The Wilmington morning star., 1945-08-25
Fair Enough

Editors no.e.-The Star and the News
accept no responsibility for the personal
views of Mr.. Pegler, and often disagree
with them as much as many OF his read
ers His articles serve the good purpose
of making people Think
BY WEsTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1945, BY King Features Syndicate.)
NEW YORK,-Twice in the course of Ernest
Bevins general statement of foreign policy of
the new British Labor government he com.
pared Hitlerism with Stalinism, though in
more delicate terms, and found them equal
Zone thing we must aim at resolutely and
that is to prevent the substitution of one form
of totalitarianism for another he said early
in the address, And later, discussing Bulgaria,
Romania and Hungary, he said 1.-The impress
sion we get from recent developments is that
one kind of totalitarianism is being replaced
by another"
For years. in the United States this has
been the opinion of those Americans who re-
sisted the communist influence in our politics
and even in the national government under
Franklin D. Roosevelt The similarity is ap-
parent to every honest mind, yet from 1888
onward and more aggressively since 1914 when
Hitler attacked Russia, our communists and
those who had confidence in American CAPT
talism during the long panic, attacked the
faith of Americans in their form of govern
ment with false representations. We were
asked to be friendly to the Russian people and
to give them understanding even to the extent
OF ignoring the truth and adopting system
from which they were unable to bulge, even
though they had been sufficiently enlightened
to want to- The Russians have never had any
experience under freedom and, to them, the
dictatorship of small group of strong men
ruling by force and terror but benignly as long
as they obey, probably does represent com.
plete liberty
Friendship for the Russian people, of SEN
timental kind based on good will and gener.
oslty rather than acquaintance, which has
been lacking, did not require us to adopt any
phase of their totalitarian system For reel.
procity had that been so, we might as well
have required them to adopt free elections
under the two-party system, capitalism and
freedom of religion and the press
The Americans however, made no such con.
ditions. We were tolerant enough 10 grant them
the right to live on under dictatorship or
overthrow it if they could and that was their
desire. Always, however, the propaganda per-
sisted that whoever in the United States Oh.
posed communism, exposed the penetration OF
communists and their sympathizers in the
Roosevelt party and the Roosevelt government
and hammered away at the fundamental like
ness of the German and Russian systems, was
a nazi or fascist and an enemy of labor and
progress.
Bevin referred to this, also when he said
there is a tendency to extend those names
to groups of people and parties who are
neither nazi nor fascist but who simply want
to be represented and are dsliked by the
majority parties who see the possibility of win
ming power and would like to deny those
parties the opportunity to express their views
in the election
He was speaking of conditions at home but
he oiohf hoY, han 10
repartee of the CLIO and some elements of the
American Federation of Labor in our own
election of last fall. In that contest in some
areas OF New York, populated largely by i'm
migrants still unassimilated though natural
lied and those able to vote, citizen wearing
a Dewey campaign button could expect to be
heckled if not attacked in the streets There
was in indication of that version of demo
cracy,' a very much overworked word" as
Bevin said which so many political unioneers
of the C1O were fighting to impose on the
native American.
One tragedy of the last election was not a
matter of personalities but the fact that the
American people, under the spell Of the most
powerful propaganda ever exerted in this
country and in fear of losing the war by
changing presidents indicated to the peoples
OF Europe that they, too, had lost faith in
the capitalism which had made their country
the greatest nation earth and our living
standard the highest The Europeans looked
to our verdict and. not knowing how it was
wrought, belived that we had deliberately
Gone LETT toward communism. The truth is
that the majority who elected Roosevelt had
been told that communism was not totali.
tartan form but democracy" and believed it
and were worried by subtle fear that we
must accept diluted communism here OF. fight
the real thing in a war.
Just after the British election news picture
showed Clement Attlee surrounded by his fol-
lowers giving the communist salute of the
clenched fist. A few days later, Harold Laski,
the non-combatant revolutionary and chairman
of the Labor party, announced that Spain was
fascist "PlaguG spot which must be elm
mated.
Now Bevin says his majesty's government
is not prepared to take any step which would
encourage civil in that country
All of which recalls the story of the English
office clerk who discovered his wife in in
fidelity with burly neighbor but announced
that he had taken horrible revenge.
He met the bounder in a pub and when the
cad wasn't looking stuck his finger in his beer
SO THEY SAY