Live and Help Live

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

In less than three weeks Eduard Benes, President of Czecho-Slovakia's Government in Exile, made nine formal speeches and one short-wave broadcast to his homeland, conferred with hundreds of friends, greeted thousands of admirers. Wherever he went he planted the thought that the rains of war and the guided plowshares of revolution can help grow good democrats in Europe.

"We hope firmly," said Benes in New York, "that the American people will place their inexhaustible material and moral resources and their organizational genius behind the great work of salvation and reconstruction. The old formula of live and let live is no longer sufficient to meet the requirements of the era that is ahead. Now it is live and help live."

In Washington Benes expounded a threefold doctrine: 1) freed Europeans will not tolerate reactionary leaders re-entrenching themselves through expediency; 2 ) the solution of the Balkan and Eastern European problems can be worked out through a cooperative federation of liberal governments; 3) the future of this federation depends on the friendship and help of Russia, as well as of the U.S. and Britain.

The Benes proposal is as clear as any yet to float up on the muddy waters of Allied postwar aims. It comes from a statesman who for the past decade has called the turn on European events with consistent accuracy. It predicates a maximum of "live and help live" in a world more accustomed to "grab and hold on." As Benes prepared to leave for further talks and conferences in Russia, the U.S. could do nothing less than wish him well.

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