The Grey River Argus MONDAY, February 28, 1949. SHOUTING LIBERTY

Grey River Argus, 28 February 1949, Page 4

The Grey River Argus MONDAY, February 28, 1949. SHOUTING LIBERTY

gUROPE cannot exist half slave and half free. This remark of Air Churchill in the Belgian capital, at the week-end, in giving his benediction for economic and political unity on the Continent, is well calculated to interest the people on whom most dependence at present is placed by the nations which are seeking to unite. Abraham Lincoln said the same thing about ninety years ago in the face of the question of human slavery in his own country. Mr Churchill referred also to the right to life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness, going back as far again for another American precedent. His object, however, was doubtless to picture a concrete contrast between the example of democracy in the traditional European sense, and the totalitarian dictatorship which is proclaimed to be democracy in the Communist sense. The constitution of a European. Parliament, to which Air Churchhill looks forward, would be an experiment, but it is not so much the difficulty of reconciling differences between such countries as it would represent that has to be considered. It is rather the greater difficulty of reconciling their conception of democracy and liberty with the scheme of things which has now replaced that conception throughout Eastern Europe. Some might say it is a choice of two evils, but could say so only from a rather limited survey of European history, going back no further than the time when Frederick the Great made militarism the arbiter of the fate of his own realm, and set a precedent for the extension of that policy until its ultimate form of Prussianism forced even the British to forget' Carlyle’s rhapsodies, and prepare to meet a prospect not unlike that which is again facing Western Europe. It is pretty evident that the military might 'to which Air Churchill attributes the eclipse of freedom in half a dozen countries cannot be ignored nor countered with verbal dialectics. He says that these have turned oven the United Nations into a cockpit, but so must at least admit they also have exemplified or emphasised his own idea that regional pacts are essential even in a world pact. Dialically the getting together of AVestern Europeans for defence, offers, on the other hand, to flic Kremlin a chance of representing an alternative to Communism as an enemy of Communism. Whatever, therefore, may be said of the hidden designs of the Soviet, its propaganda carries the hall mark of -aggression by denying that there is any alternative to its own except that of Fascism. It is a gospel that must encourage a spirit of conflict, and doubtless that is what it is meant to encourage. There arc numerous things which might divide the democracies. The safeguard, as remarked, is that their differences, however real or radical, are minor in character when compared with the difference between them and the sort of thing which has'been proceeding in Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania, Poland and Czechoslovakia. The trials are all of a piece with those which marked the inception of the Soviet dictatorship. As little reliance is to be placed on the so-called confessions now vaunted in Sofia as upon the earlier examples of the like in Budapest or Aloscow. That the Western nations are under a strain is to be noted in the unrest of France and Italy, and even in the economic relationship of America -and Britain. When one British Minister . remarked the other day that his country was well on the road to recovery, United States statesmen lost no time in saying that in such circumstances they ought to be able in Britain’s case to curtail the Marshall Plan. Sir Stafford Cripps has quickly assured them that the plan is essential alike for Britain and for Western Europe generally.. This forms a fair criterion of the great degree of their dependency on the United States. It is therefore a stroke of political wisdom for Air Churchill to exemplify the present situation with a comparison of the philosophy behind the policy of the United States towards Euirope, and the philosophy which

inspires the policy of the Soviet towards Europe. There are in the} European tradition modes of being of which the Communist planners are quite oblivious, and that is the reason those planners eliminate so entirely the very notion of political liberty. It is a good reason for the expectation that their planning is doomed from the start. But that planning embraces the acquisition of everything to'hand for its development, and so long as opportunity for predatory action offers, .nobody can say that the Soviet would not attack. If and when Western Europe is so united that attack on one will be treated as attack on all, the numbers will go up for the Communists. Their awareness of this is an immediate risk for the West, but the risk itself is a spur to unity. In short, altrr.Ltic motives may not be enough, but the very urgency of self-preservation is bound to restore that unity which stood to Europe in the centuries when it reared civilisation. ,