J\lA Y 4. 1953 25¢

Nullification by Treaty The Threat to Your Constitutional Rights Caret Carrett

Was Bohlen ~l Blunder? James Burnham

Agony of the Welfare State Ludwig von Mises

Peronism at Bay Eudocio Ravines CHARGING J&L's OPEN HEARTHS. A $ymbol of J&L's capacity for progressive, scientific steel-making is this eleven-furnace open hearth shop at Pittsburgh. In the IIheat" of today your tomorrows are born

ODAY a "heat" of steel is born. In with America. For nearly everything ized. Research, to develop new steels, Ta succession oftomorrows this steel that's important to our way of life and better steels, and better ways of will be formed and shaped by the and our standard of living stems making steel, goes on endlessly. genius of American industry into the from steel. And behind it all, to shape and things that everybody wants-auto­ J&L is geared to play an increas­ guide today's operations, are J&L's mobiles and appliances, toys and ingly important role in America's one hundred years of steel-making typewriters, cans and cash registers. steel-makingjob. Production facilities experience-assurance that J&L Steel-making has to move fast­ have been expanded greatly. Plants stands ready to meet the challenge and it has to be good-to keep up and equipment have been modern- of tomorrow! .JONES & LAUGHLIN STEEL CORPORATION PITTSBURGH THE A Fortnightly Our Contributors For GARET GARRETT, who has written for various New York newspapers, including the New York Individualists Sun, the New York Times, and the Wall Street reeman Journal, was chief editorial writer for the Sat­ Editor HENRY HAZLITT urday Evening Post, and more recently editor of American Affairs. He is the author of nu­ Managing Editor FWRENCE NORTON merous books, essays, and articles on finance, economics, and politics.

JAMES BURNHAM is well known to our readers VOL. 3, N'O. 16 MAY 4, 1953 both for his frequent articles in the FREEMAN, Contents and his much quoted books on Communism and the strategy we should adopt in opposing it, of Editorials which the most recent is Containrnent or Lib­ eration, published in February of this year. The Fortnight 0 0 0 0 • 0 0 0 •••• 0 0 •••• 0 ••• 0 •• 0 0 • 0 0 0 •• 545

The Korea-Formosa Leak .. 0 0 0 0 0 ••••••• 0 0 0 0 •• 0 0 •• 0 0 • 0 546 LUDWIG VON MISES is a well-known contributor The Kremlin Itself Confesses .. 0' ••••••••••••• 0 •••••• 0 547 to the FREEMAN on economic and political ques­ Wonders of World Wheat. o. 0 0 0 ••• 0 0 .000. 0 ••• 0 o •• 0 000 548 tions.

Articles EUDOCIO RAVINES knows well the innermost workings of the Communist movement in Latin Nullification by Treaty. 0 • 0 ••••• 0 • 0 ••• 0 • 0 GARET GARRETT 549 America, for he was long its mos,t successful Was Bohlen a Blunder? o •• 0 • 0 •• JAMES BURNHAM 551 leader. He broke with the party in 1941, and is Agony of the W'elfare State LUDWIG VON MISES 555 now living in exile in Mexico City. His auto­ Peronism at Bay 0 • 0 0 • 0 0 EUDOCIO RAVINES 558 graphical volume, The Yenan Way, was pub­ Decline of the Rule of Law, Part 2.0 ..•• 0. of. A. HAYEK 561 lished by Scribner's in 1951.

Thorez Comes Home..... 0 0 • 0 0 • 0 •••• 0 EUGENE TILLINGER 564 F. A. HAYEK conlpletes in this issue his discussion Books and the Arts of the rise of the Rule of Law and its subse­ quent and recent decline.

Man as a Promise 0 •••••• 0 0 0 MAX EASTMAN 567

A Problem in Psychology 0 •• 0 ••• 00000000000 R. A. PARKER 568 EUGENE TILLINGER, foreign correspondent for

Young Heroes ..... '0' 0 0 •••••• o' •• 0 0 0 HELEN WOODWARD 569 the North American Newspaper Alliance, has

Deep-Damasked Wing 0 ••••••••• 0 ••• 0 •• E. MERRILL ROOT 570 jus,t returned from four months in France and

Romulo-Voice of Asia ..... 0 • 0 0 0 •• 0 • 0 •• SERGE FLIEGERS 571 Western Europe.

Timely Reappraisal. 0 • 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ••• 0 0 0 • 0 • 0 • 0 0 FREDA UTLEY 572 R. A. PARKER, biographer, critic, and columnist, Television .. 0 0 •• - •••••• 0 •• 0 0 • 0 0 •••••• 0 0 0 • KAPPO PHELAN 573 has condueted extensive research into contem­ porary cults and myths. Poems

To My Father... 0 0 0 ••••••••••• 0 ••• 0 0 0 RUTH PICKERING 554 E. MERRILL ROOT, the distinguished poet, has

Agenda 0 • 0 •• 0 0 •• 0 •••••• 0 •••• 0 •• CANDACE T. STEVENSON 563 published six volumes of verse and several

Amen 0 •••• 0 • 0 ••• 0 0 0 0 •••••••••••••••••• WITTER BYNNER 566 prose works. He is Professor of English at E'arlham College, Richmond, Indiana.

From ()ur }leaders 0 ••••• 000 •• 0 •• 00 •••• 0" 0 0 ••• 544 FREDA UTLEY returned in January from an ex­ tended stay in Germany, where she collected Worth Hearing Again '0 0 ••••••••• 0 ••• 0 ••••••• o. 557 material for a number of articles and a book in progress. A regular contributor to the FREE­ This Is Wbat They Said...... 566 MAN, her most recent article was "Germany's Dilemma," in our issue of March 9.

THE FREEMAN is published fortnightly. Publication Offtce, Orange, Conn. Editorial and General Offices, 240 Madison Avenue, New York 16, N. Y. Copyrighted in the United States, 1953, by the Freeman Magazine, Inc. Henry Hazlitt, President; Lawrence Fertig, Vice President; Claude Robinson, Secretary; Kurt Lassen, Treasurer. A Note to Subscribers Entered as second class matter at the Post Office at Orange, Conn. Rates: Twenty-five cents the copy; five dollars a year in the United States; nine dollars for two years; Notification of change of address should include six dollars a year elsewhere. both the old and the new address, and should The editors can not be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts unless return postage or, be sent to: Circulation Department, the FREE­ better, a stamped, self-addressed envelope is enclosed. MAN, 240 Madison Avenue, New York 16, N.Y. Articles signed with a name, pseudonym, or initials do not necessarily represent the opinion of the editors, either as to substance or style. Please allow thirty days for the change to be­ ~ Printed in U.S.A., by Wilson H. Lee Co., Orange, Connecticut. come effective. II FROM OUR READERS II

Timely Protest Why Don't You say in your issue of March 9: "What was even more ominous than the provisions of the [Yalta] agree­ ment wait the absence, at the time of You its publica,tion, of any loud or audible outcry or protest." You are wrong. The Chicago Trib­ une's protes1t was as loud as we could Stabilize make it, which is said to be tolerably loud. What you call "the normal American ability to distinguish be­ tween right and wrong, freedom and Real Wages slavery," was not "badly blurred" in Chicago. Here, for example, are the conclud­ by returning to the ing paragraphs of an editorial of February 27, 1945: The scheme concocted at Yalta is, GOLD COIN STANDARD? of course, in dIrect violation of the letter and spirit of the Atlantic Charter. It is said that those who denounced the charter as a confi­ dence game at the time it was is­ sued have no right now to cite it against the Big Three. On the con­ trary, when we and others scoffed at the charter it was not because of the principles it proclaimed, which are sound enough, but because it was evident that neither Mr. Roose­ velt nor Mr. Churchill meant to abide by them. The decision of the Yalta Con­ ference proves we were right. Chicago, Ill. LEON STOLZ

THOSE of us who WO:k for a living­ During that periodl a phenomenal and who doesn't - will be restless increase in industrial productivity A Few Words of Praise and dissatisfied as long as we are partially overcame the effects of paid in dollars of uncertain and fluc­ the decline in the dollar's real value. Congratulations on your March 23 is­ tuating value. Making plans ... sav­ As an example - Kennametal, as sue. And particularly upon the "No ing to bring those plans to reality ... a tool material, helped increase Rich, No Risk-Bearing." Edward seeing dreams come true - these are metal-working productivity as muoh Hunter's "Government by the Insane" essential to human contentment and as 300%. Despite these technological also was outstanding. And much ap­ happiness. improvements real wages dropped preciated your Four Horsemen of the The foundation for security is sound far behind dollar pay. Kremlin. money_ There is only one money Friction between management and Washington, D. C. CLIF STRATTON which fills that description - a med­ workers was inevitable. The con­ ium of exchange which is freely stant cry for "more money" actually convertible to gold on demand. means "for more purchasing power" I look forward eagerly to each issue of the FREEMAN - a real American When the government seized the - to make up for the dollar's defi­ people's goldtwenty years ago, it ciency. In other words - for sound magazine. withdrew from its citizens their money ... Rochester, N. Y. INEZ ROBINSON

power to control government spend­ The Presidentl some of his close ing. The·stage was set for waste and Cabinet advisors, members of the The People Pay corruption - financed by a·· flood of Senate and the House have publicly In one of your editorials [March 6, fiat currency which diluted the pur­ recognized the need for a return chasing power of the dollar. to the Gold Coin Standard:*" Why not 1953] you say: "... The Secretary of take action on it, now? Agriculture's decision to continue the Excerpt from Republican Return to the Gold Coin Standard support of dairy produc;ts at 90 per "Monetary Policy" Plank will end the bickering which stems cent of parity may cost the govern­ from unsound money' ... will create ment about 100 million dollars in the a healthful business atmosphere year starting April 1." where American industry, of which Did someone slip in your office? ... Kennametal Inc. is a key enterprise, The point is that nothing costs the can achieve greater productivity, and government anything;' The cost, what­ provide more real wages and real ever it may be, is paid by individual The right to redeem benefits to all our people. *currency for gold will citizens and by rio one else. Whether help keep America free .•• ask your Sen­ One of a series of advertisements published in the public it be the government, a corporation, a ators and Congress­ interest by trade union, or any other form of co­ man to work and vote to restore the Gold operative effort, the cost is always borne by individuals. It is by forget­ f:iThs:a~o~~d.S~~~: (, \GOLD" ard League, Latrobe, / ting this for a moment, or ten minutes, Po., for further infor­ or an hour, now and again, that men mation. The League is on association of pa­ aoting in the name of government or triotic citizens joined in the name of some other organiza­ in the common cause WORLD'S LARGEST Independent Manufacturer Whose Facilities are tion toss heavy burdens on the people. of restoring a sound Devoted EXclusively to Processing and Application of CEMENTED CARBIDES monetary system. New York, N. Y. MURRAY T. QUIGG reemanTHE MONDAY, MAY 4, 1953

The State Department declined comment, but the The Fortnight Defense Department, stating that Hanley's report Once more we are learning the consequences for ,vas released without the knowledge of General ourselves of acting as if any truce' or peace pro­ Ridgway, said that they had cabled the General posal from the Communists were made in good for clarification. On the following day General faith. On April 15 American planes sent up to fol­ Ridgway clarified as follows: "Of the 10,836 peT­ low the progress of returning prisoners of war sons still carried as missing in action ... there is had to fight their way through Communist anti­ considerable evidence to justify a presumption of aircraft fire, only to observe' an enemy build-up of death by atrocity of a large number which may ap­ supplies for the front all along the roads desig­ proxim'ate 6,000." nated for transporting captives. "Hundreds" of trucks were reported boldly rolling in daylight on He remarked by way of mild rebuke that Colonel supply roads that they usually use only under the Hanley's duties did not "involve responsibilities for screen of darkness. But they bore the agreed mark­ the reporting of casualties in the Korean opera­ ings-large red panels-that immunized them from tion," but made it clear that the Judge Advocate attack. The result? 'The next day all the sixty mem­ had the best possible ace-ess to the' facts. Subse­ ber states of the United Nations voted in favor of quently, on November 23, the Defense Department, a resolution expressing the hope that "the further on the basis of a .report from Gene'ral Ridgway, negotiations 'at Panmunjom will result in a'chiev­ gave the number of captured United States mili­ ing an early armistice' in Kore'a." tary personnel slain by the Communists as 8,000.

A mysterious silence has greeted the announce­ We ask again: Can the memories of our military ment th'at, while the UN is handing over 5,800 sick and political leaders be so short that they have for­ or wounded prisoners to the Communists in Korea, gotten these facts? Is their meek request that the the Communists have only been a'ble to dig up 600 Communists revise their standards and m'ake a re­ in return, and of the'Se only 120 are Americans. count due to pathological forgetfulness? Or are Rear Admiral John C. Daniel, who is handling the they, in the interest of a policy of appeasement, exchange, remarked that this seemed an "incredibly ignoring the -ghastly truth implied by the pro­ small" number, and asked the Communists for "a posal of the Communists to return 120 sick and more libeTal interpretation of your definition of wounded American prisoners in exchange for 5,800 sick and wounded." The refusal was adamant, and prisoners of their own? Admiral Daniel reserved the right to make "further com'ment" on the enemy figures. That "furthe'r And what of our leaders of opinion-the news­ comment" has so far not been made. paper editors, the columnists, the radio debaters, the news commentators? Is this a case of involun­ Can it be possible that no one in the Pentagon, taryamnesia, the "oblivescence of the disagree­ and no one in the United Nations, and no one in able"? Or is this a conspiracy of silence imposed the United States Gove'rnment remembers in this by the new administration in a continuance of the conne'ction the news broken to us on November 15, Acheson-Truman e'ffort to get out of the war in 1951, by Colonel James M. Hanley, Judge Advocate Asia without winning it? General of the' Eighth Army, that 3,600 United States prisoners of war were slaughtered by the On April 11 former President Herbert Hoover North Koreans, and another 2,513 by the Chinese made the most constructive proposal for de-social­ Communists? "A record of killing and bavbarism izing electric power that has been put forward by unique even in the Communist world," was Colonel any statesman in the last twenty years. "The ob­ Hanley's phrase for it. jective of the whole proceeding," he explained,

MAY 4,1953 545 "should ,be to get the Federal Government out of the business of generating and distributing power The Korea-Formosa Leak as soon as possi'ble." Mr. Hoover'sexplanation of why his proposal is necessary was no less interest­ The government of the United States considers the ing than the proposal itself. He told in hard figures Republic of Korea and the Republic of China as vlhat twenty years of creeping socialism has meant independent and sovereign nations. It should, we in the field of Federal electric power. By the' mid­ feel, neither think nor act in a manner that puts dle of this year, the Federal 'Government will have this position in doubt. But it did think and act as aequired a generating 'capacity of about 15,000,000 if these t,wo governments were ours to hold or dis­ horsepower, 'which is a'bout 12 per cent of the card, when the Department of State early this utility generating capacity for sale to the public. month engineered its remarkable leak on possible The burdens and losses which this change, and future policy on Korea -and Formosa. further programs still afoot, will impose on the' What happened was this: a number of experi­ American taxpayer, as Mr. Hoover demonstrated, enced newspapermen, within a few hours of each will run into the ibillions unless the trend is re­ other, published Washington dispatches suggesting versed. that the United States was 'Considering 'a division between North and South Korea at the peninsula's Bureaucrats remain bureaucrats. They miss no waist. The dispatches also said that the future opportunity to vent their pro-socialist bias even if status of Formosa, .seat of the Chinese' government, they serve a Republican State Government. A fine might be solved by a United Nations trusteeship. example was provided by the' New York State In­ The reporters lwhose dispatches relayed this sup­ come Tax Bureau. Its form 201 used to call "Earn­ posed State Department thinking included Anthony ings" only the compensation received by employees. Leviero of the New York Times, Ray Cromley of By implication, all other income, including that re­ the Wall Street Jo1lrnal, Garnett D. Horner of,the sulting from the exercise of a prof.ession became 'Vashington Star, and United Features columnist, "unearned" income. In his essay "Profit and Loss" Marquis Childs. (reprinted in Planning for Freedom) Professor These and other dispatches were identical in Ludwig von Mises referred to this semantic mon­ basic content. Their tenor suggested that they were strosity as characteristic of the mentality of the based ona calculated State Department leak, a bureaus. His critique has apparently had a sur­ trial baBoon designed to sound out reaction at prisingly quick ~U'ccess. The' new Income Tax Re­ home and abroad. Bill Costello, White House cor­ turn f'orm 201 has dropped the offending termi­ respondent of the Columbia Broadcasting System, nology, and no longer reserves the term "Earnings" alleged that the dispatches were based on a talk exc1usively for wages and Sialaries. which Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had with the correspondents. Costello said Mr. Dulles Elsewhere in this issue we publish an article by gave the re-porters permission to use his remarks, Eudocio Ravines on the sinister collaboration now without attributing them to him and spaced out in apparent between Peronism 'and Communism. This a series of dispatches. is in part the result of the complete collapse of When a furor set in, both in Congress and else­ Peron's totalitarian economic policy. One fact where, the White House and State Department de­ symbolizes that collapse' more vividly than any nied that the dispatches reflected official thinking. other. In the modern world the Argentine has been The New York Times' Washington bureau chief, one of the great sources of the world's 'beef. Today Arthur Krock, called the incident "'another instance there is a ishorta;ge of beef in the Argentine itself. of the administration getting its wires crossed and lVleat shipments into the cities have declined to a blaming the consequences on the press." trickle; hundreds of butcher shops are closed. Whoeverlleaked the State Department's mullings­ Peron's economic policy can be deseribed as con­ over to the press, there is one thing we just plainlY sisting mainly in monetary inflation "suppressed" don't understand. It is this: What was this leak by price...fixing. The economic dislocations and supposed to accomplish? We see only that it has shortages brought about !by this have been the chief shown our hand to the Moscow and Peiping re­ reason behind the mounting internal opposition to gimes, that it has weakened our 'bargaining power Peron's regime. 'This culminated in the fatal explo­ vis-a-vis our Red antagonists. sion of bombs when the dictator was, speaking to a We should, if any leaking was to be done, have crowd of 100,000 persons in Buenos Aires. The suggested the' very opposite. We should have said inte'rnal opposition has 'been 'followed by the arrest that we stood 'by our guns, and that all of Korea of hundreds of merchants for price-ceiling viola­ should be freed from Communist control. We tions and the arrest of scores of others for the should have strengthened our bargaining power lat crime of circulating "false and tendentious rumors the negotiations, by restating' what we have said of alarming nature." Peron is now fighting for his right 'along: that the government of Chiang Kai­ political Ufe. He can hope to stay in power only by shek is the legitimate and recognized government increasing the violence of his repressions. of China.

546 THE FREEMAN The Kremlin Itself Confesses

One of the strangest, most bizarre, and most im­ the charges proffered against them, was obtained portant events in the Soviet Union since the death by workers of the investigation section of the for­ of Stalin was the 'abrupt cancelation of the show mer Ministry of State Security through the use of trial prepared for "the poisoning doctors." It was methods of investigation whi'ch are inadmissible officially announced last January that nine promi­ and most strictly forbidden by Soviet law." nent Soviet physicians, of whom six and probably This is about as clear an admission of the use of seven were Jews, had confessed to having mur­ torture as could be imagined. At long last the dered two well-known ,soviet leaders, Andrei power of darkness and of evil, enthroned in Russia Stcherhakov and Andrei Zhdanov, by prescribing since 1917, so diabolically expert in extracting de­ incorrect treatment for their aHments. grading confessions from its victims, has itself As has been the case in previous Soviet treason, confessed. Who can how take seriously the admis­ murder, and sabotage trials, the reach of these sions in any political trial ever held in the Soviet supposed enemies of the proletariat had exceeded Union or in any satellite state? their grasp. They had unsuccessfully tried to kiH, it was said, leading figures in the Soviet armed Suspicious skepticism about these trials was forces. They had not acted on their own initiative. aroused from the beginning by the strange dis­ They had been taking orders from the J ewish Joint crepancies in the very sm'all amount of the evidence Distribution Committee, a well-known American vlhich could be examined and veTified outside the philanthropic organiz'ation, which had acted as an Soviet frontiers. For example, in one of the first instrument of the American Intelligence Service of these treason and sabota1ge trials, held in 1930, and had instructed the physicians to "destroy the a group of accused engine'ers, headed by Professor leading eadres of the Soviet Union." No circum­ Ramzin, testified that they proposed to set up a stantial detail was omitted. The go-ibe'tween in the counter-revolutionary government, headed by a supposedly sinister doings of the doctors was "the prewar Moscow industrialist, P. P. Ryabushinsky, well-known Jewish bourgeois nationalist, Solomon with a tsarist Finance Minister,Vishnegradsky, as Mikhoels," a famous Soviet actor, murdered under J\/Iinisterof Finance. But both Ryabushinsky and mysterious circumstances several years ago. Vishnegradsky had died in exile years before the supposed plot took place. The stage setting for a trial designed to point There were similar curious slips, Which the "de­ an anti-American andanti~Semitic moral seemed fense" made no effort to expose or emphasize in complete. The 'accused had confessed, thereby fullv the later trials, in which Leon Trotsky, then in satisfying the Owen Lattimores, the Corliss La­ exile, was supposedly implicated. One of the de­ monts in Ameriea and their opposite numbers in fendants declared that he had met Trotsky's son, Great Britain and France. More than that, 'a med­ Sedov, in the Hotel Bristol in Copenhagen. But ical expert commission had confirmed the findings there was no I-Iotel Bristol; the only hotel of that of the investigation. All that remained, it seemed, name in the Danish capital had been closed in 1917. "vas to have the physicians produced in court, con­ An the supposed details of the trip of another de­ fess their guilt again, and plead for the death fendant, Pyatakov, to visit Trotsky in Norway, the penalty, which would be quickly meted out to them. arrival by airplane, the length of time required to But something slipped in the smooth functioning reach Trotsky's place of residence, etc., were ex­ of totalitarian "justice."·The harassed physicians posed as apocryphal. the'mselves probably were in danger of death from Still more' significant 'was the failure of the So­ heart failure when they were set free and pro­ viet Government,after the Red Army had captured nounced innocent. An Order of Lenin to a woman Berlin, to produce a single piece of corroborative physician who had denounced them was canceled. evidence from Nazi archives to ,bear out the thesis And the whole method of extorting the "confes­ of the purge trials of the thirties: that there had sions," which for the last two decades have edified. been extensive Nazi plotting with the followers of foreign Communist sympathizers and puzzled for­ Trotsky and high officers in the Red Army. eigners unfamiliar with totalitarian methods, was How confessions are manufactured. in Communist laid Ibare with breathtaking frankness in the Com­ political trials is no secret. There are many inde­ munist Partyoffi:cial newspaper, Pravda. When a pendent witnesses, the former Swiss Communist, Soviet citizen, brought to public trial, confesses, it Elinor Lipper, the formeT Spanish Communist mili­ is not ne,ws. When a totalitarian state confesses, it tary leader, Valentin Gonzales (UEI Campesino"), is big news, like the man who bites a dog. the forme'r Communist physicist. Alexander Weiss­ "It has been established," 'write'S Pravda, "that berg, the Polish lawyer, Z. Stypolkowski, who have the testimony of the arrested, allegedly confirming descrIbed their experiences under the notorious

MAY 4, 1953 547 "conveyor" method of interrogation. The principle to sell to the higheit bidder, and never mind global of this torture is night after night of sleeplessness, wheat bureaucracies. aggravated by blinding lights playing on the eye­ To stay within the theoretical framework of the balls of the victims, and compulsion to sit in a fixed Council, however, two substitute wheat exporterB position, while relays of investigators shout a1buse had to be found. And they were found, never fear, and badger with repeated questions. The strongest although their wheat exporting did not really physical and nervous or,ganism is certain to ibreak amount to much. 'The choice fell on France and under this system ultimately. Uruguay. However, for all practical purposes, it But it is just as well to have Pravda's belated was the United States, Canada, iand Australia who confession on file., for reference in the next big wound up on the exporting side. Moscow purge trial. That there will be such a tri'a'l Looking back, from our non-global American is highly probable. Only a very powerful .figure point of view, it turns out that this deal has cost could have ordered such an important political step the United States taxpayer something like $600,­ a.s a public trial of the kind. prepared for the doc­ 000,000. Because the difference between our domes­ tors. Only an equally powerful figure could have tic market price and the wheat agreement maxi­ called it off, and with such reckless exposure of mum had to he paid out of the U. 8. Treasury. the true methods employed in political trials. The apparent target of the original frame-up Let us not get high and mighty at this point, and was Lavrenti Beria, who would have been logically blame it all on the wheat-hungry importing coun­ considered negligent in taking care of state secur­ tries. Let us look at the wheat grain in our own ity if it were established that two successful poison­ eye, and observe that Washington de'Sired the po­ ing efforts and several unsuccessful one's were litical allegiance of the nation's wheat growers as made during his regime. Beria has proved strong it made this whole deal,back in 1949. enough, for the present, to vindicate his reputation When the 'global wheat agreement was signed vigorously by discrediting the frame-up. But will four years ago, it fixed the maximum price sellers the matter stop there? could charge 'at $1.80 per 'bushel. But the world A state of acute tension behind the forbidding price for wheat has, since then, always been very walls of the ancient Kremlin, which witnessed so much higher. In the United States, this difference many revolts, massacre'S, and palace conspiracies in has been around sixty-three cents per bushel­ the time of the old Muscovite tsars, is indicated. It '\vhich the Trum'an administration paid out as a is unlikely that Moscow has seen its last, or its subsidy. bloodiest, purge. Truman burdened the Eisenhower administra­ tion with a heavy political debt to the wheat farm­ ers. The Eisenhower cabinet found itself smack between two most unattractive alternatives: to get Wonders oj World Wheat itse'lf in bad with the 'wheat growers; or keep on paying subsidies, so that wheat importers could If the International Wheat Agreement expires buv at the fixed price. without renewal on July 31, it will be, ironically The Eisenhower administration did, as it looks enough,because the chief gainer from the' old now, the' politically unavoidable thing. It tried to agreement, importing Great Britain, has formany g'et a compromise. From next July on, the agree­ announced its withdrawal, though the chief loser ment maximum will be $2.05 per bushel~hich from the old agreement, exporting United States, would save the taxpayer 'a quarter on each bushel. was willing to signa new agreement for another compared to what was paid out during the past three years. four years. When the International Wheat Council was set Still, let us keep the record straight. Th~ Inter­ up in 1949, it was not another ,global plan set up in national Wheat Agreement represents the kind of the allied afterglow of the Second World War. It political realism. that undermines economic moral­ was not created in the image of the United Nations, ity in the long run. Once subsidies start, overpro­ or any other hopeful'ly contrived international duction becomes 'chronic, and 'pressure for more body. Instead, it was the product or a world-wide subsidies is unavoidable. The wheat subsidies marriage of convenience. shou;ld :be reduced out of existence. Countries as The Council 'was supposed to Ibe made up of rich as the oil nations of Saudi Arabia and Vene­ forty-six nations, four of which were to be major zuela can surely.pay the going price of wheat. And wheat exporters. 'That would have meant: the Germany, where we've been sending most of our United ,states, Canada, Australia, Argentina, and wheat, is also able to pay its own way. the Soviet Union. While it is well to understand that the Truman But 'the two dictator-governed countries, Per6n's Administration left the Washington Republicans Argentina and Stalin's Russia, decided not to join with a tricky politieal dilemma, the final goal should the club. If any selling of wheat was being done, not be in doubt: no pay-offs to ,pressure groups, at Moscowiand Buenos Aires decided, they were going home or abroad.

54:8 THE FREEMAN Nullification by Treaty

The Constitutional amendment propo$ed by Senator By GARET GARRETT Bricker ~sessentiaZ if we are to preserve our national sovereignty and;our rights as Americans.

Now you may see what happens when, after 'a Regard, first, the fact that this treaty-making prodigious rise in theexecu'ti've authority of ;gov­ power has never, been explicitly defined; secondly, ernment, the people put forth their hands to limit that in the interpretation of the Constitution at it. The State Departmen1t echoes with cries of dis­ this point the courts have been equivocal. The Con­ tress, and the reigning bureaucra'cy, sinking all stitution says (Article VI) that: "This Constitu­ minor differen'ces, unites to throw a fighting de­ tion and the laws of the United States which shaH f.ense around it. The people are told ,they know not be made in pursuance thereof and all treaties ... what they do. They would we1aken American leader­ shall he the supreme law of the land ... anything ship 'in the world 'and perhaps destroy mankind's in the Constitution or laws of any state to the con­ hope of peace. trary notwithstanding." Wha't seems now to be the issue? That was all right when it was written. Inter­ It is this: 8h'all the Constitution be amended to nationall treaties at that time were not political; say that international treaties may not impair the they touched only such matters as boundaries, navi­ fundamenta'l rights of American citizens, nor strike gation, fish'ing rights, and maybe migratory birds. down the internal laws of the 'country, without the The Founding Fathers could not imagine 'a treaty consent of Congress? that involved a sa'crifiee of the national sovereignty, With that one end in view 'two main proposals a trea1ty thiat infringed the Constitutional rights are under debate. One is 'called the Bricker 'amend­ of American citizens, nor a treaty that struck down ment, sponsored by Mr. Bricker and sixty-three our internal laws. Nor could they have imagined other senators, and one' is from the American Bar an Owen J. Roberts. Association. Since the United Stlates has been making :treaties with fore'ign nations for 'more Clarification Needed than one hundred and fifty years, 'why should any­ body think it necessary now to 'amend the Con­ So treaties shall be the supreme law of the land. stitution in that manner? Because now for the What are the impli'c1ations of that phrase? During firs,t time in our history there is rising among us the ye1ars the courts have tried again and 'again to a fanatic men'tiality that holds nationai sovere'i1gnty fix the m'eaning of it, and they have never agreed, to be an evil, 'and would use the treaty-m'aking so that it still means anything the Supreme Court poweT to overthrow it for the sake of the world. may say it means in R speci;fic case. In the most One of the eminent voice'S e~pressing this state celebrated case (Missouri vs. Holland) Mr. Justice of 'mind is that of Justice Owen J. Roberts, who Holmes held th'at an act of Congress, to be the su­ formerly sat on the Supreme Court bench and now preme law of the land, must be consistent with the is 'chairman of the Atlantic Union Committee. At Constitution, whereas a treaty is the supreme law a conference in Ottawa last year he s'aid: "We of the land if made only under the authority' of the must decide whether we are to stand on the silly United States, whieh means merely the will of the shihboleth, nationa'l sovereignty." We must, he' Presiden't, two-thirds of the Senate concurring. said, yield our national sovereignty to some "higher Thus the crucial question is presented. To be the author'ity---'call it what y'O'uwiH." This call-it-what­ supreme law of the land, must a treaty be Consti­ you-will would be a super-government of the world, tutional? Some say yes and some say no, and so invested with power to make "such economic ad­ have the courts said, sometimes yes and sometimes j ustments 'as are necessary to put the people of all no. If you are trusting the Supreme' Court at last the member countries on an equai leve1." to say yes, you had better look again at the recent TheTe is no way to m'ake all the members of a steel seizure case. There was a steel strike. On the world government equal hut to level down America. ground that it put national defense in jeopardy, Mr. Ro'berts, and all who think as he thinks, that President Truman seized the steel properties, the superior economic position of this country which he had no Constitutional right to do. The should :be s'Rcrificed to the ideal oia common level, steel people appealed to the Supreme Court and know that wha't they want, or a good deal of it, the Supreme Court decided that the President was could be brought to pass by the treaty-making wrong, but it was a spli't vote. And it was the Chief power of the President. Justice himself who argued th;at under the United

MAY 4, 1953 549 Nations Charter, which is an international treaty, the Supreme Court bench-in the steel seizure case. the Pres'ident had power to do that which unde'r While the State Department was giving wide the Constitution he was fo~bidden to do. His seizure circulation to that piece of propaganda" John Fos­ of the steel properties, therefore, was legal-not ter Dulles, addressing the members of a bar asso­ under the Constitution of the United St'ates but ciation in LouisvHle, Kentucky, April, 1952, 'said: under the Charter of the United Nations. The Chief The tre,aty-making power is an extraordinary Justice, happily, was in the minority, supported power liable to abuse. Treaties are more supreme by only t,wo other members of a court of nine. than ordinary law, for Congressional laws are in­ On this startling record" Frank E. Holman, past valid if they do not conform to the Constitution, president of the American Bar Association, made whereas treaty laws can over-ride the Constitution. the following comment (in a pamphlet entit'led Treaties can take powers away from the Congress and give them to the President. They can take pow­ "Dangers of Treaty Law") : ers away from the states and gi~e them to the Fed­ The Chief Justice succeeded in getting two other eral government or to some international body. They members of the Supreme Court to .join him in this can cut across the rights given to the people by the extraordinary doctrine whereby the UnitedNations Constitutional Bill of Rights. Charter would be superior to the Constitution of the United States. If he could have succeeded in getting two additional members of the Supreme Court to Constitutional Amend.ment Opposed side with him, the United States would in effect then and there have ceased to be an independent Now John Foster Dulles is Secretary of State Republic, and we would have been committed and and responsible for State Department policy. In bound by whatever the United Nations does or di­ that capacity he appears before the Judiciary Com­ rects us to do. We would have had a full-fledged world· government overnight, and this is exactly mittee of the Senate. He does not retract the words what may happen under so-called Treaty Law unless he uttered at Louis'ville, nor does he disavow the a Constitutional amendment is passed proJ;ecting State Department's propaganda piece, which, ac­ American rights and American law and American cording to those words, was false. N'evertheless, he independence against the effeQt of United Nations stands with the emha'ttled hureaucr'acy of the State treaties. Department. He defends the dimness in which it When in the course of change the precise mean­ likes to work. He is against any amendment of the ing of a law comes to be obscured by many inter­ Constitution that would limit the freedom of the pretations and. gets involved in endless legalistic President to make tre'aties and agreements with disputations, the obvious remedy is to clarify it. foreign countries-a'gainst it at 'leas,t for the If the people want the treaty-making power to be presen't. confined by the Constitution, beyond any doubt, On wh1at does he rest this illogical position? let them exercise their sovereign right to say so On the grounds, namely, that President Eisen­ and amend the Constitution accordingly. Why howe'r can be trusted not to abuse the treaty­ should there 'be any difficulty a'bout it? making power, that more than some other Presi­ dents he will share it with the Senate, that he is State Department Contradicts Itself sympathetic to the idea of clarification. The difficulty is, first, that clarific'ation would For marginal illumination read in the New York limit the freedom of the President to make treaties Times, April 8, 1953, an editorial entitled "Path­ and a'greements with foreign countries (agree­ way to Ch'aos." It s'ays: ments some1times without the consent of the Senate The Bvicker resolution to hobble the treaty-making even though they may be as binding as treaties), powers of the United State~ is unnecessary, unwise, and, secondly, that ,a condition of dimness is very and dangerous.... The resolution is dangerous be­ favorable to the extension of the executive au­ cause it forbids any treaty that would allow any foreign power or any international organization thority of government. It becomes, therefore, the (meaning the U.N. or one of its agencies) to control business. of the' State Department not only to de­ the Constitutional rights of Ameri,can citizens within fend di'mness but to enlarge its area. To that end the United States or any other matter essentially it issued, among other pieces, a propaganda paper within the domestic jurisdiction of the United States. entitled: "Questions and Ans'wers on the United Such a fantastic proposition could hamstring our participation in all sorts of international agencies Nations 'Charter, the 'Genocide Convention and the that are of world-wide benefit. Proposed Covenant on Human Rights." Question No. 22: "Are the Constitution and Fantastic to propose to limit the executive power American liherties in jeopardy from the conventions of government only so far as to say that it shall and treaties flowing from United Nations or'gans?" not surrender to any foreign or international power The ansiwer was :"No. ... The treaty-making the Constitutional rights of the Ameriean citizen! power does not extend so far 'as to authorize what The editorial adds: "It is i'mposs'ible to avoid the the Constitution fo~bids." conclusion that wh1at Mr. Bricke'r is really doing is What flatly contradi'cts the State Department on striking a blow for the isolationists against full this point? Well, 'among others, the Ohief Justice American participation in the United N'ations." of the8upreme Court and two of his colIea1gues on National sovereignty, avaunt!

550 THE FREEMAN Was Bohlen a Blunder?

This step-by-step account of the events culminating By JAMES BURNHAM in the confirmation of our ne~v envoy to Moscow raises st,artling qu,etStions that areinthe.mt8elves an answer.

1. Shortly after the election, Secretary of State­ Defends Acheson at Senate Group Hearing." This to-be Dulles asked three retired and respected dip­ precis, though a little too blunt to cover the syntax lomats-Joseph Grew, Norman Armour, and Hugh of a diplomat, was on the whole confirmed by the Gibson-to serve as a committee to sift State De­ text when it was made publi'C three weeks later. part1ment appointments. On January 26" Dulles told The committee put many questions to the nomi­ this committee that he had decided to name CharIe'S nee concerning the Teheran, Yalta, and Potsdam E. Bohlen Ambassador to the Soviet Union. Sub­ conferences, at all three of which Bohlen was offi­ sequently, Messrs. Grew and Armour stated their cially present. He did not attend, he said, as a endorsement of this choice. Mr. Gibson, who was "policy-maker." Bohlen's de'finition of this phrase not Requainted with Mr. Bohlen, felt thereby dis­ is strict. On March 18 he explained to the Commit­ qualified from expressing a positive opinion, but he tee that "nobody is in a policy-making position in was willing to go along with the judgment of his the Department of State except the Secretary of colleagues. State or the Acting Secretary." When, however, the friendly Senator Green tried to help him out of 2. News of the planned appointment soon spread. a difficult spot during the March 2 questioning by On February 23, notice was taken of it during the urging that "he acted simply as interpreter" at House debate over the abortive "Yalta resolution." Yalta, Bohlen was quick with his rejection: "Sena­ Representative' Thaddeus M. Ma'Chrowicz, an anti­ tor, might I s'ay this, that I was also an assist'ant A1cheson Democrat, while criticizing the failure of to the Secretary of State at Yalta, and I had a cer­ the White House text to include a repudiation of tain advisory capacity. .. ." Yalta, mentioned the "slated" appointment, and With respe'ct to the Yalta agreements, the am­ remarked: "It will confuse the people behind the bass;ador-designate found nothing wrong from a Iron Curtain." 1945 perspective. In 1953, by "hindsight" and "in On February 27, the executive's nomination of retrospect," he suggested two possible "valid cri­ Charles E. Bohle'll, "Foreign Service officer of the ticisms" of the Far Eastern agreement: "First, it class of career minister," was suhmitted to the vIas unnecessary; ... secondly, it was done with­ Senate for confirm!ation..Although there was no out the participation of the Chinese Government." indieation at this point that the nomination would These two points are', in Mr. Bohlen's opinion. be openly opposed, two things were already clear: minor, impossible to have noticed at the time, and first, that most Democratic senators, including all without "influence on what has hiappened in China." who had consistently supported the Acheson for­ As for the European agreements made' at Yalta eign policy, were pleased; se-cond, that all Repub­ (and Teheran and Potsdam), Mr. Bohlen had no lican senators (except Senator Morse, who on that critici'sm of any kind, even by hindsight. In spite date still sat on the Republiean side) were unhappy. of Senator Ferguson's almost begging him to put Senator Taft summed up what was apparently tho some qualifying phrase into the record, or at least initi1al attitude of most of the Republicans when ho som'ething neutral a la professional technician, said that he was not enthusiastic about the nomi­ Bohlen declined to say a word against the treat­ nation but that it was a relatively minor question. ment of Poland, for example, in the Yalta agree­ not worth fighting over. It was aS'sumed that tho m,ents, or the provisions for forcible repatriation pill, though bitter, would be quickly and quietly of Soviet citizens. swallowed. "SENATOR FERGUSON. As you s'ay now, hindsight makes YaUa and these other agreements look like 3. On March 2, the Committee on Foreign Rela­ a great mistake. tions, under the chairm'anship of Sen1ator WHey, "MR. BOHLEN. I would not say that, sir, for the met in executive session to question the nominele. ones that were relating to Europe. ... The proceedings failed to bring joy to the he~arts "SENATOR FERGUSON. You claim now ... that of the Committee's Republican majority. The next these agreements were correct governmental agree­ morning's Baltimore Sun headlined its story on ments so far as America was concerned, but that the session: "Boh'len Backs Yalta Pacts and Tru­ the interpretation put on them by Russia is what man Foreign Policy. Choice as S0viet Envoy also has C'aused the ...

MAY 4,1953 551 "MR. BOHLEN. 1 would say, sir" I would go further with Charles Kersten, author of the "Kersten than that; s'aying ... it is not so much interpreta­ A'mendment" to the Mutual Security Act. Along tion as violation...• with Kers,ten, Walter Judd, and a few others, O. K. "SENATOR FERGUSON. Why did We' have to sur­ Armstrong was conspi'cuous in the House as a firm render the rights or these people and be a party to or "hard" anti-Communist" one who w'as consist­ the surrender? ently ready to initiate or support anti-Communist "MR. BOHLEN. I don't consider that the agree­ and anti-Soviet actions. ment at Yalta involved a surrender. It involved Armstrong had be'en, or thought he had been, the opposite." promised an important job in the Department of It was left for Senator Hubert Humphrey to State. Even before the inauguration, in fact, this give the only warm welcome: "I think the Presi­ prospect had been publicized, and Armstrong had dent's choice of you as Ambassador to the Soviet taken part in prtblic _funC'tions as an official-to-be. Union is exce'llent. ... Thank God we have got His expectation was favored by a group of con­ people in the Government who will take the atti­ gressmen 'and senators, most of whom are also tude of forbearance, of honor, particularly in deal­ known to one or another degree for conscious and ing with these great conferences, such as you long-term anti-Communism. These congressmen had have." also 'submitted in the appropriate quarters a list of fifteen or twenty additional names of informed 4. Shortly after the March 2 hearing, a closed anti....Communists who they thought would be useful meeting of the Republic-an PoHcy Committee was recruits for a revivified State Department and held. Senator Styles Bridges declared, as he was related agencies. later to do on the Senate floor, that he alone had Somehow, week after week, the Armstrong ap­ voted against confirmation of Dean Acheson as pointment never came definitely through, and none Secretary of State, and that he would vote, again of the other names got anywhere at all. On March alone if necessary, against confirmation of Ache'­ 13 a luncheon was held to put the cards on the son's disciple, Charles E. Bohlen, as Ambassador table. A dozen or so congressmen and senators (not to Moscow. With this declaration, the quiet swal­ all Republicans), including-Karl Mundt, Joe M·artin, lowing of the pill was over. -Now' each man would W'alter Judd, Charles Kersten, and Dewey Short have to be counted, and an open dispute be'came met with Secretary Dulles and Assistant Secretary inevitable. McCardle. The result was una'mbiguous. The members of 5. With the chance for routine approval thus Congress were informed that Armstrong was not gone, a pro-Bohlen publicity campaign had to be going to get the job (unless he wanted to accept mounted. Leadership was assumed by the press an insignificant post), and that none of those on and commentators that belong to what is often the list and no one like them was going to get jobs caned the. "liberal" or "internationalist" wing of "at this time." "early" Eisenhower supporters: that is to say, those who in general supported the Acheson for­ 7. On lVlarch 18, a new actor in our little drama eign policy, but who, reaching the conclusion that made his public entrance. His opening lines were Acheson and Truman had become discredited, have funneled through the mask of James Reston's col­ hoped that Eisenhower would continue the old pol­ umn in the New York Times: icy unde'r new labels and auspices. The New York "John Foster Dulles," spoke the megaphone, Times, the Washington Post, and columnists like "now has reached the point where he must choose Walter Lippmann and the Alsop brothers were between defying the McCarthy-McCarran-Bridge's vigorous in the Bohlen campaign. Behind them was axis in the Senate or losing -the confidence of the probahly the bulk of the press, at least in the East. men who work for him in the Foreign Se'rvice and Guerrilla action, in which the salvoes of the the State Department..•• vVashington Times-Herald were the most conspicu­ "... If he takes anything except a strong position ous and telling, countered irregularly from the for Mr. Bohlen-even if he quibbles about it--his other side. prestige among the men who must administer his policy here and overseas will suffer. . .. Without 6. On March 13, exactly midway between Boh­ their respect and support, he cannot operate effec­ len's nomination and confirmation, there took place tively." an unreported incident which, a1lthough it has .no In a word: blackmail. The' controlling upper direct relation to the Bohlen affair, is a clue in stratum of the "career Foreign Service," formed tracing the political pattern of which that affair is under the New Denl-FairDea'l dispensation and a part. still adhering to its international principles, the O. K. Armstrong was formerly a Representative' defenders of John Stewart Service and Edmund from MissourLHe did not run for re-election last Clubb and John Carter Vincent and John Davies; November, though he campaigned actively for his as of Alger Hiss in his day-these nonpolitic'al party. Politically, he was associated in Congress technicians threaten, through Reston's voice, to

552 THE FREEMAN sabotage the foreign policy of their government if people who gave a complete clearance, and ex­ their boy doesn't get the blue riibbon. pressed high approval of Mr. Bohlen." To some minds, after the disiUusionments of recent years, 8. Me'anwhile increasing talk was heard about a there is something not funy convincing any more possible "security problem." A security problem, about these lists of distinguished approving people. with its mysterious "file" which no mortal man Well, it is hard for the ordinary citizen to know seems ever actually to see-or perhaps rather to what to make of all this. In any case, the security admit· seeing---.:is always difficult and always un­ issue here was resolved and dismissed. Senators pleas'ant. Yet it is not altogether surprising that Taft and Sparkman were appointed to examine the some senators became during the' course of the file. On the twenty-fifth, they reported back. It Bohlen affair concerned over security. turned out that they. had not been able to carry Senator WHey reported on March 18 to the through their exact mission. Taft observed that he Foreign Relations Committee that t,wo days before "thought we should see' the raw file." They did not he had requested a summary of the State Depart­ do so. They, along with Mr. Herman Phleger, the nlent security file on Bohlen. "My office, however, department's legal adviser, looked over the sum­ was called by the State Department and advised mary. But they declared that they were satisfied, that for all intents and purposes there' was no and the matter was then dropped. security file on Mr. Bohlen because there had never All in all this was no doubt a good thing. In the been an investigation made of him. It seemed to Bohlen affair, the security issue was partly a diver­ me very strange indeed that a man who had sion. With it put aside, the basic meaning of the occupied confidential positions in the department affair-the' political meaning, that is-had to be of the highest magnitude for over two decades faced unadorned. should not even have had an ele'mentary loyalty and security check." It seems strange to the rest of us, 9. The small chance that the White House might too, I think, particularly when we' rec'aH some of withdraw the nomination evaporated on the twenty­ Mr. Bohlen's former colleagues who were also long sixth. "The President," said the New York Times' uninvestigated during those two decades. summary of his remarks, "had listened to Mr. It further developed that no FBI "field investiga­ Bohlen's philosophy and so far as the President tion" had ever been made of Mr. Bohlen until ~ could see the nominee was the best qualified man 'hurry-up call for one came in connection with this for the Moscow post who could be found, and that nomination. was the reason his name was sent to the Senate The usual legal precision of the' Secretary of and that was the refason it was staying there." State's language seemed to break down somewhat on this rough point of se'curity. "I received a day 10. So, on the tiwenty-fifth and the t'wenty-sev­ ago a summary of the report of the' FBI," he told enth, the Senate went to the heart of the matter. the Com:mittee. "There is no derogatory material Senator Taft himself, with his usual parliamen­ wh'atsoever whieh questions the loyalty of Mr. tary tact, said little. It was for Senator Wiley as Bohlen to the United States, or which suggests Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee to that he is nota good security risk." But a little' motivate the decision which was, of course, also further on, indirecNy confirming Senator McCar­ .Taft's and ,vhich was sure to prevail. For both ran's statement to the Senate-so hotly denounced men, as for many others, the "constitutional ques­ in the press-that Scott McLeod, the Department's tjon" was prominent. "The President," Senator new chief security officer, had not "cleared" Boh1en, 'Viley affirmed, "is entitled to have the men of his the testimony reads: choice as his representatives" if there are no "over­ "SENATOR HICKENLOOPER. Has your security office'. riding" reasons to the contrary. Testimony indi­ cleared this file for loyalty and security? cated that the nominee was technically "qualified," "SECRETARY DULLES. No. I told you that he "secure," and loyal. Therefore' the Senate should [McLeod] said that in view of the fact that thjs confirm. Both Taft and Wiley were thinking also, file contained some derogatory infor'mation, he did we may be sure, of the unity and future of their not wish to take the responsibility of clearance." party, and of the nation's as well as the party's Was there or was there not "derogatory mate­ interest that there should not arise a bridgeless rial"? Senator McC'arthy was given the customary gap between the new Congress and the new White treatment for saying there were sixteen pages of House. it. But Senator Morse, ardently pro-Bohlen, re­ 'These considerations are very weighty. Who has ferred first to "two or three," then to Hsix or seven," discove'red a balance delicate enough to test and finally to "fifteen derogatory reports" as being mechanically a complex political decision? in "the :file'." No RepubHcan senator praised, 01'" even defended, As for the favorable material in the file, the only the politic-al substance of the nomination. Senator official word we have about it is also from Secretary I{nowland honestly recorded his doubts. "If I had Dulle's: "The approving evidence has not been sum­ had," he said, "the poweT of appointment, which I marized except by a long list of distinguished did not have, very likely I would have selected

MAY 4, 1953 553 someone else. But that is not the question before Communists and would fight them was shared by the Senate." Senator Hendricksen admitted that he those who surely ought to know, by the Communists 'would be voting Aye "with some reluctance." themselves. Igor Bogolepov, an official of the Soviet Senator Watkin's Aye would be "in nowise approv­ Foreign Office when Henderson-and also Charles ing all of [Bohlen's] views on foreign policy and Bohlen-were in Moscow, has testified that his his arguments made before the Foreign Relations Soviet superiors rated Loy Henderson alone on the Committee." Senator Ferguson's speech was a long American Embassy staff of those days as "hostile." critique of Yalta, but his pained vote was also Aye. Then, as a member of a party which in its elec­ Eleven Republican senators and two Democrats, toral campaign had called for a dynamic policy of a number unprecedented on such an issue so early liberation, Senator Welker asked: "What is the in a new Administration, judged that political thinking of millions upon millions of captive people substance had to be put above protocol and party behind the Iron Curtain today, when they see a regularity. representative of the State Department who sat Senator McCarthy had declared earlieor that how­ in at all those meetings go into one of the most ever the security question was settled, "I would crucial positions in the world? Does it give them still oppose his nomination, because I think we hope? Does it give them faith for the future? I should not promote' those in this Administration think not, Mr. President." who were part and parcel and heart of the Acheson The Democratic senators quite naturally sat disastrous, suicidal foreign-policy group." On the back. It was not their headache. But as in the t'vventy-fifth, Senator Bridges spoke at length. "It Foreign Relations Committee hearing, so in the was my belief," he summed up, "that in November, final Senate debate, it did not seem decorous that 1952, the American people repudiated the Truman­ a vote should be taken without a word of genuine Acheson foreign policy.... By confirming Bohlen, praise for the candidate. As Humphrey had felt it we put the seal of approval on the sellout of Poland. necessary to speak in the Committee, so did Senator ... Like Acheson, he stood by his friend Alger He~bert Lehman on the Senate floor. The last lIiss. ... He is a partisan, an active partis'an of words before the business of the tally were his. the foreign policy of the Truman-Acheson wing of "I shall vote for theconfirm'ation of the nomina­ the Democratic Party...." tion of Charles E. Bohlen," he said without reserva­ On the twenty-seventh, Senator Dirksen spoke tion, "because I think nothing has been shown save against confirmation with good humor and firmness. that he has been a loyal, honest, devoted, and good I-Ierman Welker, Freshman Senator from Idaho, public servant of his country." unashamedly· troubiled that he was compelled to vote With this, the Senate voted 74-13 to confirm. in opposition to the President whom he so much admired and for whom he had campaigned so hard, 11. So from this modest summary of the file, the said quite simply: "I have a duty to perform ... I question almost unavoidably arises: Why did a came to the U. S. Senate weH-nigh solely because Republican President, with a fresh mandate from I had campaigned against the foreign policy of the his people, name Gharles E. Bohlen to such a post prior Administration. I campaigned against Dean at such a time? What is the portent? What purpose Acheson, against the Yalta agreement. ...I could cans for Bohlen and none other? not return to my home state and say that I voted to confirm the nomination of a man who still justi­ fies and defends Yalta." And then, in his direct Idaho way, he burst the argument by which the nomination had been chiefly To My Father defended-that Bohlen is "uniquely qualified" for the Moscow post: "The only person that we could Be not abashed before the glittering train think of who was qualified to play that role," Of angels wa'lking slowly calmly by, Secretary Dulles had on the eighteenth gone so far But pluck the angel's skirt most seeming shy as to say. "I am no authority," Senator Welker And lead her down some friendly glareless lane; admitted, "on career diplomats. I have met only Describe your vineyards whi'tening in the rain, one, a man by the na;me of Loy Henderson, whom Your wheat-blown gold in June when 'winds are high. I ,admire very much. I wonder why he was not No Siweets for you are hid in heavenly sky; chosen from the career service to be sent to Moscow, For you ,thecricket's song must tril'la'gain. because he impressed me, and many others, as. a man who would be feared by Communists and who An angel's heart wi'll waken at your way vvould fight them down to the last ditch." Of smiling. Galling others she will say: Well wondered, Senator! And you might have "Eternal wonder stirs this simple soul; added that Loy Henderson, too, "speaks Russian"~ For him our knowledge is 'an empty scroll; if that is really a necessary quaUfication--and has For him the daily joys of earth suffice; seen· his apprentice years of service in the Soviet Return him to his dearer paradise." tTnion. Your impression that he would be feared by RUTIi PICKERING

554 THE FREEMAN Agony of the Welfare State

It can play for its handouts and its deficits only by seizing .the funds of the wealthy­ By LUDWIG VON· MISES but it has already exhausted them, and must now tax the supposed beneficiaries themselves.

For about a hundred ye'ars the Communists and fact that the state does not own any funds but interventionists of all shades have been indefatig­ those which it collects as taxes from citizens. His able in predicting the impending final collapse of idea is to let the government tax away the greater capitalism. While their prophecies have' not come part of the income and of the capital of the wealthy true, the world today has to face the agony of the citizens and to spend this revenue for the benefit much glorified policies of the Welfare State. of the majority of the people. The riches of the The guiding principles of the Welfare State were nabobs are considered inexhaustible, and so, con­ best laid down by Ferdinand Lassalle, both the sequently, are the funds of the government. There friend and rival of Marx. Lassalle ridiculed the is no need to be stingy in matters of public expen­ liberal doctrines. They assigned to the state, he diture. What may appear as waste in the affairs of remarked sneeringly, only the functions of a night individual citizens, is, when we consider the na­ watchman. In his eyes the state (with a capita'l S) tion's budget, a means of creating jobs and pro­ was God and Santa Claus at the same time. The moting welfare. state had inexhausti,ble funds at its disposal, which could freely be used to make all citizens prospe'rous Let the Rich Pay and happy. The state should nationalize big busi­ ness, underwrite projects for the realization of Under the impact of such doctrines the system which private capital was not available, redistribute of progressive tax rates was carried to extremes. national income, and provide for everyone security But then finally the myth of the inexhaustibleness from the cradle to the grave. of the wealth of the rich had to evaporate. The For Bismarck 'and his professorial henchmen, politicians were perplexed when they discovered deadly foes of "Anglo-Saxon" freedom as they that they had reached the limit. Several years ago, were, this program was the consummation of the Mr. Hugh Gaitskell, head of the British Treasury historical mission of the Hohenzollern dynasty as in the socialist cabinet of Mr. Attlee, had to admit well as of the social gospel of a new Christianity. "that there is not enough money to take away from Sozialpolitik provided a common ground for the England's rich to raise the standard of living any co-operation of churchmen and atheists, of royal­ further." The same is true for all other nations. In ists and republicans, of nationalists and inter­ this country even if all taxable income of those nationalists. They were all united in the fight earning more than $25,000 were confiscated, the against the alleged inhumanities of capitalism, additional income to the government would amount which had ,multiplied population figures and raised to much less than $1,000,000,000, a trifle when the average standard of living to an unprecedented compared with a budget of $78,000,000,000 and a height. threatened deficit of $10,000,000,000. The house of The new German policy was soon enthusiastically cards built by the "new economics" is crashing. praised by British Fabianism, and later adopted by Politics seemed to be a very simple thing in these all European nations and by the United States. last decades. The main task of a politician was to The Welfare school communicated to mankind induce the government to spend more and more. the tidings that the philosophers' stone had finally Subsidies, public works, new offices with hosts of been found. Self-styled "new economics" dismissed employees, ,and many other costly things secured as palpable nonsense what "orthodox" economics popularity and votes. Let them, Le., the rich, pay. had said about the alleged nature-given limitation But now their funds are spent. Henceforth the of useful goods and resources and the consequent funds of the beneficiaries themselves will have to necessity of saving and progressive capital ac­ be tapped if more handouts are to be made to them. cumulation. Th0re is, they shouted, abundance; The statist philosophy considers the entrepreneur poverty is merely the outcome of bad policies fa­ a useless idler who skims the cream from industry voring the selfish interests of the few at the ex­ without performing any corresponding economic pense of the many. service. The nationalization of business merely If the interventionist says the state should do abolishes the unjustified privileges of ,parasitic (and pay for) this or that, he is fully aware of the drones. A salaried public servant does the jobs pre-

MAY 4, 1953 5 5 5 viously assigned to the businessman .much more knows, their operation results every year in a tre­ efficiently and much more cheaply. The expropria­ mendous de,ficit. The financial management accumu­ tion of private ownership is especially urgent in lates operating de,ficits which it is planned to fund the field of public utilities. by the issuance of serial bonds. Only a municipality Guided by these principles, the governments of of the bigness, wealth, and prestige of New York the various European countries long ago national­ could venture on such a policy. With a private cor­ ized the railroads, the telephone and the telegraph, poration financial analysts would apply a rather and many other branches of business. The result ugly word to its procedures. No s,ane investor would was catastrophic: scandalously ,poor service, high buy bonds of a private corporation run on such a rates, yearly incre'asing deficits that have to be basis. covered out of budgetary allowances. Incorrigible socialists are, of course, not at all alarmed. "Why sholJ,ld a subway pay?" they are Derailment of State Railroads asking. "The' schools, the hospitals, the police do not pay; there is no reason why it should be dif­ The financial embarrassment of the main Euro­ ferent with a transit 'System." pean countries is predominantly caused by the This "why" is really remarkable. As if the prob­ bankruptcy of the nationalized public utilitie'S. The lem were to find an answer to a why and not to a deficit of these enterprises is incurable. A further wherefrom. rise in their rates would bring about a drop in There is always this socialist prepossession with total net proceeds. The traffic could not bear it. the idea that the "rich" can be endlessly soaked. Daily experience proves clearly to everybody but The sad f.act, however, is that there is not enough the most bigoted fanatics of socialism that govern­ left to fill the bottomless barrels of the' public mental management is inefficient and wasteful. But treasury. Precisely because the schools, the hos­ it is impossible to sell these enterprises back to pitals, and the police are very expensive-, the city private capital because the threat of a new expro­ cannot bear the SUbway deficit. If it ,wants to levy priation by a later government would deter poten­ a special tax to subsidize the subway, it will have tial buyers. to tax the s,ame people who are supposed to profit In a capitalist country the railroads and the from the preservation of the low fare. telegraph and telephone companies pay considerable The other alternative is to raise the fare from taxes. In the countries of the mixed-economy their the present level of ten cents to fifteen cents. It yearly losses are a heavy drain upon the nation's will certainly be done. And it will certainly prove purse. They are not taxpayers, but taxeaters. insufficient. After a while a rise to twenty cents Under the conditions of today, the nationalized will follow----with the same unfavorable result. public utilities of Europe are not merely feasting There is no remedy against the inefficiency of pub­ on taxes paid by the citizens of their own country; lic management. There is a limit to the height at they are also living at the expense of the American which raised rates increase revenue. Beyond this taxpayer. A considerable part of the foreign-aid point further rises are self-defeating. This is the billions is s'wallowed by the deficits of Europe's dilemma facing every public enterprise. nationalization experiments. If the United States had nationalized the American railroads,and had Subways at a Dead End not only to forego the taxes that the companies paY,but, in addition, to covereve'ry year a deficit of How little the management of the New York several billions, it would not have been in a position City subways is touched by the spirit of business to indemnify the European countries for the fool­ was proved a short time ago when it triumphantly ishness of their own socialization policies. So what announced economies made by cutting down serv­ is postponing the obvious collapse of the Welfare ices. While all private enterprises in the country State in Europe is merely the fact that the United compete with one another in improving and ex­ States has been slow and ",backward" in adopting panding services, the municipality of N'ew York is the principles of the new economics: it has not na­ proud of cutting them down! tionalized railroads, telephone, .and telegraph. When economists clearly demonstrated the rea­ Yet A'mericans who want to study the effects of sons why socialism cannot work, the statists and public ownership of transit systems are not forced interventionists arrogantly proclaimed their con­ to visit Europe. Some of the nation's largest cities tempt for mere theory. "Let the facts speak for -among them Detroit, Baltimore, Boston, San themselves; not books, only experience counts." Francisco-provide' them with ample material. The Now the facts have spoken. most instructive' case, however, is that of the New It is just a historical accident that transporta­ York City subways. tion systems were nationalized while bakerie'S and New York City subways are only a local transit automobile factories remained in the hands of pri­ system. In many technological ,and financial re­ vate capital. If it had ,been the other way round, spects, however, they by far surpass the national the socialists would perorate: "It is obvious that railroad sy,stems of many countries. As everybody bakeries and automobile plants cannot pay like

55(; THE FREEMAN railroads. They are public utilities supplying the now, restating it, testimony about conspiratorial masses with vital necessities. They must show conduct, and you are then 'leaving it to the local in­ deficits, and the taxes paid by the extremely profit­ stitution-which the Senator eve'll described as the able railroads must provide the government with first line of defense--Jboth in its faculty and in its the funds required for making good these deficits." board, to judge, to evaluate that testimony and to It is paradoxical indeed that Washington is eager act on it. You went out of your 'way to say that you to spend the taxpayers' money for the benefit of have no interest in doing anything about the con­ European deficit railroads and does not bother tent or the method of teaching in the local institu­ a'bout the transit deficits of large American cities. tions. You are not interfering with that. You are Marshall aid seems to differ from charity at least concerned with this conspiratorial evidence and in this-that it does not begin at home. putting it on 'the books, and leaving it to the local History has been rather kind to the American authorities to judge. voter. It has provided him with object lessons in I know from my experience with our witnesses socialism. If he looks behind the Iron Curtain, he that you have m!ade it a practiee in every case to can learn useful things about the one-party system sift this evidence in private hearings before it of the classless and profitless "peoples' democ­ comes to the public. You even warned me about the racie'S." If he studies European budgets, he will be naming of people that might not have had that informed about the blessings of nationalization. If bene,fit before this public session started. I know he stays at home, he can extend his views by care­ from my own experience, too, that you have always fully reading what the newspapers report about allowed everyone who wanted it to have a lawyer the financial breakdown of the world's largest and in the private session as weB as in the public one, richest urban agglomeration, the intellectual capi­ if he wanted to have it. tal of Western civilization, the home of the United I think if all of that were clearly understood Nations. There is plenty of experience that can in­ throughout the country, the overwhelming majority duce ,a man to analyze scrupulously what the prog­ of people interested in the 'S'Chools and colleges ressive propaganda has taught him, and to think would say there is absolutely no objection to that twice before again casting his vote for the apostles whatsoever. It is only ibe'cause it is misunderstood. of socialization and advocates of public spending. You have this lunatic fringe on the left, to use the Roosevelt term, and you have another one on the right. 'They are both thoroughly propagandized, and they don't see what is going on in the middle. This is 'Something going down the main line right in the :middle. It is just a matter of putting evi­ II W_O_'R_T_H_H_E_A_R_I_N_G_A_G_'A_I_N__II dence of unprofessional conduct on the books for evaluation by the local authorities. Academic Freedom DR. HARRY D. GIDEONSE, President of Brook­ lyn College, in testimony before the United and the Senate Committee States Senate Subcommittee to Inves,tiga!te I think one of the reasons why there is such a the Administration of the Internal Secur­ flurry in some circles about the operation of this ity Act, March 11, 1953 committee is that there is so little understanding of the nature of the job done. Senator Jenner made The T'wo Basic Freedoms a statement on February 24, a statement on the In the Atlantic Charter freedom of worship and purpose of this committee. I had really to go to freedom of speech were equated with freedom from "York to get the text of that, 'because the news­ want and freedom from fear. These freedoms are papers didn't carry very much of that. It was not in entirely different categories. Freedom of wor­ flamboyant. It did not have anything to do with ship 'and freedom of speech are natural rights witnesses. It was a statement of purpose. springing from the nature of man. Freedom from I have watched your hearings, and I have read want and freedom from fear pertain to the a'Cci­ this statement of purpose. I find them completely dental conditions of our economic order and psycho­ in accord with one another, and I think if there logieal milieu. were some varied reiteration of this statement of pur,pose 'so that it would be understood that your Our frontier fathers never looked for freedom from want and freedom from fear. They endured committee there said ,that you are not interested in want and they overcame fear for the more basic anything that is negative to academic freedom­ that,as a matter of fa:ct, you are interested in pro­ freedoms to use their God-given talents to subdue tecting academic freedom; you are not interested hostile forces and establish peaceful living condi­ in taking away the responsibility for the local po­ tions. THE VERY REVEREND EDWARD B. BUNN, s. J., licing of the institutions throughout the 'country­ President of Georgetown University, Wash­ in fact, you are interested only in putting on the ington, D. C., in an address at Loygla Col­ books here testimony, 'and I am using my language lege, February 17, 1953

MAY 4, 1953 557 Peronism at Bay

T'rapped by the results of his economic policy the By EUDOCIO RAVINES Argentine dic,tator seeks 'a way out bly territorial expansion and by p~aying the game of the KremUn.

Since the dictatorship of General Juan Domingo reception given by the President of Chile, Carlos Peron reached the height of its power, Buenos Ihanez, to the diet'altor of the Argentine. Aires has become the focal point of an involved Owing to the mianner in which i1t has operated, South Am'ertieian intrigue. The Argentine dictator's Peron'ism has been accused of being fascist rather vis'it to Chile in Fetbruary of this year ushered in than Communist. Objectively, it practices the meth­ the a'ctive, undisguised stage of this intrigue. It ods com'mon to both these forms of totaHtari:anism; showed that the virulent dem,agogy, the cunning, it is akin to them in its contempt for freedom and bitter, and exasperating national'ism, the enraged human rights, its lack of seruples, its sh:ameful 'anti-Y'ankee propaganda---whilch have been and are abasement and degradation of parli'ament, and its the blood and breath of the Peronist policy-have inexor'able aggressiveness. stretched out far beyond the frontiers of Argentina. Peronism, like the totalitarian despotisms of Native Origin a Dunger Hitler and StaHn, is nurtured by dreams of hege­ mony; the justicialismo (extreme justice) regime To estimate, however, the full magniltude of the' feels its wings are broader than its nest and as­ menace which has developed in the Argentine, it is pires to extend itse'lf as though it were 'a product necessary to re'memiber that Peronism ori'ginated~ for export, like meat, fait, cereals, or leather. Per'on­ developed, and imposed itself not as open fas'cism ism is proselytizing; its fundamental doctrine is or Gom'munism, but as a sort of simple and indige­ hatred of everything originating in Washington. nous Latin American military dictatorship. An ob­ It i's no longer s'atisfied to stay within its own bor~ scure and resentful military m'an rose up, un­ ders, but is seeking allies abroad, playing up old she'a'thed his s!word, climbed to power, made him­ enmities, fosltering misunderstandings, ill win, and self generral by de'cree. By decree also, he was dis'content, swaying people by arousing feelings of transformed into the man of destiny, the provi­ hate. By SUich methods Peronis'm has revelaled how dential genius chosen by his grateful country to closely it is anied" as a politic'al concept to Soviet rescue it from mortal danger. So, from the shadows Communism. The demagogic propaganda and the of anonymity, Colonel Juan Domingo Peron hidden claws of Peronist expansionism have been emerged, de'claring (at Nazi suggestion) that Ar­ at work in South AmeTica for over six ye'ars. There gentina was in mortal danger from Washington. has been no election,rebe:J1ion, or coup d'etat dur­ If Peronism has been born as overt fascism, as ing that tfme without the intervention of Peronis·m. unmasked Communism, the Western mind would Peron'ism has m'ade complex and e~tensive efforts have called, without a doubt, for organized and de­ to exert pressure on Uruguay, to scheme in Peru termined resistance. The real danger of Pe'ronism and ChHe, to cover Para'gu:ay and Bolivia with lies in its peculiarly lJatin American origin. The blood, and to intrigue in Ri:o de Janeiro and Quito. Peronist dicta!torship has consequently been looked And now, as the most daring of all these attempts, upon me'rely as the somewhat strident manifesta­ we have had the visi,t of the Argentine dict,ator to tion of 'a harsh nationalism, of an exacerb'ated re­ Chne. sistance to anything that might be interpreted as 'The Peronist dictatorship has always been osten­ foreign interference. For this re'ason the corrosive tatiously ,extra'vagantand sp'lendid. Public treasury action of Peronism developed in La'tin A'merica not funds ha've finan~ed Syndica!list congresses, internal only with impunity, but with passive complicity. rteV'olts, ,and cultural contests, as well as coups The history of democra'cy in Latin America is a d'e'ta,t and prop'aganda in neighboring countries. record of di'ctators who have enslaved it; in the Peron ha's invited to the Argentine thousands of shadow of this dark history there is gr!ave danger Syndical'ist he'ad's, South Ameriean politicians, pro­ tha,t Peronis'm will spread s'tea'lthily across the fessors, journiali'sts, ,writers, and arti,sts, paying hemisphere. their transportation and supplying them with com­ And, in spite of its native origin, there is unmis­ fortable aecommod'a:tions in the cities of the Plata. takable evidence that Peronists and Communists All this was a'im'ed at gainiing support for his pol­ are today taking part in a common strategy. icy of expansi'on. Such deterrnined work, expensive' Commun'is'm, as expounded by M'arxand Engels and prolonged, has borne fruit in the spe~tacular and applied in Russia by Lenin, has suffered severe

558 THE FREEMAN practical reverses. The theory of the inevitable the irredeemable captive. In the midst of this stri­ clash between the proletariat and the bourge1oisie dent nationaHs!m Peron's voice is undoubtedly to is bankrupt. Communism has failed to eapture the be distinguished. But the pr,acti'cal device used is proletariat of the West. On the contr'ary, this pro­ the same which Moscow in the past entrusted, with Ietaria;t has shown itself more and more re1ady to meager success, to the anti-imperialistic leagues of untte with the bourgeoisie in halting Communist Latin Americia. Peron's anti-Amerieanism is m'ade aggression. Communism as a doctrine has failed from cloth woven on the looms of Moscow and with both theoretically and practically, if the volume the same thread. and political potential of the Communist parties on The so-called "third position" of Peronism is a this side of the Iron Curtain are considered. frankly negative attitude toward the defense of the West. It is an artifice to divide the American blockade, m1aking of it a we'aker target for Sov'iet Nationalism 'E,xploited aggression. Yet this ",third position," which claims Communism, however, achieved spectacular suc­ to be neutralist, has never voiced the slightest cri­ cess when it foHowed the route mapped out by So­ ticis'm against the Soviet postition; instead it has viet StaUni-sm. Con1trary to those who championed made its primary and daily task the accumulation the el'ass struggle as the driving force, Stalin gave of diatribes l'aden with h1ate and acrimony against first imp'ortan'ce to the nationaHs,t prejudices of the country wh1ich is the leader of We.s'tern defense. the people. For this he developed a vast maneuver, It is thus that Peronism .and Communism are in in four stages. As a first step he constantly played practice converging more and more each day, in up Russian nation'aHsm, the :love of. the mother spite of their recently sta'ted opposition. By their country, the fanatical devotion for Great 'Russia; deeds a true brotherhood has been eemented; and at the s'ame time, he inexorably ~rushed any be­ through this brotherhood they have est'ablished a ginnings of nationalism in the sateUite countries. system of co-operation Which seems to function on l\feanwhHe, Communists worked systematieally to intim1ate terms, though not in the open. It was not weaken and underm'ine all national sentiment in by mere chance that the liberal and democrati~ the lea;ding countries of the West; at the same newspaper La Prensa, the gre'ates't medium of the time, they were doing ,their utmost to incite and press in the Latin wor1ld, w,as persecuted, gagged, saturate with ha'te the nationalism of the economi­ closed, and fin1ally expropri'ated, while, at the same cany underdevelope,d c'ountries, which, because of time,- Communist organs in the Argentine were re­ their wretched poverty, were r~ady to vent their eeiving punctu\ally and generously·from the dicta­ anger against those naltions thatenjoy a high torship all the newspriint they needed. And in the standard of living. Commun1ist newspapers-Ja most suspicious coinci­ Such have been, so far, the tactics used in the dence-statements weTe being repe'ated simHar to mostconspieuous Communist suC'cesses. In China, those made by the Per:onist press; identical epi­ for eXlample, Communism took hold when the fo~­ thets, simHar attaeks, always direeted against the lowers of Mao Tse-tung were able to mobilize the United St1ates and its policy of Western defense. Chinese people agains't their J'apanese invaders. The most resounding successes achieved by Com­ Birds of a Feather munism in France, Yugosl'avia, and Italy were in the wartim'e resistance movements in those c'Oun­ Further evidence is provided by the presence of tries; the Communists exploited the fight against prominent Communists in the Secretariat of the foreign o'C'cupation and the struggle for liberation. Pink House and in the' priva'te offices of the late These are the ta'cti'cs by me1ans of wh'ich Commu­ Eva Peron. These Communists 'were lIed by Vittorio nism now incites and inflames·· the peoples of Indo­ CodovHa-high Argentine Communist leader, guide China, Iran, Egypt, Tunisia, M'alaya, and M'orocco, and strategis,t of the Spanish Civil W1ar, agent of with the object of we'akening the West and under­ the Soviet's secret poHce-and headed by Isaac mining its defenses. Likewise, Soviet Russia is Levinson, Hector P. Agosti, and others. conducting such a campaign in Latin Americ1a. One clan also find evidence of Communist col· Through a str'ange and suspicious coincidence, lahoraition in the style, language, tone, and accent the Peroni'S't Argentine dictatorship has persist­ of the inflamed manife'Stoes and harangues of the ent'1y undeTt'aken an idenfical campaign. Peronists, which are unparalleled in the long and Obviously, some of the h'ate and HI will of the corrupt history of Latin American dem1agogy. The Hitler movement found shelter in Argentina. .brotherhood of Peronism and Communism is not Nazism influenced the growth of the rahid anti­ only established and operating in Argentina; that Yanke,e dema'gogy that was such a useful tool in co-operation is now taking shape as a general the hands of the Perons. South American movement. 'The recent trip of It was pern1aps am1bition and lust for power, the Peron to ChHe constitutes but one of the steps in com,puls'ion to court the masses in order to cement the development of that undertaking. personal di1ctiaitorsh'ip, th1at made Peron the loud­ On February 6 of this yelar, for the first time in speiaker for that dem1agogy of which he is today Soviet anna:ls, a La'tin Am'eriean diplomat pene-

MAY 4, 1953 559 trated the three-and-a-half-yard thick walls of the biles, spare parts, machinery, and household ap­ Kremlin to be greeted personally with military plIances of all kinds can be obt'ained only on the honors by the late Soviet despot. In a conference black market. A Chevrolet, which according to the which lasted forty-five minutes, the Soviet dictator official price list should cost 45,000 pesos, can be and the amhassador of the Peronist dictatorship, obtained only at a cost of 120,000 pesos-approxi­ Leopoldo Bravo, offered the world testimony of po­ m'ately $5,000. The same is true of thousands of litical solidarity. By opening the Kremlin's door to manufactured articles. In the meanti,me the Peron­ Ambass'ador Bravo, Stalin let it be known that he ist Five Year Plan, like the Soviet, continues to was willing to make better and further use of the absorb enormous sums from the national treasury, Argentine dictatorship-not the Argent,ine people· while industrializ'ation, so necessary to the life of --'as a battering-raw which would clear the roads the country and even more so for raising the and open a beach-head in the New World to facili­ standard of living among the Argentines, is not tate the Soviet ass'ault. being accomplished. The Peronist dictatorship is trapped by the impla'cahle results of its economic Tool of the Kremlin? policy, strangled by the accumulation of its" errors. Peron is seeking a way out by arming and by The Soviet gesture is even more signifiC'ant if territorial expansion, wi,th the object of establish­ one remembers that Peron, Peronism, and its des­ ing an Argentine hegemony in a part, at least, of camisados (the shirtless) were once the objects of South A'meric1a. In attempting to accomplish these i'mpassioned attacks by Molotov, at the time when aims, the Argentine dictator has started down the he opposed the admission of Argentina to the path whieh leads to disaster; it will make of him, United N:ations. It is suggestive, ironic, and hnpu­ perhaps to his eventual grief, nothing but a tool dent that those enraged attacks have today been for the sinister work of the Kremlin. transformed into flattery. It is as if the ceremony of August, 1939, when Hitler and Stalin became allies, were being repeated on a somewhat smaller scale. It seems as though a new Mos'cow-Buenos On Borrowed Wings Aires axis is under way and the "third position" is revealing its role as a satellite of the Soviet. In ''''hat almost amounted to an international incident the guise of ineandescent nationalism, authentic recently occurred between this country 'and our Soviet policy is being hypocritically i'mplemented neighbor Canada. Telegrams flew back and forth; through the inter-Ameriean activities of the Ar­ newspapers were up in arms; the Canadian Consul gentine government. General in New York 'was summoned to 'action; and And now Americans have been notified explicitly people on both sides of 'the border declared with that this Moscow-Buenos Aires axis is try'ing to heat that they 'wouldn't stand tby and see their extend itself to Chile. This is a menace of unpre­ country's rights abused. Were the Canadians try­ dictable magnitude. Peron's visit to Chile took ing to grab off a slice of Vermont? Had Americans place ata time when the economic situation in the been secretly infiltrating into 'Ontario? No: the Argentine had revealed the, failure of justicialismo, cause of all the caffuffle was a goose. the misery of its conception, and the ineptitude of For years, flocks of Canada geese have settled its structure. Extensive plans to manufacture 011 Byram Cove in Connecticut before flying north atomic energy .from homemade formulae on the to nest. This year, at the annua'} migration, a game island of He-umul h'ad failed; the dictatorship was warden saw one lone gander unab'le to get off the beginning to feel the slow deterioration brought water. In a touching gesture of friendship, a couple about by the use and abuse of power; a prosperous of his fellows skittered beside him, trying to get and hardworking country was being undermined him airborne. Foiled in their attempts they finally by the prodigal spending, the h!andouts to the honked mournfully away. masses, the corruption and waste. AU of which Then the furor broke. 'The Canadians claimed has crystallized and expressed itself in a cruel and him; after all, he was a' Canada goose. Su'bscrip­ hard phenomenon: inflat'ion. tions poured in, and Trans Canada Airlines offered Inflation, the price which the Argentine is pay­ a special plane. But Connecticut wouldn't ,give him ing for Peronist demagogy, is gnawing away the up; according to their lights he was an American foundations of the national ecnnomy. Some seven gande'r, in spite of his name. years ago, the dollar was worth three-and-'a-half to Weare pleased to report that the matter was four Argentine pesos. Today, after a long and com­ settled without recourse to the United N'ationS. ,In plicated pro'cess of juggling with the exchange, the the end, Connecticut nobly ceded the gander, who dollar -is officially quoted at fifteen pesos. But no was pictured in a ceremony 'at the Bronx Zoo, one can buy a single dollar at that price. Only on nestling in the arms of his consul, Mr. Ray Law­ the black market is it possible to buy dollars, at son, before taking off by plane to join his friends the rate of twenty-three to twenty-four Argentine at Kingsville, Ontario. pesos for each dollar. Likewise, gasoline, automo- JOHN VERNON TABERNER

560 THE FREEMAN Decline of the Rule of Law 2.

Concluding his discussion, the author shows how By F. A. HAYEK disrega.rd of the fundamental purpose of the law producedi dic,tatorships and the socialist sta,te.

As the establishment of the Rule of Law in Eng­ Law met from the very beginning conditions which land was the outcome of the slow growth of public arose in England only much later-----the existence opinion, the result was neither systematic nor con­ of a highly developed central administrative ap­ sistent. The theorizing about it was mainly left to paratus. This had grown up unfettered by the re'­ foreigners who, in explaining English institutions strictions which the Rule of Law places on the dis­ to their compatriots, had to try to make explicit cretionary use of coercion. Since these countries and to give the appearance of order to a set of were notwilling to dispense with i,ts machinery, it seemingly irrational traditions which yet mysteri­ was clear that the main problem was how to sub­ ously secured to the Englishman a degree of liberty ject the administrative power to judicial control. scarcely known on the Continent. It is a matter of comparative detail that in fact These efforts to embody into a definite' program separate 'administrative courts were created to en­ for reform what had been the result of historical force the elaborate system evolved to restrain the growth at the same time could not but show that administrative agencies. The main point is that the English development had remained curiously the relations between these agencies and the citi­ incomplete. That English law should never have zen were systematically subjected to legal rules drawn such obvious conclusions from the general ultimately to be applied by a court of law. The principle as formally to recognize the principle German lawyers indeed, and with justice, regarded nulla poena sine lege, or to give to the citizen an the crealtion of administrative courts as the crown­ effective remedy against wrongs done him by the ing achievement of their efforts toward the state (as distinguished from its individual agents), Rechtsstaat. There could hardly have been a more or that English constitutional development should grotesque and more harmful misjudgment of the not have led to the provision of any built-in safe­ Continental position by an eminent lawyer than A. guards against the infringement of the Rule of V. Dicey's well-known contention that the exist­ Law by ,routine legislation, seemed curious anom­ ence of a distinct administrative law w,as in con­ alies to the Continental lawyers who wished to flict with the Rule of Law. imitate the British model. The demand for the est,a1blishment of the Rule Limits to Coercion of Law in the Continental countries also became to The real flaw of the Continental system, which some extent the conscious aim of a political move­ English observers sensed but did not understand, ment, which had never ibeen the case in England. lay elsewhere. The great misfortune was that the Indeed, for a time in France and for a somewhat completion of the Continental development turned longer period in Germany, this dem,and was the on a point which to the general public inevitably very heart of the liberal program. In France it appeared merely a minor legal technicality. To reached its height during the July monarchy when guide all administrative coercion by rigid rules of Louis Philippe himself proclaimed it as a basic law was a task which could have' been solved only principle of his reign: "Liberty consists only in after long experience. If the existing administra­ the rule of laws." But neither the reign of Na­ tive agencies were to continue their functions, it poleon III nor the Third Republic provided a fa­ was evidently necessary to allow them for a time vorable atmosphere for· the further growth of this certain limited spheres within which they could tradUion. And although France made some impor­ employ their coercive powers according to their tant contributions in adapting the English prin­ discretion. Wilth respect to this fie'ld the admini­ ciple to 'a very different governmental structure, strative courts were therefore given power to de­ it was in Germany that the theoretical develop­ cide, not whether the action taken by an adminis­ ment was carried furthest. In the end it was the trative agency was such as was prescribed by the German conception of the Rechtsstaat which not law, but merely whether it had acted within the only guided the liberal movements on the Conti­ limits of its discretion. This provision proved to nent but became characteristic of the European be the loophole through which, in Germany and governmental systems as they exislted until 1914. France, the modern administrative state could This Continental development is very instructive grow up and progressively undermine the principle because there the efforts to establish the Rule of of the Rechtsstaat.

MAY 4, 1953 Ii 61 It cannot be maintained that this was an inevit­ old form of government began to reassert itself able development. If the Rule of Law had been under the new name of Welfare State. strictly observed, this might well have caused what At the beginning of our century, the establish­ David Hume had called "some inconveniences," and ment of the Rule of Law appeared to most people might even substantially have delayed some desir­ one of the permanent achievements of Western able developments. Although the authorities must civilization. Yet the process by which this tradition undoubtedly be given some discretion for such de­ has been slowly undermined and eventually de­ cisions as to destroy an owner's cattle in order to stroyed had even then been underway for nearly stop the spreading of a contagious disease, to tear a generation. And today it is doubtful whether down houses to prevent the spreading of tire, or to there is anywhere in Europe a man who can still enforce safety regulations for buildings, this need boast that he need mere'ly keep within the law to not bea discretion exempt from judicial review. be wholly independent, in earning his livelihood, The judge may want expe'rt opinion to decide from the discretionary powers of arbitrary au­ whether the pa~ticular measures were necessary or thority. reasonable. There ought to be the further safe­ guard that the owners affected by such dec'ision Soc:ialist Inroads are entitled to full compensation for the sacrifice they are' required to make in the interest of the The attack on the principles of the Rule of Law community. was part of the general movement away from lib­ 'The important point is that the decision is de­ eralism which began about 1870. It came almost rived from a general rule and not from particular entirely from the intellectual leaders of the social­ preferences which the policy of the government ist movement. They directed their criticism against follows at thcs' moment. The·machinery of govern­ practically everyone of the principles which to­ ment, so far as it uses coercion, still serves general gether make up the Rule of Law. But initially it and timeless purposes, not particular ends. It was aimed ma,inly against the ideal of equality be­ ma!kes no distinction between particular people. fore the law. The socialists understood that if the The discretion conferred is a limited discretion in state was to correct the unequal results which in a the sense that the agent is to carry out the sense free society differen,t gifts and different luck would of a general rule. That this rule cannot be made bring to different people, these had to' be treated wholly explicit or precise is the' result of human unequally. As one of the most eminent ,legal theor­ imperfection. That it is in principle, however, still ists of Continental socialism, Anton Menger, ex­ a matter of ,applying a general rule is shown by plained lin his Civil Law and the Propertyless the fact that an independent and impartial judge, Classes (1890): who in no way represents the policy of the govern­ By treating perfectly equally all citizens, without ment of the day" will be able to decide whether the regard to their personal qualities and economic po­ action was or was not in accordance with the law. sitions, and admitting unlimited competition between them, it was brought about that the production of goods was increased without limit, but also the poor No Permanent Achievement and weak had only a small share in that increased output. The new economic and social legislation at­ 'The suspicion with which Dicey and other Eng­ tempts therefore to protect the weak against the lish and American lawyers viewed the Continental strong and to secure for them a moderate share in position was thus not unjustified, even though they the good things of life. We know today that there had misunderstood the causes of the state of af­ is no greater injustice than to treat as equal what is in fact unequal. fairs which existed there. It was not the existence of an administrative law and of administrative A few years later, Anatole France was to give courts which was in conflict with the Rule of Law, wide circulation to the similar ideas of his French but the fact that the principle underlying these in­ socialist .friends in the much quoted gibe about stitutions had not been carried through to its con~ "the majestic equality of the la,ws, which forbids elusion. Even at the time when, in the later part the ~ichas well as the poor to sleep under bridges, of the last century, the ideal of the Rechtsstaat had to beg in the streets, to steal bread." Little did gained its greatest influence, the more deliberate the countless well....meaning persons who have since efforts made on the Continent had not really suc­ repeated this phrase realize that they were giving ceeded in putting it into actual practice as fully as currency to one of the cleverest attacks on the had been the case in England. There' stHI remained fundamental principles of Hberal society. there, as an American observer (A. B. Lowell) The systematic campaign which during the last then described it" much of the kind of power which sixty years has been conducted against all the con­ "most Anglo-Saxons feel ... is in its nature arbi­ stituent parts of the tradition of the Rule of Law trary land ought not to be extended further than is mostly took the form of alleging that the particu­ a'bsolutely necessary." And before the principle of lar principle in question had never really been in the Rechtsstaat was completely re'alized and the force, that it was impossible or impracticable to remnants of the polie,e state finally driven out, that achieve it, that it had no de:finite meaning, and, in

562 THE FREEMAN the end, that it was not even de'Sirable. It may all government action. According to Sir Ivor Jen­ well be true, of course, that none of these ideals nings, the Rule of Law in its original sense, "is a can ever be completely realized. But, if it is gen­ rule of action for Whigs and may be ignored by erally held that the law ought to be certain, that others." In its modern sense, he believes, it "is legislation and jurisdiction ought to be separate either common to an nations or doe'S not exist." In functions, that the exercise of discretion in the Professor W. A. Robson's opinion it is possible to use of coercive powers should be strictly limited "distinguish 'policy' from 'law' only in theory" and and always subject to judicial control, etc., these "it is a misuse of language to say that an issue is ideals will be achieved to a high de'gree. Once they 'nonjusticiable' merely because the adjudicating are represented as illusions and people cease to authority is free to determine the matter by the strive for their realization, their practieal influ­ light of an unfettered discretion; and equally in­ ence is bound to vanish rapidly. And this is pre­ correct to say that an issue is 'justic!iable' when cisely what has happened. there happens to be a clear rule of law available The attacks against those features of the Rule to be applied to it." Professor W. Friedmann in­ of Law were directly determined by the recogni­ forms us that in Britain "the Rule of Law is what­ tion that to obseTve them would prevent an effec­ ever Parliament, as the supreme lawgiver, makes tive control of economic life by the state. The eco­ it" and that therefore, "the incompatibility of nomic planning 'which was to be the socialist means planning with the Rule of Law is 'a myth sustain­ to economic justice would be impossible unle'Ss the able only by prejudice or ignorance." Yet anothe'r state was able to direct people and their possessions member of the same group even ,went so far as to to whatever task the exigencie'S of the moment assert that the Rule of Law would still be in op­ seemed to require. 'This, of course, is the very op­ eration if the' majority voted a dictator, say Hit­ posite of the Rule of Law. ler, into power: "the majortity might be unwise, and it might be wicked, but the Rule of Law would Concept of Justice Abandoned prevail. For in a democracy right is what the ma­ jority m'ake it to be." At the same time, another and perhaps even In one of the most re'cent treatises on English more' fundamental process helped to speed up that jurisprudence it is contended that in the sense in development. Jurisprudence abandoned all concern which the Rule of Law has been represented in the' with those metalegal ,criteria by which the justice present discussion, it "would strictly require the of a given law can alone be deteTmined. For legal reversal of legislative measures which all demo­ positivism the concrete will of the majority on a cratic legislatures have found essential in the last particular issue became the only criterion of jus­ half century." That may well be. But would those tice applicable in a democracy. On this basis it be­ legislatures have reg'arded it as essential to pass came impossible even to argue about-or to per­ those measures in this partlicular form if they had suade anybody of-the justice or injustice of a understood that it meant the destruction of what law. To the lawyer who regards himself as a mere for centuries, at home and abroad, had been re­ technician intent upon implementing the popular garded as the essence of British liberty? Was it will, there can be' no problem beyond what is in really essential for social improvement that law fact the law. To him the question whether a law after law should have given ministers powers for conforms to general principles of justice is simply "prescribing what under this Act has to be pre­ meaningless. The concept of the Rechtsstaat, which scribed"? About one thing there can be no doubt: originally had implied certain requirements about this is essential to the progress of socialism. the character of the laws, thus came to mean no more than that everything the government did must be authorized by a law-even if only in the Agenda sense that the law said that the government could Now is the time to foster that green shoot do as it pleased. Pushing its way through newly broken ground, Years before Hitler came to power German legal To know what s'trength j,s latent in the root scholars had pointed out that this complete empty­ Whi'ch has so long ibeen cramped and winter-bound. ing of the concept of the Rechtsstaat had reached a point where what remained no longer formed an Now is the time to harrow up the heart obstacle to the cre,ation of a totalitarian regime. Chi1'led into stubborn clods thy years of war; Today it is widely recognized in Germany that this After that Ibleak land barren se'ason, start is exactly where that development led. Putting the plow to willing earth once more. But if there is now a healthy reaction under way in German legal thinking, the state of British Now is the time to strip the withered stalk, discussion on this crucial problem seems to be very To prune old 'wood that no more sap runs through, much where it was in pre-Hitle'r Germany. The Protect the rabbit from the' hovering hawk, Rule of Law is generally represented as either Whose lengthening shadow falls upon us, too. meaningless or requiring no more than legality of CANDACE T. STEVENSON

MAY 4,1953 $63 Thorez Comes Home

After over two years in Moscow the ailing "Maurice" By EUGENE TILLINGER has su~denly been returned to Paris by -the new Kremlin 1nasters. Wha,t lies behind this long-,awaited move?

It happened on November 11, 1950-Armistice Day "fifty-three-year-old miner" worked but a few in the United States. A few days earlier the French weeks in a mine when he was twenty-two is of less Communist leader Maurice Thorez had been importance to the comrades than the emphasis on stricken by a cerebral hemorrhage. Dismissing the his being a "professional revolutionary" since the liTen(;l1 speclallsts who had been called in to at­ age of twenty-three'. tend him, the Kremlin ordered Thorez flown to The Thorez myth is best symbolized by the use l\tIoscow to be treated in a "specialized clinic by of his first name. They call him "our Maurice" or Russian doctors." "comrade Maurice" or simply "Maurice." For the The ailing 'rhorez was accompanied in the spe­ party faithful he is much more than the secretary cial Soviet ambulance plane that took off from Orly general; he is their best friend, personal adviser, Airfield that gray November day by. his common­ beloved brother. Slow-witted and nonintellectual, law wife, Jeanette Vermeerscll, and by Auguste the burly man with the rough voice makes them Lecoeur, one of the top French Communists. Thir­ always feel that he is "one of us." teen days later, Lecoeur, back from Moscow, told the comrades: "Maurice will return early next Son of the People year completely recovered, thanks to the indIs­ putable superiority of Soviet [medical] science." The Thorez legend tells of "Maurice" rISIng, For the past two and a half years, practically step by step from the rank and file in 1919 to be­ every other month, the Communists have announced come the party's secretary general in 1933, a post Thorez' "imminent" return. One Red leader after he still holds. His autobiogra1phy, Fils du peuple, another has told the worried party members that first published in 1937, is an interesting case' his­ "our Maurice" will return "soon." As time passed tory in itself. To give just one sample. In the 1949 and Thorez remained in Russia, the French party's edition (page 67) Thorez teHs how in 1925 he lieutenants became' increasingly a'pprehensive. "studied with passion BtaiinYs authoritative book, Needled by the propaganda of such anti-Commu­ Problems of Leninism." (Boris Souvarine, the emi­ nist outfits as Paix et Liberte, the French Reds nent French biographer of StalIn, has pointed out had a hard time quieting the troubled comrades. that this is an anachronism as at that time Stalin's When Thorez left for Moscow, Paix et Liberte book had then not even been translated into plastered the billboards of France with posters French!) On page 50 of the 1949 edition Thorez cleverly appealing to French nationalism, protest­ wrote: "During my first trip to Moscow, I had the ing: "A snub to the doctors of France! Are French rare chance to see and to hear Comrade Stalin. doctors unworthy or unfit to treat a patient?" And His remarks, simple and profound at the same when the Reds announced last year that Thorez time, made a strong impression upon me." Strange would direct the party from Moscow, Paix et Lib­ as it may seem, Thorez did not mention this im­ erte was quick to exploit this "news release" with portant fact in the first edition of his autobiog­ posters: "Scandalous snub to the members of the raphy. The truth is that all these passages glorify­ French OP! ... Here is a new snub, this time ing Stalin were subsequently added. It should sur­ directed at the members of the party's Polit­ prise no one if the next edition of Fils du peuple bureau. The Kremlin seems to be of the opinion omits these eulogies. that none' of the'm is able to execute its orders. The veil of secreey surrounding Thorez' deser­ This scandalous decision must be revoked in the tion from the French Army at the outbre;ak of name of national independence and liberty, which vVorld War Two has never been clarified. In Sep­ have -always figured so prominently in the program tember, 1939, instead of joining his regiment, he of the political party." disappeared, later showing up in Moscow. Con­ No other Red leader outside Soviet Russia has demned to six years' imprisonment by a French had built around him the sort of legend Thorez Military Tribunal, he w'as granted an amnesty in has. True enough, it is a legend created by Agit­ 1944. In the 1949 edition of his autobiography, he Prop-the story of a struggling miner, who be­ ignores this episode. French Intelligence is said to came the' devoted chief of the largest Red party have proof that Thorez, after leaving France se­ on this side of the Iron Curtain. The fact that the cretly, went to S'witzerland. and from there. with

564 THE FREEMAN the permission of Hitler was transported by the "This is regrettable and underlines the lack of NKVD through N1azi Germany. Legally, Thorez' vigilance on the part of the comrades responsible amnesty covers only desertion in France, and he for the lo'wer echelon. It has been insufficiently could stHI be tried by the army for "intelligence stressed that the intense self-criticism to which we with the' enemy in time of war." submit the party is a manifestation of strength ... Despite Thorez' relentless devotion to "the it has prevented us from falling into a regrettable cause" for the past thirty years, there are, never­ opportunism. ... The return of Maurice Thore'z, theless, in the Kremlin files certain dark chapters. his presence among us ... must become the image Tito's recently published memoirs contain interest­ of the unity of the party. Now the task of each re­ ing hints. According to Tito, Thorez, in 1947 be­ sponsible 'member is to proclaim this unity ... fore Tito's excommunication by Stalin, had planned [Thorez'] presence ... marks the renewal of the to come to Yugoslavia to bring about a closer rap­ party. It is up to us to show how worthy we prochement between the French and the Yugoslav are of this proof of attachment he gives us." Reds. Stalin arranged inste'ad for Thorez to visit In my opinion, the return of Thorez at this time Moscow in November, 1947. Again, according to is Httle but a last-'minute face-saving device of the Tito, Thorez was slapped down by the Kremlin on Kremlin. Despite all the hullabaloo about the three occasions during that same period for na­ miraculous achieve'ments of Soviet medical science, tionalist tendencies. Ea'ch time Thorez repented, Thorez' condition has not much improved. The welcomed the criticism, and agreed that he had reason for hurriedly sending him back to France been wrong. In addition, certain rather unorthodox seems to indicate that the Kremlin does not want statements of Thorez were never forgotten, as for him to die in Russia. Maurice Thorez' death on instance: "One thing happened in Russia, another Soviet soil would be extremely embarrassing to will happen in France; we'll have our French revo­ the Reds. After all, it would duplicate the strange lution in our own French fashion." death of another Communist leader, Georgi Dimi­ trov, who also died in Soviet Russia after a cure Return of the H.ero in a Soviet clinic. And coming after the death of Stalin and Kle:ment Gottwald, it might cause too Why then, in April, 1953, did the new Kremlin much eyebrow-lifting eve'll among the most devoted masters see fit at last to return the French party comrades. le1ader back to his native country? And how is it The return of Thorez fits perfectly into the new that Thorez, who only a few weeks ago was ob­ Soviet peace offensive. Certain Red propaganda viously so sick that he could not even attend Stalin's has always portrayed Thorez as an exponent of the funeral, suddenly was well enough to undertake "moderate" wing of the party, opposed by "tough the long and streiluous trip by railway from Mos­ guys" like Andre Marty, recently purged and ex­ cow to Paris? pelled from the ranks. There is no· doubt that the One fact has been little publicized in this country, Kremlin, aIong the new "co-existence line," hopes namely thiat the decision to send Thorez back was to save the unity of the French party. "Maurice" made after S,talin's death. A special meetting was could be the ideal man to bring about a revival of held in the Kremlin subsequent to the funeral, at the ill·';famed Popular Front. which French leaders Jacques Duclos and Laurent Casanova were present. Duclos strongly urged that Popular Front Revival? Thorez be sent back to France in order to "stimu­ late the masses." Despite his shaky position with For some time, certain neutralist and Leftist the Kremlin since his arrest by the French police circles in France have sought to re-establish the last summer, he won out. Immediately after this Popular Front formula, a scheme that would be meeting, the party apparatus set to work in France. precisely what the Kremlin needs at this strategic A secret circular was sent to ceIl and section lead­ moment to torpedo NATO and German rearm'a­ ers, giving instructions about the new line to fol­ mente There are indications that the groundwork low. Le Figaro, the outstanding conservative daily is being laid, courteous'ly and discreetly, for such in Paris, got hold of a copy. a revival of the Popular Front by certain French "Comrade, our brother M'aurice Thorez comes politicians of the neutralist fringe. The subtlety of back," the circular announced. "In a few days, he this approaich was quite overlooked by the Ameri­ will again take his pl1ace as the 'he'ad of the party. can press, which failed to notice the strange ... [the bourgeois preiss] tries to give reasons for eulogy ex-Premier Edouard Herriot, now President the return of our comrade. ... We need not point of the French Senate, paid to the U.S.S.R.'s late out these lies. Nevertheless, we have learned that dictator. In a speech in the Chamber of Deputies, these lies, particul;arly those that specify our al­ Herriot praised Stalin as a "military genius" and, leged diversions regarding the unity of the party, alluding to the French-Soviet "fraternity in arms," have found a sort of echo not only among the' non­ 'went so far as to exclaim: "This memory imposes organized masses of the workers, but also among upon us a duty to address today, when he passes c€'rtain of our milit'ants. away [our] salute and respect to the man who ...

MAY 4, 1953 Ei 65 has contributed to our liberation and reinforced the ties bet'ween both our peoples, [ties] that we're T_H_IS_IS_W_H_A_T_T_H_E_Y_S_A_I_D_"""""",II created by commonly shed blood." III-__ Thorez' return at this time might also be moti­ vated by the' well-known Communist desire to cre­ Look Who Was Talking,! ate martyrs. In a few weeks, the French National Ameri'can effic'iency is that indomitable force which Assembly must f1ace its long-delayed task of revok­ neither knows nor re'cognize's obstacles; Which with ing the parliamentary immunity of some top Red its businesslike perseverance brushes as'ide all ob­ de'Puties. Consequently, they could be arrested and stacles; which continues at a task once started tried for treason. What the government has in until it is finished, even if it is a minor task; and mind is to prove legaHy that the Communist Party without which serious cons'tructive work is incon­ is not a regular French party, but takes orders ceivable. from Moscow. It could be the first step toward JOSEPH STALIN, lecture at Sverdlov Uni­ crushing the whole' party. versity, April 1924, as quoted in Proble1ns of Leninism, Foreign Languages Publish­ ing House, Moscow, 1947 Kremlin's Trump C:ard The Perfect Hostess If the four deputies in question (J'acques Duclos, Etienne Fajon, Fran<.;ois Billoux, and Auguste Le­ The perfect hostess win see to i,t that the works of coeur) are deprived of their immunity, and conse­ male 'and female 'authors be properly separated on quently tried, the party would lose its higher her bookshelves. Thelir proximity, unless they hap­ echelon leadership. The Kremlin, foreseeing such a pen to be married, should not be tolerated. situation, might he trying with the return of Thorez Lady Gough's Etiquette, 1863 to force the government to revoke his immunity, Into the Sunlight too, and to arres't him. The arrest of a man so ill and paralyzed as Thorez would make him a martyr, I believe with deep conviction that the warrior not only among his Communist comrades but even statesman at the head of Russi'a wiH lead the Rus­ more, among the befuddled liberals. A martyrized sian peoples, all the peoples of Russia ... into Thorez would be a heaven-sent opportunity to the sunlight of a broader and happier age for aU, France's Com'munists. His prestige is today the and with him in this task win marlc'h the British Kremlin's great trump c'ard in its effort to save' Commonwealth of Nations and the mighty U. S. A. the unity of the French party and to check the WINSTON CHURCHILL, Speech before the intra-party struggle that has been going on since House of Commons, November 1944 the failure of the anti-Ridgway demonstrations Moth-eaten Refrain of last summer, which culminated in the purge of old-timer Andre Marty. The Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China and a number of other states have repeatedly In this connection it is interesting to note that, submitted proposals for the peaceful settlement of contrary to all the other Red leaders, Marty has the Kore1an dispute, and the only reason the war not yet repented and confessed his "errors." There still continues in Korea is that the United States is some talk in well-informed circles that Marty has prevented the adoption of these peace pro­ might soon come out with a bombshell of his own posals. and found a ne,w "independent" party. But the JACOB A. MALIK, Chief Soviet Delegate to eventuality cannot be e)rcluded that Thorez might the United Nations, June 23, 1951 bring about a reconciliation with Marty. After the sens'ational turn of the doctors' affair in Moscow, Higher Level at. Yalta? such a development is not impossible. Whatever I am inclined to think that at theme'eting with the ultimate result, from the point of view of l\Iarshal Stalin and the Prime Minister I can put French,and therefore Western, public opinion, the things on a somewhat higher level than they have return of Maurice Thorez to Paris is well timed been. with the "new Kremlin line" of temporary "peace" FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT in a letter to Har­ and "co-existence." old Laski, January 16, 1945, reproduced in Harold Laski, by Kingsley Martin Amen Classic "Dishwater" The cheek of every American must tingle with Where winds of doctrine blow, shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dishwatery Avoid the draught: utterances of the man who has to be pointed out The best that man can know to intelligent foreigne'rs as the President of the Is to have laughed. United States. Chicago Tim,es, on the occasion of the WITTER BYNNER Gettysburg Address

566 THE FREEMAN Man as a Promise By MAX EASTMAN

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Richard Wright seems in his momentous new intolerable. But it does not seem to me a sane novel, The Outsider (H'arper & Bros., 405 pp., feeling, or a good starting point for the journey $3.95), to be wrestHng more earnestly with prob­ toward a philosophy of life. "Existence was not lems torturing his own mind in passing from the perpetrated in malice or benevolence, but simply Communist conspiracy to the Existentialist racket is, and the end of our thinking is that here we than with those confronting his hero in a suffi­ are and what can we make of it." This remark, ciently perplexing life. That is all right with me­ with which I concluded a book when I was about l like thesis novels----!but it does detract somewhat Cross Damon's age, kept coming into my mind as from the verisimi'litude of the story. The hero is a I traveled with him through his fear-and-gloom­ rather incredible char1a'cter to begin with, a pro­ ridden career. It would have undercut a lot of his digious highbrow, a man possessing both intellect agonized lucubrations, and might have saved him and intelligence (in itself a h'ard combination, these a few murders, and quite a number of false starts days, to believe in), and yet not possessed of enough and involved blunderings. It would certainly have sense to refrain from murdering people just be­ spoiled this story! cause they get in his way, or because he doesn't like what they stand for. From the standpoint of Also I think it would have immunized Cross the thesis this is correct, for the hero represents Damon, or his creator, against the blandishments individualism as against Communism. He repre­ of the Existentialists, for it contains about all sBnts individualism going to the same extremes of there is that is valid, and valuable, in their philoso­ criminal immora1ism that the Marxist party does phizings. When I called Existentialis'm a racket, -setting up the same claim, that is, to be or to re­ that was too extreme. I meant only that it is a place God. But from the standpoint of effective product of the purely literary mrind, 'a mind in­ storytelling it is not so good. It lowers the intensity ,terested in having ideational experiences and mak­ of the reader's partricipation in what were other­ ing art works or commodities out of them, r'ather wise a breathlessly exciting, and is anyway a m'ag­ than in ascertaining facts and using ideas for nificently contrived and constructed, plot. guidance among them. A solemn toy that Existen­ tiaHsts h1ave unctuous fun with is the question: Mr. Wright knows how to wind a man up in a What is man? It obviously has no answer except combination of matrimonial and extra-ma'trimonial, either in the experience of any one man, which parental and nonparental and trying-not-to-be­ cannot be generalized, or in the generalizations of parental love, la,w, and money predicaments, in anthropological science. But it can yield some won­ comparison to which a barbed-wire entanglement derful intellectual playca'Stles, if you pose it in a is a pleasant invitation to come through and have re'alm called "phHosophical anthropology," suspend­ some fun. He knows how to get him out of it too, ing for the purpose your sense of fact and of the only w1ay-----but I am not going to expose that humor. secret. Suffice it to say that Richard Wright can concoct a story with the best of his colleagues in Cross Damon asks this question and seems to be the murder mystery business, and season it with a spending his short life hunting for the answer. rich, if somewhat confused, comment on many of This is what m1akes him an "outsider"-not his the vital problems of life. being a Negro. Race troubled him very little. His trouble was that "he knew he was alone and that The main problem he wrestles with seems a little his problem was one of the relation of himself to unreal, or at least unnecessary, to me. It must be himself." That I take to be the beginning of the real enough for those whom he describes as feel­ main thread of Existentialist philosophy that runs ing "insulted at being alive, humiliated at the through this book. If the reader is puzzled as to terms of existence." This affliction, else\vhere de­ just how a self can relate to itself, he will find the scribed as a feeling that something has been matter clarified, I am sure, in these more explana­ promised and the promise not kept, gave his hero, tory lines which I quote from Kirkegaarde, the Cross Damon (named by his mother after the father of Existentialism: cross of Christ), "a sense of loss that made life Man is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the intolerable." It led him into a life that was indeed self. But what is the self? The self is a relation

MAY 4, 1953 567 which relates itself to its own self or it is that Oliver Wendell Holmes, then seventy-five years old. (which accounts for it) that the relation relates it­ This meeting, Harold later confided to Holmes, was self to its own self; the self is not the relation but one of the three great events of his life-the others, (consists in the fact) that the relation relates itself to its own self. evidently, being his marriage to Frida Kerry and the birth of their only child, his daughter Di1ana. Nothwithstanding that he is bogged down, for the Following that meeting, Harold wrote a bread­ time being, in this literary swamp, Richard Wright and--butter letter to Justice Holmes, a letter which has wise and profound things to S'ay about many initiated this voluminous corres,pondence between challenging problems in this book. He gives you, the sage in his sevent,ies and the highly articulate along with some tense and terrible excitement, an vest-pocket dialectician in his early twenties. Me­ experience of the nature and behavior of the facto­ ticulously and painstakingly edited by M1ark De tums of the central committee of a Communist Wolfe Howe, with a foreword by Justice Frank­ Party in feeling out the qualifications of a pro­ furter, these letters mount up to something like ,Posed new member-and disposing of him when sixteen hundred closely pa'cked pages, gathered into they find he knows too much-that is unforgettable. two weighty volumes. The correspondence w'as The fifteen-pa'ge speech with which Cross Da,mon brought to a close only by the death at the age' of stans and baffles them when they get him in a ninety-four of Justice Holmes, nineteen years later. corner, and seem on the point of exterminating Inevitable, therefore, that the second volume him, is a masterpiece of learned reflection. As an should be mostly letters from Laski; and indeed ess'ay in the Freeman it would provoke arguments the chief value of this great collection is the docu­ to fill the magazine for a year. And what an in­ mentary evidence i,t presents of the evolution of genious way to compel a lazy-minded nation to read the British left-wing "intellectual." Laski paints an essay! his own portrait in these outpourings, and the oc­ togenarian Justice is mostly on the receiving end. I must add, too-I hope without taking back But the wary reader should be careful to distin­ everything I've said-that the answer Wright fi­ guish between the Laski of the HrQ!mes letters and nally arrives at to that questrion, What is man?, the real Laski, victim of an intense inner conflict ,when Cross murmurs it with a faint last summons and schizophrenia. Even Mr. Howe is compelled to of breath on his deathbed, is as great and memor­ point out that elements of exagg.eration, distortion, able an aphorism as modern literature contains: and falsehood are to be found in Laski's letters. "Man is a promise th!at he must never break." Behind the soft brown owlish eyes, the sallow fa'ce with its trimmed Chaplinesque mustache, the demure manner, the dazzling erudi,tion, and the persuag.ive eloquence, lurked a less lovable and more A Problem in Psychology dangerous Laski. "He would have been very well liked," Mr. Kingsley Martin adm'its in his bio­ Holmes-Laski Letters, edited by Mark De Wolfe graphical memoir recently published in London Howe. 2 Vols., 1650 pp. Cambridge: Harv'ard (to be published here by Viking Press on May 15), University Press. $12.50 "could his statements have heen relied upon." And Harold Laski: A Biographical Memoir, by Kingsley it is amusing to note how the British reviewers of Martin. London: Gollancz. 21s. Mr. Kingsley's book, themselves mostly admirers Harold Laski was a wonder boy. Born in Man­ of H.J.L., avoid namiing him a deliberate and even chester, in 1893, lit,tle Harold at a tender age gave congenital liar. H'arold did not so much lie as "em­ signs of restless and insatiable precocity ~ At four­ broider," "invent," "romance," and "adjust" facts teen 'he busied h'imself writing a biography of to fit his radical and extr'erne theories. An invet­ Abraham Lincoln, embodying all the violent con­ erate name-dropper and a consummate sycophant, trasts of a black-and-white woodcut. This manu­ he liked to tell stories of the great and the cele­ script, Harold later 'Confided, was destroyed by fire. brated, usually with himself in the scene as a vic­ At seventeen he wrote and published an essay on torious parti'Cipant. Mr. M'artin, his intimate dis­ eugenics,which evoked unqualitfied praise from the ciple and friendly biographer, offers this sample: founder of that controversifal science, Sir Francis In the distinguished assembly in the Senior Com­ Galton, then in his late eighties. At eighteen Laski mon Room of the London School of Economics ... married Frida Kerry. Graduated from Oxford, he Harold Laski looked about seventeen, with large was whisked off to MeGill University to tutor and round glasses and the learned mien of Giglamps in the schoolboy stories. He would suddenly break into teach political wisdom to students only slightly the conversation in his penetrating voice. "Gannan," younger than himself. There he was discovered by he would say to the famous economist, "when I was Felix Frankfurter (or did Laski discover Frank­ dining at Haldane's last night Asqui;th got off a furter?); and at twenty-three he was imported to beautiful thing about Curzon which would have teach at the Harvard Law 8chool. pleased you." Early in July, 1916, Frankfurter took Harold to Stories of this type abound in his letters to J us­ Beverly Farms to present his genius to Justice tice Holmes; but there is also evidence that the

568 THE FREEMAN sage of the Supreme Court was not too easily taken ignominious defeat was said to have "broken Har­ in. "You certainly seem to wiggle in wherever you old Laski's heart." Subsequently, he lashed out at want to," Holmes slyly but disconcertingly wrote, nearly everything and everybody-not only Jean­ tempering this "dig" with an added rem'ark: "I'm Paul Sartre and T. S. Eliot, but even his once­ glad to believe tha,t the men in power know a good beloved America. thing when they see it." When he died in 1950, at the age of fifty-six, his In fairness to Holmes, even those readers wary funeral was honored by the presence of Clement of the myth that has been cultivated about his name Attlee and the entire Labor Cabinet, and suhse­ must admit that he s'aw through the potential ex­ quently a memorial meeting was held under the tremism of his industrious correspondent. The old auspices of the entire F'abian hierarchy. The two man of eighty-eight expressed an almost prophetic heavy volumes of the Holmes-Lasld letters are suf­ insight: "I think that the wisest men," he wrote ficient evidence of the importance attached to his Laski, July 10, 1930, "from Confucius and Aris­ name by a certain c1aste of American intellectuals. totle to Lincoln have believed in the via media. ... R. A. PARKER But I have not had a very high opinion of the in­ telleetual powers of such extremists as I have known or known about. All of which is painfully near rudimentary twaddle~but I say it beeause Young Heroes little things once in a while make me wonder if your sympathies are taking a more extreme turn Back Down the Ridge, by W. L. White. 180 pp. as time goes on. I always aim uncertain how far New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co. $3.00 Frankfurter goes. But I noti'Ce that you and he are When W. L. White wrote his book on Russia in a good deal more stirred by Sacco and Vanzetti, 1945, critics got the screaming meemies. How could who were turned into a text by the Reds, than by he be so unpatriotic as to speak against our dear a thousand worse things among the blacks." Earlier ani~s? Since then every book of his has met with he had written of Laski's "socialism": "I read your cool superiority or silence. But what are they' arlticle ... with a touch of regret at the tone that going to do about this one? They can't attack it as you hint from time to time that the existing order unpatriotic; they can't even make a face at it. is wicked. The inevitable is not wicked. If you can Some of them will greet it with the enthusi'asm it improve upon it, all right, but it is not necessary deserves; some of the worst will simply pass by on to damn the stem because you are the flower." the other side and cut it dead. That will 'take gall, With the death of Holmes in 1935, the Laski but of gall our fellow-triavelers have a big stock. letters end. It is significant that Laski confessed When Mr. White began this book he meant it to his revolutionary sympathies to Felix Frankfurter be the story of doctors, nurses, and techniques ra'ther than to Holme'S: "Clearly socialism cannot with the wounded. "But," he s,ays, "another figure be attained constitutionally and the Bolsheviks are began struggling free of the typewriter keys, ris­ right. I stay with the Left of Labor, and if neces­ ing from the s'wamp of blood-soaked bandages. He say I go to the extreme Left." Could it have bee'll is the average American boy, just under twenty, the loss of the gentle restraining influence of Jus­ who was pulled from his m'alted milks and basket­ tice Holmes that brought Harold Laski's inner con­ baH scores ... how he faces pain and death." It is flict out into the' open? told in the words and actions of the boys them­ Mr. Martin's biography miakes it clear that the 8elves, a tight, underpainted picture that would final fifteen years of Laski's life were a series of make the old Spartans take in their sign. crises, of intensified frustration, embitterment, The new techniques are there, too, the swift sal­ and defeat. Y'et this is the little man of whom A. vaging of the boys who in other wars were shel1­ J. P. T'aylor writes: "His was the most important shocked for years, the device to slave helpless men influence in making English Social Democracy and in their cots in case of unexpected attack, the new giving it its present form." drugs, even the new words. N'ot pretty words but As Kingsley Martin's book unintentionaIly and tough, like Mash, which stands for that wonderful even unconsciously makes clear, Harold Laski was institution, a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. driven farther and farther left by his Messianic And what the boys who have been taken prisoner delusions and his inability to dominate the L'abor and eSicaped think of the enemy. The mistreatment Party and its leaders. Attacked in 1944 and 1945 came from the North Koreans, they said. If there by Churchill and the Beaverbrook press, he broke was a Chines'e officer around they were safe. That out into a rash of libel suits against the' London is encouraging and, we hope, true. Daily Express and the Evening Standard, as well And smiles, if not beIly laughs. A sweet, silver­ as several dailies in the provinces. Laski tried to haired old gentleman bl"'ings the boys fruits and vindicate himself of the charge that he preached books, and then asks if there is anything else they "bloody revolution." Three witnesses took the stand want. "Sure," says Jrake, who may never have' a to testify that Daski~ in a political campaign, had girl of his own. "Girls," he whispers in the old incited to violenee and instigated sedition. This gentleman's e:ar.

MAY 4, 1953 569 It is a tribute ,to Bill Whlte',s newspaper training South. Claude McKay was a burning spirit, who and skill that he has crammed so many incidents, strode valiantly into the future; a modern who so much action, and so much emotion into the one sought out (as many do), and wl}o found victory hundred and eighty pages of this book. He doesn't over (as few do), the fiery furnace of our years. consider it his most import'ant work, but it seems Into the furnace let me go alone; to this reviewer a "must." Stay you without in terror of the heat. HELEN WOODWARD I will go naked in-for thus 'tis sweet­ Into the weird depths of the hottest zone. I will not quiver in the frailest bone, You will not note a flicker of defeat; Deep-Damasked Wings My heart shall tremble not its fate to meet, My mouth give utterance to any moan. The Selected Poems of Claude McKay. 112 pp. The yawning oven spits forth fiery spears; Red aspish tongues sihout wordlessly my name. New York: Bookman Associates. $2.75 Desire destroys, consumes my mortal fears, Out of the ashen wastelands of contemporaTy Transforming me into a shape of flame. I will come out, back to your world of tears, verse, this posthumous volume of Glaude McKay A stronger soul within a finer frame. leaps and glows like a sudden b'loom of bougain­ villea. Here -at last is poetry-great poetry. Also he was a bold spokesman for his race, bid­ Around us today droop the Aesthetic Puritans. ding them die-if they must die-"Pressed to the They abhor the wise' words of Robert Frost: "A \vall, dying, but fighting back." Yet his unique and poem begins with a lump in the throat, a lovesick­ greatest words are not of conflict but compassion: ness or a homes,ickness." They choose to be mum­ his people's vi'Ctory, he knew, lay not in rebuttal mies rather tJhan men. They had rather die of by more savage violence, but in the gift of a more anemia than admit .. that their hearts beat. noble love. But Claude McKay was not like that. He believed in expressing richly what he had experienced But the Almighty from the darkness drew deeply. He knew that poetry is like the sun, giving My soul and said: Even thou shalt be a light Awhile to burn on the benighted earth, us a universe sharable and shared; he chose reason Thy dusky face I set amid the white and the inteUigible word. Fortunately for us, for­ For thee to prove thyself of higher worth; tunately for poetry, his African blood was hot and Before the world is swallowed up in night, strong. He brought the passion of the South to To show thy little lamp: go forth, go forth! dimNorthern men, thin and cerebral. He gave us Here are too great riches for the hands of a re­ initiation into reality rich as a cleft pomegranate. viewer to hold and bring. The cities of men, the Of such is the kingdom of poetry! might of Moscow and the blaze of Barcelona, the I have forgot the special, star'tling season chasmed subway winds of Manhattan, the "dusky Of the pimento's flowering and fruiting; half-clad girls of tired feet" who drift like shadows What time of year the ground doves brown the fields through Harlem, even the snows of New Hamp­ And fill the noonday with their curious fluting. shire, spe'ak his unwearying delight in the drama I have forgotten much, but still remember The poinsettia's red, blood-red, in warm December. of time. But I must mention (for they are almost the best A lump of homesickness in his throat sent his of all) Claude McKay's beautiful love poems. He imagination to seek and see the dear, lost island: knew the whole of love, from thorn to rose-love thence he fashioned as poignant lyrics of nostalgia that ,is the knife in the heart, love that is the as the world has known. Yet even his grief affirms crown of the soul. He brings to American poetry, life's glory; even his pain fas1hions a paean for the as no other save Emily Dickinson has, the intensity world. Thus he creates poetry "innumerable of and wholeness of love's being in both flesh and stains and splendid dyes," that says yes to life by spirit; and if her intensity is greater, his color is its explicit philosophy and even more by its sheer richer. and overwhelming beauty. He is what poetry most N'o wonder arid coHectivism and despotic revo­ needs today: a classical romanticist. lution could not long deceive and snare such a poet! Of these J ama'icanpoems, perhaps the greatest Poetry like his is life's great antidote to the death is "My Mother." Here is a simple-subtle elegy of a called Communism, for it is life itself-rich, free, boy made a man by grief-so strong and whole passionate, wide, joyous. that life and death become the twin sides of the' Claude McKay is not, in quantity of work or de­ arch, held in place by the keystone of truth. It veloped philosophic width, a major poet. But in moved me deeply years ago when, a boy royse'lf, I sheer intense quality-in his clear noble spirit and first read it; it moves me as deeply today. It en­ passionate sensuous heart, in his material deeply dures unrusted by the years, beautiful beyond the fused and his technique finely infusing-he is m'a­ corrosion of time-a masterpiece. jor as Catullus and Villon are' major. He is one of But there is much more here than even these' the true lyric poets of the world, inca'rnatJing a rich excursions into the lost land of youth and the grea,t word in living flesh. Long after the politics

570 THE FREEMAN of today are shadows flickering over the screen of comes President, Romulo becomes his Secretary. history, Claude McKay's poetry will sing and But when Osmena takes over at Quezon's death, shine, forever timely because forever timeless-an Romulo is on good enough terms with the new American classic. E. MERRILL ROOT chief to be made Resident Commissioner in vVasl;J­ ington. And all through this period "Rommy" is a protege and adn1irer of Douglas MacArthur. It is MacArthur who-right after the Japanese Romulo-Voice of Asia? attack on Pearl Harbor and Mindanao-makes Romulo a major and puts him in charge of the Romulo: Voice of Freedom, by Cornelia Spencer. "Voice of Freedom," the United States radio sta­ 256 pp. New York: John Day Company. $3.00 tion broadcasting from the laterals of Corregidor. When American troops landed at Leyte, press dis­ During this assignment, which lasts through the patches reported that General MacArthur waded dismal and heartbreaking days of American defeat ashore in knee-deep water. "His aide-de-camp, in the Far East, Romulo's stature finally does seem Brigadier-General Carlos P. Romulo," they added, to emerge from beneath Miss Spencer's mediocre "was right by MacArthur's side." prose. Up to that point, he was in danger of drown­ Walter Winchell queried one of the correspond­ ing, not in the waters of Leyte, but among the ents: "How come Romulo didn't drown?" platitudinous compliments of his biographer. Now, Romulo's physical stature-he stands five feet on Corregidor, Romulo emerges a hero---and a sen­ four in his elevator shoes-has long been a butt for sitive hero-as he gets out his newspaper, fights good-natured banter. Romulo: Voice of Freedom, with Tokyo Rose over the airwaves, and tries to by Cornelia Spencer, is apparently an attempt to bring hope to the hopeless defenders of Bataan. establish his spiritual stature. By happy coinci­ dence, the publication of this book came at a time The entire episode, however, including Romulo's when Romulo, a former president of the UN escape in a homemade airplane named "The Old Assembly, and now Philippine delegate to the UN Duck," is told more interestingly, and far more and Amrbassador to Washington, was being boosted brilliantly, by Romulo himself in his :book, I Saw for the post of Secretary-'Generai of the United the Fall of the Philippines. Subsequent events, such Nations. as Romulo's le'cture tours through the United States The cover blurb calls General Romulo "Asia's and his triumphant return to Leyte with MacAr­ most articulate spokesman." The hook is described thur, are also told by this very articulate soldier as a dramatic recounting of "events that joined in My Brother Americans and I See the Philippines East and West irrevocably." East and West are, to Rise. our chagrin, not yet joined---:irrevocably or other­ Romulo's United Nations career, described in­ wise. And, after reading Romulo: Voice of Free­ directly in his novel The United, began at the San dom, one wonders whether that affable gentleman Francisco Conference, where he voiced the hope'S should really be described as Asia's spokesman in for peaee that were then filling the air. He attended the effort to join them. most sessions of the United Nations and, ill: 1949, Miss Spencer picks up Romulo's story when, as a when the Assembly decided it ne'eded an Asian schoolboy in Manila, he wins a gold medal for a President, he was elected with only the five dis­ speech entitled: "My Faith in America." As a re­ senting vote'S of the Soviet bloc. ward his wealthy father sends him to Columbia But neither during his tenure as UN Assembly University, whence he returns to become Professor President nor during his other assignments does of English at the University of the Philippines. In Miss Spencer quote General Romulo as making any between, he works as a cub reporter for the Manila world-shaking statements, either on behalf of Asia Times, for a salary of "four streetcar tickets a or of the irrevocable union of East and West. day" and for the excitement. Success grips the Toward the end of the book, to be sure, whole energetic little man, and he becomes in quick suc­ chapters are devoted to quoting General Romulo's cession assistant editor, editor, and then politician. poetry and prose. Long excerpts are reproduced As Miss Spencer puts it so graphically: "The desk from the General's speeches in the UN at a lunch­ he occupied seemed to float from one office to an­ eon given by International Business Machines, other, each more imposing than the one before...." during the intermission of the Philharmonic broad­ This peculiar fate, to be always holding on to a cast from New York. But these speeches, wliile desk that floats from bigger to better places-or, filled with the fluent phrases of polite diplomacy, in simpler terms, to be on the right side of the lack any salient idea that might contribute to world right people at the right time----seems to abide with wisdom or world statesmanship. Reading them only Romulo throughout the book. During the Quezon­ makes one more painfully aware that the United Osmena dispute, Romulo sides with Quezon, striv­ Nations, so far, has not produced a single states­ ing for a tougher attitude toward American legis­ man of historic stature. lators who were drafting the basis of Philippine As to General Romulo, if he does not emerge independence. Shortly thereafter, when Quezon be- from this book as a valid spokesman for Asia and

MAY 4,1953 571 a joiner of East and West, he does leave one with was to talk to the German people and study, with­ the impression of a gentleman of great charm who out prejudice or preconceived theories, the evidence unites the affability of the East with the energy available concerning their real,~thoughts, senti­ of the West. SERGE FLIEGERS ments, and attitudes. He approached them not as a nation ap'art, but as human beings responding in much the same way othe'f peoples do to pressures, temptations, and experience. His conclusion is thus Timely Reappraisal very convincing that the majority of the German people have an along been neither villains nor The Return of Germany, by Norbert Muhlen. 320 heroes hut simply "passive non-Nazis." pp. Chic:ago: Henry Regnery Co. $4.50 Most Germ'ans, he continues, "learned about the In the opening chapter of this. valuable book the death c'amps only after the war when ... nine mil­ author points out that "keeping alive the specter" lion Germans arrived as fugitives from the East of a resurrected N'azi Germany is "an essential where two million Germans had been killed after objective in the Soviet plan to subdue America and the war, when atrocity stories we're a dime a rule the world." Undoubtedly the many books writ­ dozen." Thus the "particular case of the murdered ten from the Morgenthauist, or Nazism-in-reverse, Jews merged in their minds with the destruction point of view h'ave aided the Kremlin in its grand of millions of other lives in the war and postwar design. By representing the German nation or period." Moreover, as he also points out, young "race" as "Nazis by their very nature," the authors Germans asked why their country alone was "sin­ of such books, Whether they know it or not, have g1ed out to be punished for the atrocities of her not only diverted our attention from the clear and dictators, When the democracies did not even pro­ present danger of Communist aggression. They test against the simHar mass atrocities committed have also come near to persuading us to continue by Russiians, Poles, Czechs, Hungari'ans, Yugoslavs, tre,ating the whole Germ1an people as aetual or po­ etc." tential criminals, instead of enlisting them on our A boy of eighteen, who had joined the Hitler side in the struggle for the world. Youth when he was ten, told Muhlen that he could Norbert Muhlen, being himself of German-Jewish have no fa-ith in anyone or anything now that origin, as well as a liberal in the origina'l sense of everything he had been taught to believe w'as de­ the word, cannot easily be smeared as a fascist or clared to be wrong. If the Western powers had anti-Semite as others have who attempted a pic­ practiced what they preached, the ardor of German ture of postwar Germany uncolored by hate. His youth, abused by Hitler, could have become a book is therefore likely to receive the silent treat­ source of strength for the' free world. Instead we ment from the anti-·anH..;Communists who are now discredi'ted the ideals and values we profess to be­ the most favored reviewers on the publications lieve in by equating the term "democratic" with which make or break books. willingness to coHaborate' wi,th Communists. We So it is to be hoped that readers of the Freeman not only appointed Communis·ts as editors of news­ will not only buy The Return of Germany but will papers. We even refused licenses to publishers if talk about it to their friends, thus helping to sur­ they could not prove that they were friendly to mount the barriers set up by surviving wartime Communism. And when we finally changed our pol­ prejudice. Just how high those barriers are in the' icy in 1948, we made it all too clear that our grow­ case of Germany today, as in the case of China ing hostility to Communism was not based on prin­ yesterday, is illustrated by the many examples of ciple, but was merely our response to Moscow's biased reporting give'll in this book. Every faint threat to our own se'curity. sign, or unsubstantiated report, of "neo-Nazism" For'tunately, our attitude toward the Germans is headlined in most ne,wspapers, while the much has improved sufficient1ly to suggest tha,t we m,ay more abundant evidence of anti-N'azi, democr,atic, yet rehabHiitalte the democratic concept in German and pro-Western sentiment is played down ,or not eye'S. Moreover, thanks to their intimate knowledge reported at all. To give only one of the many in­ of Communist re1alities, .the grea,t majority of Ger­ stances cited by Mr. Muhlen: In last N:ovember's mans unquestionably prefer our side. A large and local government eleetions in West Germany, one most interesting part of The Return of Germany out of a total of a hundred thousand representa­ is devoted to a description of conditions in the tives chosen was a former Nazi storm trooper. East zone, and to an account of the Germ1an re­ Yet "this single N'azi s'eemed-to judge from the sistance to Communist terror. headlines and spiace devoted to his victory in the N'orrbert Muhlen ends his book on a note of hope. American press-to be the actual winner of the Germany is, he thinks, still ready to take the road' elect,jons, while' the tens of thousands of anti-Nazis Americia could open to her. But, "wha't is not pos­ elected to office on the same day were more or less sible (aUhough our diplomats seem to think it is) ignored." is to bind a free Germany to the West without Seeking to discover the real Germany of today binding the West and ourselves to a free Germ'any." under "the dust of old oliches," Muhlen's method FREDA UTLEY

572 THE FREEMAN To detail somewhat further the "perfect COln­ II TELEVISION mercial" of this TV feature, it's also fair to say '---~~ II at once that a good deal of luck is involved. The sponsor is Alcoa (the Aluminum Company of Some Months of Sundays America) and there isn't any question that alumi­ nurn is not toothpaste. Or cereal. I'm uncertain Although it's difficult to believe that anything in whether this is the first of the documentary COil1­ television is done on purpose, it's probably no ac­ mercials, but it's still the best:, short, always varied, cident that three of the industry's most serious and the fascinating shine of the metal as it gets efforts are channeled on the one safely free day in pressed, rolled, fired, and sprayed through the dif­ the week. (A long time ago this used to be called ferent manufacturing processes is extremely good the day of rest, remember?) Since the early faIl, camera stuff. it has ,been possible to diial in to the U. S. Navy's There are no commercial problems, of course, history of World War Two, "Victory at Sea," on vvith "Victory at Sea," the Navy's filmed history NBC; switch from there, by long and fancy slow­ of WorId War Two. Henry Salomon and his staff coach, to the Ford Foundation's "Omnibus" on have had access not only to our own official camera CBS; and a little later on the same network to files but also to those of our late allies and to cap­ arrive at Edward R. Murrow's news feature "See tured enemy ones. They have worked 'all this ma­ It Now." All this on ea'ch, or any, Sunday after­ terial into weekly chapters of the great ocean cam­ noon. paigns in such a way that the program has been It may appear slipshod to group three such di­ winning prizes and polls right round the town. vergent programs under the single term "serious," There is an original score by Richard Rodgers, and although I do not think so. Certainly it's easy a narrator. While the Rodgers music seems to me enough to designate the Navy's work as seriously superlative, the accompanying spoken script does good, the Ford Foundation's as seriously silly, and not. There is small point, surely, in viewing the lVlr. Murrow's as seriously useful. But in the enor­ facts of modern warfare to the accO'mpaniment of ITlOUS and dangerous welter which is present-day sumptuous dHations from the Book of Joshua, or television, there is one primary critical considera­ to rolling, rhapsodic, Whitn1anesque periods. Often tion: to try to assess that work whieh by experi­ in watching "Victory at Sea"-and I have not ment, discovery, or plain brain is developing this missed a single chapter-it has seen1ed to me that latest machine art into competent TV reporting, it is only when we (the spectators) are "at sea" TV dramatic presentation, TV small entertainment. that we get the plain, strategic, intelligent an­ These three Sunday programs are all, I think, in­ nouncement; and, conversely, it is when we are trinsically television shows. "on land" or "in the air" that "V2 get the fancy, Here is what you get when you dial in to "See obscuring riprap. But there is no obscuring the It Now" on CBIS on Sundays at 6 :30 P.M. The exceHence of this sustained documentary. s'cene is a TV ne1wsroom, small, and with no trap­ Finally we arrive at the Ford Foundation's "Om­ pings. An announcer's voice identifies the program, nibus," and I wish it were going to be a joyride. and then Edward R. Murrow swivels into view Frankly, after some eighteen weeks of watching and des'cribes his selection of the week's events. this largest, longest, richest, most promoted, most Immediately, on a small monitor screen, a filmed elaborate, most pretentious TV effort, I find it record of the events begins; this then enlarges to almost impossible to sift any serious reason for the size of your own screen, and you are involved its existence. Evidently the Ford people wanted to in the action. There is no narration, no musie, no establish an "Omnibus" of the air, a "Something­ setting; no placards, maps, or cartoons; and best for-Everyone" vehicle to contain an hour-and-a-haTf of all (and I me'an this), no Murrow. The editor of filmed (and live) art, ideas, and data. On the returns in the middle of the program to introduce technical end, all was to be experiment-no nag­ the commercial, and again to describe the second ging time commitments for commercial spots; no half. The total time is half an hour. blaring, compulsive announcing voices. On the Now this is an approach to journalism, or week­ esthetic end, lists of names were published of those lyism, which could only be accomplished on tele­ who would take part in the programs (notably vision; no other means would do. The one danger Alistair Cook's as some species of enlightened MC). inherent in the scheme is that naIve or intermit­ And on the "real" end, sponsors were to be invited, tent viewers might think they had tuned in to although never urged. Well, las everyone now knows, straight reporting (page Orson Wells and his Mar­ all this took place; five sponsors have bought it; tians of some fifteen ye'ars ago). But the very and public and critical reaction has mainly been a shortness of the program ought to take care of smog of indifference. I think perhaps the Founda­ this eontingency, and in every program I have tion's 'TV workshop ought to take a couple of Sun­ seen, Mr. Murrow has been scrupulous about in­ days off-seriously off-to consider how they might dicating which features he and his staff have ar­ be useful to themselves, as well as to the rest of us, ranged and which have beenmere'ly photographed. in the future. KAPPO PHELAN

MAY 4~ 1953 573 The Company did well im the election year. Net income before taxes showed an increaseover the preceding year. Net sales were the highest in Safeway's history. Uninterrupted dividends on all outstanding stock have been paid since the Company's incorporation in 1926. NET SALES HIGHEST IN HISTORY Again in 1952, total aggregate net sales of Safeway Stores, Incorporated and its sub­ sidiaries set a new record, totaling $1,639,095,212, an increase of $184,452,216, or 12.68% over net sales in 1951. EARNINGS AND DIVIDENDS After deducting preferred stock· dividends of $1,641,948, earnings amounted to $2.01 per share of common stock. This compares with earnings in the previous year of $2.26 per share of common stock. Dividend requirements on the 4% cumulative preferred stock and the 4Y2% cumulative convertible preferred were earned 3.51 times. Cash dividends were paid on the common stock at the rate of $2.40 per share. NET PROFITS INCREASED (Before Taxes) The net profit before income taxes for 1952 was $17,094,348 as compClred with $1 3,318,809 in 1951. After allowing for a refund of excess profits taxes in the amount of $1,157,000 in 1951 and payment of increased income taxes in 1952, the net profit after taxes on income for 1952 was $7,331,943 as compared with $7,615,851 in 1951. ASSETS AND LIABILITIES Total net assets of Sofeway and all subsidiaries on December 31, 1952 totaled $132,273,480. Total current assets of the same date were $232,344,580, and total current liabilities were $142,948,472. The ratio of current assets to current liabilities on a fully consolidated basis was 1.63 to 1 as against 1.39 to 1 in 1951.

15 YEAR COMPARATIVE RECORD OF SAFEWAY STORES, INCORPORATED AND ALL SUBSIDIARIES CONSOLIDATED Net Assets Book Value Dividends Paid Net Earnings Capital Per Share 'of Per Share of Per Share of Per Share of Year (I'nd Surplus Preferred Common Common Common Stock Stock* Stock* Stock* 1938 •• ~ ••••••••• $ 48,407,475 $314 $13.84 $ .67 $1.34 1939 •••••••••••.• 51,075,334 308 14.26 1.50** 2.20 1940•••••••••••• 53,286,166 287 14.38 1.17 1.59 1941 •••••••••••• 60,007,566 270 14.87 1.17 1.64 1942 •••••••••••• '60,1 54,048 280 15.23 1.00 1.35 1943 •••••••••••• 61,453,200 288 15.78 1.00 1.56 1944•• ,. ••••••••• 62,564,498 299 16.40 1.00 t.63 1945 •••••••••••• 63,604,685 311 16.97 1.00 1.59 1946 .••••••••••• 71,901,081 359 20.18 1.00 4.29 1947•••••••••••• 76,039,946 388 21.96 1.00 2.75 1948 ..•••••••••• 81,972,829 428 24.44 1.00 3.50 1949 •••••••••••• 91,236,990 488 28.22 1.25 5.04 1950••••••.••••• 115,215,274 371 29.76 2.40 5.20 1951 •••••••••••• 113,821,747 377 29.58 2..40 2.26 1952 •••••••...•• 132,273,480 266 29.03 2.40 2.01 *Number of shares adjusted to reflect April 72, 1945 3.for·1 split. **Paid in part in five percent preferred stock.

SAFEWAY STORES, INCORPORATED _------, \l~COR~ORAT£D \ r------cs \ AFEWAY STORl; , l\5RAR\AN, 5 \ d A Ca\iforn\Q' P. O. Box 660, Ook an I ANNUAl. REPORT OP'{ Of '(OUR \952 Pl.EASE SENO C •••••••••••••••

NMA£ •••••••••••••••••••••••••• ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• ...... SlRcti ••••••••••••• •• S1 AiE •••.••••••• ZONE •• •• C\1'( ••••• •••••••••••••••••••••••••• • REMEMBER the "Model T" days of the automobile? You adj usted the spark and gas, worked your feet over three pedals and you chugged away. Conlpare that to the smooth autolnatic power plant you drove this morning. Precision parts madethe ilnprovement possible and Thompson is proud to have been a part of that constructive revolu­ tion. For example, from cumbersome foot pedal clutch to today's automatic transmission was a big improvement and one of the things that helped was a better light Inetal casting developed and made by ThOlnpson.

Whathrppene{l to thePjjJ)AlSon thflfloor boardr?

Other Thompson products are replacing heavier, more costly parts in many types of industries - in electric Inotors, house­ hold appliances and airplanes. It has been a big JUInp from the "chug­ away" of the early cars to the "step-and­ go" of today's automatic drive autOlnobilt;s. You can count on Thompson to continue to nlake equally important improvements in other fields. Thompson Products, Inc.~ Cleveland 17.

Torque f~on"er'er-A product of Thompson's Light NI etals Division, is a com­ bination die and permanent mold casting. Its better surface finish improves operat­ ing efficiency and the exclusive manufac. turing process substantially cuts costs. ,i • They sleep soundly and unafraid. The adult world to vVe at Harvester, both employes and management, pledge them is a source of strength, offering protection. our best efforts in the same direction for the years to come But their adult world of thinking, working Americans in order to contribute still more to the welfare of all of us realizes today that a secure future for these youngsters is ... to the end that these youngsters may have the secure in jeopardy. There are forces working to destroy our free­ future we so deeply wish for them. doms, undermine our security, and change our way of life. Standing as a bulwark for the future security of these youngsters is our free enterprise system. Farmer, business­ INTERNATIONAL man, factory employe, professional man work together for Chicago 1, the greater strength of our country. HARVESTER Illinois International Harvester, tracing its origins back over a farm Equipment for easier, more profitable farming • truclcs for better hundred years, pledges its continued support to the system transport • industrial power for road-building and earth­ that has made our nation and our people prosper. moving • refrigeration for better preservation of food