Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1947-05-08
No Time for Giving Up

1HO YEARS dSU bOudy r1CIQldl1y
surrendered totally. Hitler, who had
unleashed on the world evils and
agonies without precedent, was dead
by his own hand. Japan's days were
clearly numbered; the nightmare of
Nightmares, the most terrible con-
dict in the history of mankind, was
all but over; now stricken human.
ity could hope that out of this great
Allied victory would be fashioned
peace, decent and enduring new
order, under which peoples every
where might have a chance to
prosper and be secure together for
generations to come.
Today, two years later, 1t is only
too easy to yield either to a mood
of cynicism or mood of despair.
The hope inspired by We day has
not been fulfilled. The fruits of vic
tory that have been gathered up to
now have been not sweet but bitter.
The shooting has stopped, the awful
bombing and dying have stopped,
but there is no peace. Although a
kind of beginning has been made
with the treaties for Italy, and the
Axis satellites, the ratification of
even these is in doubt. AS for the
heart of the European problem
wholly apart from the equally fateful
Asiatic problem-nothing basic has
been achieved.
The grand coalition of wartime
Allies is in ominous deadlock over
the future Of Germany. Worse than
that, there is such a gulf in ideol-
ogies and apparent aims between
Russia and the western democracies
that the latter, not without reason,
have begun to suspect the former
of a deliberate effort to spread its
dominance by promoting chaos and
exerting direct and indirect pres
sures in the key areas of the world.
The result has been a steadily grow
ing trend toward the creation of two
antagonistic blocs, one totalitarian
and one not-a trend that has forced
the United States to undertake a
history-making new policy to safe
guard the sovereignty of Greece and
Turkey against actual or potential
threats from Moscow.
This is not peace. Stripped to it's
essentials, 1t is grim power politics.
It is contest in which the free
lands of the west are moving more
and more together to check any
further advance of liberty destroy
ing communism, in much the same
manner as they once moved against
Naziism. 1t is bitter thing that
this must be said two years after
We day. Yet the bitterness of it
ought not to be allowed to distort
our perspective. The picture is not
all black by any means No power
wants a major armed conflict; no
power, excepting the United States,
is physically equipped to wage one;
all peoples-as peoples-have come
to loathe war. Moreover, the United
Nations is in being; it is young and
relatively powerless, but it is matur-
ing, and there is still reason to hope
that it will evolve into an effective
instrument for collective security.
Certainly, any surrender now, to
cynicism and despair would be dan
gerously premature. The wars dead
the many millions of them in so
many landslide not die only to have
the living make such a surrender. A
world has been ripped apart as never
before. Time, patience, unf1agging
effort, affirmative action-with or
without Russia-will be required to
put it together again. In the age of
the atom men and governments can
give up striving for good peace,
can yield to sense OF hopelessness,
only at the risk Of engulfing them
selves, sooner or later, in cataclysm
Of mutual humiliation. That much
we can be sure of on the second
anniversary of We day.