THE UNITED STATES IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25159, 15 April 1947, Page 6

THE UNITED STATES IN THE MIDDLE EAST

NEW AMERICAN POLICY

[By the RT. HON. WINSTON S. CHURCHILL, former Prime Minister of Gr®»» Britain.] 11l

I understand and have never underrated the weight of arguments of former days in favour of American isolationism. If my father had been an American citizen instead of my mother, I should have hesitated a long time before I got mixed up with Europe and Asia and that sort of thing. Why. I should have asked myself, should my forbears have gone across the Atlantic Ocean in little ships with all the perils iof wind and weather to make a new home in a vast, unexplored continent? Why should they have left class and i feudal systems of society, or actual tyrannies which denied them religious freedom, to encounter the unknown? Why should they have struggled on through hard, bleak generations, cut- ! ting down the forests, cultivating the land, fighting the Red Indians, climbing over the mountains, wending across the prairies, driving their covered waggons and presently their railways, ;to the misty and mysterious Pacific, in order to find, create, arid consolidate, “the land of the free and the home of the brave” —why all this, if it was not to find self-expression in isolation? Why, then, I should have asked myself, have I got to go back to Europe and to Asia, just because they showed me maps of these continents when I was at school? Are not the oceans broad and have we not got one on each side of us? It would nave taken me a lot to get over this. However, there has been a lot, and it is needful to look around upon it all. The United States has become the most powerful force in the world, and at this same moment all the ancient nations and races of Europe and Asia, except only the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics and Great Britain and her Commonwealth, have been for the time being exhausted in the aftermath of their horrible struggles. More than that, the fundamental principles which have governed the growth of American democracy are also challenged, not only in Europe and Asia, but in every country throughout the world. The doctrine that all men are created free and equal and are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, is confronted bluntly and menacingly X? totalitarian conception that the State is all and the individual is a slave or a pawn. The remaining free, democratic countries are also preyed upon from within by a sect which has no national loyalties and obeys blindly the orders which it receives from the Supreme Communist oligarchy in the Kremlin. This also raises new and far-reaching issues. It would seem to force thoughtful and patriotic Americans to ask themselves why should millions of Americans be taken from their homes and farms and businesses from which they get their living and rear their families to go across the ocean every 25 years or so and shed their blood in wars, in tne making of which they have had no say, m the preventing of which they Ve A so far been no use. Why should the American people pour out its life ana treasure generation after generation to try to put things 'right across the ocean after they have watched them all go wrong?

Other Considerations These are only the questions which I would have pondered over, and perhaps said something about, if I had been born a citizen of the United States. But I should also have memories and comprehension of what had happened m the last 30 years or more. I should see the shattered, convulsive, quivering Europe as a source of great danger to me and my home town—for which I might have been elected (you never know). When I reflected ?n the strength of the United States, its freedoms, and its many virtues, all the toils, sacrifices, costs, and burdens cast upon it, I might well have come to the conclusion that the United States has no choice but to lead or fall. It is certainly not strange that American opinion should probably be greatly influenced by President Truman, General Marshall. Mr Bernard Baruch, Senator Vandenberg, Governor Dewey, and other champions of peace and progress in trying to nip evil in the bud, quench fire at its outbreak, and stop pestilence by timely inoculation.

And then there are other facts. There is this awful thing they call science. It never will leave America alone—not even sfter conquering the redskins and the forests and the prairies Facts, obnoxious and persistent, come reaching out their claws, upsetting the lives of the cottages or the apartment homes, from Boston to San Francisco, from Chicago to New Orleans. Detestable facts arising from muddle and disaster thousands of miles away, or from terrible discoveries and inventions, but facts, none the less, that all can see and have lately

felt. These are facts, that must U mastered and controlled. And ™ only are these ugly facts, there are ths calls of duty inseparable from world power and its responsibilities, I gJ not surprised that many American ask whether it would not be worth while, would not it indeed be a meal sure of ordinary prudence, would it not also be a high moral duty to take a little interest between whiles in matters which make so great a difference to the ordinary life and welfEr2 of the American Common Man? h must be the interest as well as honour for every man in every free country to see whether these unrelenting, re. curring dangers cannot be so governed by a world organisation as to make things better for all humanity.

The British Empire I have now something to say about my own country. It would be er. roneous for Americans to suppose that Great Britain has ceased to be a State and nation of high and enduring power in the world, or that its people have no longer within them the slowly-maturing qualities which had made their history famous, and reached their finest expression in 1940. It may be true that the British withdrawal from India and Burma, now in sombre progress, marks the end of that mighty Empire and mis. si on in the east, which for two centuries had raised England to a world pinnacle. But it is after we have departed from these wide lands with their teeming and now convulsed populations that the ensuing tragedy will bring a better understanding, especially in the United States, of the part we have played and the work we have done. No doubt it is also true that under continuance of socialist rule the British island could not support its dense population of fortyseven millions and certainly not the standards of life to which they have lopg been accustomed, which compared so favourably before the win with’ those of any other European country. What is not certain is that socialist rule will continue. British democracy, working under free institutions, and fortuitous elections, appears superficially changeable. Who could compare the Britain of Munich with the Britain of Dunkirk? A casual observer from outside would find it hard to believe that we were the same race of people. Britain has, of course, been grievously weakened by the effort she made in the two victorious world wan fought against German aggression. This is especially true of the last, in which we made intense exertions from start to finish. The zeal and energy with which we fought that struggle has brought us at this moment to a point of exhaustion, psychological, physical, financial, economic, usually seen only in defeated countries, and not always in them. But this phase will pass. The British nation will rise again, if not to its former preeminence, at least in solid and lasting strength. As I said at Fulton, ‘ Half a century from now, there will be at least eighty millions of Britons spread about the globe, united in defence of our traditions, our way of life, and of the world themes to which we and the United States have long been faithful.” Americans should not fear to march forward unswervingly upon the path to which Destiny has called them, guided by the principles of the Declaration of Independence, all written out so carefqlly and so pregnantly in the balanced, well-shaped language of the eighteenth century by the founders of the greatest State in the world. All is there, nothing can be abandoned; nothing need be added, nothing should be denied. No importance should be attached to the discordant voices of the 40 or 50 cryAbCommunists in the House of Commons. They have their rights in a free assembly. But Britain and the British Commonwealth as a whole will welcome the establishment of American power in the Middle East and will give all her potent aid by every means.

Let us then go forward together in all understanding and amity. Divided, all may be destroyed piecemeal; united, in the World Organisation, we may save freedom, civilisation, and democracy—and perhaps even roll away the curse of war for ever from mankind.

(This is the last of a series of three articles by Mr. Churchill.) [World copyright 1947 by Co-opera-tion. Reproduction in whole or in part in all languages strictly pro-