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PARTISAN REVIEW
about which more later, all the delegates realized that Mayor Reuter's
opening remarks "We greet you as fellow fighters in the cause of freedom"
was no mere rhetoric. The people of West Berlin were part of the
Congress.
III.
Since almost every delegate presented a paper, I can give an account
only of those that precipitated general discussion. There was a brace
of papers by Koestler around which a good deal of the discussion crystal–
lized. The first was on "Two Methods of Action." Its basic thesis was
that at certain times and in respect to certain crucial issues, instead of
saying "Neither-Nor" and looking for other viable alternatives, we must
recognize an "Either-Or" and take one stand or another. It was obviously
directed against the type of intellectual who today says "I am neither
a Communist nor an anti-Communist" just as fifteen years ago he said
"I am neither a Nazi nor an anti-Nazi." Partly because his formulations
were literary rathcr than pointedly political, he was criticized sharply
for oversimplification. Lombardi suggested that to demand a Yes or No
answer was itself to fall victim to a totalitarian mentality. Some other
participants seemed to be under the impression that Koestler was denying
the validity of any other type of approach, that he was saying our choice
was always between white and black-"our side" being white-something
that Koestler has always denied. The choice between Hitler and the
democracies, he once said, is inescapable but it is a choice between a lie
and a half-truth. Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, who refused to attend the
Congress even to defend their point of view there, were quite aware of
French and American injustices to Negroes when they supported the
Resistance to Hitler. But they can see no justice in the Western defense
against Communist aggression because the Negroes have not yet won
equality of treatment.
One might have generalized Koestler's position and shown that the
recognition of the possibility of many alternatives always proceeds on
the assumption that, in respect to some value or goal or method, a choice
of the either-or type is involved. For example, either you are looking for
the truth in science or you are not. There are no two ways about it.
But once you have decided to look for the truth, then any particular
truth may lie on a scale in which there are so many alternatives that it
is absurd to have to choose between particular contraries (as distinct
from formal contradictories). In the face of a totalitarian threat either
you decide to oppose or appease; but having decided to oppose, the
alternative may not be either this method of opposition or its contrary.
