In times when month-by-month events give little comfort to the hopes of men in general, and perhaps of Jews in particular, it is the 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. The judgments expressed here are his own, and in no sense represent or reflect official policy. 

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In Lake success and Belgrade and Berlin, the pattern of conflict was the same. The Western powers—which meant, above all, the United States—had ceased to give ground. The Soviet Union had not yet begun to retreat. The result was deadlock.

This was true of questions where there were basic conflicts of principle, and of those where the issue was strategic rather than ideological. And at times it seemed also to be true where only prestige was involved, and indeed little of that. But this last might be something of an illusion; for the disputes over prestige were generally ancillary to those over principle or strategic advantage, and it might well be that neither side bothered to yield where it might have done so with no real loss, simply because it recognized that surrender would bring no progress toward a settlement of the underlying issues.

This might explain the frequency of the Soviet veto, even in regard to questions whose significance it was difficult to discern. For by exercising the veto when it did not matter, the USSR might sometimes succeed in avoiding an issue where it did, and could at least transfer attention, to some degree, from other issues to the procedural one.

Thus, again, the point at which negotiations broke down was often the very preliminary one of constructing an agenda. But failure to agree on an agenda often meant that the blame for a fundamental disagreement remained unapportioned, and that it was possible for an aggressor to continue to act aggrieved.

A case in point was the UN’s commission on conventional armaments. Here, the Soviet Union continued to insist that the scope of the discussions be extended to include atomic weapons, while the Western powers resisted that proposal on the ground that the latter were already under consideration by the UN’s comission on atomic energy. That body, of course, had failed to reach agreement because of Russia’s refusal to accept any provision for effective inspection, coupled with her insistence on the immediate destruction of all atomic weapons in the possession of the United States. Obviously, there was little to be gained by simply transferring this dispute to a new arena, so that the attitude of the Western powers was easy enough to understand. But meanwhile, the Soviet representatives were able to concentrate the attention of the world—or that part of it which still bothered with the UN’s less spectacular disputes—on the procedural question, and divert it from the fact that the same issue of effective inspection would in any case bar agreement on reduction of conventional weapons. At the same time, the Western nations permitted themselves to be maneuvered into publicly giving up the effort to reach an agreement for armament reduction, while the Soviet Union appeared as the advocate of continued negotiations.

Closely related to the UN’s inability to make any progress toward disarming its member states was its failure to arm itself. Both were aspects of the insistence on national sovereignty of which the USSR was the most emphatic and uncompromising—though by no means the only—exponent. Creation of a force capable of implementing the decisions of the Security Council was the responsibility of the UN Military Staffs Committee, representing the permanent members of the Security Council. This committee, after meeting on and off over a period of three years, now found itself forced to report that it had not as yet been able to agree on where to begin. Such questions as the control and use of the proposed UN force had not been reached for discussion, since the powers were still occupied in disputing its composition. Certainly this issue, if not purely technical in nature, was predominantly so, and not innately a difficult one to resolve. But agreement on it would merely have opened the way for more fundamental and explosive disputes, not for the creation of an effective UN force. So there was little incentive to settle even that part of the problem on which agreement might have been possible.

At the Danubian conference in Belgrade, the issues on which the powers were disputing also seemed, on the surface, something less than vital. American insistence that any control body for the Danube include representatives of Austria and eventually Germany, and Soviet refusal to accede to this demand, occupied the time of the conference. But the real issue was whether the Soviet Union and its satellites would have exclusive dominion over the river, or whether it would be open to the free navigation of all nations. And that question was not one which would be determined by the presence or absence of Austria and Germany on a control body in which the Soviet bloc would in any case be dominant. Indeed, the whole Danubian conference appeared to have taken on the character of a sparring match in which each side’s main preoccupation was with the accumulation of material for a white paper presenting its explanation of a breakdown which both regarded as inevitable. Meanwhile, the Russians had the river, except in its upper reaches, and seemed certain to keep it—at least, as long as the break between Tito and the Cominform did not lead him to scek an accommodation with the West.

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The Central Problem

In his annual report, UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie pointed to the failure of Russia and the United States to achieve a settlement in Germany as the greatest single obstacle to international harmony. The extent of this failure was becoming clearer each day.

Its most obvious index, of course, was the continuing blockade of Berlin. In that city, the Russian offer to feed the entire population remained unimplemented, to nobody’s surprise. Meanwhile, the planes of the Western powers brought in an average of four thousand tons of supplies each day, and the capacity of the airlift was still increasing.

At the same time, the British, French, and American envoys in Moscow called on Joseph Stalin for two hours to discuss the German situation. They were reported to have emerged smiling. But the smiles appeared to be wearing off after several subsequent conferences between them and Foreign Minister Molotov. For Russia made no move to ease the blockade; on the contrary, Soviet pressure in Germany was intensified. Nor did the Moscow negotiations seem likely to be more successful than previous attempts to reach an agreement. For it was reported that the Soviet Union was still demanding, as a basis for negotiations, that the Western powers agree to concede it a share of the Ruhr’s production and participation in its control, as well as postponing their planned reorganization of Western Germany and accepting the new Russian-sponsored mark as the sole legal currency of Berlin. These were terms to which the West could not agree, for they involved the restoration of a situation in which the Soviet Union operated unchecked in Eastern Germany, while blocking the effective rehabilitation of the Western zones and their integration with Western Europe.

In Berlin, meanwhile, the gap between the Soviet sector and the rest of the city was becoming wider. Seeking to keep the door open for a compromise on the currency question, the Western powers had ordered that Soviet-sponsored marks were to be acceptable for rationed goods and certain other expenses, as well as for three-fourths of all salaries. But this made the economy of the Western-occupied sectors of Berlin largely dependent on the Russian authorities, and when the latter blocked all accounts of Western firms (including the city government) held in banks in the Soviet sector, wages and bills in the Western sectors went unpaid. In the face of this situation, the Western powers had no choice but to bring in enough of the new West German currency to meet the urgent needs of Berlin. Since this was banned in the Soviet sector of the city, the economic division of Berlin was now almost complete. A man who lived in one part of the city and worked in the other found himself unable to use the money he earned for the purpose of paying his expenses. In this situation, a black market in the two currencies quickly arose. Then, to facilitate transactions, the British made them legal and licensed exchange shops in their section of the city. It soon developed that, despite Berlin’s isolation from Western Germany, the city’s inhabitants had so much more faith in the Western mark than in the Eastern that the former brought almost three of the latter.

Berlin also found itself with two separate police forces. When the Russians had originally occupied the city, they had installed Paul Markgraf, a former Reichswehr officer turned Communist, as Chief of Police. They had vetoed all attempts of the municipal government to replace him, and Markgraf, for his part, had never hesitated to carry out the will of the Soviet authorities. His police had repeatedly been implicated in the kidnapping of anti-Communist Berliners; they had also been notorious for their complacence when Communist mobs attacked their opponents. Now the City Assembly voted to remove Markgraf and replace him with the Social Democrat Johannes Stumm. The Russians, of course, refused to recognize this action, and Markgraf announced that any policemen taking orders from Stumm would be arrested. But the Western powers supported the action of the municipal government, and Stumm set up new headquarters for the Western sectors of the city. A similar split took place in the city’s food department, the Social Democratic head of which was unilaterally “removed” by the Russians, and seemed in prospect for other departments as well.

At the same time, the Western powers began to take retaliatory action. They had already shut off shipments from their zones to the Soviet zone; now they barred transit shipments between it and other countries via Western Germany. This, they said, was not intended as retaliation for the blockade of Berlin. Rather, it was the result of the Soviet failure to return freight cars to the Western zones, the strain on the Western railroads produced by rerouting of trains consequent on the closing of the Soviet zone’s borders, and the impossibility of scheduling trains because the transportation sub-committee of the Allied Control Council—broken up by the Russians—was no longer meeting. Whatever its cause, however, this action undoubtedly strengthened the hand of the Western powers in any negotiations over Germany.

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The Ideological War

In Germany, there could be no question that at least for the present Russia had lost out in the political struggle, whatever might be the result of the Battle of Berlin. The convictions of non-Communist Germans had been reinforced, those of even convinced Communists shaken, by the blockade. The Communist leader Wilhelm Pieck was reported to have told a meeting of party leaders from the Soviet zone: “This damned blockade has cost us more in three weeks than we were able to gain in the previous three years.” And in the American sector of Berlin, the youth section of the Communist-controlled Socialist Unity party passed a resolution denouncing the blockade as a crime against humanity and declaring that those Communists who defended it were foreign agents with whom it was necessary to break off all relations.

Elsewhere in the world, the Communists were also suffering setbacks. In Finland, where they had lost a fourth of their strength in the elections, they demanded that they nevertheless be permitted to hold the Ministry of the Interior. But despite the presence of Russian forces in Finland, the other parties refused to agree to further Communist control of the police. And when the Communists sought to precipitate a crisis by refusing to enter the Cabinet unless their conditions were granted, a purely Social Democratic government was formed with the support of the Agrarians. Together, these two parties commanded a safe majority of the votes in Parliament; any Communist attempt to overthrow the new cabinet would have to take place elsewhere. And although the Communists had threatened to hamstring the government by strikes, it seemed unlikely that they would succeed in this, since the majority of the workers supported the Social Democrats. Nor did the Communists have the control of the police, which had played a crucial role in all their other coups. Only if the USSR was ready to intervene directly did there seem any probability that the Communists would win their demands. For the moment, despite denunciations of the new Finnish government in the Moscow press, the Kremlin seemed reluctant to act.

But if the Communists had suffered a defeat in Finland, they were consolidating their power in Hungary. This did not mean that they were any more popular in the one country than in the other. But after free elections had resulted in an overwhelming defeat for them, they had taken over the key posts in the government with the aid of the Soviet occupation forces. After that, they had made the other chief parties expel their less subservient members, and follow wherever the Communists led. The Socialist party had been absorbed outright. However, the purged Smallholders party had been permitted to retain the presidency for Zoltan Tildy albeit he was reduced to a figurehead. Now even this was changed. It was suddenly announced that President Tildy’s son-in-law had been caught spying for the West; Tildy “resigned” and was replaced by the renegade Socialist leader, Arpad Szakasits. All this, however, was merely mopping up. Hungary’s fate had long been settled; nothing short of a withdrawal of Soviet troops could change it.

Nevertheless, if the Hungarian government, like others in Eastern Europe, was seated securely on Soviet bayonets, this did not mean that popular discontent was not rising. From all the lands of Eastern Europe, refugees were still escaping to the West. Tyranny was not popular, and the knowledge that the West European standard of living was rising under the influence of the Marshall Plan was a powerful spur. At the same time, there seemed little chance of further Communist penetration in the Western countries as long as economic improvement continued. The first effects of the Marshall Plan were already apparent. In England and France, bread and many other commodities were derationed. In Western Germany, nominal rations rose by a fifth and the actual food supply in even greater degree. And industrial recovery appeared to be keeping pace with the improvement in food.

In Europe, the West appeared to be winning the political war. In Asia, however, the Communists were still on the offensive. In China, the graft-ridden government of Chiang Kai-shek no longer talked in terms of wiping out the Communists. Rather, it sought desperately to hold back their advancing armies. Here, the struggle was not between democracy and dictatorship; it was between an old-fashioned and inefficient military despotism and a modem and streamlined dictatorship, and the odds seemed to be with the latter.

In Indo-China, where the French had sought to restore their old colonial rule, they found themselves on the losing side of a ruinous war against the nationalist Viet Minh movement. And this movement was led by the veteran Communist Ho-Chi-Minh, although it appeared to include non-Communist elements as well.

In British Malaya, tin mines and rubber plantations were in constant terror of rebel Communist bands. Despite the use of airplanes and all the other appurtenances of modern war by the British, the rebellion seemed to be growing. One reason, perhaps, was that neither the planters and mine owners nor many of the British colonial administrators seemed to have learned anything. One of the first steps taken by the government in its endeavor to suppress the rebellion was the outlawing of strikes—a measure hardly calculated to rally the support of Malaya’s workers.

Indeed, the past mistakes of the West in Asia had resulted in the growth of a Communist movement capable of making substantial trouble even where an enlightened government now held power. Thus, in Socialist Burma, a government which had at first sought to include the Communists found itself forced to outlaw them when they engaged in armed rebellion, and it found their suppression no easy task.

In one Asiatic country, the Communists had never gained much strength. Japan had not had a strong Communist movement before the war, and the enlightened labor policies of the occupation had helped in the growth of a democratic labor movement rather than a Communist one. But the Communists seemed likely to benefit substantially from a sharp shift which now appeared to be in process in General MacArthur’s labor policy. A directive from the General to the Japanese government resulted in ordinances whereby the cabinet—in apparent violation of the Constitution—denied the right of collective bargaining to public employes. In protest, the head of MacArthur’s labor division, James Killen of the AF of L, resigned his post. And Japanese labor, which hitherto had regarded the occupation as its friend and protector, was now likely to accept the Communist picture of a reactionary and anti-labor United States.

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If there was little doubt in anyone’s mind as to the seriousness of the Communist challenge in other lands, the situation in the United States was less clear. American Communists had never won the support of more than a small percent of the population; both the exponents and the self-proclaimed enemies of Communism in the United States often seemed to belong to the realm of burlesque. Yet there could be no doubt that Communists and persons close to the Communist movement had succeeded, at one time or another, in gaining access to positions of power in groups of importance in the community. These included trade unions, cultural and philanthropic bodies, and organizations claiming to represent minority racial and religious groups. Some, too, had unquestionably at one time or another obtained key posts in local and even national governments. And, Communists being what they were, they had used these points of vantage in the interests of the Communist party and, directly or indirectly, of the Soviet Union.

One aspect of Communist activity much in the news was the gathering of information from government employes for transmission to Russia. The testimony of Miss Elizabeth Bentley before the House Committee on Un-American Activities gave details on the operation of one section of the network which the Communist party had been constructing since the early 30’s for the purpose of extracting confidential material from United States government files for the USSR. The spectacular aspect of the particular ring whose activities had been coordinated by Miss Bentley appeared to lie less in the importance of the information obtained than in the importance of some of the people who supplied it.

Not all of those named in the Bentley testimony appeared to have been actual Communists or fellow-travelers, or to have known what use was being made of the information they supplied. Indeed, it was possible that many even of the active Communists among them merely believed that they were giving the Communist party information which would be of use to it in its political functions. This implied a certain degree of naivety on their part. But it was hardly a greater degree of naivety than that which many of their non-Communist compatriots had displayed during the war years.

Making all allowances, however, it was clear that at least some of those involved had known precisely what they were doing and that if most of the rest had not, they had displayed a degree of irresponsibility which completely unfitted them for any position involving the handling of confidential information. And, like the Amerasia case and the Canadian spy ring disclosures, the Bentley testimony helped to document the role of the Communist movement as an instrument of the Soviet Union.

Many, however, questioned the desirability of the public presentation of Miss Bentley’s charges. They held: that, if any crime had been committed, evidence should be presented to a grand jury and an indictment obtained; pointing out that a grand jury had heard Miss Bentley and that no indictment had resulted, they claimed that the Congressional hearings involved the besmirching of innocent persons. To others, this seemed to involve a confusion of issues. They believed that, irrespective of whether there was legal proof of acts criminal under existing law, there was clear evidence of conspiratorial activities connected with the Communist party. The former question was properly one for the courts; the latter was one for the consideration of the legislative and executive branches of government, and of the American people, in the determination of public policy. And though a refusal to answer on the ground of possible self-incrimination was legally permissible, it carried with it no presumption of innocence.

Certainly most of those who protested against the blasting of reputations by testimony before the Un-American Activities Committee—a reproach which had somewhat less substance in the present case, when persons accused were given an early opportunity to testify in rebuttal, than it had in previous instances—had never felt similarly in regard to the investigation of big business by Congressional committees. Nor, indeed, had they jumped to the defense of Fritz Kuhn and his fellow Nazis when they had received the attention of the selfsame Un-American Activities Committee. In some cases, of course, it was a question of whose ox was gored. But in others, what was involved was the belief of many liberals that Communists were fundamentally decent but misunderstood people. It was precisely this belief which the public presentation of the facts about the activities of the Communist party might be expected eventually to undermine.

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One of those who believed firmly that American Communists were misguided at times, but had their hearts in the right place, was Henry Agard Wallace. To be sure, Mr. Wallace might have had difficulty in pointing out the specific respects in which he thought the Communists were misguided. Certainly these did not come to the fore at the convention of his new Progressive party.

There, the Communist-line steamroller operated by Lee Pressman had overcome all opposition, first in the Platform Committee (whose non-Communist chairman, Rexford Guy Tugwell, found himself and his sympathy for the Marshall Plan completely ignored), and then on the convention floor. When one delegate suggested that the platform contain a statement that the Progressive party’s criticisms of American foreign policy did not imply an unconditional indorsement of that of any other nation, his proposal was indignantly rejected as an unwarranted slight on the Soviet Union. And Mr. Wallace, in his acceptance speech, went out of his way to express his solidarity not only in general but in all particulars with the decisions of the convention.

Nevertheless, Mr. Wallace was not happy at the idea of complete Communist control of the Progressive party. This was not so much because he rejected the Communist position on any issue, but because he recognized that Communist support was costing him ten times as many votes as it gained him. Hence, from time to time, he sought to disassociate himself from his Communist backers without, however, disavowing them. In one such statement, he said that the United States was menaced by three internationals—Communism, clericalism, and capitalism. Stating that although he disagreed with their method, both Communists and Catholics were working for a better world, he said that he would attack neither in such a way as to cause hate. To the capitalists, whom he termed the most dangerous threat, he made no promises.

Mr. Wallace’s running-mate, Glen Taylor, was not a Communist either. Indeed, some of the arguments he used to support his and their position must have given the Communists pain. Thus, he cited the refusal of the two Soviet schoolteachers Michael Samarin and Oksana Stepanovna Kasenkina to return to the USSR as proof that the Russian people were unwilling to die in order to impose Communism on the world. It was a good argument, but not one that Stalin would enjoy.

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In most parts of the world, the UN had seen its prestige fade because the rivalry of America and the Soviet Union had prevented it from taking action. In Palestine, the two powers had, at least on the surface and for a moment, cooperated. The UN had, in a sense acted. But its prestige had not been noticeably raised by the results.

It was now clear that UN decisions were not self-executing; it was also becoming rather obvious that the UN could not or would not create the instruments for their enforcement, even on Lilliputians. True, it had secured the acceptance of two truces by invoking the threat of an arms embargo against the side which refused to cease fighting. But whereas the first truce had been fairly generally observed, at least so far as overt military action was concerned, violations of the second continued to occur daily on many fronts.

Moreover, the situation was deteriorating, not improving. Both sides had demanded that a term be set to the truce, and threatened to resume their freedom of action if this were not done. In the case of the Arabs, this was merely a continuation of the position they had held all along. Popular discontent in the states of the Arab League was increasing; a continuation of inaction on the part of the Arab governments might prove fatal to them domestically. At the same time, they recognized that the relative military situation of Israel was improving. Caught between the upper and the nether millstone, they were only too likely to choose desperate courses.

Israel, on the other hand, felt that the military balance had already shifted so far that the truce was merely delaying an eventual military triumph. Moreover, many Zionists appeared to feel that the presence of the UN mediator and truce commission formed a brake on the realization of territorial ambitions beyond the limits set in the General Assembly’s resolution. More and more, Israel’s claims were based on the success of Jewish arms, rather than on any UN decision. It was perhaps this feeling that more could be obtained without the UN framework than within it which led Moshe Shertok to propose direct negotiations with the Arabs, by-passing Count Bernadotte. On the other hand, this may have been merely a gesture intended to show the world Israel’s readiness to negotiate, since it was obvious that the Arabs would reject direct conversations as implying a prior recognition of the Jewish state.

In the face of an increasingly unfavorable situation, Count Bernadotte continued his efforts to bring about at least a limited amount of peace in the Holy Land. From no side did he receive much encouragement. American opposition checkmated his attempt to secure a force of two or three thousand to enforce the truce. Indeed, he still was unable to secure even the tiny contingents of observers already promised by the United States and France.

Among the Arabs, only Abdullah and his Arab Legion seemed inclined to cooperate with the Mediator. Truce violations by the other Arab states, and even more frequently by the Arab irregulars whose military weakness did not make it possible to ignore them, were continued.

But the mediator, and other representatives of the UN, seemed to be coming into more and more frequent conflict with Israel. The case of the five Englishmen kidnapped by Irgun from a building under UN protection during the first truce, and subsequently held for trial by the Israeli government, continued to cloud relations even though three of the five were released for lack of evidence. (They then returned to their posts in Jerusalem’s electric plant, despite the advice of the British Consul that they leave Palestine.) An even greater source of potential conflict lay in the refusal of Israel to consider the demand of the mediator that it permit the return of the 350,000 Arab refugees estimated to have fled Israel. The Arab DP’s lacked even camps, and had no organized international aid. The hundred thousand pounds which great Britain offered for their relief was tiny compared to the sum—inadequate as it was—available for DP’s in Europe.

Another source of trouble was Jerusalem. Here, at least in theory, the Arabs had agreed to both demilitarization and the mediator’s proposal that all troops be instructed not to return fire in case of truce violations. The Israeli government—perhaps from fear that it could not control the Irgunists concentrated in Jerusalem—had agreed to neither proposal. Instead, it had proclaimed Jerusalem occupied territory and appointed a military governor. This might be interpreted as a demand for Jerusalem in any final settlement. Or it might be simply a device for bringing the Jerusalem Irgun under government orders.

In any case, while the situation in Palestine sometimes seemed to pass all understanding, it could hardly be said to be moving rapidly toward peace.

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