Evening star., 1948-03-03
ReuI, Grim and Urgent

Senator Vandenberg has not strayed into
land of hobgoblin make-believe in ap-
pealing to Congress for swift adoption OF
the Marshall Plan to "help stop World
War III before it starts" The dark reali
ties OF the hour fully justify the note of
alarm and urgency in his eloquence. A
ruthless and vaultingly ambitious tyranny
the tyranny of Red totalitarianism-
Is on the march. II it is allowed to keep
marching, then the chances are that on
some tomorrow, not many years from now,
there will be titanic death struggle be-
tween 1t and what is left of the earth's free
nations, meaning chiefly our own.
This danger is as real as life. 1t is not
part of some bad dream that jittery or
emotionally unstable men are dreaming in
the night. 1t exists just as surely as the
Soviet Union itself exists, and it threatens
not only the whole of free Western Europe,
including Britain, but America as well.
One by one, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria,
Hungary, Yugoslavia, Albania and Czecho-
slovakia have succumbed to It, and
Finland now is in the process of going the
same way. Unless the Communist
lands unite against it, therefore, and make
effective use of such imperative measures
as the Marshall Plan, France and Italy
may be the next to fall. Then as Mr..
Vandenberg warns, the iron curtain would
be clamped down all the way to "the rims
of the Atlantic" the British Isles would be
almost hopelessly vulnerable, and our own
country-with precious few allies left in
largely hostile, Red-dominated world
would have to prepare for the eventuality
of either abject capitulation or total war.
If there are Americans-in Congress
or out-who are inclined to scof at warn
ings of this sort, they owe it to themselves
and their country to think twice about the
matter, and to think soberly and long.
They would be well advised, certainly, to
read with the greatest care such searching
and well-documented reports as the one
just published by a subcommittee of the
House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Dealing with the strategy and tactics of
world communism, it makes thoroughly
persuasive case for the thesis that the
Soviet dictatorship-repr the most
backward and oppressive system of the
AGES working toward one goal only, and
that that goal is universal dominance
through universal revolution. To that
end, operating through Communist fifth
columns in all lands, the men of the
Kremlin have been Systematically seeking
to promote chaos in the west in prepara-
ton for what they believe to be inevitable
namely, final catastrophe war cul-
minating in the overthrow of capitalism
and the triumph OF Red totalitarianism on
a global scale. In short, according to the
report, they are dedicated to objectives
of extreme violence and, unless firmly
countered now, will pursue those objectives
even to the point of setting off a, world
wide explosion.
That is why Mr.. Vandenberg is COM
pletely right when he says that "aggres-
sive communism threatens all freedom
and security in the Old World or the New
when it puts free peoples anywhere in
chains" That is why every wide-awake
American must agree with his solemn
warning that if there are risks in adopting
the Marshall Plan, the risks of rejecting it,
or whiting 1t down, would be far greater.
OF itself, of course, 1t cannot be the
answer to everything. But it is an indis-
pensable key part of all that the democ-
racies must do together now to cope with
the immense danger before them. The
situation is not an imaginary one. The
Soviet Union has made it very real, very
grim and very urgent.