156
PARTISAN REVIEW
nomic concessions as the price of holding onto its totalitarian appar–
atus. Parallel with all this there has gone the verbal battle between
containers and liberators, the Anglo-American row over China, and
the growth of European neutralism, the latter now taking the form
either of idealizing the Malenkov regime, or else of hoping that it
will shortly be displaced by a definitely post-Stalinist grouping.
In all this welter the broad outlines tend to get blurred, but it
may perhaps be suggested that "wait and see" has hitherto been the
essence of Western policy toward Russia since 1917, save for the
two intervals of the 1918-21 intervention period and the 1938-39
Munich period, when some people had the impression that Germany
was being egged on to march east. In each case, as we now can
see, the upshot was favorable to the consolidation of the Soviet regime.
It is possible that we have relapsed into another wait-and-see period,
to be followed perhaps in due course by another outbreak of violence.
In the interval before this happens those who are committed to the
defense of democracy, but otherwise have no stake in any of the cur–
rent political or religious orthodoxies and do not propose to embark
on any crusade, might do worse than ask themselves whether some–
thing can perhaps be done to promote peace without at the same time
surrendering other people's liberty or property. This is admittedly a
difficult operation, and it may be urged that where the statesmen and
the experts have so signally failed--one need only read Churchill's
account of what happened during those amiable intervals at Teheran
and Yalta-a handful of onlookers are not likely to do better. Per–
haps, though, they are not as helpless as all that.
One comes back to the point about the role of the intellectuals.
Every modern government or political party, however addicted to
the cult of stupidity, public opinion polls, and the Common Man,
needs a growing number of technicians in order to stay in business.
If
all the experts simultaneously went on strike, work would come to
a stop.
If
all the German experts had struck against Hitler, the Nazi
regime would not have lasted a month. Nothing so drastic is pro–
posed here. It is merely suggested that even in this age of advertising
techniques and mass communication media the still small voice of
intelligence need not be completely silenced. One can yet reach the
handful of people in research and propaganda agencies who know a
thing or two, and through them perhaps the even smaller number of
