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PARTISAN REVIEW
ceivable that Churchill or Roosevelt would or could grant them.
The policy of Laski, Strachey, Bevan, Williams and the left wing
of the British Labor Party of supporting the present government
and at the same time pressing for such demands, therefore, means
in practice giving up these demands and acquiescing in the
status
quo.
The choice is inescapable: which do you put first, your sup–
port or your demands? Laski
&
Co. put their support first, we put
our demands first. The conclusion is equally inescapable: opposi–
tion to any government which cannot grant such demands. The
experience of the last year in England, to delve no deeper into his–
tory, seems to indicate that the fight for an all-out socialist war
effort can be prosecuted only from
outside
the present regimes in
England and this country. Only socialism can win this war. Only
uncompromising, unambiguous and unflagging opposition to
Churchill and Roosevelt can win socialism.
Roosevelt-Churchill have a simple, all too simple formula for
victory: kill enough Germans. Aside from the fact that the cost of
such a victory would make it an empty one, entailing the destruc–
tion of as much that we love as that we hate, the truth is that the
democracies cannot defeat Hitler by force. They cannot get close
enough to slug it out-even assuming they are better at slugging
than the Germans. And so for years to come they must content
themselves with long-range attrition, warfare that exhausts and
kills but does not decide. What future does this hold out to our
civilization?
The only way this conflict can be won in the interests of man–
kind as a whole is by some method of warfare that will transfer
the struggle from the flesh of humanity to its mind. Such a method
is offered only by the cause of the socialist revolution.
