Europe crossroads

by
JOSEPH
STAROBIN

~~

—NEW YORK.
N the old Negro spiritual,
I everybody who talked
about Heaven wasn’t neces-
sarily going there. Some-
thing of the same can be

said for those liberal writers
and progressive figures who
talk about European reconstruc-
tion as though Mr. Marshall
would: take us straight there, if
only Mr. Molotov weren’t such
a ‘meanie.’ .

And you would think that no
one ever mentioned a western
bloc until Molotov put the idea
into the heads of Bevin and
Bidault. Our liberal friends are
trying very hard to make it
appear that the Soviet policy
bas determined American and
_ British policy. They have lost
all sense of where the horse
is, and where the cart.

e

Y WALLACE puts the
matter in a much more sen-
sible way in this week’s New
Republic. He expressed regrets
that the Soviets would not
come into the Paris scheme,
which is his privilege. But
much more important is. the
fact that he puts some very se-
rious conditions to the Secretary
of State which Samuel Grafton
and Frank Kingdon, writing in

The New York Post fail to do.

With or without Soviet par-
ticipation, says ‘Wallace, the
Marshall program “is certain to
divide the world and_end in
failure unless the philosophy be-
hind the Truman Doctrine is
disavowed. Under this _philo-
Sophy we have backed the most
reactionary forces in Europe and
bemoaned the suffering of un-
repentant Germans while ignor-
ing the need of our Allies.” -

I agree that the trouble with
the Marshall plan is exactly
that it is doing all these things.
And they are bad things—not
only for Europe—but for Am-
erica. That is why those who
certainly, clearly, definitely sup-
port the reconstruction of Eur-
ope, are critical of Marshall's
actual program, which does not
have to be spelled out to be
understood. :

®

WEVER, if this is true,
and we agree with Wallace
that this is American policy to-
day, it becomes much easier
to understand why the Soviets
did not participate in Paris
What were they offered, after
ali? Two months before Molo-
tov was supposed to meet with
Bevin, Bidault and Marshall to
settle the German question, a
proposition is presented not only
to rebuild Western Germany
but to guide the rebuilding of
Eastern Europe in such a way
as to make Western Germany
the paramount industrial power
in Europe again. If Russia

FRIDAY, JULY 2, 1947

GEN. GEORGE C. MARSHALL
He chose the wrong road.

agrees, said Bevin and, Bidault,
then maybe America will give
us money.

We can imagine Molotov’s feel-
ings. You fellows are by-passing
your own foreign ministers par-
ley, he said. You are also by-
passing the United Nations Eco-
nomic Commission. You insist
that I let you allocate property
(a share in German reparations)
which really belongs to me; and
then you intend to use _ this
German property which doesn’t
belong to you in the first place,
against the young, industrializ-
ing countries like Czechoslova-
kia and Poland, and they are
supposed ' to like it.

If I agree to all this, then
maybe the American Congress
will give us money and maybe

not (probably not, since they are--

in an anti-Russian frenzy-) But
they will do so only if we ac-
cept the quaint American idea
that nationaliation -of industry
is 2 sin.

That’s the situation Molotov
faced. In a self-respecting way,
unwilling to go into something
Just. to. expose it," he said:
“Count me out.” And he went
back home where nationaliza-
tion and economic planning has
worked for 30 years whether
Herbert Hoover considers it sin-
ful or not.

EAD of berating the Rus-
sians, I should think that
Grafton and Kingdon and other
progressives would have had
a different reaction. Our coun-
try has played a very shabby
game with a very fine tdea, the
reconstruction of Europe. In-
stead of approaching the Soviets
directly we acted in an under-
hand way.

We browbeat two other part-
ners of the alliance into trying
to cheat the Russians. And then
we blame them because they
refused to play the game in
which they were scheduled to
be skinned.

And where are we now? No
American can take much com-
fort from the parley which open-
ed recently. I see no dem-
cnstrations in the streets of our
cities because Portugal, or Tur-
key, or even Iceland have come
to the table.

Exactly how, will somebody
tell us, can all the heavily in-
dustrialized countries of western

Europe be revived while reviv-
ing Germany — except on the
fbasis of a fundamental settle-
ment with new eastern Europe,
which has big plans for growth,
a new class of landholding far-
mers, and an expanding work-
ing class?

WESTERN bloc, if it suc-

ceeds beyond paper- designs,
is an economic absurdity. Es-
pecially’ since Wall Street is
playing all ends of it against
the middle, and ploughing into
the colonial areas of the very
countries that will now try to
hold their colonies even more
desperately.

I supose we could waste a few
billions in this attempt and give
ourselves the illusion of pros-
perity. We would be preparing

Greek misrule, a British-US ‘export’ 1

a new reactionary menace in
western Europe, and a deeper
crash. for ourselves later on.

The real difficulty with some
of our liberals and progressives
is that they still see the prob-
lem in terms of how best to
beat the Communists. They at-
tacked the Truman doctrine,
not because it was fundamental-
ly un-American, but because it
was not the way to fight com-
munism.

Some of them hail the Mar-
shall plan beeause it seems to
be a more clever way of accom-
plishing what they think is the
main problem — weakening the
Communists.

But the problem that faces
America is not how to “con-
tain Russia,” how to pillory the
Russians,’ outwit them, or any-

by ISRAEL EPSTEIN

'

ett Sem
2S ieee e

thing like that. Such games had
an -ignominious outcome after
the Munich conference almost
a decade ago.

The real problem is how to
dismantle the still vigorous and
now reviving Fascist and reac-
tionary organisms—in Greece, in
Spain, in Germany, in France
and in our own country.

The problem is to secure @
long peace by economic recon-
struction of Europe which \re-
builds the countries that fought
with us and uses the economic
power of Germany—for the Ger-
man people, for our allies and
ourselves.

We are for such a program.
There is no evidence that such
is Marshall’s program. There iS
every

HE Greek royalist government—which its British and U.S. backers themselves
shamefacedly admit is anything but democratic—has just arrested 6,000 people’

for the “crime’ of peacefully opposing

its policies:

from the civil war being waged against Greek peasant guerrillas who, driven to despe!
ation, are fighting King Paul’s men with arms.

Among those arrested and
shipped off immediately to no-
torious Greek island concentra-
tion camps were General Secre-
tary Dimitrios Paparigas of the
Greek Confederation of Labor,
officials and rank and filers of
practically every union in the
country, officers of the EAM
coalition, leaders and members
of the legal Liberal, Socialist,
Agrarian and Communist par-
ties, mewspapermen, professors,
students, workers, soldiers, busi-
nessmen, engineers and even a
too-progressive former police
chief.

Government police, the same
men who worked for the Ger-
mans during the occupation,
swooped down while Greek
Foreign Minister Constantine
Tsaldaris was visiting the U.S.
and after American Ambassa-
dor to Greece Lincoln McVeagh,
consulted in advance, said he
could find no objection to the
roundup. McVeagh later expres-

sed “surprise” at the raids’ se--

verity. What he expected is not
clear,

Even the strongest stomachs
are turned by Greek misrule, as
is evident from an_ interview
given in London by Col. A. W.
Sheppard, chief of Britain’s eco-
nomic mission in Salonika.

Sheppard said that the gov-
ernment spends only five per-
cent of its budget on reconstruc-
tion and the rest on civil war
and graft.

Sheppard also
the horde of

implied that
“advisers” now

being shipped into the country
serve the interests of the nations
that send them, not of the
Greeks, who have plenty of fine
technicians. He said that what
Greece really needs is an end

to her war-making government,
than imports for peace.

If Greeks are to rebuild their
lives instead of fighting, forei8?
support to the government they
don’t want must stop.

—— a

Stanley

Author of
‘French Canada’, and ‘A World to Win’

SPEAKS

Auspices:. Vancouver Committee, Labor-Progressive Party |

Ryerson

at the
PENDER-
AUDITORIUM

“MR, TRUMAN,
DISTURBER OF
THE PEACE.”

PACIFIC’ TRIBUNE—PAGE
‘

'

indication that his pro- |
‘gram is the very opposite.

The roundup is quite apart