DO NOT LET AMERICA GO ISOLATIONIST

BRITAIN'S PRIME MINISTER WINSTON CHURCHILL, addressing the Conservative Party conference at Blackpool:

EVER since Stalin died, I have cherished the hope that there is a new outlook in Russia, a new hope of peaceful coexistence with the Russian nation, and that it is our duty, patiently and daringly, to make sure whether there is such a chance or not. It is certainly the interest of the Russian people, who have experienced a terrible half-century of war, revolution and famine, to have an easier and more prosperous generation. While I have life and strength I shall persevere in this. But there is one risk that we must never run. Our policy is "peace through strength." We must never willingly or wittingly run the risk of "subjugation through weakness."

I have always thought that the growth of ever closer ties with the United States is the supreme factor in our future, and that together we may make the world safe for ourselves and everybody else. There is no other case of a nation arriving at the summit of world power, seeking no territorial gain, but earnestly resolved to use her strength and wealth in the cause of progress and freedom.

For America to withdraw into isolation would condemn all Europe to Russian Communist subjugation and our famous and beloved island to death and ruin. And yet, six months ago, a politician who has held office in a British Cabinet [i.e., Nye Bevan], and who one day aspires to become leader of the Labor Party, did not hesitate to tell the Americans to "go it alone." One cannot imagine any more fatal disaster than that this evil counselor should be taken at his word.

There is already in the United States no little talk of a return to isolation, and the policy is described as "Fortress America." We may, however, be sure that all the strongest, wisest forces over there, irrespective of party, will not allow the great republic to be turned from the path of right and duty, and that they will disdain the taunts of impudence as effectively as they confront toil and danger.

RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION NO PROOF OF LOYALTY

Hoxie N.Fairchild, professor of English at Hunter College, author of Religious Trends in English Poetry, writing in the New Republic:

There are religious as well as constitutional grounds for objecting to the increasingly popular habit of regarding religious conformity as a touchstone of loyalty to democratic institutions. Probably we need not fear that failure to be "religious" will ever be accepted in this country as sufficient proof of a citizen's disloyalty, but I have met persons recently who use "atheist" and "Communist" as interchangeable terms. And although such mental defectives are exceptional, many sane people already regard the churchgoer as at least a better security risk than the non-churchgoer.

It is of the very essence of the "American way of life" that no man must believe in God, that no man had better go to church or else. Denial of this freedom may be implicit in the present trend of factitiously patriotic religiosity. The truly American objection to the state of religion behind the Iron Curtain is not that Christians are persecuted there, but that Communism does not grant men the right to choose freely between belief and unbelief. On that issue all loyal Americans, believers and unbelievers, may indignantly unite; but they cannot do so without hypocrisy unless they maintain more jealously than ever their traditions of religious liberty and the separation of Church and State.

U.S. LABOR SHOCKED BY BRITISH SOCIALISTS

GEORGE MEANY, president of the American Federation of Labor, speaking before the 30th anniversary dinner of the leftwing, anti-Communist weekly, New Leader:

A DANGEROUS mistake [is] being made by some of our friends in Britain who shout from the housetops their faith in Socialism. Too many of them are somehow attracted to totalitarian Russia and Communist China because these regimes call themselves Socialist. Apparently, these people prefer what they admit to be the "socialism without democracy" in the Iron Curtain Empire to the "democracy without socialism" in the United States. [No] democratic government or organization can win over the Chinese people by lending respectability and prestige, by extending diplomatic recognition to and economic relations with those who control them through terror, brainwashing, concentration camps and firing squads.

Missions to Peiping and Moscow, regardless of the good intentions of the missionaries, spell, in the last resort, submission to Moscow. Unwillingly or unintentionally, these visitors become the missionaries of a false gospel. We of American labor simply refuse to believe that any responsible or realistic representative of the British working people or British democracy can entertain any illusion that Communist despotism, merely because it calls itself a proletarian dictatorship, is less totalitarian, less brutal, and less warlike than Naziism, Fascism, or Falangism, and therefore should be treated differently and better. We are deeply shocked at the proposal to turn over Formosa and its millions of people to Communist slavery. Our shock is especially painful when we consider its source--a labor source.

MENDES-FRANCE'S REALISM HONEST BUT OPPORTUNIST

HERBERT LUETHY, Swiss-born French political analyst, writing in the Jewish monthly, Commentary:

UPON taking office in June, Mendes-France was hailed in France and abroad as the man who would lead France out of the slough of economic stagnation and social crisis and cure her of the political cancer of Communism--he would be a "French Roosevelt," bringing a "New Deal" and a new hope to his distraught country. For the present, the great reforms remain a myth, and there is a danger they will continue to remain a myth.

The truce in Indo-China, however salutary on other grounds, has not helped France's financial position in the slightest. America had already been bearing the full costs of the war. On the other hand, a sharp cut in military expenses at home is only possible if one has blind faith in "peaceful coexistence" and on the Kremlin's good will.

The question of "peaceful coexistence" is a decisive factor even for that internal stability. For a year the Communist trade-union leaders of the CGT have been carefully avoiding any social agitation, since that might split the united front between the Communists and the far right against the European Defense Community. Now that the immediate goal of this strange alliance has been achieved, Mendes-France's still-undefined foreign policies will determine whether he will continue to be "tolerated" by the Communists.

The brilliant successes of [Mendes-France's] improvised diplomacy are well known. France has returned to a policy of national Realpolitik on the prewar model, with opportunism its only principle and immediate national advantage its only aim. For those other European nations that have survived the last great attempt at this sort of Realpolitik in the Hitler years, nothing remains except to follow France more or less unwillingly along this path. Perhaps anything is better than the continuation of a mendacious abnegation of responsibility. The "new style" of French diplomacy has the advantage of honesty. Europe has lost nothing but an idea, and it is normal for the daily grind of politics to get along without ideas. There is only one thing wrong with this: Russian policy, which is also certainly not lacking in realism, has never renounced its idea.

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