Simms: Europe faces rocky road to real peace
Seeds of future strife already sown
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor
SAN FRANCISCO – The end of the war in Europe starts one of the most difficult epochs in world history. That is the view of most conference delegates here.
For the next five to 10 years, they point out, Europe will face conditions bordering on chaos or worse. Revolt or civil war in certain areas is probable.
Millions of uprooted peoples will be on the move. Discontent, fed by misery, hunger and hate will spread as violent emotions suddenly are released.
Revolutionary minorities will find in this post-war chaos the opportunity of a lifetime and will try to make the best of it.
Problems only postponed
Problems presented by Eastern Europe and the Balkans have not been solved by the Big Three. They only have been postponed. Meanwhile, army discipline has kept down the cauldron lid. Now the lid will have to come off. Solutions for Europe’s impounded troubles will have to be found.
Therefore, foreign ministers in San Francisco warn, that this conference is the most crucial meeting ever held. It must create a peacekeeping organization which will work.
Germany, Italy and the Axis satellites have been defeated, but what to do with either the vanquished or the victims remains to be decided. The frontiers of Germany are still undetermined. Likewise, those of Poland and even of France, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Rumania, Hungary, Yugoslavia and other countries.
What of Poles, Serbs and Jews?
Millions of workers, used by the Nazis as slave labor, will be released and repatriated. But many of them – such as the Poles and the Serbs – feel they have no country to return to; or are afraid to return. Then there are the millions of dispossessed Jews – all that remain of some six million who had their homes in Europe. What is to become of them?
Italy is to be turned into a democratic state by the introduction of representative government with freedom of speech, religion and the press. Today she is almost in anarchy.
Iran is to be “independent and sovereign.” Recently her government was overthrown by one of the Big Three because it wasn’t quick enough with an oil concession.
Greece was to have self-government, but the first cabinet set up there soon had to defend itself against a leftist revolution.
Yugoslavia was promised representative rule, put the regime now at Belgrade is a dictatorship imposed from without.
Seeds for future trouble
Poland was to have a new government, reorganized “on a broader democratic basis with the inclusion of democratic leaders from Poland itself.” But when the “democratic leaders from Poland itself” – the 16 underground officials – showed up for a conference, the Russians put them under arrest. And so on.
The seeds for much future trouble have already been sown.
The war in Europe ends today, but the peace to follow will be only a truce unless the Big Three here and at the peace table return to the principles of the Atlantic Charter.
Allies may use U-boats against Japs
WASHINGTON (UP) – German U-boats may soon be sinking Jap ships.
Germany’s surrender should make available 200 to 300 submarines which the Allies could use in the war against Japan, a reliable source said today.