Tuesday, June 12, 1945

THE WAR GOES ON -- WITH LESS NOTICE. The Allies are fighting on Okinawa, at Luzon, Mindanao, and Leyte in the Philippines, and now on Borneo, where Australian troops landed at four points on the north coast this past week-end. And it’s worth noting how little attention these ongoing fights are getting in the press. Yes, most of the time the daily war news still makes the front page, but the current Pacific battles aren’t getting anything like the attention that the fighting in Europe and Africa got over the last two-and-a-half years. No doubt it’s due in part to the fact that there’s not as much dramatic day-to-day news to come out of the Pacific -- the Okinawa fighting is described as being in its "final stages" for yet another week.

But I wonder if the press -- and the newspaper-reading public -- are feeling a form of battle fatigue right now? Following the euphoria of victory in Europe last month, it seems that we’re a little slow to realize that, as General Patton said at his homecoming last Friday, we still have "half a war to win." Look at any map showing all the territory still controlled by the Japanese -- in China, Southeast Asia, the East Indies, New Guinea, Formosa, plus Manchukuo and Korea, and above all the home islands -- and that should be enough visual aid to make it clear how much longer this war has to go.

The A.P. reports today that the Philippines campaign is about to heat up again, as U.S. troops on Luzon are about to launch "an all-out attack on the last major stronghold of the Japanese." I wonder whether that will bring that aspect of the war back to the front pages? Or, maybe our front-page diet for sometime will consist of alarmed reports on Europe’s latest crisis, while news of the real fighting languishes until our Marines begin the bitterly hard work of clearing out Honshu, Kyushu and the rest of it.

posted by Michael 7:49:00 AM

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A (HALTING) TRIBUTE TO THE U.N. CHARTER. Now that we’re only ten days or so away from the completion and signing of the United Nations Charter, it’s useful to remind ourselves, as Barnet Nover’s column does, that (1) it will be imperfect, and (2) it is still an important milestone. In Mr. Nover’s own words --

"The debate on the Charter has not ended. In a very real sense it will only have begun when the Charter has been signed and the delegates have scattered to the four corners of the earth. Then the parliaments of the nations, the press of the world, the courts of public opinion, will sit in judgment on the labors of the men and women who, during a period of close to three months, hammered out line by line, sentence by sentence, chapter by chapter, the document which is to occupy a central position in the affairs of nations in the years to come. It will be the easiest thing in the world to drive a coach and four through the Charter. Taken as a whole it will not satisfy everybody; in detail, it will satisfy nobody. It is full of imperfections as the delegates themselves would be the first to admit -- full of inadequacies. It suffers from poor draftsmanship and a split personality. It is not, as some critics are saying, a screen set up to cloak the domination of the world by a handful of powerful nations. Yet neither will it bring into being that ‘parliament of man, the federation of the world’ which many have dreamed about. The Charter is a compromise between hope and reality, between things as they are and things as they ought to be. Its weakness lies in the fact that the two are in eternal conflict. Its strength is the product of the circumstances that several hundred individuals of divergent races and peoples and historic backgrounds found it possible to agree at all and did so because agreement was preemptory. In other words, the most important fact about the Charter is not what it contains, but the fact that it came into being."

posted by Michael 7:46:00 AM

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MONEY TO BURN. From Time magazine’s Miscellany section -- "Off the coast of New Hampshire, Matthew Betton drifted in a power-boat for five days, finally set fire to his last twelve dollars, was rescued by fisherman who saw the light."

posted by Michael 7:43:00 AM

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Sunday, June 10, 1945

WHY DID RUSSIA CAUSE THE VETO CRISIS? Yet another diplomatic crisis was put to rest Thursday when Soviet Russia gave up its bizarre insistence on hog-tying the United Nations Organization with an absolute veto. According to Moscow’s previous position, the great powers should have the right to use the veto to prevent any problem from even being discussed at the Security Council. Such an extreme use of the veto was unacceptable to the smaller nations, and very much against the principles of the U.S. and Britain, who sensibly believe that any of the smaller nations have a right to make their case.

It’s certainly good news that the Russians have had an attack of sanity on this issue. But why did they provoke this crisis in the first place? Arthur Krock writes in today’s New York Times defines the up-and-down pattern we’re seeing in U.S.-Russian relations, and points out one way this dispute was awfully disadvantageous to Stalin --

"Once again -- as at Moscow in 1943, Teheran, Dumbarton Oaks, and Yalta -- light has broken through the clouds that have gathered intermittently over Russo-American relations, and once again Washington is relieved and happy. American statesmanship has no doubt that one of its greatest tasks is to preserve good relations with Soviet Russia in the years to come, and the belief that this goal is as attainable as it is essential acquires renewed strength, of course, each time an impasse with Moscow is broken. This task is complicated by some well-meaning, some not so well-meaning and some irresponsible persons in both countries and elsewhere in the world. But Russian methods and what at times has seemed an ineradicable Soviet distrust of the West have often been the greatest complications. Take, as in illustration, the dispute over the application of the veto. After a period of insistence that many feared would break up the United Nations Conference on International Organization, or confine its results to a very incomplete product, the Russians accepted the principle of the right of petition of small nations to the Security Council, if a Council majority approved, and abandoned their long-sustained position that any permanent member’s veto should deny petitioners a hearing. . . . What were the general effects of the Russian record in this episode, insofar as they seem to have materialized? The long holdout, against this mild acceptance of a principle dear to the West, gave anti-Soviet propagandists, especially in this country, an opportunity to impress their view on many who are most reluctant to consider post-war Russia a menace to peace or foreign democracy and eager to believe that Washington and Moscow can work together to the ends of peace and justice."

So why did the Russians behave the way they did on the veto issue? Barnet Nover lists some reasons in his latest column --

"Just why Russia took this stand is anything but clear. Chronic suspicion of the outside world which has, justly or unjustly, colored so much of Russia’s thinking on international affairs was undoubtedly one factor. Fear that the right of discussion might be used to bring up matters embarrassing to the Soviet Union was probably another. But a contributory factor, without question, was the Russian government’s ignorance of the state of mind of the outside world and, therefore, its inability to gauge in advance the effect its attitudes and actions will have on other nations and peoples. There was never the slightest doubt among observers at the Conference that the American delegation would under no circumstances recede from its position. Nor can there be any doubt that, had the voting question been submitted to the steering committee, Russia would have been voted down overwhelmingly. Furthermore, it would have been a strange spectacle to see Russia, the fervent apostle of five-power unity, fighting to ditch a viewpoint so strongly opposed by the other members of the Big Five."

Mr. Nover hits upon the most troubling aspects of this affair. Is Soviet diplomacy, to put it bluntly, exceptionally suspicious and dim-witted? If, after almost four years of friendly relations with the U.S., the Russians can’t or won’t grasp the dangers of obstinacy on matters such as this, what will happen when the Big Five, and the U.N. organization, face a real crisis?

posted by Michael 8:19:00 AM

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PROTECTING THE NATION’S WEALTH. From Time magazine’s Miscellany section -- "In Manhattan, Gristede Brothers, grocers, sent two boys with each pushcart load of orders -- the extra one to stand guard over the butter."

posted by Michael 8:16:00 AM

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