The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1945-11-22
Fair Enough
Nv WESTBROOK PEGLER
convrixht, 1s45 By King Features Syndicate)

NEW YORK, Nov. q - II understanding
and tolerance be the price OF good relations
between the United States and Russia indeed
of peace in the world, then the American
people must repudiate some OF our most pre-
cious wall notices Certainly we cannot con-
tinue to denounce aggressors and reconcile
ourselves to a relation amounting to a part
nership with the nation which seized the Baltic
republics in a deal with Hitler, parallel to
some of his own seizures which we scornfully
condemn, and, by attacking weak and unof-
Tending Finland, aroused our Righteousness to
such degree that the Late President Roose-
welt bitterly accused the Soviet Union.
These be embarrassing facts to recoilect but
they are all in the record and it were better
to acknowledge and submit to them than to
try to accommodate the national mind and
soul to lies The chronology of events in the
period between Hitlers treaty with Stain,
which actually touched off the war, and Hit
lers attack on Russia, cannot be changed by
denials and, indeed, our own government is
sued an official publication, straight factual,
Unconditional dairy which proves to any honest
person that we are not, as we have said, an
enemy of aggression. We have used this clic<e
to deceive ourselves and adorn our war mo.
tives with false nobility that cannot be prov.
ed when our actual motive of self-preservation
was noble enough.
Were we implacable enemies Of all aggres.
sion and oppression of the weak, as such; we
should now be at war with Russia to redress
wrongs identical in character and method with
Hitler's. We are not, however, nor by the
record of our treatment of the American In.
dian tribes, are we ourselves innocent of az.
gression and that same infltration and duplc.
ity that Hitler practised. We, too had our OBJ.
pressed n1inorities of white rascals who filter
| ed into the Indians country whose grievances
! presently moved us to rescue them even as
Hitler rescued his Sudeten Germans Indeed,
it could be plausibly argued that he got the
blueprint out Of our own history.
| We will never understand Russia if we try
to picture Russia as peace loving and unag-
gressive nation and if we must be tolerant Of
the ways in which they differ from us, we
| must tolerate in them a good deal of the
same theology thai we objected to in Hitler
who got his from Mussolini who merely adapt
ed communism and its methods and brutality
to his own ambitions.
A generation Of children in the schools today
will naturally ask how they are to distinguish
between communist government of Finland,
which Russia organized and recognized and
the Quisling government which Hitler arrang-
ed in Norway. They will be unable to find
virtue In Russia's procedure In the Baltic re-
publics. Starting with treaties Of mutual as
sistance'' and followed ~'ithin weeks by IRE
quests from their communist Quisling parlia-
ments for absorption into Russia - all by ar
rangement with Hitler whose own use Of the
same plan their teachers will condemn as foul
aggression. II we teach them the facts Of his
tory and justify Russia while we damn Hitler
they will have us to blame II they grow I'D
crooks and liars and, in their time, resort to
the same ways to absorb Latin American
countries.
On the other hand, II they are taught the
truth as nearly as 1t can be got at, which is
approximately just that Hitler and the Japa-
nese were enormously strong and spelling for
fight and that we fought them because we
were obviously their next victim, they will not
be troubled by irreconclable conflicts In our
story.
The extension of the American system Of
government and the liberties which it under
takes to guarantee to the whole world is i'm
possible and not necessarily desirable We
can't lnfllct freedom on the Russians and no
sane American would want to try. Neither are
we IN any position to impose freedom on the
beaten Germans and own communists,
notably those in the National Maritime Union,
VINO are now raising clamor for the return
OF all American troops from all theatres of
war. and threatening to tie up the ships with
strike unless our government concentrates
on this movement to the neglect of all other
uses of our ships
This naturally will appeal specifically to the
sololerS themselves and to their families but
me motive of the communists in this organic
alton has nothing to do with the longings and
heartaches OF the same boys whom they
were eager to sacrifice by slaughter on the
peaches of France when they were premature
~ demanding a second front to relieve the
straln on Russia and trade American lives for
RUSSIAN lives. Their purpose is to make us
abandon the areas that Americans captured
| oy lighting so that Russia may move in for
RUSSIA own purposes which were plainly re-
Vealed IN moves even now only a few years
old. But we can't occupy them forever, or in
deed, for very long because Americans will
rebel at such duty
AS to atrocities and massacres we are pro-
| ceedlng rlghteously against a select group of
Offenders, the Germans, because they were
our enemies and they lost and can't prevent
us. But we are hypocritical to tell ourselves
mat we are Furnishing atrocity as SUCH We
aren't even allowed to know what the Rus
SLAMS did with their captive populations and
even II we did know and their recrod matched
that OF the Nazis we would do nothing about
1t because we can't and lack the belly for
another fight of that size.