Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1951-02-13
Peace and the iron Curtain

Peace and the Iron Curtain
At Independence Hall in Philadelphia, more
than 200 prominent exiles from Eastern and Cen
trail Europe have signed heartfelt declaration
calling for an end to the Iron Curtain and for
the liberation of their homelands from Soviet
dominance and tyranny.
In certain respects-particularly in its SEEM
ing suggestion that the free world should resort
to some kind of military action to liberate the
captive countries-the declaration is fuzzy and
open to question. Further, it displays measure
of confusion within itself by listing Yugoslavia
with the European lands anxiously waiting to be
released from the Soviet prison.
Such a listing muddles the situation After
all, though ruled by dictatorship based on Mar
shall Tito's nationalistic communism, Yugoslavia
is not like EStonia, Latvia, Lithuanla, Poland,
Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and Czechoslovakia.
1t is not behind the Iron Curtain. Nor do the
men of the Kremlin control it as satellite or
an annexed territory. On the contrary, having
defiantly declared its independence of Moscow
and thus sown the seeds of a far-reaching schism
in the Communist world 1t is now being treated
by the Soviet Union as deadly enemy.
With that said, however, there can be no
doubt that the Philadelphia declaration-issued
with the assistance of the National Committee
for a Free Europe-refects the deepest sentiments
and highest hopes of scores of millions OF people
now trapped in the Soviet empire. Nor can there
be any doubt about the validity of the declara-
tons basic thesis-namely that there can be
no real peace in the world until there is real peace
on the European continent, and that there can
be no real peace there as long the fearbreeding
Iron Curtain sunders that great and inter-
dependent region into two halves, one living in
liberty and the other enslaved and tyrannized.
This same point has been solemnly empha-
sized by the United Nations in resolution
adopted in December 1949, by So members of the
General Assembly (the Soviet bloc alone dissent
ing) The resolution has placed the U. N on
record declaring, like the Philadelphia declara-
tion that one of the most essential of the
essentials of peace is that the Iron Curtain be
done away with, that there be free exchange
of information among all nations, and that
liberty of speech, assembly, religion and other
fundamental human rights be restored and
guaranteed to the peoples that have been robbed
of them.
But it is much easier to pass resolutions and
issue declarations on this matter than it Is to
enforce those resolutions and declarations. Short
of lberating war-which certainly does not
figure in the free worlds defensive calculations
what must be hoped for is that as the West
grows stronger and stronger and the balance of
permanent stop to aggression, the Soviet Union
will be SO checkmated and will begin to feel such
powerful internal and external pressures (eco-
nomic and political as well as military that 1t
will be forced to relax its grip on the captive
lands and eventually cooperate in organizing a
decent peace.
This is by no means a forlorn hope. Assum-
ing that the power of the free world is properly
exploited and organized to a point beyond
challenge, assuming also that an untiring effort
is made to reach the minds and buoy the spirits
of the peoples behind the Iron Curtain including
the Russian people, the Soviet system can be
forced to retreat from its present position, and
the countries it has entrapped can in due course
become their own masters-without the agony
of war
In any case, the one thing we can be rea-
sonably sure OF is that the Soviet empire is a
kind of dormant volcano whose explosive forces
are made up of the bitter discontents of many
millions of oppressed men and women yearning
to be free. If we to it that hope is kept alive
in these people, the Kremlin will be hard put
to control them indefinitely And should the worst
happen, should war come, great numbers of them
will be our allies behind the enemy's lines.