In times when the month-by-month march of events is of such a character as to give little comfort to the hopes of men in general, and perhaps of Jews in particular, it is the thankless but necessary task of the writer of this department to winnow out the facts from the welter of belief, propaganda, actuality, and emotion that constitutes present-day public information and opinion. Maurice J. Goldbloom has had many years of experience as a news analyst, and brings to his work of appraisal here a rich store of knowledge in modem history and international affairs. The judgments expressed here are, of course, those of the writer, and in no sense represent or reflect official policy.

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Attack in Prague

In 1939, when Hitler’s troops marched into Prague, they did so ostensibly at the invitation and with the consent of the legal government of Czechoslovakia. But President Hacha’s unwilling cooperation did not deceive anyone about the real nature of the transformation by which an independent country was turned into a “protectorate.” The invasion of Prague was the direct stimulus for Neville Chamberlain’s guarantees of the independence and territorial integrity of Poland and Rumania. From then on there were few in the West who any longer thought that war would be avoided.

Stalin’s conquest of Czechoslovakia, like Hitler’s, was accomplished by the utilization of at least some of the forms of law. Klement Gottwald had become Prime Minister after the Communist party emerged as Czechoslovakia’s largest in elections that were only partly unfree. (The country’s largest party, the Agrarian, had been outlawed, despite its leading role in the underground resistance and the government-in-exile; but its early collaboration with the Nazis offered some excuse for this. And a third of the country’s population—the national minorities—had been disfranchised. But they were in any case in the process of being expelled, in accordance with the principles of the New Democracy.) If Gottwald’s police had suppressed his political opponents in order to secure a parliamentary majority for the new cabinet which he formed after the representatives of the non-Communist parties resigned, he had in the first place at least secured control of the police legally—as Hitler had inside Germany itself. And his orders had been countersigned by President Edouard Benes, as Hitler’s had been by President Hindenburg.

Hence it was still possible to pretend that the establishment of a Communist dictatorship in Czechoslovakia, and the suppression of political dissent, involved no subversion of the democratic order. The Soviet Union—whose occupying army had originally dictated the granting of key governmental positions to the Communists, and whose nearby troops, even after their withdrawal across the frontier, had remained a potent reminder of the realities of Central European life—remained technically blameless. The Secretariat of the United Nations, acting on the advice of the Russian head of its legal department, was able to reject as “non-governmental” the charge of Czech delegate Jan Papanek that his government had actually been the victim of Soviet aggression. Although Chile then officially filed the charge, and the Security Council overrode Russian and Ukrainian opposition to discussion of it, there was no reason to believe that anything more than an expression of high principles and restrained indignation would result.

Whatever the legalities of the situation in Czechoslovakia, the news from that country continued to make it plain that the legalities were not the whole story. Former cabinet members, secretaries of non-Communist parties, and other potential leaders of opposition to the new regime were arrested or reported missing in large numbers. Some of the missing subsequently turned up as refugees in Germany; others might quite possibly never reappear, the nature of police states being what it was. Suicides were also reported. One party official was said to have “killed himself” after signing a “confession” implicating his party in treasonable activities. The “confession” could now be used with no danger of his repudiating it.

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Masaryk

The most spectacular of the suicides was that of Jan Masaryk. For Masaryk, perhaps more than any other non-Communist statesman, symbolized the idea of unlimited collaboration with the Soviet Union. Whatever his private leanings toward the West, he had suppressed them completely in his official role.

There were some who—in view of the frequent “suicides” of political opponents in police states—doubted the genuineness of Masaryk’s. Yet it was difficult to see what purpose Masaryk’s death could have served for the Communist regime in Prague. His presence in the cabinet could raise no difficult problems for them as long as they had complete control of all the means through which he might communicate either with his own people or with the world at large. And the magic of the Masaryk name was an invaluable asset, if they could keep it in their possession. It was, of course, possible that Masaryk had tried to escape abroad, and that his death had been incidental to a Communist attempt to ward off any such threat to the prestige of the new government. But it seemed far more likely that the suicide was genuine enough, and represented either the result of despair at the final failure of a political method on which he had staked everything, or a last attempt to reach the public opinion of the world through the only channel which Communist dictatorship left open.

Like Jan Masaryk, Edouard Benes had placed his hope for the future of Czechoslovakia in the good faith of the Soviet Union. When, in 1943, he signed a treaty of alliance with that power, he told Stalin: “We have signed an agreement for non-intervention in domestic affairs, and I know you will keep it.” At least in public he kept this faith, even after Stalin had broken another provision of the same treaty recognizing Czechoslovakia’s pre-Munich frontiers, by annexing Carpatho-Ruthenia.

When the cabinet crisis came, Benes had sought at first to mediate between the Communists and their opponents. He had announced that he could approve neither a cabinet without Communists, nor one from which the freely-chosen leaders of the other parties would be barred. When Klement Gottwald came to him with the list of a new and purged cabinet, he had at first declined to accept it. When Gottwald insisted, Benes told him: “You are talking to me like Hitler!” And then he yielded, as he had to Hitler in 1938.

Another Benes, however, was less pliant. The President’s elder brother Vojta, one of the leaders of the anti-Communist faction of the Czech Social Democrats, spurned an invitation to join the new “National Front” and remain in a Social Democratic party purged of democrats. Instead, he announced his resignation from Parliament. Other Social Democratic leaders, such as Willem Bernard and Vaclav Meier, were expelled because of their refusal to go along with the new regime.

“Action committees” were set up to take over all political parties, as well as other independent organizations, and coordinate them with the regime. (Jewish community leaders protested that no such action was necessary in the case of Jewish organizations, since these had never harbored “reactionary elements.” But their elected leaders were nevertheless replaced by new appointees who happened to be Communists.) Members of Parliament who refused to accept the new orientation of their parties were dropped from the list of deputies. But this was less often necessary than one might have supposed, for many of those who had been ardent in their denunciation of the Communists now begged for the opportunity to support or even join them.

All in all, it was rather reminiscent of Germany in March 1933.

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Defense in Brussels

The response of the Western representatives in the United Nations to the Czech coup had certainly been something less than dynamic. But perhaps this merely meant, not that the West had failed to respond to the danger, but simply that nobody any longer thought of the UN as a vehicle through which danger could be averted.

Certainly the Brussels meeting of Britain, France, and the three “Benelux” states (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxemburg) indicated a recognition of the facts and a desire to do something about them. Before Prague, there had been a marked coolness on the part of some of the participants toward Ernest Bevin’s proposal for a Western Union. But Klement Gottwald had made it very clear that there would no longer be any place for neutrals.

The result was that both France and the Low Countries agreed wholeheartedly to Bevin’s proposal for a mutual assistance pact against aggression, linked with wider—though still largely undefined—plans for close cooperation in all fields. There was no question in anyone’s mind that staff talks would soon begin, if they were not already under way, with a view to coordinating the military plans of the five countries, standardizing their equipment, and otherwise preparing for a war that nobody desired but almost everybody now expected.

The five countries that met at Brussels were not, of course, thinking of a defense in which they would act alone. On both sides of the Atlantic—and on both sides of the Iron Curtain, as well—it was recognized that the key to any Western structure, whether political or military or economic, lay in the United States.

Fortunately, if the United States was still inclined to do too little and too late, both the scale and tempo of its action were nevertheless increasing perceptibly. The character of the debate on the Marshall Plan was such as to lead to the redefinition of an isolationist as “a man who believes that four billion dollars is enough to give Europe for one year.” And even such isolationists were now rather few.

Indeed, much of the criticism leveled against the Marshall Plan centered on the fact that it had no military features. Thus a subcommittee of the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Aid reported: “The economic cooperation of Western European countries envisaged in the European Recovery Plan can be achieved only if it is paralleled by political cooperation and a firm alliance for defensive purposes. Only if Western Europe is given the necessary political and military security will it be willing to rationalize its economy on a continental basis and thereby become economically self-sustaining once again.”

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Germany and the West

Now the political and military security of Western Europe were guaranteed, at least to the extent that a mutual assistance pact could achieve this aim. But this did not automatically assure the rationalization of Europe’s economy on a continental basis.

Some steps toward such a rationalization had already been taken. The customs union of Belgium, Luxemburg, and the Netherlands was perhaps the most far-reaching of these. The practical problems involved in its implementation were still by no means solved—the differences in value between Belgian and Dutch currencies remained a major obstacle—but the will was there, and substantial progress was being made. Similarly, preliminary steps had been taken toward breaking down the tariff barriers between France and Italy.

But no such measures could compare in importance with the reintegration of Western Germany’s productive capacity in the economy of Europe. Indeed, the entire drop in Western Europe’s production, as compared to the pre-war period, was approximately equal to the decline in German production. And to a considerable extent, this drop was the result of deliberate Allied policy, expressed in the Potsdam agreement and the “level of industry” plan drawn up under it. Nor were the Russians solely or even primarily responsible for this. The lead in “de-industrialization” had, in fact, been taken by the United States; it had been supported by the French, and the British had given their reluctant consent.

What this had meant was now history. German industry in the West, operating on the average at a third of its capacity—a sixth in the case of steel, most crucial of all commodities for the rebuilding of Europe—had been unable to meet even the most elementary German needs, much less help in the reconstruction of other European countries. The United States and Britain had found themselves forced to spend several hundred million dollars a year for essential imports of food to keep the German dietary level at half the American, since Germany herself was not producing exports which could meet the bill. Germany’s neighbors were hampered in their reconstruction by the lack of German machinery on which they were dependent, and at the same time suffered from the loss of German markets for their own products.

If the Russians had not been primarily responsible for the Potsdam settlement, they were nevertheless the only ones who benefited by it. For their zone was able to produce enough food for both its inhabitants (on a level equal to that in the West) and for the occupying troops. And by utilizing the industrial capacity of their zone to the full—without worrying about how this fitted in with the “level of industry” agreement—they were able to extract substantial reparations out of its current production.

The British, whose zone had the greatest potential productivity and the greatest actual deficit, were the first to weary of this situation, in which they found themselves paying reparations to Germany for the benefit of the Soviet Union. The United States, which was not so sensitive to economic realities as impoverished Britain, was able to hold out somewhat longer. But eventually it, too, began to tire of the prospect of paying huge sums indefinitely as the price of keeping Germany’s factories and steel mills idle. With the increasing tension between East and West, the two powers found ample basis for acting without Soviet consent in Russia’s disregard of the Potsdam agreement’s provision that Germany be treated as an economic unit. But they were still to some extent hampered by French obstruction, based on France’s desire to expand her own industries, particularly steel, at Germany’s expense.

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The London Agreement

Now, at a meeting in London held simultaneously with the one in Brussels, full agreement on Germany appeared to have been reached by all the Western powers. To be sure, the agreement was so far only on rather general principles, and hitches could develop in practice. But they were not likely to be major ones, since the same forces which had produced the agreement on principles would continue operating to make it work. The most important of these forces was the Soviet threat, which created a sense of the urgency of using all available resources in reconstructing Western Europe as quickly as possible. There was some doubt, however, whether this alone had been enough to win over the French. (For the other nations involved, it—and their own needs—had been ample.) It was reported that the American representatives had felt it necessary to point out that, if Germany’s capacity were not more fully utilized, it might be extremely difficult to get Congressional approval for a second year’s Marshall Plan appropriation large enough to make up for that failure.

More important, perhaps, than any of the specific items was the fact that the powers took as their starting point “the necessity of insuring the economic reconstruction of Western Europe including Germany, and of establishing a basis for the participation of a democratic Germany in the community of free peoples.” Declaring that “delay in reaching these objectives can no longer be accepted,” the conferees went on to recommend “that the combined zone and the French zone should be fully associated in the European Recovery Program, and adequately represented on any continuing organization.” (This provision has now been implemented by the second conference of the sixteen nations participating in the Marshall Plan.)

Thus far, there could be no doubt as to either the meaning or the importance of the agreement reached in London. Less clear was the statement that “Consideration was given by all delegations to the establishment of an international control of the Ruhr on which Germany would be represented . . . to insure that the economic resources of this area should not again be used for the purposes of aggression and that there should be adequate access to the coal, coke, and steel of the Ruhr for the benefit of extensive parts of the European community, including Germany. Agreed recommendations will be submitted to the governments concerned on the scope and form of this control.” This sounded well enough, at first reading. But on further examination, its meaning began to recede into ambiguity. Terms like “adequate access” could cover a multitude of contradictory views and conflicting ambitions. Was “adequate access” to the coal of the Ruhr, for instance, to be determined by the dictates of technological efficiency, or by the requirements of an expanded productive capacity which in many cases was still in the blueprint stage? Moreover, what would the relation of the control body be to other existing bodies already engaged in allocating German resources? Thus, all the coal of the Ruhr—as well as that of other European countries—was subject to allocation by the European Coal Commission already. Would this control be replaced by one affecting German production alone? If so, it hardly seemed a step toward an integrated European economy.

Indeed, international control of German resources could only be significant in a situation in which obstacles still existed to the free flow of European resources in general to the places where they could be best utilized. And it was largely in terms of the extent to which such obstacles were removed that Europe’s contribution to her own reconstruction would have to be judged. The danger in any sort of international control of German resources appeared to be that it might serve as an excuse for postponing a similar control of all European resources. Again, it might develop into a cover under which nations participating in the control would seek to use it to serve their individual interests as against those of Europe as a whole. Perhaps, however, all that was meant was that the occupying powers were ready to delegate some of the functions which they at present exercised to a body which would include representatives of the other European states and the German people.

Equally ambiguous was the agreement “that a federal form of government, adequately protecting the rights of the respective states but at the same time providing for adequate central authority, is best adapted for the reestablishment of German unity at present disrupted.” For the word “adequate” covered a multitude of disagreements. Was the standard to be that of the Weimar Republic, the United States, the Soviet Union, the Swiss Confederation—or none of these?

But despite its inadequacies and ambiguities, the London agreement indicated a fundamental unity of approach. And this, above all, was what was needed.

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The Third Force

Whatever plans the governments of Europe and the United States might make, their success would necessarily depend in large measure on the social forces which could be rallied to their support. And the most strategically significant of these was labor. For neither economic nor political plans could function if the leadership of labor were in the hands of groups determined to prevent it. The Soviet Union and Communists all over the world were well aware of this. So, today, was the United States Department of State.

In the United States, labor support had been forthcoming at once, from both the AFL and CIO. Only the Communist-controlled unions had denounced the Marshall Plan as an imperialist attempt to enslave Europe, and a step toward war with the Soviet Union. In Europe, labor’s initial response had been favorable—again with the exception of the Communist sector—but rather hesitant. But since Communist influence was far more important in most European labor movements than it was in the United States, it was essential to organize non-Communist labor to participate wholeheartedly in the execution of the Plan.

One major obstacle stood in the way, however. All the leading European labor movements—Communist and non-Communist alike—were affiliated with the World Federation of Trade Unions. Both the CIO and the British Trades Union Congress were loath to do anything which might lead to the disruption of the WFTU. They therefore spent several months trying to persuade the Russians to permit the WFTU to take up the Marshall Plan and act in support of it. Not too surprisingly, the Russians showed no enthusiasm whatsoever for this idea. And with their allies, they dominated the administration of the WFTU.

Meanwhile the AFL—which had always refused to join the WFTU on the ground that the organization’s Russian affiliates were not free labor unions at all—was urging the British TUC to call a conference outside the framework of the WFTU. Finally, disturbed by the Russian success in blocking WFTU action on the question and even postponing the Executive Committee meeting at which it was to have been discussed, the TUC yielded. The resulting conference was a striking display of labor harmony. From the United States, delegates attended on behalf of AFL, CIO, and railroad brotherhoods. The complete agreement of all three major groups in the American labor movement went far to persuade the European unions that the Marshall Plan was not intended to enslave them. They found it easy—since the Communist-controlled groups had boycotted the conference—to agree on a program for labor participation in and support of the Plan. At the same time, the representatives of American labor assured their European colleagues that they would see to it that the Plan was not used as an instrument to support anti-labor elements in Europe. And in giving this assurance, they seemed to be on reasonably safe ground, unless the temper of Washington changed sharply.

Another aspect of the mobilization of the European “Third Force” in support of the Marshall Plan was the conference of Socialist parties called by the British Labor party. This conference had been proposed after the Antwerp Conference of Socialist parties by delegates dissatisfied with the fence-straddling resolutions which had been adopted there in a vain effort to win the support of Socialist parties from beyond the Iron Curtain. Here, too, the British had at first held back because of their fear that a split might result. But as one “Socialist” party after another in Russia’s Europe either merged or was merged with the Communists, it became increasingly clear that there was no hope of preserving even the paper unity which had existed at Antwerp. As a result, the British Labor party not only agreed to call a conference of Socialist parties on the Marshall Plan, but invited to it the anti-Communist Socialist groups from Italy—groups which had previously been barred from all international Socialist conferences in favor of the pro-Communist Socialists led by Pietro Nenni.

It seemed clear that, as a result of increasingly open Russian and Communist aggression on the one hand, and the Marshall Plan on the other, a fairly firm alliance was being cemented between the United States and the European advocates of the Third Force. How long it would last, and how successfully it would achieve its aims, was still to be seen. But if the Marshall Plan were carried out in the spirit in which it appeared to have been initiated, and if the scale on which it operated proved to be adequate, then there would seem to be no reason why this collaboration should not prove a fruitful one for some time to come. Whether this was a sufficient and not merely a necessary condition for Europe’s salvation was still uncertain.

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The Road Back

One of the arguments which had carried the greatest weight in winning the UN Assembly for partition was that this was a solution whose finality would lead to its acceptance. In fact, as it turned out, it was this very appearance of finality which stirred the Arabs to adamant resistance. For it set a term on their freedom to act.

As long as the mandate remained in force, and seemed likely to do so indefinitely, both Arab and Zionist leaders could hope that it would eventually be replaced by a state more to their liking. Their conflicts were all directed toward improving their positions in anticipation of an eventual showdown. But pending that showdown, there was always the possibility of agreement, and there was in any case no such sense of desperate urgency as appeared in the months after the passage of the partition resolution.

It was this urgency which was primarily responsible for the increase in both the scale and intensity of the struggle for Palestine. And as long as it was present, there seemed little hope of conciliation.

Hence when the United States, France, and China appealed to the contestants in Palestine to agree to a truce, it surprised no one that Zionists and Arabs alike set as the condition of acceptance the granting of their full political demands. For the Zionists, this meant the implementation of partition; for the Arabs, its suspension.

Meanwhile, it became clearer each day that whatever was said, the partition resolution was in fact not being put into effect. The Palestine Commission remained at Lake Success, vainly appealing for support from the powers in the execution of the task which they had delegated to it. The Arabs of Palestine took no steps toward setting-up a Provisional Council of Government for the proposed Arab state, nor did they give any signs of accepting the invitation extended to them to join the representatives of all Jewish parties—including both Revisionists and Communists—in the Provisional Council set up for the Jewish state. True, the nuclei for Jewish and Arab militias did exist, despite the refusal of Britain to permit their formal organization as such. But these militias, under whatever name, seemed unlikely to make the task of the Palestine Commission much easier.

Even at Lake Success, little progress was made. The Trusteeship Council failed to reach final agreement on a statute for the Free City of Jerusalem. The Economic and Social Council failed to elect the members it was supposed to name to the committee entrusted with establishing the economic union of the two unborn states. And above all, the Security Council showed no signs of agreeing on the necessity of an international force—let alone its composition. Instead, it referred the whole question to the permanent members for discussion and examination. Meanwhile, May 15 and the withdrawal of Britain drew nearer.

Of the permanent members of the Security Council, one—Britain—refused even to participate in the discussions officially. Another, China, made it clear that the same considerations which had caused her to abstain in the Assembly vote made her unwilling to take any action designed to enforce partition. France, ruling millions of Moslems in Africa, was only a little less reluctant to act, despite her last-minute support of partition in the Assembly. And cooperation between the United States and Russia on any practical steps was rendered at least difficult by developments in parts of the world other than Palestine. The result seemed likely to be a steady progress toward catastrophe in Palestine, to the accompaniment of much wringing of hands and little action at Lake Success.

Under these circumstances many of those in Washington who had participated in the framing of the partition plan and helped to push it through the Assembly began to look for a way out. Above all, what they desired was something which would postpone the showdown which they dreaded. But at first, they hesitated to face the loss of prestige involved in calling for the reversal of a policy whose adoption had been so largely the result of American pressure. Hence even in proposing that the Palestine question be referred to the Big Five for study, the United States delegate reiterated his support of the partition plan. Yet it was impossible to conceal the waverings and doubts in Washington.

It was therefore not altogether without warning that on March 20 the United States delegate, Warren R. Austin, effectively reversed the American position in a three-point statement to the Security Council. This asserted:

  1. The plan proposed by the General Assembly is an integral plan which cannot succeed unless each of its parts can be carried out. There seems to be general agreement that the plan cannot now be implemented by peaceful means.
  2. We believe that further steps must be taken immediately not only to maintain the peace but also to afford a further opportunity to reach an agreement between the interested parties regarding the future government of Palestine. To this end we believe that a temporary trusteeship for Palestine should be established under the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations. Such a United Nations trusteeship would be without prejudice to the rights, claims, or position of the parties concerned, or to the character of the eventual political settlement . . . .
  3. Pending the meeting of the proposed special session of the General Assembly, we believe that the Security Council should instruct the Palestine Commission to suspend its efforts to implement the proposed partition plan.

Mr. Austin’s statement did not, of course, preclude partition as an ultimate solution. But it was certainly inconsistent with the implementation of the Assembly plan on May 16. This was true whether or not the United States was able to muster a two-thirds vote to repeal that plan. Nor was this fact in any way altered by President Truman’s subsequent declaration that trusteeship was only intended as a temporary measure to bridge the gap created by Britain’s withdrawal, and that he was still in favor of partition.

Many observers—even some who had been sceptical of the possibility of enforcing partition—doubted whether the shift to trusteeship at this time would offer much hope of peace in Palestine. Nevertheless, it was a proposal which at least on paper had much to recommend it. In the first place, it had been advocated—at different times—by both Jews and Arabs. The former had originally proposed it as a substitute for the British mandate; the latter had presented it to the General Assembly as a last minute alternative to partition. It had been recommended as an interim regime in the unanimous report of the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry—a body which had included such champions of the Zionist cause as Bartley Crum. The Trusteeship Council, unlike the Security Council, was not subject to a veto—and in any case the Soviet Union had boycotted it. (But since there was no provision in the Charter authorizing the Trusteeship Council to raise armed forces, it seemed doubtful whether it would really be possible to bypass the Security Council in fact.) And what appealed most to the proposal’s present sponsors was the fact that it appeared to offer a breathing spell.

But unfortunately, the partition resolution had aroused forces which it would not be easy to put back to sleep. Whatever Zionists might have thought about a United Nations trusteeship in 1946, they regarded it in 1948 as an attempt to steal the state they had regarded as almost within their reach. The Jewish Agency and the Vaad Leumi jointly announced that they rejected trusteeship and would proclaim a state on May 16. The Arabs, who felt that any retreat from immediate partition was a victory for their cause, were readier to swallow trusteeship. But they made it very clear that they regarded it as a very temporary bridge leading to an Arab Palestine, and they demanded that the Arab League play a leading part in its administration. The British, plagued by the continued murder of their soldiers and officials by both Jewish and Arab terrorists, seemed no more anxious to remain and be shot at in the name of trusteeship than in the name of partition.

Hence the major problem which had wrecked partition—that of implementation—remained unsolved under trusteeship. There might be less Arab violence to deal with But the Irgun and the Stern gang would remain, as they had for years, a major threat to the peace and security of Palestine. And it seemed probable that they would recruit many new supporters, in the mood of desperation which was likely to engulf large parts of the Zionist movement. True, their strength depended on funds raised in the United States—as did the strength of Zionism in general. Whether this country would permit the gathering and transfer of millions of dollars to fight a decision in which it had taken the initiative, as it had permitted American dollars to finance opposition to the British, seemed questionable. Yet, considering that it had been the godfather of the Jewish state, it would be extremely difficult for it to participate actively in preventing the establishment of that Jewish state by the Zionists, if the latter attempted to implement the partition resolution by themselves in spite of everything. And if the situation were permitted to develop without any active international intervention, no one knew how many would die before exhaustion produced a truce.

The descent of Avernus was traditionally easier than the road back.

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