By Robert Morris
Published by the Bookmailer
230 pages US$2.50
Judge Robert Morris has been counsel to so many committees charged with investigating Communist infiltration in America that he has ample evidence, well documented, to share with all who are interested in the problem. As a young lawyer in 1910, he was chosen assistant counsel on the Rapp-Coudert Committee investigating the New York City schools. After World War II he was counsel on committees investigating charges of disloyalty in the State Department; of pro-Communism in the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR); and of US Communists in the UN Secretariat; and more recently he has been chief counsel for the Internal Security Subcommittee known as the Jenner Committee.
His war service was in Counter Intelligence for the Third Naval District of the USA. Later he was on Guam and Saipan with Navy Intelligence, and had opportunity to prove his theory that, instead of routing out and killing remnants of Japanese resistance, they could be persuaded to surrender if assured of fair treatment as POW's. Morris and his fellow-officers were so successful that when the Tenth Army invaded Okinawa, it had the first full-scale psy-warfare unit attached to an invasion army in the whole Pacific War.
Morris had experience with pro-Communists while in Naval Intelligence. Before and after the Japanese surrender, the left-wingers Clamored for "unconditional surrender" and for purging the Emperor. Both cries delayed the end of the war. Moreover, had Japan's overtures for peace through Soviet mediation not been suppressed by Stalin, the war would have ended without dropping the atomic bomb, and the Soviet Union would not have had a chance to enter the war with such disastrous postwar results.
The tragedy of Yalta is well described. The Soviet achieved a division of Germany, annexation of East Prussia, "coalition" governments for Poland and Yugoslavia (with Communists in all key posts), unilateral occupation of Manchuria (key to China), and forcible repatriation of a million Soviet citizens, of whom tens of thousands wanted to stay in Western Europe. Yalta made the free world think that Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo were the sole enemies of peace, and that Soviet Russia was a trustworthy partner of free nations. This continued (with gradual disillusionment in the West) through the Czech coup, the capture of Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria, the rape of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, the Berlin blockade, the fall of China and the invasion of South Korea.
Nowhere was there sharper disagreement pro-and-con Russia than in the US Department of State. In 1948, Adolf A. Berle, Assistant Secretary of State during the war, testified before a Congressional Committee on this difference of opinion. He had reached the conclusion that Russia was following an aggressive policy. As he put it: "The opposite group in the State Department was largely Mr. Acheson's group, of course with Mr. Hiss as his principal assistant in the matter ... (taking) what we would call today the pro-Russian point of view. I got trimmed in that fight, and that ended my diplomatic career."
Whittaker Chambers, a former Soviet courier, had told the FBI in 1942 of Communist espionage agents within the government. When Elizabeth Bentley defected from Soviet military intelligence in 1945, she named 37 high government officials as part of her ring alone, including. Lauchlin Currie, executive assistant to President FDR; Harry Dexter White, assistant secretary of the Treasury; Solomon Adler, US Treasury Attache in China; the Director of the State Department's office of Special Political Affairs, and the head of the OSS Latin-American division.
Communist influences were especially strong in the area of Asian policy, and had much to do with the mistaken Truman-Acheson policy toward China. The three best-qualified men on Japan, Joseph Grew, Joseph W. Ballantine, and Eugene Dooman, were replaced by men with no experience on Japan. John Carter Vincent, pro Chinese Communists and intimate friend of Owen Lattimore, got Ballantine's post as Director of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs. Vincent outlined a new US course on China in 1945 calling for a coalition government, no "US military intervention in an internecine struggle", and a truce (to be backed up by the Big Three) between the Nationalists and the Chinese Communists. President Truman's US policy vis-a-vis China, announced on December 15, 1945, reflected in all essentials Vincent's draft and held as US-China policy until the invasion of South Korea in June, 1950.
Moreover, John Carter Vincent drafted a similar policy as a memo for the War Department which, together with Truman's declaration of December 15, became two of the three documents comprising General Marshall's directive for his mission to China. No wonder there were pressures exerted on President Chiang to withdraw his· troops from strategic points, allowing the Chinese Communists to pour into Manchuria and to seize the Japanese arms left them by the Soviet Army.
When one considers the coterie within the State Department who were pro the Chinese Communists, including John Carter Vincent, John S. Service, John P. Davies, and John K. Emerson (now in the US Embassy in Karachi), plus the Communist agent that Alger Hiss turned out to be, plus influence on the State Department of such "China experts" as Owen Lattimore and Lawrence Rosinger, one cannot wonder at the disastrous Truman Acheson desertion of the Nationalist Government.
When one considers that there were 500 radio operators on US ships· during the war who were Communist "suspects"; a Sorge spy ring in Japan which included Americans, seeking to avert a Japanese attack on the Soviet Union and to induce one on the United States; that when the War and Navy Departments were working for a 90-day truce with the Japanese in November, 1941, such pro-Communists as Lauchlin Currie, Edward C. Carter (of the IPR) and Harry Dexter White managed to torpedo the truce, it is a wonder that we won the war. When one considers that about this time there were 1500 Communist teachers in the New York City schools; that Herbert Philbrick, in the Communist Party for the FBI, found more than 70 prominent citizens in the one city of Boston (ministers, doctors, lawyers, publishers, university professors) who were party members; that Soviet economic, cultural, athletic and other missions from the USSR to the USA always have secret police members to do an intelligence job, it is really a wonder that Soviet Russia has not yet made its intended conquest of the United States. It is largely due to exposure by these Congressional committees of those who would betray their country, that their power is as limited as it is today.
By the very title of his book, Judge Morris indicates that he thinks the Communists are winning the Cold War. Perhaps he has been too close to those who have tried to make this come true. But he also believes that "The Soviet system was not meant for loan with his intellect, his free will, and his capacity for spiritual life." If we so believe, we must have faith to believe also that God is on the side of Freedom, and we must pray that (as in 1776) we may awaken in time to pledge "our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor" to save America and civilization before it is too late. - Geraldine Fitch
Communism in Latin America
by Robert J. Alexander
Rutgers University Press (449 pp.)
If "the public in the United States is almost completely ignorant of the extent of Communist influence" in South America, it is quite understandable that peoples elsewhere are less informed about the conditions in that part of the world.
The 20 independent states in Latin America are so different from one another that each faces problems peculiar to that particular country. If Brazil is bigger than the Continental United States with limitless reservoir of unexplored richness, Nicaragua is one of the smallest countries in the whole world. Uruguay may be one of the most democratic and highly civilized countries, but the backwardness of Bolivia and the poverty of Puerto Rico finds no equal elsewhere. If Uruguay has had no revolution for two generations, Ecuador has had 12 presidents in ten years. Such are the differences among the Latin American states! However, with the exception of Uruguay, all the states do have one thing in common - political instability. Since Communism breeds on discontent, political instability, which is the symbol of discontent, provides an ideal ground for Communist infiltration and subversion. A country known for democracy and social progress, Uruguay bears witness to the fact that "Democracy and Communism don't mix."
An analysis of the principal leadership of the Communist Parties of Latin America reveals one of the causes of Communist activities in this continent. The principal figures are intellectuals whose number is extremely small. The gulf between them and the masses is so wide that the intellectuals have been able to play a role which is vastly out of proportion to their numbers in the area. In other words, ignorance of the common people makes them follow their intellectual leaders blindly. The result is that political instability and the great influence wielded by the intellectuals have given the Communists a field day in Latin America.
In writing this book, the author had in his mind to "arouse the awareness of the dangers which, in the long run, the Communist movement in America will represent to the future of democracy and peace in this hemisphere and the national security of the United States." Accordingly, the last chapter on The Right and Wrong Way to Fight Communism in Latin America is the most important part of this book.
The United States is warned not to regard the Latin American Communists as "agrarian reformers" or "another kind of radicals," but real Communists whose activities are part of the world-wide movement. This warning is reminiscent of China's unsuccessful attempt to convince the outside world that China's Communists were not "agrarian reformers." Here, the author undoubtedly implied that the United States must be on guard against making the same mistake that was made in China.
The right way to fight Communism in Latin America, says the author, is to introduce social reforms rather than to take police action, to show more concern with the problem of the Communists in the South American republics and to give unstinted support to the Democratic Left.
Although the author's knowledge of Communism in Latin America is authoritative, his suggestions are not necessarily sound. Has it occurred to the author that Democratic Left is just another name for Communism in many countries including Latin America? When Communists cannot carryon their activities openly, they would either go underground or infiltrate other organizations. And labor unions and Democratic Left are the kind of organizations most susceptible to Communist infiltration. At one time Communists held key positions in American labor unions which would have been entirely in the hands of Communists today had it not been for the fact that timely action had been taken to remove all the Communist elements. To support the Democratic Left is to support the Communists.
Whether or not Communism in Latin America is more a political problem than a military one depends upon the extent to which the Communist influence has on the country. When the Communists are ready to overthrow the government by force, nothing short of police action can save the country. In the case of Latin America where a small number of intellectuals has been able to wield great influence over the masses, Communism is no longer a political problem.
As a trained observer and an author of three books on Latin America, Mr. Alexander is unquestionably an authority on the subject he knows best. "Communism in Latin America" is a factual, objective and well documented survey of the past and present status of the Communist Parties in Latin America. His suggestion, though of doubtful value, will be most thought-provoking to the policy makers of the United States government .
The author may rest assured that his book will not only serve to "alert and reassure" his fellow countrymen but people elsewhere in the anti-Communist countries, because democracy and peace in the two American continents and the national security of' the United States mean the democracy, peace and security of all the free nations. - D. J. Lee