1 - Winston Churchill

FULTON +50train journey to Missouri, and Byrnes read it in full beforetheir departure.) 5But Churchill's harsh and somber tone, and thebreadth and detail with which he made his case — thefirst strong criticisms of Russia by a Western leadersince the Nazi invasion of Russia in June 1941 —brought down on him a torrent of controversy. (Actually,it brought him back to the stage he had known allof his career except for the war years.) Senators Pepper(D-FL), Kilgore (D-W.V.) and Taylor (D-Id.), issued ajoint statement: "Mr. Churchill's proposal would cut thethroat of the United Nations Organization." They describedit as "shocking." 6 Representative Savage (D-Wa.)declared that "this is an entirely different world than itwas before the war" and complained that Churchill was"asking for power politics to start lining up again." Russia'sactions were only guarding her security, he argued.7 Representative Patterson (D-Ca.) said Churchillwas asking "that we should revert to the reactionaryand self-destructive ... old idea of balancing of onepower or one group of powers against another group. . .Blocs of powers against powers in this atomic age canonly bring world war and total destruction to thehuman race." 8_»_ earl Buck, a Nobel Laureate, called Churchill's visita "catastrophe." George Bernard Shaw told a Reuterscorrespondent that Churchill's speech was "nothingshort of a declaration of war on Russia" and thatChurchill was proposing a "recrudescence of the old balanceof power policy . . . with a view to a future war." 9Marquis Childs wrote in the Washington Post that thespeech "overlooks a vital truth, [t]hat ... you cannotfight the 'Communist menace' by armed alliances."Rather the world needed to address the root economicand social causes of popular discontent. 10 In the Houseof Commons, 105 Labour MPs introduced a motion condemningthe speech and affirming the view "that worldpeace and security can be maintained, not by sectionalalliances, but by progressively strengthening the powerand authority of U.N.O. to the point where it becomescapable of exercising ... the functions of a world government."11„ _Time reported that a majority of Congress was"cold" and that US newspapers "generally viewed withdistaste and alarm the kind of military marriage proposedby Churchill." 12 Newsweek reported that Britishnewspapers "generally took the line that Churchill hadgone too far both in criticism of Russia and in proposinga virtual British-American alliance." 13Leading liberal newspapers and magazines attackedChurchill for relying on the old power politics, endangeringthe UN and wrongly placing the blame on Russia.The Chicago Sun denounced Churchill s poisonousdoctrines "" Norman Cousins wrote in the Saturday Reviewthat "Russian unilateralism today is not the disease;it is a product of the disease." The danger "is thecenturies-old problem of competitive national sovereignties. . . , the race for security, each nation decidingfor itself what is necessary for its own security . . . ."This leads to military bases, spheres of influence, alliancesand the arms race, all of which in the past hadled to war. The only hope, he concluded, mindful of theatomic bomb, "is real world organization, meaningworld law. . . ," 15 The New Republic proclaimed, "Securityis found in the hatred of all peoples for war, and thedemand of all peoples that all issues between nations beresolved through the U.N.O. . . . One standard must beraised now ... — 'Stand by the Charter.'" 16These words, although hyperbolic, were not entirelydissimilar to wartime statements by President Rooseveltand others, who offered the promise that victorywould usher in an era in which cooperation replaced thedemands of power. Wilsonian rhetoric was still the rulein their public pronouncements; it was, Roosevelt believed,the best way to keep the country united againstthe Axis enemy.T,hus, in an address to a joint session of Congress followingthe Moscow Foreign Ministers' Conference inNovember 1943, Secretary of State Hull (still a trueblue Wilsonian), said that once the new internationalorganization began, "there will no longer be need forspheres of influence, for alliances, for balance of power,or any other of the special arrangements throughwhich, in the unhappy past, the nations strove to safeguardtheir security or to promote their interest." TheCongressmen applauded wildly. 17 Roosevelt was certainlymore mindful of power considerations than Hulland very concerned to avoid the errors of President Wilson— the Security Council was based on his view thatthe Great Powers had to secure the peace; nevertheless,near the end of his Congressional address on the Yaltaagreement he felt compelled to say:"[Yalta] ought to spell the end of the system of unilateralaction, the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence, thebalances of power, and all the other expedients that have beentried for centuries — and have always failed." 18For Americans reared in an idealistic tradition, theUN had all the answers: for Eastern Europe, Iran,Turkey and control of the atomic bomb. Churchill's liberalcritics now saw the Roosevelt policy of one worldembodied in the UN breaking up into a confrontation oftwo blocs.For their part, conservative critics were more concernedwith Churchill's proposal of a peacetime Anglo-American alliance than with his attacks on Russian policy.Senator Taft (R-Ohio) agreed with much ofChurchill's criticism of Russia, but stated, "it would beFINEST HOUR 89/31