Critic of Western Power Alleges War Objection

Grey River Argus, 26 April 1948, Page 7

Critic of Western Power Alleges War Objection

WELLINGTON, April 16. “The Standard” states:—Marc T, Greene, “The Standard’s” widelytravelled American correspondent, at present visiting New Zealand; scathingly condemns the United States attitude to Spain as revealed by the vote, later reversed by Congress as a whole, in the U.S. House of Representatives, in favour of in including Spain in the European Recovery Plan. He said: “If there ever was a time when international politics touched the present low level of hypocrisy, chicanery and callous disregard for any consideration but political expediency and selfish national aggrandisement, a fair acquaintance with the record, from Zenophon through Gibbon down to H. G. Wells and Charles and Mary Beard, fails to discover it. One is both disgusted and depressed at what is going on in the wond to-day and to keep alive a spark of hope for the future in the face of it all becomes more and more difficult. In a few short weeks there have been perpetrated at least three acts which the historian of the future will consider witn astonishment and disdain, which indeed mu’l bring shame to the average honest and rightthinking man and woman of the present. The culminating act, appalling from any point of view except that of sheer political expediency, is the virtual recognition of Franco and his regime as a part of the comity ofnations, to be aided and supported side by side with peoples and governments victimised by the war. This move, of-which every decent American ought to be ashamed, and probably is at heart, however much he is prepared to vield to the supposed expediency of the moment, receives into the arms of the so-called democracies the man who was third member of the nefarious triumvirate. Hit-

ler- Mussolini-Franco. ■ Nor is there anp reluctance on the part of press or politicians anywhere to admit that the reason for the move is to create another baston against the third member of the triumvirate which won the war, America-England-Russia. It is a record that more than ten thousand oersons have been arrested by Franco, for “political offences” since 1939. The term of imprisonment for such “crimes” —and they include oven the' whispering of a critical word of one of the most ruthless regimes in European history—is twenty-five years at hard labour. Thousands are in Spanish gaols today, slowly dying there, without hope or possibility of escape, and they include not ony women but even children of early teen-age. There is no record of Franco’s executions since the end of the war. They are believed to mount well into the hundreds. They have included any number of Spanish intellectuals whose cole crime has been verbal opposition to the existing nefarious regime. In many cases protests from leading liberals throughout the world, especially in Britain and America, have been made, and treated with contempt by the “caudillo.” He has stated that‘the rebillion, which began in 1936, was a “holy crusade,” and any who are known to have supported the loyalists opposition to it or by any possibility would be likely to back a revolt against the Falangist Government are “criminals” and treated as Godless foes to the “crusade.” The political world has contemplated this disgraceful state of things with equanimity, but honest men everywhere have shuddered at the festering spot of medievalism in a Europe struggling to rehabilitate itself along lines of justice and protection to the common man. And now comes the crowning ignominy and shame, the virtual recognition of Snain as part of Europe to be aided by American dollars. What in Heaven’s name is it but recognition, despite a threadbare cloak of verbiage that tries to conceal the real purpose? It is the recognition of a man, and the disreputable regime he heads, who throughout the war gave as much aid to our enemies as he dared and did not give more only because he had sense enough to see that said enemies could not prevail In every moral respect he was, and is one of them, practising the same ruthless totalitarianism. And now. we take this monster by the hand and receive him into our aid and protection, and apparently, without demanding any assurances whasoever from him that he will alter his ways in any respect, ceases his cold-bloon-ed persecution, releases anybody from his gaols, reprieve anybody from his gallows, or recognise the existence of any opposition. On the other hand we are, it. would appear, to make no conditions at all, in which case we are simply aiding and abetting him and his methods. And who is so naive as to suppose for a moment that money given him under the Marshall Plan or any other plan will have any fate but the fate of American millions still being poured into China.? Who can contemplate the future without dismay and fear when the only country in a position to support anybody extends a material aid that cannot be divorced from moral to Spain. The Czechs decided to turn from the people who betrayed them . in 1938 to somebody else who promised them something better. We have countered this move, which even the conservative Senator Taft says , was only a “consolidation of position,” by three pieces of political chicanery—the reversal of Palestine-partition scheme, the arrogant tossing of the free-zone of Trieste over to the Italians in the hope of saving the forthcoming elections from the Communists, and now this recognition of Franco’s Spain! . Evervone of these moves is—who denies " it?—a pre-eminently antiRussian move and so flagrantly that as to be provocative right up to the point of war. , Without entering upon deoam as to the necessity, or the desirability, of blocking the Soviet, the method presently being resorted to hold httle hope of achieving that blocking short of war so obviously desired by a great part of the capitalist world.