Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1957-07-19
Easy to Defend

In commenting on Marshal Zhukov
IAN honest man" and "a confirmed
Communist" who apparently used to be
a pretty good friend Of hiS-President
Eisenhower has made q somewhat sur
prising confession. He has told his news
conference that once upon time in
Berlin, in a three-hour conversation
with this rather attractive Soviet big
wig, he was very hard put to it," ide-
ologically, to defend our free democratic
system against the iron rule that the
Kremlin imposes upon all under its sway
AS the President has explained,
Marshal Zhukov merely told him that
our way of doing things is material
istic," whereas the Soviet way is ideal
istic." We are "materialiStic," it seems,
because we can earn what we please,
save what we please, buy what we please,
and think and act as we please-up to
the Iron Curtain is "idealistic" because,
in the Zhukov view, it involves the SELL
ing Of "a very hard program"-a pro-
gram under which the people are Told
that they can do nothing as they please,
but must forget about individual free
dom and sacrifice their normal liberties
for the common good of "the state"
What puzzles us is why the Presi-
dent, who was then our top commander
in Berlin, should have found it diff
cult to demolish Marshal Zhukov's argu-
ments. After all, "a confirmed Commu-
mist" is pretty poor debater. For he
doggedly and boringly mouths dogmaS
that are Self-evidently ridiculous in the
way they do violence to all recognizable
realities. One reality is that men are
children Of God who want to be reason
ably free. Another reality is that they
are not free under the Soviet system
and that system is quite literally a sys-
term that regiments and terrorizeS the
masses to serve the twisted ambitions of
a power-hungry despotism made up of
only'a few men with feet of clay. And
a third reality, among many others, is
that this deSpotism, wherever it exists
in the world, is so insure of itself. so
absolutely and so utterly unrepresenta-
tive OF the people it SubjugateS, that it
never dareS to let those people have lib
erty at the polls, or any other kind of
liberty, lest they overthrow their OPP
pressors and become their own masters.
AS for "materialiSm" and "ideal-
iSm," what could be more materialistic
or less idealiStic than the bleak Commu-
mist philosophy? For this philosophy
denies the possibility that God exists. It
af1rmS only that man is a sort of cos
mic accident with no soul in him, no
indwelling individual nobility, no higher
meaning than to live and die and be-
come nothing but pointlesS dust for all
eternity, and hence only a creature that
superior or stronger bits of dust like
Mr.. KhruShchev, for example) are en-
titled to exploit and enSlave Is this a
better measure of humanity than the
one by which the free world governs it
self? Is it harder to defend than the
Red totalitarian measure?
Actually, as between the nature of
communism and the nature of our free
way Of life, nothing should be easier
than sales talk espouSing the
latter. True, stepped as he is in the
rigid, reactionary and obsolete stupid
tiles OF Marxism -Leninism, "a confirmed
Communist" even If he is also IAN hon.
est man," may be impervious to COM
nonsense arguments. But the PreSi-
dent, when and If Marshal Zhukov
comes over here for visit, ought to try
again to explain to him just why our
system seems infinitely preferable to the
Kremlin'S.