Evening star., 1946-01-10


can people.
The American people are incurabl'
reformers-of other people. No
satisfied with helping to give tn,
Germans and the Japs the wors
licking they ever got, we ar,
now bent on reforming them
determined to make them ovel
into fine, free, outstanding dem
ocrats like ourselves. At Least
we've embarked on a program with
that end in view and nothing seems
likely to stop us unless our SYM
pathy Tor the boys that want tt
come home gets the best of us.
This isn't a Truman program mol
an administration program. II
coms nearer being truly nationa,
program than anything the Gov
ernment has engaged in save the
war itself. About the only dissentel
I've happened to observe Is myself
although Walter Lippmann has re-
Gently shown signs of losing any
missionary zeal he may have had
Speaking of the difficulty expert
enced in carrying out our occupa-
tion policy in Germany, he remarked
one day this week, There was an
alternative. That was to let the
Germans re-educate themselves and
to fix our attention upon making 1t
impossible for them to rearm. II
was relatively simple thing to do
Not the American Way.
A relatively simple thing to do
and one not requiring SO many
hundreds of thousands of American
soldiers to carry out. One that
would permit a much more rapid
rehabilitation of our wartime
Army.
But that, up to the moment,
hasn't been the American way
Our way has been to debate and
argue over what We should teach
the Germans and the Japanese and
the ways and means of doing same
We've sat in our seats-nearly
everybody except me-and ap-
plauded the efforts of Gen. Mac
Arthur in Japan to impose on the
natives a system of government
that might have been the prize
handiwork of the CIO-PAC. It's
an excellent system of government,
all right, but no nation ever
achieved 1t and no nation ever will
In that manner.
You've been reading. in daily in
stailments, the Macarthur program
of reform-which is the American
Government program and which is
your own program. How long do
you think it would take to put that
program through the United States
Congress If il, were intended1to apply
to the people of the United States,
including Mississippi? What field
day the Republican-Southern Demo-
crat coalition in Congress would
have If President Truman should
ask for "must" legislation compar-
able to that which we are trying
to make must" in Japan. And yet
If any member of the political alli-
ance that has been blocking the
Presidents domestic program has
raised his voice against our much
more radical program for Germany
and Japan, nobody seems to have
heard him.
determination of Policy Possible.
1t is just possible that the stead
lily increasing chorus of discomfort
coming from the troops overseas
may serve to make the administra-
ton and Congress take a new look
at this part of our foreign policy
We've been accustomed to say that
our best ambassadors abroad are
the troops themselves. 1t is from
them, we have thought, that other
peoples would learn the advantages
of our way Of life. It's sound idea
but what are these peoples going
to learn from troops that have only
one firm conviction-namely, that
they haven't any business being
where they are, that they ought to
be allowed to come home?
This is not to say that the troops
have thought the matter through to
any better purpose than the rest OF
US; most of them doubtless would
consider the program perfectly sat-
isfactory, If given to some other
troops to execute. But the how
they are raising may accomplish