information about the straight thinking. I hope you will have Syracuse, N.Y. United Nations Organiza'tion extremely sufficient reprints to send to senators and members of Congress for whom objectionaible, especially in a magazine "Negotiation~~ this article is "must'" reading. and the FTC that usually holds 'to high critical KENNETH D. ROBERTSON, JR. In your editorial, "The FTC Talks standards. I rather think it is just Concord, Mass. Sense" [November 2], you refer to the this sort of criticism that is dangerous. new FTC policy of clearing "misunder­ The United Nations needs a lot of standings" between government and changes, but no change either .in the Farm Price Supports business by negotiation, rather than P.T.A. or in a specialized agency of Your statement, on page 77 of the court action. the U.N. will help us if it is made in November 2 i,ssue, that "it is precisely For a good many yeiars government an attitude of fear and suspicion.... the price support principle that is the bureaus have proceeded largely upon Winnetka, Ill. BRUCE. CUTLER cause of'half the economic mischief in two policies. Their favorite attitude the world," is typical of the point of toward any point in question boiled I was glad to read the article by Mrs. view of mos,t urban people, but places down to: "We are right, you are Hindman concerning the regimentation a lot of blame where it is not justified. wrong." The other has been even worse. of the P.T.A.s. It is difficult to find an In the first place, the farmer is the It has been to take a posrition of sweet,;. ness and Hght-"Now let's get together. institution where subversion could ac­ "Johnny come lately" in this price sup­ We are only too glad to show you why complish greater harm to freedom than port business. Ha,s not all the favorable we are right." in the public school system. I do not legislation for labor and labor unions If the Federal Trade Commission necassarily confine the ter,m subversion been a support price for labor? Have not all the protective tariffs we have and a host of other .federal agencies solely to destruction and overthrow of can and will change, and proceed on the Constitution by violence. had for years, to protect our "infant industries," been a support price to the realization that "negotia,tion" There is not the slightest suspicion in means to determine, in good faith, my mind that the inner core of manufactured goods of all kinds? Have not' freight and utility rates been raised which of two or more viewpoints is reformers who have dominated the right, a new day will dawn. time after time as a result of rulings Santa Fe, Cal. W. RUSSELL FAWCETT by the,ir state and federal governing bodies? All these policies have been in A New Liberalism Needed force almos't from the beginning of our country's history. Agricultural price Max Eastman, in his ar,ticle "The SOCONY-VACUUM supports are a very recent thing, and Delinquent Liberals" [November 2], OIL COMPANY are only an evening-up measure for exemplifies once more the urgent need for a reevaluation of the liberalposi­ INCORPORATED some of the supports afforded other tion not of yesterday,or the 1930's, segments of our economy for years. Dividend Octoher but of today and tomorrow. For, it You also say that farm price sup­ No. 171 27, 1953 ,seems to me, there are quite a few ports mean higher food prices for city ,people in this country who, while op­ workers. It is not difficult to prove The Board of Directors today posed to any form of totalitarianism declared a quarterly dividend of that it is largely the labor and services and government encroachment in the 50¢ per share and an extra divi, added to agricultural products after economic as well as private sphere, dend of 25 if, per share on the they leave the farmers' hands that do not believe that a return to the old outstanding capital stock of this cause,s such high food prices. Company, both payable Decem' forms of nineteenth-century liberalism ber 10, 1953, to stockholders of In any major price decline or de­ can resolve all our present problems. record at the close of business pression, a-gr,icultural prices are the To wive these non-leftist liberals a November 6, 195'3. first to decline. The manufactured direction should be one of the tasks of W. D. BICKHAM, Secreta,'YY ,goods the farmer buys are slow to come the FREEMAN. down due to protective tariffs, labor New York CitU CHARLES WILLFORT .'.t:- .r" ottell!

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