12
PARTISAN REVIEW
recovering from their first pained surprise and boldly denouncing
"Red Totalitarianism" and "Communist Imperialism." Some one
who first began to read the liberal weeklies a month ago would
never suspect there was a time when these journals were, to say the
least, on intimate terms with Stalinism. For the pact has really
simplified the whole pro-war liberal position. For some time now
the liberals have been made uncomfortable by the increasingly
plain indications of the totalitarian nature of the Stalinist dictator–
ship. Neither the Czar in the last war nor Stalin in this one could
be called ideal bed companions for the defenders of democracy.
The liberals, of course, put up with them as long as they seemed to
be necessary for the great crusade. But there is a remarkable
similarity in the editorial reactions to the defection of the Soviet
Union from the democratic front this time and the liberal weeklies'
editorials on the overthrow of Czarism in 1917. Now, at last, is
the general idea, the battle line is sharply drawn between the forces
of freedom and of tyranny. No longer must they labor to explain
away or suppress the crimes and corruptions emanating from the
rKremlin.
More clearly than ever do they see this war as essentially an
ideological conflict, a clash of ideas translated into military tenns.
The life-principle (democracy) is locked in mortal-or at any rate,
soon-to-be-mortal- combat with the death-principle (fascism)
between the Maginot Line and the Westwall, and the full rhetoric
of freedom, slightly motheaten by now, is enlisted on behalf of the
Allied arms.
The first world war opened an era in which imperialist strug·
gles for power are presented, by both sides, as Armageddons fought
out to decide eternal principles. This is a refinement in the art of
war peculiar to the twilight of capitalism. In the formative cen–
turies of European capitalism, wars were publicly recognized as
instruments of commercial and territorial aggrandizement. No one
thought it necessary to amalgamate cultural values and military
objectives. It was typical that Frederick the Great entertained Vol·
taire and immersed his court in the superior French culture at the
same time as he was prosecuting war against France. These wars,
of course, were little more than duels between professional annies,
with the normal processes of life going on behind the battle-lines.
War in our time, however, is totalitarian, requiring the coor·
dination into the military machine of the whole civil life of the
