490
PARTISAN REVIEW
of America's ideaJistic middle class; for a dominant fascism, it quickly
became clear, directly and catastrophically affected the life of every
member of society, whatever his class roots or profession. In fighting
fascism, the liberal middle-class American was fighting in self-defense.
He was fighting, not in the name of a remote ideal, but in the name of
everything worth preserving in our own system-liberty, democracy, reli–
gious tolerance. And in the idea of self-defense, he had an excuse for
a fervor, even a violence, which yet did no violence to the popular image
of the liberal temperament.
After Russia had lost Germany to Hitler rather than have Germany
fall to any left-wing party except the Communist Party, she was quick
to recognize the hidden ally she had in fascism. The fear on which
fascism had risen to power was the fear of Communism, and now
Communism, thus established as the prime enemy of fascism, could
represent herself as the prime friend of democracy. In the name of a
militant anti-fascism, the Communist movement could now organize
and control the world over all the vagrant liberal and democratic
forces which had previously eluded her solicitations. The League
against War and Fascism was the best-known of these innocents groups,
but there were many others-especially when the civil war in Spain
further concretized the fascist menace. The conduct of England and
America in relation to the Spanish War of course made it all the more
natural for sympathizers with the Loyalist cause to look to Russia as the
spearhead of anti-Franco feeling. The handful of liberals who had
been close enough to radical politics before 1932 to understand the
extent of Russia's betrayal of the German working classes, and who had
sufficient political experience to follow the double game Russia was
playing in Spain, might try to warn the innocents among the Russian–
dominated anti-fascist groups in this country that they were being used,
but their efforts were in vain. Not only were there few places where
they could make themselves heard, most of the so-called liberal press
having been completely won to this popular anti-fascist front, but also,
having no political party around which to group, they had no organiza–
tion of their own with which to combat the highly-organized move–
ment which the Communist Party had brought into being, all unknown
to most of its participants.
One of Roosevelt's first acts when he had been made President
had been to recognize the Soviet Union.
It
had been a gesture which
had won virtually unanimous support from American progressives. Here
was the perfect symbol of the new dispensation we could look to, after so
many years of Republican timidity and backwardness. The drastic
