Evening star., 1951-08-22
Mr.. Hartman on YuIto

Although the subject will continue to be
controversial for years to come, the Yalta Agree
ment has been well defended by W. Averell Har
riman in his now-released July 13 statement to
the Senate committees that investigated General
MacArthurS dismissal by President Truman
The statement itself probably will convince
nobody who is already convinced to the con-
trary. But it at least has the virtue of offering
additional views and information to whoever
seeks to arrive at a balanced judgment by
sweeping away the preconceived notions, the
fixed ideas, the distorted oversimpifcations, the
emotional prejudices and the frank politicking
that have tended to bury the issue under
mountainous mixture of fact and fiction.
Mr.. Harriman'S qualifications as pro-
administration witness can hardly be denied.
Because of his presence at Yalta, and in general
because of the key role he has played in Soviet
American relations under both President Roose-
welt and President Truman, his views on the
subject must be weighed carefully by anyone
who has a sincere desire for historical perspec-
tive. His main point is that it is a sheer myth
to blame the agreement for what has since
happened in Eastern Europe and China. His
statement emphasizes that Mr.. Roosevelt and
Prime Minister Churchill negotiated that agree
ment with Generalissimo Stain at time (back
at the start of 1945) when the war with Germany
was still going on, when the bitter battles Of
months away from being sure that we could pro-
duce a workable A-bomb and when most of our
allied military estimates indicated that the de-
feat of Japan would require about year and
q half of massive offensive operations after the
yet-to-come German surrender. In the circum-
stances, at that particular juncture, few things
seemed more important than to get firm COM
mitment from the Russians to enter the struggle
against the japanese and thus help to shorten
the fighting and keep the anticipated casualties
as low as possible
The Yalta Agreement was worked out to get
that commitment. It granted territorial and
other concessions in Asia to the men of the
Kremlin, but at the same time it clearly imposed
upon them the solemn obligation to cooperate
in establishing freely elected democratic govern
mentS in Eastern Europe and to recognize and
support an independent China dncludng Man
churia) under the Nationalist government of
Chang Kai-Shek-recognition and support that
were vigorously affirmed in 30-year Sino-Soviet
treaty. What Mr.. HarrimanS statement contends
is that the evil course of postwar events has
come about not because of Yalta, but in spite
of it. In short, Red Russia'S bad faith, its failure
to live up to its plighted word, its systematic
violation of all its pledges is the thing to be
blamed. Given that bad faith, with or without
Roosevelt Churchill Stain deals of any kind,
most of what has since happened was bound to
happen as kind of historical inevitability that
could have been stopped only if the Western
Allies, Immediately after Germany's downfall,
maintained and exerted their immense armed
power (they demobiized it instead) to check the
Stain dictatorship and pressure it-under threat
Of all-out war, if necessary-into following a
peaceful, law-abiding policy
Such is the argument implicitly and ex-
plicitly set forth in Mr.. Harriman's statement.
It is an argument that will carry no weight
with those who are unalterably convinced that
most of today'S troubles in the world stem
almost exclusively from Yalta. Yet it is an
argument with good deal of substance in it.
The conclusion it suggests is that If there was
error at Yalta, it lay, not in the terms Of the