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PARTISAN REVIEW
demands an organizational base behind it.
If
the West were to pro–
ceed in Russian fashion here, it would build a Czech army of re–
sistance directly across the border on German soil, and broadcast
to Czechoslovakia from this base. But the West is bound by habits
of legality to which Russia does not subscribe, and probably will not
be this daring. The form of legality is something that the West cannot
properly abandon, and it may very well be that legality itself may
in time prove to carry some power in this struggle, particularly if the
United Nations begins to count for more; but victories in war are
the prize for risks taken, and if propaganda is a part of the total
conflict, the West can no more fight a hedgehog battle here than it
could in the purely military area of the war. Is it conceivable, for
example, that the U.S. may soon begin broadcasts
~o
the Ukrainians
openly fomenting them to national insurrection? Similar considerations
apply to Formosa, which might become an effective base for a propa–
ganda attack upon the Chinese mainland. Even if there were no
other reasons, this would be sufficient to justify the holding of For–
mosa at all costs.
In the last analysis the West has only one slogan for its counter–
crusade: "No Slavery!" Formerly this would have been considered
good enough to galvanize men's emotions for battIe. But we live in a
world where liberal values have become an expendable luxury, and
where the U.S. already begins to be isolated from the other nations by
its great wealth. .Let us not forget that Henry Wallace once described
this as the Century of the Common Man; from the opposite pole of
the spirit Ortega y Gasset called it the century of the massman; but
the two phrases may come to be a description of the same thing: the
historical epoch in which the word "liberty" no longer resounds to
human ears. Depending on one's values, this mayor may not seem a
measure of how far the present epoch falls, in its human quality,
below the highest levels of bourgeois civilization. In any case, it hap–
pens to be the epoch in which the West now finds itself at bay.
William Barrett
(The questions raised in Mr. Barrett's
Comment
will be the subject
of further discussion in subsequent issues.)
