No More Learning

Those who think they can contain communism
through military power overlook the revolutionary pos-
sibilities, if not probabilities, of international conflict.
As Dorothy Thompson explains: "Revolutions, to be
sure, carry on wars; but wars create the revolutions. For
war is, itself, a revolution, embodying the very spirit of
violence in its most complete expression, infecting the
human spirit, accustoming men to hideous cruelties, dis-
locating stable economies, and intensifying all the griev-
ances and injustices which are present in every society,
by adding to them the supreme injustice -- injustice
against the very order of nature. For in the order of na-
ture, the sons of men bury their parents; but in the order
of war, the parents bury their sons. Both ancient and
modern revolutions illustrate this inter-relationship be-
tween war and revolution. "1
Miss Thompson goes on to state that the French,
Russian and Chinese Revolutions all followed on the
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heels of international war. "A handful of Bolshevist
agitators," she says, "could never have seized power in
Russia but for the anarchy accompanying collapsing
armies and the cry of a war-weary people for peace. . . .
The Chinese Revolution was also a direct result of over a
decade of war. . . . As for Europe, the thought that it
could be saved for any order of liberty and law by another
war fought on its soil cannot be entertained by anyone
with a political mind. Another war would break down
the last remnants of political, social and economic order,
already undermined by the last war, and regardless of
the machinations of the European Communist Parties. "
The facts are, of course, that the First World War,
in which the Western democracies were victorious, did
give the Communists their chance to put across the Rus-
sian Revolution. The Second World War, in which the
Western Powers were again triumphant, and in which
the Fascist Triplice desperately tried to wipe out "the
Red peril" in both East and West, opened the gates to
Communist domination throughout Eastern Europe and
the vast domain of China, with its teeming population;
wrecked or bankrupted capitalism in Britain, France,
Germany and Italy; and set off the chain reaction of re-
bellion against Western imperialism all over Asia. The
Third World War could comparatively advance the
cause of international communism, which might as a re-
sult engulf Western Europe, the Middle East and south-
ern Asia. As I have said many times, the Communists are
opposed to international war; but if it is imposed upon
them, they will most certainly try to take advantage of
it to spread their influence and rule.
Where I disagree with Walter Lippmann is in his too
easy assumption that the American-led bloc would win
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over the Communist-led bloc in a Third World War.
Although I am no more of a military expert than Mr.
Lippmann, I think it more likely that in the long-drawn-
out struggle both sides would score dramatic successes
here and there, but neither would emerge with decisive
victory. The result would be a military stalemate; and
the two blocs would cease fighting at last because of
mutual exhaustion and destruction.
I am convinced that despite all the recent develop-
ments in airplanes and atomic bombs, no well-organized
modern state possessing a large population, up-to-date
armaments and a territory of continental proportions is
likely to capitulate without an overwhelming invasion
by ground troops. I doubt whether American-led armies
would have even as much success in marching through
the U. S. S. R. as did Hitler's mechanized legions, which
at least had the advantage of proximity. And let us re-
member that the Nazis never captured Moscow, as did
the ill-fated Napoleon in 1812. In fact today the Soviets,
with their vast industrial development of the Siberian
hinterland and Soviet Central Asia, could lose Moscow,
Gorky and Stalingrad, and yet remain a formidable fight-
ing force defending and striking back from the Volga
River line and setting up a new capital far behind the
Urals in the middle of Siberia. Under these circum-
stances the Soviets would still retain an area twice as big
as continental United States.
But the sensational blueprints for the conquest of the
U. S. S. R. overlook little details like this. For instance,
Collier's issue about the Third World War envisages the
Red armies falling apart and the Soviet Government
collapsing on the basis of "peripheral attacks against the
'heartland' by land, air and sea (utilizing to the full the
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transport capacity and mobility of sea and air power) and
heavy bombing attacks against the enemy's interior. No
deep land penetration of Russia was ever attempted -- or
indeed, ever seriously contemplated. "2 According to this
scheme, the anti-Soviet armies halted only two or three
hundred miles within the Soviet border, at the Pripet
Marshes and Kiev. Thus the Collier's military "experts"
light-heartedly sidestep that very inconvenient defense-
in-depth which is the classic Russian method of dealing
with an invading foe.
Moreover, in the conflict with the Communist-led
bloc, America and its allies would have to knock out
through invasion another exceedingly tough customer,
namely, the People's Republic of China. If the hard-
hitting Japanese armies could not subdue a disorganized
though stubborn China over a period of some ten years,
it does not seem probable that a new expeditionary force
would get much farther against a China now far more
unified and far better able to defend itself than under
the corrupt and inefficient regime of Chiang Kai-shek.
In this discussion I have been assuming that the forces
at the command of the American coalition have been able
with no great trouble to reach the frontiers of Soviet
Russia and China. But naturally the Soviet-Chinese
coalition is not going to sit idly by permitting such a
thing to happen. Indeed, if a Third World War should
break out, it seems likely that one of the first develop-
ments would be for Soviet armies to push a considerable
distance westward in Europe and for Chinese armies to
overrun much of southeastern Asia. If this should take
place, the American bloc, with less manpower at its dis-
posal than the enemy, would have a tremendous job
simply driving him back to his own borders.
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In analyzing what might happen in a Third World
War, we cannot neglect the possibility of a victory for
the Communist bloc. In my opinion this eventuality is
as unlikely as a clearcut defeat for the Communist bloc.
For it would be just as difficult for the Soviet coalition
to invade and knock out the United States and Canada
as for America and its allies to invade and knock out
Communist China and Russia. One very fundamental
complication would immediately arise for the Soviet-Chi-
nese command in that it does not possess a vast fleet of
steamships, with a powerful navy to escort them, for the
transportation of the necessary millions of men across the
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to the shores of the U. S. A.
This consideration alone shows how utterly irrational it
would be for the Soviet Union or China to contemplate
or undertake a war of aggression against North America.
As to atomic bombing, Americans cannot afford to
forget that continental United States is less than one-
fourth the combined area of China and Soviet Russia, in
both of which industry is widely dispersed over an enorm-
ous territory. Discussing this situation Mr. Stephen
White, an editor of Look and a close student of atomic
developments, wrote in 1952: "It must be realized that
Russia doesn't need as many bombs as the United States
needs. We live in a highly organized country. Russia is
generations behind in organization. That is our strength,
and our weakness. . . . America is like a watch -- a few
bombs at vulnerable spots could create chaos. Russia is
like a sundial -- not nearly as efficient as we are, and not
nearly as vulnerable. "3
A global conflict, then, between the two Great Power
blocs that control so much of the earth today would be
a futile, horrible catastrophe for all the countries in-
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volved and for humanity as a whole. It would unloose
a mutual outpouring of death and destruction that could
set back human progress for centuries. And it would
surely result in the accelerated development of new weap-
ons of war even more fearful than the present atom
bombs. Already in February, 1952, William L. Laurence,
science reporter of The New York Times, stated that
American scientists can definitely produce the "cata-
clysmic hydrogen bomb. " About the same time Dr. L.
E. C. Hughes, Chairman of Britain's Atomic Information
Institute, said that a big-scale H-bomb explosion would
probably be the end of the world.
Even if there were any capitalism or any socialism
left, the Great Atomic War would not bring an ultimate
decision as to the respective merits of the two systems. In
any case we cannot accept as the main criterion of a civil-
ization's worth its ability to wage and win an interna-
tional conflict. The Third World War would most cer-
tainly create more problems than it solved; and would
leave mankind in a bitter, disorganized, economically
chaotic state which would in all likelihood lead to future
wars and revolutions. We cannot doubt that such a war
would be madness for everyone concerned.
2. Effects of American Foreign Policy
In his speech of November, 1945, Under Secretary
of State Dean Acheson, referring to American-Russian
relations, said: "For nearly a century and a half we have
gotten along well -- remarkably well when you consider
that our forms of government, our economic systems and
our special habits have never been similar. . . . Never,
in the past, has there been any place on the globe where
the vital interests of the American and Russian people
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have clashed or even been antagonistic -- and there is no
objective reason to suppose that there should, now or in
the future, ever be such a place. There is an obvious
reason for this. We are both continental peoples with
adequate living space -- interested in developing and
enjoying the living space we have. Our ambition is to
achieve the highest possible standards of living among our
own peoples, and we have the wherewithal to achieve high
standards of living without conquest, through peaceful
development and trade. We have that opportunity, more-
over, only to the extent that we can create conditions of
peace and prevent war. Thus the paramount interest,
the only conceivable hope of both nations, lies in the
cooperative enterprise of peace. "4
Mr. Acheson's words are as applicable today as in
1945. But Mr. Acheson as Secretary of State has, I sub-
mit, followed policies inconsistent with his earlier opin-
ions. As the member of President Truman's Cabinet
primarily responsible for the foreign policy of the United
States, he has taken the lead in curtly turning down the
repeated proposals of the Soviet Government over the
past few years for a top-level conference between the
U. S. A. and the U. S. S. R. for the purpose of coming to an
over-all settlement. Mr. Acheson and Mr. Truman have
fallen into the bad habit of stigmatizing all such offers
as mere propaganda on the part of the Soviet Union.
The trouble is, of course, that the American Government
cannot admit the sincerity of Soviet peace campaigns
without undermining its favorite thesis that Soviet ag-
gression is the great menace facing the United States and
the world at large. The underlying premise of the Tru-
man Doctrine, the cold war, the North Atlantic Pact and
the stupendous American armaments program is that
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Soviet armies will invade and overrun Western Europe
if they have the opportunity.
Undoubtedly many high-ranking officials of the U. S.
Government, as well as members of Congress and party
leaders in the country at large, do not themselves really
take stock in the fearful Soviet military threat which they
keep talking about. But the originators of our bi-partisan
foreign policy have succeeded in creating a situation in
the United States in which loud cries about Soviet aggres-
sion and Communist conspiracy have become fundamen-
tal to orthodox political ritual both during and between
elections. The high priests of the Democratic and Repub-
lican Parties have become the prisoners of their own
myth-making and must maintain the pretense of absolute
Soviet wickedness lest the foundations of their ideology
melt away in the light of the simple truth.
A lamentable consequence of all this is that a power-
ful public opinion has grown up in America which re-
gards as appeasement any attempts to work out a peace-
ful accord with the Soviets. So it is that in various quar-
ters the whole notion of peace has become suspect; and
peace committees, peace meetings, peace addresses, peace
articles are all regarded as most likely originating in a
Soviet plot to undermine the strength of the United States
and its allies. In 1950 a Hollywood studio went so far
as to suppress a movie on the story of Hiawatha, because
it was felt that the Indian chief's constant smoking of the
peace-pipe and general opposition to war might be inter-
preted as un-American. The continuing Red hunt on the
part of such agencies as the House Committee on Un-
American Activities and the Senate Committee on In-
ternal Security, and by such demagogues as Senators
Joseph McCarthy and Pat McCarran, has made most
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members of Congress and most citizens afraid to agree
publicly with any part of the Soviet peace program, lest
they then be smeared as Communists.
Today a majority of Americans tend to reject almost
automatically any idea, in the controversial realms of
economics, politics and international relations, which
originated in Soviet Russia or is generally approved
there. In fact, this trend has gone so far that the rela-
tively few dissenters who do express agreement with some
Soviet doctrines may be indicted or jailed as foreign
agents on the grounds of "parallelism" between their
views and those of the Soviet Government. Yet if Amer-
icans for one reason or another feel unable ever to agree
with Soviet opinions, then the Soviets are actually con-
trolling them in reverse by forcing them always to sup-
port contrary conclusions. The truly independent mind
cannot permit itself to be placed in such a senseless posi-
tion.
I wonder how many millions of Americans, during
the steady deterioration of American-Soviet relations
since the end of World War II, have asked themselves
the question I have so often put to myself: Would the
present American-Soviet impasse have developed if Pres-
ident Franklin D. Roosevelt had lived out his last term
of office through 1948? My answer has always been that
while these post-war years would have been difficult in
any case, President Roosevelt, with his wide experience
in foreign affairs, his political sagacity, his liberalism and
wisdom, would have been able to lay the basis for con-
tinuing American-Soviet cooperation. Assuredly he
would have had the moral strength and the basic states-
manship to resist Winston Churchill's suggestion in his
famous Fulton, Missouri, speech of March, 1946, for an
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Anglo-American military alliance against the Soviet
Union.
President Truman, however, never noted for his
forcefulness of personality or independence of mind, fell
in readily with Churchill's anti-Soviet rhetoric and apol-
ogia for a cold war. Moreover, being unsure of himself
on international issues, Mr.
Truman has consistently
leaned on others in the formulation of American foreign
policy rather than assuming leadership himself. And he
has often taken very bad advice, as in accepting the idea,
first put forward by "Mr. X" in the magazine Foreign
Affairs in 1947, of the "containment" of communism
through armed force and the heightening of pressures
against the U. S. S. R. Even "Mr. X," universally recog-
nized as George Kennan, now U. S. Ambassador to the
Soviet Union, has become rather doubtful of his orig-
inal thesis.
Also President Truman, despite his dismissal of Gen-
eral MacArthur for sabotaging American policy in Korea,
has on the whole relied heavily upon the military mind.
Writing in the New York Herald Tribune about the
powers of the National Security Council, composed
chiefly of military men and defense secretaries, Mr.
Sumner Welles, former Under Secretary of State, asserts:
"No President since General Grant has had such child-
like faith in the omniscience of the high brass as the
present occupant of the White House. It is no surprise
to learn that President Truman invariably approves every
decision of the Council. . . . The Council passes on all
important questions in this country's international re-
lations and decides the policy to be adopted. It has now
been given authority by the President to determine our
political objectives in every part of the world. . . . But no
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emergency can justify the control of this country's foreign
policy by a Council which reaches its decisions from a
military standpoint. "5
Generals and admirals, secretaries of war and navy
and air, have traditionally been in favor of continued
expansion of the services in which they function. Such
expansion increases their power, prestige and sense of
mission. Furthermore, they tend to look for the solution
of international tensions in terms of war rather than of
diplomacy. These are some of the reasons why civilian
control over the U. S. defense departments is of such great
importance. But there are many indications that the
White House bows in general to the Pentagon. And one
unhappy sign of this is President Truman's willingness
to spur on a dangerous armaments race, to foist Universal
Military Training on America and to encourage wild
war scares as the occasion demands. Even an anti-Soviet
stalwart like Congressman Joseph W. Martin, Jr. , leader
of the Republican minority in the House of Representa-
tives, has stated: "Down through the years the high
officials of this Government uttered time and again the
direst warnings of bloodshed when a particular piece
of legislation they wanted was before Congress. "
In September, 1951, as reported in The New York
Times, President Truman signed a "measure authorizing
a $5,864,301,178 global military construction program,
including a ring of secret overseas bases close enough to
the Soviet Union so that the Air Force could retaliate
against attack and neutralize the enemy's war potential.
It was the largest amount ever voted for military con-
struction during peacetime. "6 Although the stated rea-
son for this vast appropriation was that it was essential
for defense, obviously the air bases alluded to could also
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be used for a sudden A-bomb onslaught against the
U. S. S. R. The acknowledged U. S. policy of building a
round-the-world network of air bases, now several hun-
dreds in number, as near as possible to the frontiers of
Soviet Russia and its allies, makes the Soviets understand-
ably nervous.
There are grounds for believing that Harry Truman
hopes to go down in history as one of America's greatest
Presidents because of his militant crusade against com-
munism. Be that as it may, he will certainly be remem-
bered as the Chief Executive who engineered through
Congress the largest peacetime budgets on record through
his second term of office. For the fiscal year of 1952 he
obtained Congressional approval for a budget of almost
71 billion dollars, with 49. 7 billions earmarked for
military purposes, exclusive of payments to veterans. For
the fiscal year of 1953, running from July 1, 1952, to July
1, 1953, the President demanded, shortly after new Sov-
iet peace overtures, a budget of over 85 billions. *
Of this budget, which the Wall Street Journal termed
"so monstrous as to defy reasoned comment," approxi-
mately 76 percent or 65. 1 billions were for national
security,? including 52. 4 billions for the armed forces
and 10. 5 billions for international security (aid to U. S.
allies). This does not include 4. 2 billions for veterans
and 6. 2 billions for interest, chiefly on loans which
financed past wars. Fourteen billions of the new budget
were to go to the building of airplanes, while 1. 7 billions
were for speeding up the stockpiling of atomic weapons
as part of a 5- to 6-billion dollar program over the next
? This budget, announced in January, 1952, was reduced by President
Truman in August by 6. 4 billion dollars, leaving a total of approximately
79 billions.
? f For comparative Soviet figures see p. 391.
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few years for mass production of America's "fantastic new
weapons," including the dreaded hydrogen bomb.
These astronomical Truman totals mean that the
President was asking the United States to spend approxi-
mately 180 million dollars a day on defense, which is
about 3. 7 times the entire 48-million budget of the United
Nations for 1952. Let that sink in: Mr. Truman expected
the U. S. to expend for military purposes in a single day
over three and a half times what the U. N. can devote to
international peace during a full year. Or, to make an-
other comparison, the U. S. was to pour into defense
every day more than twice as much as the total endow-
ment of Columbia University, America's fourth wealth-
iest educational institution. These colossal armament
figures seem alarming not only to the Russians, but also
to some of America's own allies.
The skyrocketing U. S. armaments outlays of the past
few years have kept the American economy booming and
headed off the depression that many competent econom-
ists think would otherwise have taken place. A brink-of-
war economy, with government spending on a huge scale
stimulating business and bringing enormous profits, is
one way of temporarily overcoming fundamental eco-
nomic difficulties in a capitalist economy. Government
expenditure on weapons of war is the favorite form of
public works for capitalist businessmen, since it results
in very profitable contracts and since the end product
is something that does not compete, like public hydro-
electric developments, or public housing, with private
capitalist enterprise.
As a larger and larger proportion of American busi-
ness becomes geared to the manufacture of arms and the
servicing of armies, it grows harder and harder to turn
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back from a brink-of-war economy to a peace economy.
It is for the time being more expedient, especially from
a political viewpoint, to accelerate the armaments boom
than to put the brakes on it. And the terrible Communist
blunder in Korea played directly into the hands of those
powerful groups in America which had been agitating
for an expanded armaments program.
That program has become so prodigiously enlarged
over the past few years, and so interwoven with the basic
fabric of the economy, that government leaders, private
businessmen and even trade union officials are anxious
lest the general cold war and the little hot war be con-
cluded too quickly and peace break out. Typical was the
reaction to talk of peace in Korea as reported in the Wall
Street Journal of May 16, 1951: "Stock prices experi-
enced the sharpest decline since March 13. Brokers
ascribed the break to widespread peace rumors. . . . Trad-
ers are fearful that the end of hostilities might also halt
rearmament and catch leading companies with swollen
inventories unbalanced for peacetime production. "
As Mr. Norman Thomas, an outspoken anti-Soviet
crusader, has said: "Millions of Americans, despite their
best hopes, have acquired a vested interest in the eco-
nomic waste of the arms race. Its sudden end would be
greeted with an outpouring of joy, but it would be fol-
lowed by economic panic -- unless we were ready with
constructive plans for a cooperative war on hunger,
illiteracy and disease. "7 Such plans the powers-that-be do
not have, although vastly extended government spend-
ing for great economic projects at home and for the
development of backward nations abroad (Point Four)
could obviously be just as much of a business stimulus
as shovelling unending billions into the maw of Mars.
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In his 85-billion budget, Mr. Truman assigned only
$600,000,000 to the Point Four program as contrasted
with the approximately $19,000,000,000 needed annually
according to a report of five U. N. experts in May, 1951.
Resilient as it is, even the American economy will
not be able to stand indefinitely the strain of such enorm-
ous arms budgets and staggering government deficits as
those imposed by the Truman Administration. And if
the people as a whole finally start to offer serious objec-
tion to the armaments burden, reckless political leaders
may be tempted to overcome popular opposition by ac-
tually plunging America into a world war. When war
preparations, and in the last analysis war itself, seem to
the rulers of a country the easiest way to maintain pros-
perity and full employment, the danger is that they will
choose the path of international conflict in preference to
facing an immediate economic crisis and running the risk
of becoming discredited.
The disturbing distension of armaments has already
inflicted on the American people a spiral of inflation,
with rising prices and rising taxes cutting drastically into
the consumer's income. As ex-President Herbert Hoover
stated in his address of January 27, 1952: "The outstand-
ing phenomenon in the United States is the dangerous
overstraining of our economy by our gigantic expendi-
tures. The American people have not yet felt the full
impact of the gigantic increase in government spending
and taxes. Yet we already suffer from the blight of infla-
tion and confiscatory taxes. We are actually in a war
economy except for world-wide shooting. We are divert-
ing more and more civilian production to war mate-
rials. . . .
"Since the end of the Second World War the purchas-
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ing power of our money, measured in wholesale price
indexes, has decreased 40 percent. . . . It is the average
family who pays the bulk of taxes, both income and hid-
den. Among them are corporation taxes. These are ulti-
mately passed on to their customers or the corporation
would quickly go bankrupt. . . . These huge taxes are
also overstraining our economy. "8 In addition, President
Truman's reckless program is using up America's limited
natural resources, such as iron ore and oil, at such a
furious rate that coming generations, under whatever
form of economy, will be seriously handicapped. The
Washington spendthrifts are robbing future Americans
of their birthright for a wasteful mess of bombs and bat-
tleships, guns, tanks and warplanes.
The burgeoning American armaments economy has
brought the United States to a condition, as described by
Walter Lippmann, "of gigantic, almost explosive, indus-
trial expansion which draws tremendously and competi-
tively on the available supplies. "9 America's accelerating
need for raw materials, scrap metal and finished goods
to meet the insatiable demands of a defense policy run
wild has made it increasingly difficult for Britain, France,
Italy and the Benelux countries to find the necessary
imports for their own needs; to pay the inflated prices
asked, most frequently by American manufacturers; and
to put across their vast rearmament programs, in con-
formance with American foreign policy, without more
and more lowering their own standards of living through
domestic inflation, crushing taxation and a sheer lack
of consumers' goods.
Mr. Aneurin Bevan commented most persuasively on
the situation in his speech of April 23, 1951, when he
resigned in protest as Minister of Labor in the British
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
Labor Government: "It is now perfectly clear to anyone
who examines the matter objectively -- the lurchings of
the American economy, the extravagance and unpredict-
able behavior of the production machine, the failure of
the American Government to inject the arms program
into the economy slowly enough has already caused a vast
inflation of prices all over the world. It has disturbed the
economy of the Western World to such an extent that if it
goes on more damage will be done by this unrestrained
behavior than by the behavior of the nation the arms are
intended to restrain. . . .
"I say, therefore, with full solemnity of the serious-
ness of what I am saying, that the ? 4,700,000,000 arms
program is already dead. It cannot be achieved without
irreparable damage to the economy of Great Britain and
the world. . . . The fact is that the Western World has
embarked upon a campaign of arms production and upon
a scale of arms production so quickly and of such extent
that the foundations of political liberty and parliamentary
democracy will not be able to sustain the shock. "10*
In December, 1951, Winston Churchill, soon after
he became Prime Minister for the second time, declared
frankly in the House of Commons that Britain would be
unable to complete on schedule its three-year $13-billion
rearmament program. He said that he was giving Aneu-
rin Bevan "honorable mention" for having, "it appears
by accident -- perhaps not from the best of motives -- hap-
pened to be right. "11 Early in 1952 Churchill's Con-
servative Government launched a new austerity program
"to avert national bankruptcy.