"LIBERAL" FIFTH COLUMN
285
question before the Council. A breathing spell at last! Once again
they could wrap . themselves in the toga of self-righteousness and
parade as aggressive champions of democracy all over the world. The
"liberals" of
PM, The Nation,
and
The New Republic,
have always
required easy whipping boys; this permits an uninterrupted glow
of self-righteousness without at the same time exacting the stiff price
of intelligence and courage, two qualities they have shown little trace
of for the last dozen years. But the very fury of their attack upon
Franco
is
a self-betrayal: they are really for democracy except when
and where the interests of the Soviet Union are involved.
Every argument they use to justify intervention in Spain
is
a
valid argument for intervention in Russia. Spain
is
totalitarian?
Beside Stalin's monolithic police state Franco's fascism is a petty and
amateur affair. Spain is anti-democratic? Stalin has not only extin–
guished all traces of democratic liberties among his own people but
is
engaged in snuffing out these liberties wherever the .Red Army has
spread. Spain gave aid to Hitler during the war? By the Russo-German
Treaty of 1939 Russia gave the indispensable aid, which was the
very possibility of launching the war; that treaty was further supple–
mented by an economic pact under which, during 1939-41, ·Stalin
gave considerable economic aid to Hitler while the latter was fighting
tho western democracies; and Franco never gave Hitler such outright
military aid as the Russian invasion of Poland in 1939. Franco
is
a
menace to world peace? The comparison here becomes laughable
when we consider that Spain is a fifth or tenth-rate military power,
while Russia maintains the largest standing army in the world, spread
at this moment over vast areas outside its own territories; and when
we consider too that every recent international tension, which has
made the peoples of the world think fearfully of war, has resulted
from one or several aggressive manoeuvres on the part of Stalin.
If
the "liberals" are uncompromisingly for democracy through–
out the world, why not then be for it in Russia too?
If
they aro still
in doubt as to the facts about Russia, why not ask the UN for an
international commission of inquiry, as in the case of Spain? But the
expectation that they will struggle for any such policy is vain. The
"liberals" will continue to evade comparisons between Spain and
Russia. They will continue to think that Stalin's
tota~tarianism
is
somehow different from Franco's, different from Hitler's. Alas yes;
the considerable difference is that the former is able to enlist "liberal"
support.
