Tuesday, June 26, 1945

NO POLITICAL CAREER FOR IKE. The talk goes on about what General Eisenhower will do now that the war in Europe is won. President Truman is said to have told the General he could have any job he wanted. Well, "Ike" has now made it absolutely clear one thing he won’t do. And for anyone thinking that the General might make a swell candidate for elected office, and wanting to draft him for such, should forget about it. From the A.P. account of Eisenhower’s press conference last Friday --

"‘Look, . . . I’m in the Federal service and I take the orders of my Commander in Chief. All I want is to be a citizen of the United States, and when the War Department turns me out to pasture that’s all I want to be. I want nothing else. It is silly to talk about me in politics, and so for once I’ll talk about that, but only to settle this thing once and for all. I should like to make this as emphatic as possible. There’s no use me denying that I’ll fly to the moon because no one has suggested it and I couldn’t if I wanted to. The same goes for politics. I’m a soldier and no one thinks of me as a politician."

Conceivably, that could be read as something less than a complete denial that Ike would run for office under any circumstances. But he returned to the subject later, and shut the door to politics just as much as someone could shut it --

"In the strongest language you can command, . . . you can state that I have no political ambitions at all. Make it even stronger than that if you can. I’d like to go further even than Sherman did in expressing himself on this subject."

General Sherman is the one who said, when folks tried to draft him for the Presidency, "If nominated, I will not run; if elected, I will not serve." It’s hard to imagine how someone could "go further" than that, but it does sound pretty definitive. Whatever Eisenhower does, he won’t have a future in politics.

posted by Michael 8:12:00 AM

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WILL THE "UNITED NATIONS" SUCCEED? As the U.N. Charter is prepared for signing later this week, Walter Lippmann’s column today in the New York Herald Tribune wisely rephrases the question, and pinpoints the most hopeful element of the new world league --

"The fair and accurate question to ask about the charter is not whether the international institution will work. The question is whether we can make it work. The difference between these two questions is all-important. If we stand around and ask whether it will work, we are really saying that we expect 'it', a piece of paper with words written on it, to be a kind of automatic robot and big tin god to keep the world at peace. But if we ask whether we, the American people acting through out government and using our power and influence wisely, can make it work, then we are asking the right question. When our own Constitution had been written and ratified, the question of whether it would work was answered by Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Marshall, and the others who were determined to make it work, and knew how. What warrant have we for thinking that this charter can be made to promote and preserve peace? That it is the charter of a union or confederation which contains all the nations now capable of waging war; war can occur only if this union is dissolved. This distinguishes this new organization radically from the old one. The Geneva league never contained all the powers capable of waging war; Russia was not invited until long after the United States refused to join. Thus the Geneva league was never a union of the powers; this association will be a union of the powers. . . . The new organization is, therefore, properly and significantly designated the United Nations."

As Mr. Lippmann says, the United Nations is only a first step toward a peaceful, well-governed world. But he says, as others have pointed out, that it is the best we can do right now --

"In the international community the bonds of law are not nearly as firm as they are within the maturest states. But there is no substitute for the bonds of law if peace is to endure. In basing the new organization on the principle of union, rather than on the idea of all nations policing all nations, the San Francisco charter commits the United Nations to the development of an international society under the rule of law. The delegations at San Francisco have not created such a society. But they have designed institutions and laid down the commitments which, if we are wise and persevering, can be used to make the United Nations become an international society. More than that no one had the right to ask of the conference; to have done that much is to have done all that was possible, and to have earned in full measure the confidence and gratitude of mankind."

posted by Michael 8:09:00 AM

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NOT THE TYPE THEY’RE LOOKING FOR. From Time magazine’s Miscellany section -- "In Ann Arbor, Mich., a Mrs. Hunt and a Mrs. Peck applied for jobs at the University of Michigan Personnel Office, were both turned down flat because they had flunked the preliminary typing test."

posted by Michael 8:03:00 AM

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Sunday, June 24, 1945

OKINAWA FALLS, JAPAN GETS MORE JITTERS. Finally, finally the press is reporting that U.S. soldiers and Marines have broken large-scale resistance on Okinawa. Stragglers are still firing at our troops, but yesterday’s A.P. dispatch says these remnants aren’t presenting much of a problem anymore, and enemy troops themselves know it --

"On Okinawa, there were still five machine-gun nests to be wiped out, but generally the mop-up drive was meeting only slight resistance. Observers watched 160 Japanese commit suicide with grenades rather than surrender. . . . Meanwhile, the Marines raised the Stars and Stripes over the island, formally ending the 82-day campaign which cost the United States more heavily than any Pacific battle."

But there are signs that the Japanese might not be as quick to fight to the death as they portray themselves to be. The A.P. also says we’ve probably now taken over 7,000 enemy prisoners on Okinawa -- an amazing number, and more than we’ve taken previously in the entire Pacific war. Broadcasts from Tokyo are also sounding a bit more panicky about an "impending" U.S. invasion of Kyushu, with Premier Suzuki himself joining in the invasion warnings.

And there’s been one intriguing development that might make the Tokyo government a lot more queasy -- the Truman administration has just now revealed that we’re shipping lend-lease supplies to the Russians in Siberia. As Leo Crowley, the Lend-Lease Administrator, told Congress last month, "The possibility of Russia’s entry into the war against Japan acts to pin down in northern Manchuria large numbers of Japanese troops which might otherwise be diverted against Allied forces in the Asiatic theater." Up until now, the administration has been absolutely mum on the possibility of the Russians joining in the Pacific war. If they did -- and if our lend-lease help is a quid pro quo to get Moscow to declare war -- it could notably speed up our timetable for invading the Japanese home islands by robbing Tokyo of desperately needed reinforcements. This certainly could be a factor in the latest round of Japanese jitters.

posted by Michael 8:35:00 AM

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THE NEW, IMPROVED POLISH GOVERNMENT. Seeking to break the Big Three stalemate over the composition of the Polish government, the Soviets have moved to open it up to non-Communist membership -- at least a bit. The "reorganization" of Poland’s provisional government, announced yesterday from Moscow, brings in three former members of the non-Communist Polish government-in-exile, including its former head, Stanislaw Mikolajczyk. Is it enough to gain American and British recognition of the provisional government. News reports tell us it doesn’t appear to have budged the Western allies that much, and Barnet Nover gives us some reasons why it shouldn’t --

"How really democratic is it? It is true that the Soviet-sponsored Warsaw regime has been enriched with new blood. But of the 21 members of the new government, 16 are holdovers and of the five new members of the cabinet, one, Wicenty Witos, Peasant Party leader, is an old and ailing man, another, Meczislaw Thugot, is without political experience and known only as the son of a distinguished democratic intellectual who died in exile two years ago. If Messrs. Mikolajczyk, Grabski and Stanczyk prove strong enough to make their influence felt in the new regime the hopes engendered by the Moscow settlement may be realized. At the moment the fact remains that they are outnumbered in the government by at least four to one, with most of the principal posts, including the administration of the police, in the hands of Lublinites, i.e., of Polish Communists. Of course, the composition of the new Polish regime is far less important, since it is admittedly a provisional government, than the policies it will pursue, particularly the manner in which it will prepare for and hold those 'free and unfettered elections . . . on the basis of universal and secret ballot' that are stipulated in the Yalta agreement."

Mr. Nover says that the U.S. and Britain should not recognize this provisional government until it gives "very explicit assurances" of its democratic nature and its intentions to hold fully free elections. The Polish exile government, on the other hand, has acidly described the new government as a Communist regime in disguise and an "unconditional surrender" to Russian demands, and asserts that any elections held under this government’s auspices will be a "sham."

I think the correct position is somewhere between these two -- the U.S. and Britain should applaud any effort to open up the Moscow-backed Polish government and make it more representative. But we should withhold recognition of a new Polish regime until after free elections have been held, with all democratic parties allowed to fairly participate. And in fact, according to an A.P. story this morning, this is what the Anglo-American position will be.

posted by Michael 8:22:00 AM

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KEEPING SECRETS FROM THE WIFE. From Time magazine’s Miscellany section -- "In Bloomington, Ind., County Clerk Earl Baxter grew tired of $300 alimony gathering dust in his safe, advertised for the divorcee to come and pick it up. She came promptly, explained, 'I didn’t know I’d been divorced.'"

posted by Michael 8:18:00 AM

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