From ‘War Commentary: For Anarchism’, Mid-October 1943, London, UK
THE MASK & THE FACE
If one is to be guided by what is commonly labelled “public opinion” — moulded, in reality, by every conceivable instrument at the disposal of the ruling powers — then one can only conclude that the aims of the United Nations are of the highest and purest sort imaginable. Nay, these aims, we are assured, hold out great hopes for a brighter future and a happier life for the “common man”.
Thus, we find statesmen speaking of the United Nations giving vent to honeyed phrases and swearing by such words as “democracy,” “self-determination,” “justice,” and “freedom”. Some even go so far as to proclaim the present war as a “peoples’ war”.
When the tides of the bloody battle were anything but favourable to the United Nations, the pretentious claims could not be measured by any sort of illustrative events, however doubtful of the good intentions the more critical were. But no sooner had the defeats begun to be turned into victories than the two leading powers of the United Nations are, by the force of events beyond their control, forced to reveal themselves as being as far from intending to realize the claims they have been putting forward, as they ever were before the human world carnage was unloosed upon mankind.
Some very recent occurrences that one may wish to term as “little”, nevertheless, illustrate most tragically how vain are the hopes that those who believed in them can continue to hold on to when the ruling powers shall have the opportunity of passing judgment upon the big things, if and when “victory” comes to the United Nations.
One of the least publicized events, though of the utmost importance to the common people, had just been enacted in Bolivia, with the United States Government as the leading invisible power in the tragical drama. Bolivia has a population of three million. Its chief industries are coffee, sugar-cane, iron, tin-ore and rubber. The last two are being fully contracted by U.S. industrialists, for instruments of destruction. Meagre news items began appearing in the press about strikes in the so-called war industries. The strikes were alluded to as Nazi-inspired. Being at the mercy, as the world is, of a controlled press and radio no one could learn the truth. The strikes already ended — with 19 strikers killed — were it not for an unexpected incident that followed.
BOLIVIAN STRIKES
Ernesto Galarza was, until recently, Chief of the Division of Labour and Social Information of the Latin American Union. The main office is at Washington, D.C. It is really a Government controlled organization, utilizing Labour leaders as its main functionaries.
But what had taken place in Bolivia was too much even for a man in the position of Mr. Galarza. He knew the truth about the strikes. He knew not only that they were not Nazi-inspired, but a lot more as well. So he sat down and wrote a letter to the U.S. Under Secretary of State, Mr. Sumner Welles. Instead of receiving an attentive consideration he was made aware that his services might no longer be wanted — if he should persist in bothering about the strikes that had taken place in Bolivia. To the credit of Mr. Galarza, it can be recorded, he chose the honest and forthright course by resigning his position and exposing the whole matter.
Only one daily newspaper and a weekly dared fully to expose Mr. Galarza’s charges. The rest of the press lived up to its dishonourable reputation of being a Kept Press. We quote from his letter to the U.S. Under Secretary of State, as it appeared in The Nation of Jan. 9th, 43 as follows:
“The declaration of a state of siege in the Republic of Bolivia last week brings to a head a fundamental issue with regard to the policies of this State Department toward the people of Latin America, which can no longer be ignored . . . The state of siege . . . is the result of popular resentment against certain practices of corporations, especially in the mining industry, towards the workers. It is also the result of mass discontent amounting to despair because of rapidly increasing living-costs and the scarcity of basic foods . . . for many years the Bolivian workers have sought relief from a condition which kept 90 per cent or more of the people . . . in a state of chronic misery and economic degradation by seeking the enactment of a labour code . . . The code, drafted three years ago . . . was to have been enacted by Dec. 8 of this year . . . the American ambassador to Bolivia, Mr. Pierre Voal, communicated to the President of Bolivia, General Penaranda, the views of the American embassy with regard to the legislation . . . The ambassador clearly agreed with the position of the large mine operators that the new code would impose, disagreeable administrative expenses on the companies . . . that collective bargaining would be detrimental rather than helpful to production . . . Statements have been made in· the press and on the radio in this country to the effect that the strikes in Bolivia are caused by Nazi agents . . . I assert that the Nazi agents are not causing something which has its roots in basic economic maladjustment. The Nazis are merely taking advantage of something which they hope to use to discredit democracy . . . This is attained by the simple process of contrasting public statements of President Roosevelt and Vice-President Wallance with the everyday, practical, and immediate effects of American policy in the Latin American countries . . .”
The Washington correspondent of the liberal daily P.M., Mr. I. F. Stone, commented upon Mr. Galarza’s exposure in part, as follows:
“Rarely do we ordinary mortals get so full a look under the lid of our diplomacy, which remains as secret as the State Department can make it. More is involved in this than the welfare of Bolivia’s miserably underpaid and tubercular miners . . . the sincerity of our Good Neighbor policy . . . The affair raises even a broader question. If we cannot keep diplomats in this hemisphere from serving the forces of reaction and exploitation now, how can we hope to defeat the same combination of big business and bureaucracy and build a better world when the war is over? . . . “
ROOSEVELT’S RESPONSIBILITY
The comment of Mr. Stone is illuminating, but far from consistent. It infers that the blame lies with the U.S. diplomats. But in reality, the blame ought to be placed at the doorstep where it belongs — the White House.
Time and again the liberals have been pleading with the “great Messiah” of the “New Deal” to cleanse his State Department, which is honey-combed with reactionary pro-fascist elements. But all their prayers have fallen on deaf ears. And our liberals pull wool over their own eyes and only repeat their parrot-like pleas whenever a questionable action is committed by any branch of the “new deal” administration.
No liberal will term the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, as one of their brethren. For he is only too well known as a reactionary. His associate Under Secretary of State, Mr. Sumner Welles, is likewise known as a reactionary of the first order. He has, like Mr. Hull, been for sores of years with the U.S. State Department. He is known to have played a most sinister role in the United State’s imperialist policy in Latin America. One of his most unsavoury acts has been in ridding Cuba of any President that dared to show the least concern for the welfare of the Cuban masses. His crowning achievement came when he enthroned as President of Cuba Fuelga Batista, a former gangster-policeman. Thus the U.S. Sugar interests, in the exploitation of Cuba’s chief industrial product, and also of the workers, were made secure.
Of course, the liberals as usual, protested at the time of Mr. Welles’ actions. But was he the rightful one to hold to account? Not by a long chalk.
Only a few months ago the same dictator-President Batista was given a royal welcome by the United States. Furthermore, more than one Dictator from Latin American countries has recently been received in the same regal way.
This time, our liberal press didn’t even raise a word of protest. Presumably, they acted thus so as not to embarrass the “great holy cause of democracy,” as well as its chief apostle.
So much for one of the “little” and least known incidents — the mal-treatment and slandering of the working masses in the interests of American capitalists.
U.S. NOMINATE PEYROUTON
If further proof were needed to test the integrity and true aims of the United Nations one did not have to wait too long. This time the “little” event is somewhat larger in scope and, therefore, serves to indicate what is in store for the masses everywhere if and when the “cause of democracy” proves victorious.
Unlike most of the press men and radio broadcasters, the U.S. Columbia Broadcasting Company happens to have a man stationed in Algiers, North Africa. Finally, one day, Mr. Collingwood said something along these lines: Algiers is but a small place on the face of the world’s map. Yet, what is now being decided here politically, behind closed doors, will ultimately effect not Algiers alone — but the fate of the whole of Europe.
The world did not have to wait too long in order to learn what Mr. Collingwood hinted at. For, less than ten hours after his broadcast came the United Nation’s appointment of Peyrouton as Governor of Algiers.
This time the liberal element in the United States were aroused as never before. The black record of Peyrouton as an avowed fascist, anti-semite and anti-labourite was too well known for anyone to attempt to defend. But who could have been responsible for the new perfidy that had just been enacted? The liberals once again thundered and directed their protests at the State Department.
Angered beyond control, Secretary of State Cordell Hull came back with an anti-semitic insult towards an inquisitive Jewish reporter along these lines: He and his associates in the State Department were but subordinates to the Chief Executive — President Roosevelt. Furthermore, all the tongue lashers and word fire-eaters would within a few days be forced to eat their own words.
Mr. Hull knew what he was talking about. Within a few days came the startling revelation of the secretive confab between Mr. Churchill and Mr. Roosevelt at Casablanca — both of them having given their approval and blessings to the importation of the Fascist Peyrouton from South America to assume the reins as ruler over Algiers. And when Peyrouton arrived — both saviours of democracy greeted him and later conferred with him as well . . .
LIBERAL’S REACTION
And what was the reaction of the liberals towards this unexpected bombshell that was hurled into their midst by the actions of Churchill and Roosevelt? Wrote The Nation of February 6, 1943:
“… the French African laboratory test suggests that we are far from arriving at any coherent war-and-peace-aims policy. The European peoples will judge, us by deeds, and solely as these suggest that it is profitable to run with the Axis hare and hunt with the democratic hounds, we shall continue to gladden the hearts of the quislings.”
Strange as it may appear, a reader, Miriam Stuart, had a letter in the same issue of The Nation that proved to be far more clarifying and straightforward. We quote these pertinent parts from it:
“. . . Peyrouton cannot be regarded as a rat fleeing from a sinking ship . . . He has been assigned to his present part where he is in readiness for higher assignments — as the Herald-Tribune correspondent points out in a cable published to-day (Jan. 21, 1943) in order to assure . . . (1) Acceptance by the Allies of a French government which would keep intact the economic empire that the Germans with their French associates have established in France — with ramifications all over Europe; (2) peace proposals emanating from the same German group which lead to a definite stabilization throughout Europe of the German economic empire — with or without Hitler . . .”
And from The New Republic of February 8, 1943 came this editorial comment:
“It is our considered judgment that as things are going, the United Nations may achieve a military victory only to be followed by a political defeat; a defeat which may itself be followed by a series of civil wars in many countries, and perhaps by the Third World War . . . Many of the men around Chiang Kai Shek come very close to being fascist; his government as a whole is still about as much concerned to fight the Chinese Communists as it is to fight the Japanese . . . Britain did great harm to the cause of world, wide democracy when she bluntly announced a few weeks ago that she had not intentions of ever giving up Hong Kong . . . the British do not want China to become too strong . . . If this proves to have been a war for the preservation of empire, for the maintenance of the status quo . . . then the tragedy of the world predicament will be black indeed . . .”
The vague and ambiguous tone of the editorial is quite on a par with the entire history of liberal thought. The same New Republic had supported the last World War just as it has this one. And no one ought to be held more to account for the tragic predicament that the world is already finding itself faced with than the very pen wielders of liberal thought. For these liberals know only too well that those who have led the world into the present war (and all past ones as well) are not only the powers that design and bring about military “victories” — but the political ones as well. The signs as to the kind of a peace the Allies intend to bring about are already clear enough. But the liberal world that supports the allied powers still keeps up its wishful thinking about “if” . . .
It is therefore somewhat of a relief to find a few of the writers writing about what is actually taking place. Writes, for instance, Mr. Egon Kaskeline in The Christian Science Monitor of February 5, 1943:
“French industrialists and politicians, arriving in Portugal and North Africa, give evidence of an increasing effort on the part of certain influential French elements to switch their allegiance from Axis to the Allies . . . they are understood to feel now that their deal with the Nazis has been entirely to their disadvantage. They are hoping that a timely change of sides will help them to escape retribution from the French people and to keep their grip on economic life, metropolitan France and in the French Empire . . . Only a small, though influential minority of French businessmen has so feared a social revolution as to actually want republican France to be defeated by Hitler . . . These elements were delighted when Vichy destroyed the French trade unions and handed over to them — the business men — direction of French economic affairs.”
Still more enlightening is a cable of the same newspaper’s correspondent at Algiers, Mr. R. Millard Stead, appearing on Feb. 7, 1943. It states, in part:
“A source of anxiety to people long resident here and intimately acquainted with political undercurrents is the freedom with which American and British have been striking up friendships with leading pro-Fascist families. Politely smiling hosts are amicably discussing North African affairs with the visitors and entertaining them most pleasantly . . .”
Thus it becomes quite clear to anyone wishing to face the truth that Peyrouton’s appointment was no mere coincidence. The Churchills and Roosevelts know what they are out to save, protect and perpetuate. Only the liberals and regrettably, some radicals as well, continue to blind themselves and their followers with a belief that lacks increasingly with every passing day any sound basis or justification for support.
In speaking about North Africa it is in place to mention the fact that thousands of Spaniards, the first to wage battle against the united fascist hordes of Franco, Hitler and Mussolini in 1936-1939 are still languishing in the jails of Algiers after having escaped from Nazi-occupied France. This fact fully attests how strongly the hearts of such souls as Churchill and Roosevelt beat for “freedom” and “democracy”.
When U.S. Secretary of State Hull was questioned about the anti-Fascists imprisoned in Algiers he inadvertently revealed that the Franco government will be consulted before any of the victims will be released. This should have caused little surprise to anyone since but within a period of a few months the U.S.A. ambassador to Fascist-ruled Spain, Carlton J. Hayes, has recently assured Franco that all possible aid will continue to be given his regime, and that no social change will be affected in Spain, if the United Nations can help it. (This ought to serve as a good “reciprocal” act to all those anti-fascist elements that have all along supported the United Nations’ present War — as a “war of liberation” . . .)
And Drew Pearson, columnist, writes on February 16, 1943:
“In December, 1940, Secretary of State Hull issued a caustic categoric denial that he had ever offered $100,000,000 credit to Dictator Franco of Spain . . . To-day is published a book ‘Appeasement’s Child’ by Lieutenant Thomas J. Hamilton, U.S. Army, who was in Spain at the time and tells in detail how the American Ambassador Alexander Weddell offered Franco a $100,000,000 credit . . . ‘we offered $100,000,000 credit . . . This sum was to be used for wheat, gasoline, rubber, cotton, meat — the five products necessary to prevent the regime from collapsing . . .’ Hamilton goes on to report that later Franco got a credit totalling $1,100,000,000 in a roundabout way from Argentina . . .”
A CAPITALIST PEACE
Facts speak louder than all the pretentious claims made on behalf of and by the United Nations. The “little” incidents we have enumerated foretell the kind of a peace that the powers reigning over the United Nations are secretly contemplating. The capitalist system is to be saved at all costs. The nazis and fascists of all sorts will be tolerated, but subdued and controlled by the democratic powers. For to achieve this aim millions of human lives have already been sacrificed. Millions more await their turn of ordained self-destruction.
Disillusionment within the ranks of some of the radicals who have been supporting the “democratic” powers is already making its appearance. First came the novelist Pearl S. Buck — declaring early this year at a gathering of Nobel Prize winners held in New York City — that this is no longer a war for freedom. Now the novelist-socialist Arthur Koestler is quoted in Time magazine of February 22, 1943 in these self-confessing words:
“. . . the character of this war reveals itself as what the Tories always said it was — a war for national survival, a war for certain conservative 19th century ideals, and not what I and my friends of the left said that it was — a revolutionary civil war in Europe on the Spanish pattern . . . The coming victory will be a conservative victory and lead to a conservative peace . . .”
The confession of Koestler is noteworthy and significant in more ways than one. He admits that the Tories claimed all along that this war was to preserve their kind of system of society. If this is so, then what moral justification had such people as he himself to support the war? Assuredly he was aware that the Government of Great Britain on September 1, 1939 was not Leftist but Tory. And the same Tory regime has been reigning all along since that date. The only explanation lies, as with the liberals, wishful thinking as to what they would have wanted to be the aims of this war.
Koestler’s confession, belatedly as it is made, becomes nevertheless, a forth-right challenge to every sincere liberal, radical, socialist, communist and the few anarchists who have supported the war as being a war for “democracy”, “freedom,” and the dawn of a “new day” for the common man.
At the same time Koestler’s stand is — indirectly — a vindication of the consistent position that the greater part of the anarchist movement throughout the world has taken from the start of the present war: Unequivocal opposition to the nazis, fascists, tories, democrats and bolsheviks, who, by the very basic nature of their regimes, have all along been preparing to mislead the peoples of their respective countries into the slaughter.
Also
Manufacturing Psychology, from Industrial Worker (1910)
Rampant Fascism in America, by Marcus Graham (1935)
Mussolini’s War Upon East Africa, by Marcus Graham (1935)
This Is Not A War For Freedom!, by War Commentary (1939)
The Axis Versus “Democracy”, by Marie Louise Berneri and John Hewetson (1941)
Our New Ally, by Marie Louise Berneri (1942)
The Issues in the Present War, by Marcus Graham (1943)
British Army of Oppression Crushes Eastern Freedom, by Marie Louise Berneri (1945)
Long Live Free Algeria!, by the Federation Communiste Libertaire (1954)