The Press MONDAY, MAY 29, 1944. Foreign Policy Debate

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24269, 29 May 1944, Page 4

The Press MONDAY, MAY 29, 1944. Foreign Policy Debate

Criticism of Mr Churchill's foreign policy speech has fallen under two main heads. His statement that the war, as it progresses, has become " less ideological in character," has puzzled some newspapers and to others has served partly to explain inconsistencies in his speech by introducing the principle of expediency. Second, it has been suggested that Mr Churchill was in seme respects disappointingly, perhaps dangerously vague. The two lines of criticism cross at some points, but are worth pursuing separately. As for the first, it is unfortunate that the context in which Mr Churchill made his remark about the ideological aspects of the war has not been indicated. It is unlikely, however, to have disclosed any weakening of Mr Churchill's grasp of the ideological issues of the war and any approach to a warmer sympathy with fascism in any of its forms, including Franco's. For tnere is a sufficiently plain sense in which what Mr Churchill said was a literal statement of fact: that it is now certain that victory in this war will go, not to the enemy and the system of ideas for which he stands, but to the United Nations and their system, as it is or as they make it. It fellows, in that sense and within its limits, that the issue has increasingly become a military one: how soon, and by what means, the United Nations can make their vjsible and potential superiority decisive. Fascism will not prevail; and that is reason enough to account for the tone of Mr Churchill's references, on the one hand, to Turkey, and on the other to Spain. Neither the active aid of one nor the active hostility of the other can now tilt the balance. But what is true in Mr Churchill's remark does not alter the fact that the ideal issues of the war and the peace are vital-and that it is impossible to separate them from the practical issues of victory and settlement. They are one and the same. That is why, to come to the second point, Mr Churchill's reference to the Atlantic Charter is disturbing. It remains, he said, " the guiding signpost "expressing ihe vast body of " epinion among the Powers nov/ '•fighting tyranny"; but he repeated the statement he made after Tehera'h, that it in no way binds the Allies regarding the future of Germany. There is a way, of course, in which it does not bind them: it affords the Germans no ground on which they can bargain for peace. And that is the meaning of unconditional surrender. But it is impossible to read the Atlantic Charter without recognising that its key phrases do bind the victors, and were intended to bind them, to certain principles in making peace—principles, essentially, of territorial, political, and economic justice, perhaps best summarised by recalling that clause after clause evenly applies to " all nations." Mr Churchill, in fact, referring to the " world structure" of the future, said that» there must be room in it "for happiness and prosperity for "all," and that it must, "in the " end," be capable of " giving happi"ness and prosperity even to the "guilty, vanquished nations." This could be read as the necessary and sufficient corrective to his comment on the Atlantic Charter; and it would be easy to read it so, if there were no evidence that peace terms difficult or impossible to reconcile with the Atlantic Charter have already • been agreed upon. Mr "Churchill's speech on the Tejieran conference contained such evidence; there have been rumours of more. But the truth about the identity of the real and the ideal issues of the peace is simply this: that while the temper of some or even all the United Nations, in the hour of victory, may be such as to assent to an oppressive, retributive peace, or to one that furthers some [purely nationalistic end, it will not continue to give assent and therefore it will not be ready to sustain and enforce such a peace. But the peace settlement will last only if fhe victors are and remain united in upholding it; which means that the victor peoples remain ready to uphold it by fighting for it, if necessary; which means that they must be able to uphold it 'before their own sense of right and justice and before that of the renewed comity of nations. When Mr Churchill rested the initial responsibility for post-war order on a " world-control- " ling council of the great victor " States," and declined to forecast, at this stage, the nature of the relations between the " world as- " sembly" of all nations and this "world executive," he was not, as some critics have complained, delusively vague. The complete pattern of international relations and their rule of law will emerge from the peace settlement. It will emerge as a workable one, if that settlement works; and only an equitable one will work. What has become disturbingly vague is the prospect of such a settlement.