The Evening Star (March 25, 1946)
ON THE RECORD —
World issue still is freedom or slavery
By Dorothy Thompson
Despite the concentration of attention on Iran, our civilization will stand or fall, not with the Middle East or with Asia, but with Europe. If Europe, geographically a peninsula of Asia, becomes, in fact, an appendage of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union will dictate to the world. Great Britain, the world’s worst target in the days of rocket and atomic weapons, once the Soviets have both, will have to accept any ultimatum that comes from a Soviet-controlled continent or risk total annihilation.
The most critical place in the world today is France. The Soviet party in France is the strongest single political party and far and away the most dynamic. I call it the Soviet party and that is its correct designation. For the Communist party is not merely nor chiefly an international movement advocating the socialization of the means of production. It is a power instrument of a totalitarian state with messianic ambitions. When one of the accused in the Canadian espionage case stated that he had a “higher loyalty” than to the country of his citizenship, he spoke for all Communists throughout the world.
The European Socialists, including the French, have refused to merge with the Communists on exactly this ground – that Communist victory means foreign dictatorship. But the two did vote together on the issue of the military budget, which caused the resignation of De Gaulle. Thus the only relatively great Allied power on the European mainland is militarily weakened.
At just this moment, then, the French Communists demand the ousting of Franco. The issue is retroactive. Franco can only be ousted by force. France has not got the force. The tension on the border is such, however, that clashes might occur; set off what might or might not become a civil war in Spain; but would almost certainly become a civil war in France, with Russian support for the pro-Soviet elements, and with the rest of the world paralyzed by fear of being called Fascists.
This, of course, would be the end of France, whatever the outcome; Germany, then, already occupied to one-half by the Soviets or their Polish supporters, would be encircled in a Soviet ring; Spain and Italy would go; and Peron’s Argentine would make up with the Soviet Union, and please mark my words.
The idea that Peron represents capitalism is balderdash. Capitalism is represented by Spruille Braden and the Yanks. Peron, like all these modern mass-based despots, is out for power and state control over the whole economy. The Soviet Union is no more anti-Fascist than anti-everything else that is not pro-Soviet and open to Soviet control. The Soviets are for whatever will weaken all other great powers.
The Soviets made a pact with Hitler and our authorities now know from documents captured in Germany that Stalin offered the Axis a full military alliance against the western powers, guaranteeing Germany’s eastern and southeastern flanks, with a Soviet military program against the west in the Near East, in return for what the Soviets have already been ceded by the Allies plus the Dardanelles, Iraq, Iran and enough of Saudi Arabia to control the Persian Gulf. The Germans refused it because it would have meant keeping a force in the east to watch Soviet moves and would have put the Soviets, not themselves, in the key world areas. That is what broke the Russo-German pact.
These facts, known to me for some time, but in confidence, have certainly influenced my viewpoint. But at long last they have been revealed in a dispatch by L. S. B. Shapiro to the New York Times from Frankfurt – inconspicuously displayed on an inner page of the paper.
Iran and France are part of the same strategy, but France is on the Atlantic and the last bastion of Europe.
Communism thrives on disorganization, poverty, hunger and the growing belief that the United States is disinterested in Europe. M. Blum, a Social-Democrat, is in this country looking for a loan to aid the economic rehabilitation of France. M. Bidault, the foreign minister of the MRP party, with the lack of tact produced by desperation, is threatening that if the USA fails France it will have to turn to the Soviet Union. It is doubtful whether France will get anything from the Soviet Union but rosy promises through M. Thorez. The 500,000 tons of grain that were to be sent couldn’t be found by our ships that rushed to transport it.
But if M. Blum returns empty-handed, the fact will greatly influence the elections in France on May 25, and that is what M. Bidault really fears. It will not be he, or the Gouin government, which will turn to the Soviets, but the French masses. France, like Britain, should be given generous long-term credits to purchase the machines and materials she needs. Or – let us sit on our gold until it is blasted from under us by the bang that will end our civilization.
The issue in the world is not between capitalism and socialism. It is what it has been since the beginning of the war: Freedom or Slavery.