herents followed positive objectives-the winning of political or social rights,or the dynamic quest of new libertythrough settling a wilderness.
Letters
But we cringe from new challenges,and accept the purely negative goalof opposing Communism . Instead ofapplying democratic solutions to theproblems of mankind, we bend all ourefforts to preventing the application ofCommunistic solutions. Even ECA waspresented to Congress and the peopleas a measure to thwart Communism Shifting the Burdensrather than to strengthen and fosterdemocracy.
To The Reporter
Achievement of democracy will pre-vent Communism anywhere. But mereprevention of Communism will neverachieve democracy. We are violatingthe first principle of war, the principleof offensive action, and have yieldedthe initiative to the enemy. Any change,any proposal to ameliorate the obvioussocial, economic, and political ills be-setting most of the world, will not beours but our opponents'.
Fear of Communistic change hasengendered fear of any change. Andthe compulsion to demonstrate errorsin Communism has led us to attributea perfection to our own policies andmethods that cannot possibly exist. Wemistake democratic forms for democ-racy itself; postulate that these formsare perfect; and deduce that we haveattained a perfect state of democracy.But perfect democracy can never beattained- although it may always bemore closely approached.
To the Editor: Your recent issues promptthese questions and tentative answers.
Does Britain bear enormously too largea share of the western world's securityburden? Does Britain police oceans andfurnish first and second lines of defenseout of all proportion to its reduced re-sources?
The United States , belatedly, relievedBritain of the burden of Greece and ofmost of the burden of Germany . Was thisrelief sufficient? Was it only a beginning?
The following transfers of wealth, power,prestige and burden are suggested:
The Bahamas to cold Canada , whichneeds a warm resort area, for say one hun-dred million dollars. To Canada , also, say,one billion dollars' worth of the British Navy .
Belize , Falkland Islands , British Guiana,possibly to Guatemala or Honduras , Argen tina , Venezuela , or to the United States as trustee. The consideration should behundreds of millions of dollars.( As is al-ready evident from uranium explorations,British Guiana will be developed withAmerican capital.)
Jamaica , Trinidad and other denselypopulated British possessions in the Car ibbean , no monetary consideration. Butthe United States to share the dead- weightburden of steering these islands towardindependence.
Gibraltar , Malta , Cyprus , Suez, Aden tothe world's first naval power, for enoughbillions to pay off Britain 's debt to America .Some sort of shift of on- the- spot respon-sibility in Southern Asia .
Are these suggestions insane?
In a rapidly- changing world, newproblems continually arise, involvingnew conditions and relationships. Newsolutions must be found. Solutions em-ployed for past problems will be inade-quate, however well they served be-fore. If we cease to seek new solutions,fearlessly and aggressively, we shallfind ourselves unable to solve newproblems by reason. And as Arnold Toynbee has amply demonstrated, asociety which no longer meets its prob-lems rationally must turn to force. Theresults are dictatorship, militarism and Schizojournalism?
disintegration.
The immediate threat to our free-dom is not as yet- that a tyrannyshall be imposed upon us. It is ratherthat we shall halt in our advancetoward democracy. But in the end, thiswill amount to the same thing.
Or would such transfers, after tem-porarily lowering British prestige, enor-mously strengthen Britain ? And America ?And the western world?
To the Editor: I am sometimes troubled bya seeming split in The Reporter's personal-ity. On the one hand the magazine assumes aconsiderable amount of background infor-mation- particularly about the internal po-litical situation in continental Europe. Thestyle of writing contains allusions whichmust be lost on people who have not at-tained a certain degree of intellectual poise.On the other hand, an occasional article
adopts an extremely simple approach. I amnever sure just what you are trying to door whom you are trying to reach.
The fare is a little too thin, perhaps, toexcite the scholar and intellectual- yet themagazine seems to be aimed at him in part.I'm afraid it's too demanding, on the otherhand, for the" average" reader. It must beaimed primarily at liberal college graduateswho are interested in things but only partlyinformed. If this is so, I should like tosuggest something. Forget about trying towoo the scholars directly, since they are anirascible minority at best. Forget about try-ing to be subtler than the" little magazines"and go after that literate but under-nourished group of college graduates andprofessional people. And forget aboutthrowing a bone to the masses.
Dear Reader:
In this issue we have only estab-lished the main lines of our posi-tion on Germany ; we have not ex-hausted the subject. Every" theme"that we have brought to your at-tention will be developed in futureissues.
The men who have written forus are experts; several write fromrecent experience. Among newcontributors are John Scott, for-mer chief of Time's Berlin Bureau;Ernest Leiser, bureau chief for apress service in Berlin; and FredHechinger, who writes for theWashington Post and the NewYork Herald Tribune.
-
-The Editors
NOTE: The Reporter likes to givecredit where credit is due, even ifbelatedly. Dr. Harold Taylor, in writ-ing his article," A Vote for AcademicFreedom" in the August 30 issue, basedit on his speech given previously atthe Mademoiselle Sixth Annual Col-lege Forum, on" Freedom and Se-curity," in April.
The Reporter, October 11, 1949
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