Evening star., 1951-09-05
Thomas L. Stokes:
Thonos L Stokes:
Still Fighting the Last War?
The Contest for Mems Loyoties All Over the World
May Be Won or Lost Without Rocket or Atom Bombs

A hard-boiled Regular Army
colonel who was in Europe to-
ward the end of the Second
World War came here, after the
war, for a "refresher" course at
the Army War College. Dur
ing his student" days here
he remarked rather cynically:
They are still fighting the
last war over there at the COL
lege, just as We were fighting
the First World War when the
Second came along"
That all seems to be rectified
now. what with rockets. atom
bombs. radar. and even talk
about space ships" and whether
we or Russia will get to the
moon first and ''liberate" that
mild-mannered planet in the
name of Democratic Capitalism
or Communist Imperialism, quite
an ambitious venture since we
haven't found out yet how to
run this planet. War has been
taken out of the classroom on
tactics into the scientists lab
oratory. In the laboratory We
seem to be fighting tomorrow'S
war or day after tomorrow's
war-so We are at least up to
date.
That war possibly could be
made more likely by an attitude
that might be expressed by para
phrasing the colonel and Saying
that We are still, haunted by
the First World War in making
delayed peace for the Second.
This is dramatized by cur
rent developments - in the
japanese peace treaty up for
signing at San Francisco and in
some pertinent facts about what
is happening in Europe brought
out in recent Senate debate over
the ECA bill.
Anybody who has had any
contact with John Foster Dulles,
the architect of the Japanese
peace treaty, knows his deep
concern that it should not
repeat the mistake of the Ver-
sailleS treaty after World War
I by imposing upon the japanese
people impossible burdens. as
were laid on Germany after the
First World War. Some histo-
rians hold those burdens re-
sponsible for the eventual rise of
H1tlerism, which seems over
Simplif1ed.
The Japanese treaty is, indeed,
liberal and generous, to the ex-
tent that the japanese govern
ment is given the right to
abandon reforms carried out in
our occupation under Gen.
Douglas A. MacArthur's admin
istration.
Our aim was to "democratiZe"
Japan by various changes, in
cluding wider distribution of
land among her people and, per-
haps more important, breaking
up the great monopolistic COM
binations of finance and industry
known as cartels. These were
all-powerful. They dominated
the government through a few
families and inspired japanese
conquest in the Pacif1c-for
trade and business sake-just as
the same sort of cartels used
Adolf Hitler as a pawn in Ger
many for the conquest Of
Europe.
After the war We sent teams
into both Japan and Germany
to conduct what we know
familiarly as antitrust" op-
erations. In seeking to avoid
one mistake" of Versailles, we
may be stretching our gener-
osity to the point of nullifying
their work-one of our chief
World War II aims. That was,
simply stated, to get govern
ment into the hands of the
people in Germany and Japan
so they could live decently in a
free, competitive society and
not be led off to aggressive wars
to deSpoil other nations.
How much had been achieved
by our japanese reform program
is matter of dispute-but even
that now apparently is to be
forfeited. We already have
learned how the German pro-
gram fell far short of it's aims
and we know also that carteliza-
tion-giant monopoly control
still exists all over Europe
among our Atlantic pact allies