meet them may cost us, by present estimates, $6,800,000,000 for 15 months. And as they threaten one front after another, and we cover their threats with our countermoves, they have yet other fronts to which they can turn. This is the great significance and the great advantage of their four planes of choice, the basis of the variety and resourcefulness of their tactics. But the limits of this variety and resourcefulness and the means to meet it, are the subject of the next section of this report.

IV. THE APPROACH TO COUNTERACTION

A. OUR PROBLEM

For the Communists the present world situation is the continuation of a long succession of events. They have, they believe, predicted these events, and they have played, they think, a rational role based on understanding and expectation.

Their movement has been based on the expectation of great wars and revolutions growing out of the explosive forces generated in modern society. Their movement has grown in a hundred years from a trickle to a flood. Its growth has accelerated in the last 30 years, first through the capture of power in Russia, then through the building of the might of the Soviet system, then through the fruits of victory in war. And it has grown in relative power even faster than in absolute power, for the breaking of nations in two world wars has left the Soviet power as one of only two great centers of political power in the world.

Today they see the whole process on the brink of its final culmination. Between them and the United States lie broad areas of cracked and repaired but shaky political structures, under severe economic and political strains. There is only one power with strength to spare to prop the weak, and that power, as they see it, is liable to have its own troubles with an economic crash, and soon. Short of running any decisive risk, they know and have announced their own solution to the problem of the present.

For us the situation is radically different. We cannot claim to have expected the present situation, for only 2 or 3 years ago we ignored it and denied it. How to face it is therefore a very different problem for us than it is for them. Where they have only to follow the book, we have to adapt ourselves. We have to learn to recognize and identify the key elements in the problem, assess our own means, and devise methods by which to apply our available resources. have to take account of stock in a situation we did not anticipate. They have kept a running account in their own terms, and think they know exactly where they stand.

We

In taking account of stock we can begin by examining the immediate weaknesses and disadvantages of our position. We can then examine our general position in our own terms, and in their terms, and measure our strength to meet the situation. On that basis we can perhaps set ourselves some practical rules on what is to be done.

68 The most comprehensive Communist statement on the present situation is Zhdanov's speech published on October 22, 1947, given in supplement I to this report.

B. OUR HANDICAPS

The first category of handicaps under which we find ourselves is the same as a list of their recent gains. We granted to them, in that remote but recent era of the alliance, the veto in the United Nations, the hold upon Germany under the Potsdam agreement, and the opportunity to introduce the "new democracy" in eastern Europe. We also induced them to intervene in eastern Asia, with great benefit to their side of the balance and damage to our side.

These things leave us unable to use instruments that should have been available for the projects of reconstruction, and blocked from any action in areas upon which other areas are partially dependent. We lost these assets through agreements that were final as soon as they were made so far as concerned what we granted. They were subject to future delivery dependent on good will, for the return benefit to us. The results were summed up by Senator Vandenberg when he said:

Too many words, as at Yalta and Potsdam, and in Poland at this very hour, have been distorted of all pretense of integrity."

The next category of our handicaps is the reverse side of their present opportunities. Much of the world is in distress or disorder or both. Much of the world, while reluctant to accept communism, is at best dubious about the prospect of stability under non-Communist auspices. They saw the United States blunder into the world depression, and they know no proof as yet that we are not subject to a repetition. Anti-Communist morale is low. It may be high in certain places or circles, and it may be higher in many places than a year ago; but, by comparison with what it once was, or what it would have to be for reconstruction to be called a success, it is low. There are unsolved economic and political problems of vast scope, and for some of them we have not yet pretended to offer solutions. Mr. Byrnes put it succinctly when he said:

If we regard Europe as the tinderbox of possible world conflagration, we must look upon Asia as a great smoldering fire.70

The fact that we are handicapped today by reason of our own past mistakes points the finger to weaknesses in our way of conducting our own business at home. Our agencies of Government that make policy have been too obviously hampered by conflicts of principle within their own ranks. Wrong policies are wrong either because they are made by officials whose ideas are wrong, or they are wrong because they reflect compromise of the bad sort after internecine struggle. Ours have been neither as right as they should be, nor clear. This lack of clarity has extended of course to relations between the branches of Government, and the Congress has exhibited at times the skepticism that is inevitable when the case as presented is not clear and candid and consistent. When inconsistency has been necessary, as it must be in a time of transition, explanations and the fullest possible presentation are called for and must be forthcoming.

Insofar as communications between the Government and the Congress have left something to be desired, so have communications

"Senator Vandenberg, speech at Grand Rapids, Mich., March 8, 1947.

70 Speaking Frankly, p. 204.

between the Government and the public. No democracy can act firmly, with the courage of its own convictions, unless the people know what it is about. A government that tries to correct its past mistakes, without admitting that it ever made any, cannot quite succeed at the same time in reducing confusion. And public confusion is a real handicap in our kind of system.

C. THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE

Our handicaps, our partial confusion, and the disillusionment of facing an unpleasant situation on the heels of a romantic dream of peace, are enough to account for the desire of some to extend the dream. This is an easy thing to do. We could have some time yet of entirely sweet relations with world communism, if we took no measures to block its aims. We could extend that time without limit by the simple device of turning Communist en masse. But even people in misery and danger do not do that.

Granting concessions to an antagonist is not always wrong. Disraeli granted concessions to Bismarck, and gained a peace. One can grant concessions even to an overt enemy, without betraying oneself, if one gets a fair bargain. And one can yield to an enemy what one cannot practically withhold, and not regret it later. But the things we want from the Soviets today are major things, stabilization of the world and an acceptance of the possibility of peace. What have we to offer? We have already given them what they thought was enough to assure their position; we do not still have those things to give. The stakes now in play include all the areas that are not settled as areas for their system to control or ours. These areas would settle the issue of power once and for all. The only concessions we can make now that would buy immediate peace involve these areas. They are not fools. They think they will win their bets, and they will not sell for any discount. And the price is just too big to concede. We have granted all that can be granted without giving away what would be decisive. When we did it we thought we were setting the foundations of trust and neighborly relations. We have found that we only gave them the means and opportunity to grasp for more. Now the issue is how to recover from that disadvantage, not how to add enough price to buy the original article.

In the past we have granted to the Soviets concessions in terms of power and position that are of the highest degree of importance. We did so in the agreements concerning the veto in the Security Council, and in the agreements concerning Germany and the Far East. These were very great concessions made in hope of appeasement. They did not have the anticipated effect. In the opinion of this committee we have reached the end of such a policy. There are no more comparable concessions that could be made without fatally weakening our own position.

This does not mean that we must no longer bargain with them. We should bargain with them on practical terms of mutual advantage whenever occasion arises. But we cannot afford to regard them as distrustful children who need a demonstration of our kindness in order to be reassured. They are distrustful, but they are not children.

D. OUR CASE IN THEIR LANGUAGE

An assessment of the world situation today has been laid out, as they see it, in some of the major statements of Communist authorities since the war. Such statements can be found at the latter part of supplement I to this report. The situation as seen from our point of view has not lacked for eloquent statement in recent times also. But the differences between the two styles of thought and expression leave it far from clear just what the differences are. An effort to state our case in their terms may clarify some of the issues.

To begin with we can take the major Communist assertions about the condition of the United States today, its place in history, the logic of its development and its coming fate, and see how they apply and to whom they apply most.

(a) According to the Communists we are the prime embodiment of the capitalist system. What they mean by this has been discussed above, in particular the deprivation of the producing class of the fruits of production. If there is any country in the world of which this is more true than of any other today it is not, however, the United States but the Soviet Union. And at the same time there is no country in the world where labor gains the benefit of high production so much as in the United States.

(b) They charge us with being in the monopoly and imperialist phase of capitalism. Yet they maintain a foreign trade monopoly and we do not. They have monopolies in every major industry and we in none.

(c) They claim that labor is exploited in our system. But it is they, not we, who use the slave labor of millions on political grounds,"1 plus the slave labor of war prisoners by the hundreds of thousands. (d) They claim that our trade-unions are a false front, designed to betray the interests of labor, and covertly under capitalist control. But it is their unions that are iron-bound organs for state control, with strikes prohibited, used only as instruments to prevent labor from seeking justice.

(e) They hold that we have a vast spread between the rich and the poor. But their army has a wider range of pay than ours, and the general wage spread in the Soviet has increased while ours has decreased.72

They claim that our form of democracy is a sham and theirs is the true one. But in ours the party in power can lose an election, voters can shift their allegiance, new parties can be organized. What they call democracy involves a vote of more than 99 percent for the party in power, with no criticism of policy. Lenin once quoted Engels to the effect that when the state withers away:

The authority of the Government over persons will be replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production.

In no country in the world is there a closer approach to this than in the United States, except that our Government does not direct production. In no country in the world today is there such a high degree of authority over persons as in the Soviet.

71 See Communism in Action, H. Doc. No. 754, 79th Cong., ch. V. 73 Communism in Action, ch. IV.

(g) The Communists hold that our parties mislead and deceive the voters. No party in the United States has ever deceived all the voters if it deceived any of them. The single party in the Soviet enjoys unchallenged monopoly of the art of deception.

(h) The Communists declare that the capitalist press is the corrupt instrument of capitalist controlled propaganda. There has been much discussion on this issue in recent years. The Communist point of view was stated by N. Baltisky in War and the Working Class, in an article that was reprinted in the Washington Post of January 25, 1945. This article was an answer to the arguments put forward by Mr. Kent Cooper of the Associated Press. The text of the StalinStassen interview, published in the New York Times for April 15, 1947, also had much to say on the subject of press freedom. The simple fact that the Communist side of the case can be covered by citations to the American press should make further comment unnecessary. But it may be added that their theory of the party and of democratic centralization provides a role for agitation and propaganda, "agitprop" in their vocabulary, but no role for freedom of information.

(i) They hold that corruption is characteristic of our system, and cite our prolific scandals in evidence. But scandal as such depends upon standards of public behavior, and scandal is rarest just where corruption has become the rule instead of the exception. Corruption is, in the nature of the case, an impossible subject on which to make accurate comparisons. The existence of corruption in the Soviet is not unheard of however, and standards of public honesty in the United States have made enormous progress. The evolution of their tactics on the basis that "the end justifies the means," is really a sort of systematic universal corruption, instituted and legitimized. (j) They call us reactionary. Yet we are the land of maximum progress toward freedom and welfare for all, and the Soviets the land of maximum reassertion of the ancient characteristics of tyranny. Their thinking rejects the possibility of peace while ours asserts it, and theirs rejects the capacity of freemen for self-direction while ours asserts it. Their eminent journalist, Ilya Ehrenburg, some 20 years ago wrote a fine chapter in a novel, in which he drew a parallel between a Bolshevik commissar and the grand inquisitor of Dostoevsky's fable, told in The Brothers Karamazov. No account has been publicly given of how Ehrenburg made his peace with the commissars, but his original viewpoint, in contrast with his present career, throws light on both the character of the Soviet system with its reactionary rejection of freedom, and on the meaning of integrity and of careerism in the Soviet press.

(k) According to Marx and his followers the capitalist class are too hide-bound, and too limited in vision by their own special interests, to see the necessary way out of the contradictions of capitalism into a system where production will be unimpeded. Both production and democracy in the United States have been less hide-bound than anywhere else. And in the Soviet, while production has grown it has grown only for the power of the state, and democracy in the sense of freedom has not grown at all.

(1) The Communists hold that we are doomed to suffer another great economic crisis. It is too early yet to claim that we have proved the expectation false. If we can prove that it is false we