282
PARTISAN REVIEW
eagerly as the Communist Party to the official tunes of Russian
propaganda- and with just
.as
much disregard of the facts, too.
When the UN Security Council met at London, Russia pulled
another tactic out of its bag of tricks which has since been worked by
the "liberals" for all it is worth. To forestall inquiry into Russian
operations in
Euro~at
that time in Manchuria too--Vishinsky
launched a prompt attack upon British actions in Greece and Indo–
nesia. This is Stalin's game of international chess. When a piece in
an advanced attacking position is threatened, he relieves by attacking
elsewhere, maintaining thus a continuing but shifting pressure. Again
the "liberals" showed they knew how to take the cue.
It
was their
signal to launch an all-out campaign to hate Britain. Some of
P
M's
cartoons on the theme of Perfidious Albion became a match for those
of the Herust-McCormick press, when these latter were conducting
their anti-British campaign in the interest of isolationism and Hitler.
It used to be considered a liberal principle to attack imperialism
wherever it showed its head. But now if Russian imperialism is at–
tacked, the "liber.als" rise as one man to shout: "what about Britain?"
This dazzling piece of "liberal" logic may be summed up as:
Two wrongs make a right- and it is always Russia's right.
The dizzy corruption of logic and morals was to reach new
depths in the handling of the Iran case by the "liberal" press. The
same day that the
New York Times
carried the fin;t reports of the
continued presence of Soviet troops in Iran,
I.
F. Stone produced in
PM
a masterpiece of journalistic insinuation. Stone turned what pur–
ported to be an account of the Iranian situation into a minute des–
cription of his own confusions as a reporter in getting the news. Be–
fore he had finished, he had managed to convey the impression that
the illegal presence of the Red Army in Iran was just a concoction of
rumor and innuendo, and probably of British origin at that! Stone
does not impress us as one of the innocents; he is a clever enough
reporter to know what he is about, and the fact that he has sub–
sequently hewed pen;istently and bitterly to the anti-British line,
shows very well what
h~
is about.
All of
P
M's staff were promptly mobilized for the defense of
the Socialist Fatherland. Max Lerner, who had already played so
many comic roles in his career hitherto that one more could not
matter, rushed before the footlights in the role of the Ambassador
of Iran: he knew better than Hussein Ala what the situation and
policy of Iran should be.
PM
transformed the question into a strug–
gle between Britain and Russia for Iranian oil, and the onus of
