The Wilmington morning star., 1947-07-24
Victims Of War

BY WILLIAM HENRY
We shall only be deceiving ourselves, and
LAYING the foundation for many diSappoinN
ments, i we do not recognize il advance that
the task we have set ourselves Of helping 20
promote European revival is uncommonIy
difficult. Our American way Of life is based
On optimism and confidence in the value Of
Individual effort. After two great wars and
many revolutions and counter-revolutions
most Europeans have lost the very basis for
such qualities.
Our American society is stable because a
great many people have a stake in its smooth
functioning. The number of people with such
a conscious stake in Europe was always
smaller, because Europe was a poorer CONT
nert. more restricted in individual opportun-
ity. But the number OF such people has been
alarmingly reduced by the war. Every time
a bombing raid destroyed or half destroyed a
prosperous town, every time foreign invaders
or domestic insurgents burned a flourishing
peasant village the force of individualism was
weakened and the force Of apathetic accept
ance of a bare subsistence livelihood from the
state was strengthened.
Again and again, when I was in Europe
last year, the thought came to me How ter
ri5ly easy it is, in this advanced scientific
age, to destroy in a few hours, even in a
few minutes. what it took centuries OF gener-
atoms to create! This is especially true for
medieval cathedrals md churches, for IL
brariee. tor research laboratories.
have been in correspondence recently with
an olo Journalistic colleague, a German cor
respondent whom I knew in Moscow. He. was
a highly educated man, never a Nazi sympa-
thizer, western in culture and sympathies.
And he has seen his whole world of civiliza-
ton cru1nble and disappear quite as complete
ly as if he had been deported to some canni-
bal island and left there without any chance
to escape.
With his wife he got out If Budapest before
the Russians came in with what he could put
into his automobile. He found shelter in a
single room in one of the little towns in the
British zone which are Overlooking with refu-
gees. erma who have beer expelled from
the eastern provinces. His car was requisi-
toned by the British authorities. His life say
ineS were in Sweden; they were confiscated
unde4 the modern practice Of looting all the
foreign private assets of citizens of a defeated
country. There is SO little paper in the British
Zore that his former newspaper comes out in
a pathetic one-sheet form and he cannot prac-
tice his old profession.
What this man has suffered is not excep-
tional: as he writes to me, others have expe-
rienced far greater tragedies. But the intelli-
gent productive work which he formerly en-
Joyed has been simply blotted out; his exis-
terce has become largely a matter of keeping
alive if possible, on the meagre German al
ioWance o. calories. His natural sympathy
would have been for the West, against the to-
taljtarian Soviet East which he knows from
personal experience. But it is not surprising,
IN view of his personal experiences, that ne
should write in this pessimi@tic tone:
There are many people who have given up
believing in the goodwill Of the occupation
powers. 1t seems that, for me countries which
are Interested in world trade, it is cheaper
at the expense of their taxpayers to feed the
Germans with grain SO badly that they can
not work than to promote the development Of
the German non-nlilitary industry, which
must then come into competition with their
own"
I get a little Russian Social Democratic
magazine, which l first read many years ago
in Berlin. 1t was transferred TO Paris after
Hitler came into power ana moved to the
United States after the collapse of France.
Through all these vicissitudes it has kept the
same staff of voluntary contributors, the
same formal, the same spiri: of uncompro-
missing opposition to fascism and communism.
This magazine, in a recent issue, told the
story of a Russian Jewish woman, a member
of the Social Democratic Party, who had died
shortly after her arrival in this country. 1t
was ( story tragic, heroic and deeply instruc-
tive The woman's life had been a long story
o. Underground work, exile, imprisonment.
After being imprisoned several times in Rus
STA because her conception Of socialism diff
fered from that of the Communists she was
expelled altogether from Russia and found
refuge in Germany.
Leaving Germany after the establishment
ot the Nazi regime she lived for a time in
France, refusing to 60 to America when she
was offered an opportunity to do SO after
France was overrun and taking part in the
French underground, which was doubly
dangerous Cor her because Of her racial origin.
One OF her brothers was shot by the Gestapo:
tnera &c mr. rau,r of ,y,o+her IN a Co1,;a+ rricop
Experiences like this convey an impression
OF what people of independent spirit, educated
people have gone through IN Europe-some-
thing which the average American, against
the background of his relatively sheltered life,
can hardly cornprehend.-Wall Street Journal.