In
welcoming George C. Marshall as the new Secretary of State, H.A. said, “In
almost every nation that has suffered heavily in this war, men and women are
desperately trying to alter the old order of things because the old order has
brought them poverty, disaster and war…
Almost without a battle we have yielded to the Russians the loyalty of
millions of workers and peasants because they believe the Russians and not
ourselves are their only guarantors against hunger and war. We cannot permit this to go on or we shall
find our only allies are the tired men who have lost the faith of their own
people.”
Speaking
of tired men who have lost the faith of their people, it looks like King George
will fall in Greece, as might the government in Turkey. The anti-communist Whiskey Rebels want to
send military aid to these regimes; however, the anti-communist, but
isolationist, subsection of the Whiskey Rebels do not want any more tax dollars
spent on more foreign aid.
H.A.
responded that sending military aid to Greece and Turkey would be a down payment
on an unlimited expenditure aimed at opposing communist expansion. America, in effect, would be forced to police
Russia’s every border. To the Whiskey
Rebels there is no regime too reactionary for us to support provided it stands
in Russia’s expansionist path. There is
no country too remote to serve as the scene of a contest, which may widen until
it becomes another world war. He said, humanitarian
aid to Greece was needed, but not military aid to a repressive regime. A policy of military aid H.A. said, “is
utterly futile. No people can be bought. America cannot afford to spend billions and
billions of dollars for unproductive purposes.
The world is hungry and insecure, and peoples of all lands demand
change. American loans for military
purposes won’t stop them. …once America
stands for opposition to change, we are lost.
America will become the most hated nation in the world.”
H.A.
called for action through the U.N. “If
the United Nations is untested, let us test it.
If the United Nations lacks support, let us support it. If the United Nations is weak, let us
strengthen it.”
The
way to fight communism, H.A. concluded, was “by what William James called ‘the
replacing power of the higher affection.’
In other words, we must give the common man all over the world something
better than communism. I believe we have
something better than communism here in America.”
© 2014 Ron Millar
