No More Learning

Television cameras relayed
. images of the explosion to TV stations from coast to coast.
Typical of the publicity build-up was the message sent
out in advance by Hugh Baillie, president of the United
Press: "A demonstration of the atom bomb as a humane
weapon was scheduled today at Yucca Flat. Atom bomb-
ing as a mercy stroke is based on the theory that it will
kill troops quickly and in large numbers, and enable the
capture of positions with a minimum of loss and a maxi-
mum speed and thus shorten wars. "34 Dictionaries, at
least those published in America, should at once under-
take to revise their definitions of "humane" and "mercy"!
In discussions of atomic energy it is essential to re-
member that it was not the Soviet Government, but the
American Government which manufactured the first
atom bombs and assumed the terrible moral responsibil-
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
ity of dropping them on two densely populated Japanese
industrial centers, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the
purpose of causing economic havoc and undermining
enemy morale by mass killings. In the two gigantic ex-
plosions approximately 120,000 persons lost their lives;
about 110,000 more were injured. Throwing light on the
wisdom and morality of the American move is an official
government report, the United States Strategic Bombing
Survey, issued in 1946, which came to the conclusion
that Japan had been so weakened by the spring of 1945
that it was highly probable she would have surrendered
during the summer or autumn, even without the added
disaster of the A-bombs and the Soviet offensive in Man-
churia. The Survey revealed that as early as May the
Japanese were tendering peace feelers through the
U. S. S. R. In 1950 Rear Admiral Ellis M. Zacharias, war-
time Deputy Director of U. S. Naval Intelligence, pub-
lished an article in Look entitled, "We Did Not Have
to Drop the A-Bomb," in which he asserted that Japan
had been ready to surrender anyway in August of 1945.
It is possible, however, that an unexpressed motive
may have entered into the calculations of U. S. military
leaders and of President Truman, who personally gave
the order for the dropping of the atomic bomb: That was
the potential advantage from an American viewpoint of
winning the war against Japan before the Soviet Union
could enter the conflict and take a substantial share of
the credit for victory. Since Stalin had agreed at Yalta
that the Soviets would attack the Japanese army on the
Asiatic mainland three months after V-E Day, it was
well known in highest governmental circles in England
and the United States that the expected date of the Soviet
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? CO-EXISTEHCE OR CO-DESTRUCTIOW
war declaration would be August 8, 1945. * And there
is weighty opinion to the effect that U. S. Army officials
moved heaven and earth in their eminently successful
effort to have the first atomic missiles ready before that
particular day.
Mr. Thomas K. Finletter, now U. S. Secretary of the
Air Force, in a joint article with Mr. Norman Cousins,
Editor of the Saturday Review of Literature, stated in
June, 1946: "Assuming that the use of the bomb was
justified, why did we not demonstrate its power in a test
under the auspices of the U. N. on the basis of which an
ultimatum would be issued to Japan -- transferring the
burden of responsibility to the Japanese themselves? t . . .
Whatever the answer, one thing seems likely: There
was not enough time between July 16, when we knew at
New Mexico that the bomb would work, and August 8,
the Russian deadline date, for us to have set up the very
complicated machinery of a test atomic bombing. . . .
"No; any test would have been impossible if the pur-
pose was to knock Japan out before Russia came in -- or at
least before Russia could make anything other than a
token of participation prior to a Japanese collapse. "35
This plan, according to Messrs. Finletter and Cousins, was
supposed to prevent a "struggle for authority" between
the U. S. A. and the U. S. S. R. in the defeated country.
Professor P. M. S. Blackett of Manchester University, a
Nobel prize-winner in physics, agrees with the Finletter-
Cousins interpretation in his devastating book, Fear,
? See p. 272.
? f Dr. Alexander Sachs, a personal, non-official adviser to President
Roosevelt on atomic energy, has revealed (Look, March 14, 1950) that Mr.
Roosevelt favored a similar plan for a great warning demonstration of the
atom bomb's destructive power.
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? SOVIET CIVILI7LATIOH
War, and the Bomb. "We may conclude," he writes,
"that the dropping of the atomic bombs was not so much
the last military act of the Second World War, as the
first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with
Russia. "36
Included in the general disarmament program of the
Soviet Union has been its insistent appeal that all states
which have not yet done so should ratify the Geneva
Protocol of 1925 prohibiting bacteriological warfare and
the use of poison gas in international conflict. The Amer-
ican Government originally took the leading part in
drawing up this agreement and later signed it. But the
U. S. Senate never ratified the Protocol, and in 1947
President Truman withdrew it from that body's con-
sideration.
In June, 1952, the Soviet U. N. delegate, Jacob Malik,
brought the matter to the attention of the U. N. Security
Council, pointing out that the United States was the only
major Power which had not ratified the Protocol. Ernest
A. Gross, U. S. representative on the Council, answered
that the convention did not set up adequate means of en-
forcing the merely "paper" prohibitions. This excuse
hardly seemed sufficient, especially in view of the exis-
tence of an official U. S. Biological Warfare Committee
and the expenditure of millions of dollars a year by the
U. S. Army Chemical Corps on the development of bac-
teriological weapons. The New York Times U. N. cor-
respondent, Thomas J. Hamilton, commented: "One
of the most important parts of Mr. Gross' speech, in fact,
was the omission of even an implied pledge that the
United States, in keeping with the spirit of the Protocol,
would not use bacteriological warfare unless the enemy
used it first. "37
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? COEXISTENCE OR CO-DESTRUCTIOH?
The ninth Soviet peace move was made independently
of the United Nations and centered upon the question
of Germany. On March 10, 1952, the U. S. S. R. sent notes
to the Governments of France, Great Britain and the
United States proposing that a peace treaty be concluded
with an all-German Government, that Germany be re-
established as a unified state and that full democratic
rights be guaranteed to the German people. In the treaty
envisioned by the Soviet Union, "Germany obligates
itself not to enter into any kind of coalition or military
alliance directed against any power which took part with
its armed forces in the war against Germany. "38 On the
Soviet interpretation this would prevent the new Ger-
many from becoming a member of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization, which Soviet Russia regards as an
alliance directed against itself. Thus Germany would be
neutral as between the two Great Power blocs and could
serve the cause of peace well by being a buffer state.
Surprising and disturbing to many devoted to the
cause of peace was the Soviet position on German rearma-
ment: "Germany will be permitted to have its own
national armed forces (land, air and sea) which are neces-
sary for the defense of the country. Germany is permitted
to produce war materials and equipment, the quantity
and type of which must not exceed the limitations re-
quired for the armed forces established for Germany by
the peace treaty. "39 While this means definite limita-
tions on German arms, it represents a reversal of policy
on the part of the U. S. S. R. For the Soviet Government
had stood firmly behind the Potsdam directive for "the
complete disarmament and demilitarization of Ger-
many"; and had refused to sanction rearmament of the
eastern zone of occupation under its control, even after
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? SOVIET CrVILIZATIOH
the American bloc had started rearmament of the west-
ern zone.
In its second note of April 10 to the three Western
Powers, the Soviet Union explained that the suggestion
regarding German armed forces "is in accord with the
principle of national sovereignty and equal rights be-
tween governments. It is impossible to imagine such a
position whereby Japan would have the right of its
national armed forces designed for the defense of the
country, but Germany would be deprived of this right
and placed in a worse position. "40 The key to Soviet Rus-
sia's view lies perhaps in its statement that "it will be
much better to create such armed forces than to create
in West Germany hireling troops of revengers headed by
Fascist-Hitlerite generals ready to engulf Europe in a
Third World War. ""
This same Soviet note of April 10 agreed that there
should be "free, all-German elections," but insisted that
a Four-Power commission of the occupying states should
supervise them. The Soviet Government also held pat
on its claim that the Potsdam Conference established the
eastern borders of Germany. This is certainly correct re-
garding the Koenigsberg area, which went outright to
the U. S. S. R. with only the reservation that the ultimate
transfer would be "subject to expert examination of the
actual frontier. " In reference to the Polish-German
border, the Potsdam Declaration said that its final delim-
itation "should await the peace settlement," but did not
make clear whether this delimitation was meant to apply
merely to details or to substantive considerations.
The U. S. State Department was greatly embarrassed
by the Soviet proposals on Germany, fearing that they
would weaken Chancellor Adenauer's regime in Western
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? CO-EXISTENCE OR CO-DESTRUCTION?
Germany and interfere with Secretary Acheson's policy
of building "situations of strength" vis-a-vis the U. S. S. R. ,
particularly through the rearmament of Western Ger-
many. In a dispatch to The New York Times from Bonn,
Drew Middleton suggested that Washington really views
reunification as undesirable because it could mean "that
the present fairly tractable Government of Chancellor
Adenauer would be replaced by one much more difficult
to handle. It might be a Socialist Government or a com-
bination of Socialists and right-wing nationalists. But at
the head of the nation of 70,000,000 Germans, a people
not noted for calm or restraint, any Government of a
United Germany would be independent and self-cen-
tered. "42
While the Soviet Union and the Western Powers pro-
ceeded to exchange bitter notes on the German question,
the United States and its European allies went straight
ahead to forge an armed alliance with Western Germany
and make German unification impossible for a long time
to come. During the last week of May, 1952, the Western
Powers signed a Contractual Agreement, in effect a reg-
ular treaty, with the Adenauer Government officially free-
ing Western Germany from military occupation, though
maintaining Allied troops there for its defense. The West
Germans agreed to raise a substantial army, with America
paying a large share of the bill, as part of the so-called
European Defense Community (E. D. C. ) and to forego
temporarily the manufacture of atomic, germ and chem-
ical weapons. Whether the fifteen national parliaments
concerned would ratify the various agreements with
Western Germany was by no means assured.
The tenth Soviet effort in the direction of peace has
revolved around the U. S. S. R. 's attempts to lessen world
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
trade barriers, with special emphasis upon the Interna-
tional Economic Conference held in Moscow during
April, 1952. More than 450 businessmen from countries
in every part of the globe attended the meetings. Not-
withstanding the publicly announced hostility of the
Western governments, a French delegation of thirty part-
icipated in the Conference and a British delegation of
twenty-four, including Lord Boyd Orr, former head of
the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization.
A handful of Americans were present, in spite of Secre-
tary Acheson's denunciation of the Conference as an-
other malevolent Soviet stratagem, and severe U. S. State
Department pressures to discourage American business-
men from attending.
The U. S. Government was so agitated over the fact
that a few Americans had the hardihood to go to the
Conference that shortly afterwards, on. May 1, 1952, it
announced a sweeping ban against American citizens
traveling to the Soviet Union and other countries in the
Communist bloc.
According to The New York Times,
these drastic restrictions "seemed necessary after a num-
ber of United States citizens already abroad attended the
recent Moscow Economic Conference without notifying
the State Department. "43 Under the new regulations
American passports will not be valid for any Communist
nation unless the applicant can prove to the U. S. State
Department that he has "compelling reasons" for his
visit. The State Department asserted that its action was
essential "to warn American citizens of the risks of travel
in Iron Curtain countries. " What this really means, so
far as Soviet Russia is concerned, is that the U. S. Govern-
ment believes it cannot take the risk of having Americans
who dissent from its foreign policy go to the U. S. S. R. and
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? CO-EXISTEHCE OR CO-DESTRUC7IOW
possibly bring back reports about Soviet affairs which run
counter to the totally black picture painted by the State
Department propagandists.
The delegates at the International Conference dis-
cussed at length the possibilities of increasing East-West
trade and of setting up a permanent international organi-
zation for the expansion of world commerce. Total busi-
ness transactions arranged at the Conference were esti-
mated at over $250,000,000, with American, British,
French and Italian firms making deals with the Soviet
Union, China or countries in Eastern Europe. Lord Boyd
Orr stated that a "very substantial dent" had been made
in East-West trade barriers. According to Marcus Duf-
field of the New York Herald Tribune, "Russian and
Chinese offers to purchase large orders of British goods,
especially textiles . . . sounded very enticing indeed to
the British textile industry, which is suffering from a
slump, with 75,000 workers unemployed in Manches-
ter. "44 What Mr. Duffield failed to mention was that
American textile manufacturers, who were also in the
throes of a slump, could likewise profit from Communist
orders.
In general the foreign businessmen at the Interna-
tional Economic Conference were convinced that the
Soviet Russians would be reliable in any business ar-
rangements they agreed upon. The truth is that in the
pre-war period the Soviet Government and the trade
organizations under its control made an enviable record
for business reliability and a strict carrying out of con-
tracts. In a planned socialist economy, business enter-
prises do not go bankrupt, since they can depend, if
necessary, on the financial backing of the government.
So, in international trade the resources of the entire
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
U. S. S. R. stand, in the last analysis, behind every obliga-
tion.
Intelligent analyses of international affairs have in-
variably come to the conclusion that flourishing and
mutually advantageous trade among countries helps sub-
stantially in the advancement of world peace. Economic
self-interest and well-being weigh so heavily in the moti-
vation of men and of nations that when peoples are active-
ly trading with one another, they are less likely to become
embroiled in military hostilities against one another.
And insofar as normal trade stimulates prosperity, it
reduces national tensions of a domestic nature that may
lead towards war. For these reasons I feel justified in
saying that Soviet Russia's encouragement of good busi-
ness relations on a global scale is a genuine contribution
to the cause of international amity.
Surely the cooperative Communist attitude at the
International Economic Conference made more sense
than the many captious endeavors in the West to show
sinister intent. America's Dean Acheson, sallying forth
once more to slay the Soviet dragon with bitter words,
charged that "The true purposes of the organizers of this
Conference are to confuse and weaken our unity of pur-
pose"; and "to discourage us from carrying forward our
program of creating strength. "45 Yet it must be clear to
anyone with a grasp of reality that the allies of the United
States will neither build up nor maintain dependable
strength if their economies are further weakened through
artificial interference with world trade.
The situation is ironic in that a central feature of
America's Marshall Plan, initiated in 1947, was the res-
toration of East-West trade, especially in order to over-
come the dependence of the Western European nations
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? CO-EXISTENCE OR CO-DESTRUCTIOH?
upon their diminishing dollar resources. For instance,
the first report of the Committee of European Economic
Cooperation, transmitted by Secretary of State Marshall
in September, 1947, stated: "A substantial and steady
resumption of Eastern European food, feeding stuffs and
timber supplies is assumed in this report; the pre-war
flow of cereals from Eastern Europe is assumed to be
restored by 1951. "46
The report went on to say it was "essential that there
should be an adequate flow of dollars to the rest of the
world so that the participating countries and Western
Germany may be able to earn dollars, not only by their
exports to the American continent, but also indirectly by
their exports to other countries. " The East, expanding
its trade with the United States, was to obtain dollars
which would then go in part to the Western European
nations in payment for imports from them. Yet U. S.
policy has gone far in negating this goal of the Marshall
Plan by making it impossible for many Eastern countries
to secure dollars through those natural channels of com-
merce long established by the operation of economic need
and financial profit.
The question is not whether all the ten points in the
Soviet peace program I have outlined are acceptable; but
whether these recent moves in the direction of world
peace do not indicate that the Soviet Russians are sin-
cerely seeking a reasonable international settlement. It
is my feeling that their various proposals, while of course
provoking much disagreement, do provide a hopeful
agenda for discussion by the Western Powers. The Amer-
ican attitude, however, has seemed only too often to be
one of shutting -- or slamming -- the door against all
Soviet peace overtures on the ground that to entertain
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
them seriously would jeopardize Western rearmament
and unity of purpose. Such a foreign policy, encouraging
on principle tensions that produce a brink-of-war mental-
ity and implying that all peace offers to the West must
be indefinitely rejected, is both unintelligent and dan-
gerous.
Again and again over the past few years the U. S. State
Department has issued releases to the effect that "the
Soviet peace offensive" is solely intended to embarrass
and impede Western rearmament. But the Soviet Union's
foreign policy has remained substantially the same since
the end of World War II; and the Russians are almost
always conducting some kind of peace offensive, whether
the Western Powers are demobilizing, disarming, rearm-
ing, intervening, occupying, withdrawing, sending notes,
holding conferences or anything else. It is not rational,
then, to claim that the unceasing Soviet drive for peace
is merely Machiavellian in its import.
It has not been my intention in this chapter to try
to cover the entire complex course of American-Soviet
relations since 1945; or to assess the precise amount of
blame on either side for such exacerbated happenings as
the Berlin crisis of 1948, with the Soviet blockade and the
American airlift, and other tense situations in the cold
war. There have been numerous instances in which the
U. S. S. R. has plainly been in the wrong. I think especially
of the harsh and insupportable practice of Soviet flyers
in shooting down foreign airplanes, some of them pas-
senger planes, which may be inadvertently violating Sov-
iet territory or the Soviet zone in Germany. In the spring
of 1952 this happened to both French and Swedish air-
planes.
Frankly, however, I do think that the United States
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? CO-EXISTEHCE OR CO-DESTRUCTIOH?
bears the major responsibility for starting the cold war
and that after Hitler's defeat in 1945 the Truman Ad-
ministration took the first hostile steps towards the Soviet
Union rather than the other way around.
The first such step to arouse Soviet resentment was
the abrupt order, issued by Leo T. Crowley, chief of the
Foreign Economic Administration, on May 12, 1945,
four days after the Nazi surrender, for the suspension of
all Lend-Lease shipments to the Soviet Union. The
American Government took this action without any
previous consultation with or warning to the Russians,
to whom it appeared as an insult and as a handicap in
carrying out their promise to join forces later against
Japan.
Under Crowley's order ships on the high seas with
supplies for the U. S. S. R. were recalled and other ships
about to sail with goods were unloaded. Among the
equipment never delivered to Soviet Russia were forty-
six wide-gauge locomotives built especially for the Soviet
railways at a cost of almost $4,000,000 and not usable
anywhere else -- valuable equipment which the U. S.
Army ultimately auctioned off as scrap. The Crowley
directive was later relaxed to some extent; but President
Truman soon put an end to the whole business when on
August 21, 1945, one week after the Japanese collapse, he
terminated Lend-Lease for all countries which had been
receiving it.
The second thing which so antagonized the Soviet
Union was the U. S. treatment of Soviet reparations
claims against Germany. The Soviet proposal had been
that Germany should pay total reparations of $20,000,-
000,000 with half of it going to the U. S. S. R. It was
Stalin's judgment at Yalta that the aggregate German
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
industrial plant at the end of World War II was as large
as, if not larger than, it had been in 1939, wartime ex-
pansion having been greater than all the destruction.
This estimate was later substantiated by the facts. Since
the Nazis had wrought property damages in the U. S. S. R.
of more than $125,000,000,000, the Soviet claim for
$10,000,000,000 in reparations was not exorbitant.
The issue came to a head shortly after Hitler's de-
feat when President Truman sent to Germany and Soviet
Russia a Reparations Commission chairmaned by an oil
executive, Edwin W. Pauley, a political appointee who
proved to be without the slightest competence for the job.
This whole mission on reparations was a tragic debacle.
There were no actual discussions with the Soviets that
by any stretch of the imagination could be called nego-
tiations; and the result was that Pauley arrived at the
Potsdam Conference in the latter part of July, 1945, with
nothing to present except a beautifully embossed "pro-
gress report" looking like the Gutenberg Bible. It con-
tained a perfect hodge-podge of views emanating from
individuals on the American staff whose brief "inspec-
tion" tour of German industry had been primarily a
sightseeing junket.
Of course neither Pauley's Commission nor any other
body ever worked out an agreement on total reparations
with the Soviets. And the Western Powers never came
anywhere near fulfilling the guarantees made in the
Potsdam Declaration for the removal of industrial equip-
ment from the western zones of occupation as reparations
for the U. S. S. R.
** *
I have not attempted to state all the problems or give
all the answers in the broad sphere of American-Soviet
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? CO-EXISTEHCE OR CO-DESTRUCTIOW
relations. Rather I have endeavored to fill in some of
the gaps in the general knowledge of the average Amer-
ican in this field; and to present facts and interpretations
concerning the subject which are neglected at present
by U. S. public opinion in its preoccupation with the cold
war. It is my thesis that whatever the defects of the Amer-
ican and Soviet systems, whatever the past mistakes of
their respective governments, whatever those govern-
ments' disagreements as so far expressed, they can come
to an intelligent over-all agreement that will stop the
drift towards war and turn the tide instead in the direc-
tion of peaceful co-existence between the two countries
and between the capitalist and Communist blocs in
general.
As that oracle of conservative sanity, the Wall Street
Journal, stated in commenting on the desirability of an
American settlement with the Soviet Union: "The U. S.
has many differences with nations with which it lives at
peace. To live together peaceably it is only necessary
that differences be resolved to the point where the re-
maining disputes seem less important than the danger
of war. What is necessary is not perfect agreement, but
only a method of living together. "47
So far as concrete Soviet peace moves are concerned,
there is much in them that is valid for the U. S. A. as well
as the U. S. S. R. A sound American peace policy is bound
to have a number of basic points in common with Soviet
policies. During the war against the Axis, Soviet Russia
and the United States drew up and faithfully carried out
many joint military agreements which were to the ob-
vious interest of both countries. In these years high
officials in the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations
did not turn down suggestions merely because they were
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
initiated or advocated by the Soviets. It is not sensible
to do so today.
War and violence have always been the worst ways
to deal with problems between countries. There is a far
better method for the solution of current dilemmas -- for
nations, for peoples, for governments, for capitalists, for
Communists, for conservatives, for radicals, for politi-
cians, for businessmen, for this alliance and that bloc,
for East and West. That is the method of reason, under-
standing, negotiation and compromise. I believe that this
method now demands that the American Government
give more serious and reasonable consideration to the
major Soviet peace proposals; and that it should accept
the invitation of the Soviet Government to have highest
ranking officials from each side sit down and talk things
over calmly, with the aim of settling the chief issues in
dispute on terms advantageous to both.
The President of the United States during the next
four years will have an unexcelled opportunity to serve
America and humanity through initiating more construc-
tive measures for international peace than those sup-
ported by the Truman Administration. And if he is
politically wise, the President will realize that nothing
will gain him stronger backing among the American elec-
torate than success in putting across a peace and disarma-
ment program that reverses the trend of the past few
years towards global disaster; and that embodies the
principle of atomic power for life, not death. The Amer-
ican people themselves have their own unique power
and responsibility in the current situation. They can
elect public officials who are pledged to carry through
a genuine peace policy; and they can maintain steady
pressure on the President, the State Department and Con-
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? COEXISTENCE OR CO-DESTRUCTIOW
gress to avoid extremist actions and to pursue the path
of world amity.
Military aggressors have gone down to defeat many
times in history, but mankind has never succeeded in
doing away with international conflict itself.