The "Liberal" Fifth Column
AN EDITORIAL
"It is time that the United States awoke to the truth that
nothing is gained fer us vis-a-vis Russia by 'getting tough' ."
Editorial,
The New Republic
THE
NEW REPUBLIC
proclaimed this oracular "truth" on
April 22, 1946. Several weeks earlier the German Social Democrats
in the Allied zones voted 7 to 1 against fusion with the Communists;
the fusion was later forced in the Russian zone without any vote.
Two weeks after the editorial appeared, the French people had ad–
ministered a smashing defeat to the Communist Party by rejecting
the proposed Constitution. The French referendum cannot be inter–
preted as a swing to the right, since many Socialists had voted no,
against their own party leadership. Moreover the vote called out the
30 per cent absentees from the last election, who, had they been
Rightists, could have voted for the parties of the Right at that time.
The French people wanted democracy and their nose was keen enough
to smell out the totalitarian odor of the Constitution; their referen–
dum cannot be twisted to show any other meanings. Both French
and German votes indicate that there are millions on the Continent
with genuine democratic longings-even though many (for example,
the French absentees) are not yet expressed completely by any party.
If
these democratic longings do not exist in Europe, we can write off
European civilization right now; if they do exist, they will certainly
not grow stronger by being fed the bread and water of a feeble
American foreign policy. As long as American policy is weak and
halting, the peoples of Europe will persist in believing that the
United States intends to withdraw altogether from Europe, and they
will gravitate helplessly-and under the threat of terror-into the
Russian orbit.
Meanwhile in New York a journal which calls itself "liberal"
is advocating a policy to sell out these millions into Stalinist slavery.
When
T he New Republic
published this editorial,
it
was actually ,
helping to herd Social Democrats into concentration camps in Ger-
