February 1947
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
January 1947
Okay
I’m not paranoid. We found out that J.
Edgar Hoover, in his paranoia of “Communist conspiracy,” has made dossiers on
everyone connected with H.A. It seems
Hoover secretly questions the president’s “Americanism” and he, and everyone
associated with him, is suspect. Beware
the clean-cut men in gray suits.
H.A.
was on Meet the Press and almost every question was, in one way or
another, about the infiltration of communists in our society. He simply replied, “If you allow that little
thing to dominate your mind, it means that you have become a red-baiter, a
person who wants to sic the F.B.I. onto your neighbor; its interferes with
everything you want to do.”
However,
fear of communist infiltration is growing.
Spurred by the Whisky Rebels, Conservative Republicans such as Robert
Taft of Ohio and Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska, and William Knowland of California
allied with racist southern Democrats such as Mississippi’s Senator James O.
Eastland and Congressman John Rankin attacked the New Deal as “un-American” and
“unconstitutional” and in foreign policy they said that H.A. would allow the
Communists to take over the world.
Congress
has started investigations to identify and expel communists in the federal
government. To facilitate their efforts
they sought to establish a Federal Employees Loyalty and Security Program. The program would not allow employees under
suspicion to confront their accusers or to know the evidence against them.
H.A.
said that Congress was overstepping its bounds.
He was the President and he was responsible for government
employees. H.A. correctly sees this as
means to discourage the best and brightest from staying, or joining, government
service to advance the New Deal. H.A.
will not allow the New Deal to be stymied.
Again
from the sidelines, Truman said he would issue an Executive Order to implement
the Congressional program and weed out communists in government. Fortunately, Truman is not the president and
innocent employees will not lose their jobs due to red-baiting.
© 2014 Ron Millar
© 2014 Ron Millar
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