A. Werth 1959

8/13/2019 A. Werth 1959

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clamp d o w ~ n l i ~ x u ~ ymports, an

additional loss t o importers, mer-

ch,antsand servlce rades. How will

Castro car ry’ou t his ambitious pub-

lic-housing, school-buildmg, factory-

building,arsh-drainingrojects

without,money? A few token and

resegtlements have beenmade, but

how will heprovide th e promised

f a rm equipment, nimals, seed andtechnicalssistance? How pay for

theaddi tiona l and hat will be re-

quired’?Yet unless he canpromote

considerable land diversification, get

a. few more consumer industries go-ing, provideadequate food fo r he

ruralopulation and’ aegree of

economic ecurity,hes sunk and

civil liberties are sunk. T h e needs of

the people aregreat,and th e pos-

sibilities of new disaster loom even

greater.

NonethelessCuba about t h esize of England, with four times the

amount of arable l a n d a n d MO S t af

i t f a r moreertile,wlth mneral

wealth tha t ipcludes copper,, nickel,

manganese ndone of the world’s

great ironsupplies(now beingheld

in reserve by American corporations),

andwith less than seven million

population ould become one of

the wodd’s rchest a n d most prosy

perous nationsnstead sf being ablot on t11e freeworld. What itneeds is honesty, inltlative and some

outside help.

One of Castro7splans is to make

Cuba self-sufficient in rice produc-

tion ot an unreasonable dea,

given the soil andclimate;Ecuador

and Panama both accomplished i t inrecent years. But here too there

hangs a tale. Great increases n rice

and andproductionwere eriously

attempted y,Cuba in the early

thirties, bu t he much-touted reci-procity treaty with the United States

knocked therojects on the hea

Nearly all of Cuba’s rice has be

coming from Louisiana. The Cuba

wanted to keep rice and lard off t

free ist. It mayhave been pure

coincidence that he American Ambassador at t h e tlmecame rom

big rice and hog-growing plantati

family in Louisiana. Furthermo

the reclprocity treaty obliged Cut o buy almostxclusively in T

high-priced American market, pr

venting I t from takin g advantage

lower-priced goods from German

England, Japan and Italy.

Cubahas been cooperatingwith

the United State s fora long timThe wry Cu b a n saying is, whenev

the going gets rough, “Cuba is

cork; i t always loats.” But acor

can do a lot of tossing. Cubanshav

been seaslck forwoenerations.

Theyre likely to be seasickwhile longer.

De GAULLE: THE FI ST YEAR y Alexander Werth

ParisPERHAPS THE GREAT change

tha t has occurred nEurope in th e

Iast two or three weeks may best be

described by quoting rominent

Soviet official whom I‘ met a fewdays fter he nnouncement hat

Mr. Adenauer was relinquishing t h eWest German Chancellorship.

“I think tprettycertain, now,”

he said, “tha t there will be no War.”

“Did you eyer eally think here

wight be one over Berlin?” I asked,

somewhat surprised.

“Therewas always th e danger,”

the Sovietofficialreplied, “that we

might have drawn 30 near the brink

that we would havehad o esortto he kind of corqpromise which

could lead only to new incidents and

new perils. I think t h e world should

be grateful t o Britain-the press, th e

Labor Party, , theldermaston

march or showing more realism

than the rest of th e world.”

A few day,s-Jater, I met the same

official. Hesaid:

ALEXANDER WBRTH is Th e Na-

tion’s PqrGr coryespondemt

. ~ - ~ _ i ” . . .

“Mr. Dulles was becoming more

reasonable ately, but probably we

will be till aferwith Mr. Herter.

And my ountrymen redelighted

thatMr . Nixon will visit Moscow;be got oq surprisingly well with Mr. ’

Mikoyan in Washington. In general,

flexibility is making so much progress

in th e West that I think you’ll h d

Z J more flexible. There’s a fair chance

now that we may agree on apeace

treaty, with some kind of confedera-

tion of the two Germanies; on a

number of disengagementproposals

and on a U,N,-controlled West Ber-

lin.”

I QUOTE hisauthoritativeSovietviewbecause i t seems to sum up

the reasons why there’s ground foroptimism on both sides. A curious

anomaly is de Gaulle’s belated self-

identificationith th e Adenauer

policy of no clisengagemgnt of any

kznd. But heway hingshave de-

veloped lately, i t seems unIlkely tha t

France will beable tostand alone

for a wholly rigid attitude, especially

after the recent DebrC visit t o Lon-

don, where Macmlllan partially won

himover Debrkwasnot all th

pro-Adenauer, anyway)ohe

Britishviewpoint. So some ethink

ing is going on at he op in Pa

a t the moment.

Not that, on the face o tbing

the Frenchublic seems to are

muchone wayoranother. ndeed,

after a year of de Gaulle, one could

argue that he Frenchpeople ha

become apolitical, preferring t o lea

everything to th e “great man” wh

while not infallible, is “better nd

morehonest thananybody else.”

Paradoxically, there is still a stro

prejudice n favor of deGaulle

the Left. True, he is not popular

the hysterical way ‘Hitl er. wasGermany, or General Boulanger wa

m France. There is nothing emotio

l or even irrational in the worsh

of him. His publicppearances

‘arousenopopularenthusiasm.But

nearly everybody somehow imagin

that to suppor t de Gaulle is rearo

able because he epresents a co

promisebetween twoextremes; b

cause he represents not a revoluti

but merely the preservation of

(slightlymodified) 5tatzcs qvo.

8/13/2019 A. Werth 1959


doubt, heconstitution of the FilthRepubllc is a monstrosity; but so

lpng as de Gaulle is in charge, there

is llttle t o worry bout.Andyou

wilI flnd old-fashioned iberals whoexpress atisfaction at he hought

that,af ter all, since deGaullehas

Taken over, personal reedoms Seem

to be more respected than they were

‘;n ‘the bad ast fewmonths of theFourth Republic. M TrCno, the

witty, whimsical editor of the Ca

nard @tclzfl..il~e’ theestatirical

weekly in France, oldme ecently

that he had far less trouble with t h eautlloritiesodayhanreviously,

and tha t he sales of hispaperare

soaringnow that hebulk of the

press ad ecome compIeteIy on-formist. ndeed, M. TrCno toldme

that d e Gaulle himself tookgreat

pleasure, every Wednesday, in read-

ing he ann ld ’~wisecracks ’and n

try ing to figure out who had “leak-

ed” t o the pap er inside nformation

about the last cabine t session.

AND WHO cares here about Berlin?

No doubt, there’sa kind of tongue-

in-cheek att itud e oward he ques-

tion: everybody realizes that France,

thebulk of whoseorces reied

up in Algeria, is in no good positlon

to play at a great European policy.

WhetherdeGaullehadany nten-

tlon originally t o revert t o his 1944-

4 5 “between-East-and-West” olicy

(which Moscow was hoping for), he

had ittle choice but to stick to the

AtlanticPactand NATO assummg

a t the same time a r ather independ-

ent air by playing off Western Ger-

many against Britain. But most ob-

seniers believe de Gaulle’s show of

independence is littlemorehan

camouflageor rance’sopelessly

weak ,military position in Europe;

and he gang-upwithAdenauer is

Vot necessarily anymore enuine

than the almostopenbreachwithMacmdlan.A ewobserversdiffer,

however, with hisview. A leadmg

British diplomat spoke in a11 serious-

ness tome of de Gaulle’s genuine

apbitios to make the present Franco-

Germqn repprpcheqe zt the basis for

9 new 66 Charlemagne’s Empire”-a

crazy ormuladeGaulle conceived

back in 1951, ButdeGaulle hirn-self implicitlydenies any such de-

signs; lje is talking biq abou t a much

greater Europe embrac in4 the vyhole

w m 95?

Slav world,urging Khrushchevnot

tobe “sdly’3 about so unimportant

a matter as Berlin In fact, he even

went urther:he dismissed all th e

quarrels over Germany and Berlin as

‘insignificant, andrged a global

reconciliationwiththeaying of

man” a s theultimateoblect, an,d

wlth France forming, a s it were, the

center of this world-saving system.Only, as Beuve-M6ry of L e Mo.nde

wrote on the followmg day, all this

appeal for Man and €or Human Dig-

nity would sound a little more con-

vincing if it were to meetwithan

immediateresponse in Algeria,

“where, in themidst of blood and

tears, nd theprice of terri ble

mutual degradations,an ncreasing-

ly meaningless and senseless war is

continuing.” This wa r is now costing

France 1,000 billion francsyear.

Not only is it having a fairly serious

effect on the standard of living here,

but i t is weakening France nterna-

tionally,and is costingheraround

one hundred young men a week.

I t ir begiwz ing t o threaten t he

de Caz d le r e g i m e i t rel f . De Gaulle

is vaguelyaware of this. He knows

thatheConstantine Program for

thedevelopment of Algeria,predi-

cated on largeFrensh rivate in-

vestments i p Algeria, is meeting with

increasing opposition from Big Busi-

ness, whlch is not ready o risk its

money as long as the war continuestoendernvestments ighly re-’

carious. Big Business (or, at ny

rate,asubstantialpart of i t ) is in

favor of winding up the Algerian

war, iE possible. And, as the recent

municipal elections showed, the elec-

torate, despite outward appearances,

IS farromndifferent t o Algeria;

and i t is now obvious th at t he votes

for deaulleuheeptember

seferendum and for the “Gaullists”

In the November election were large-

ly ictated yhe hope tha t eGaullewouldnd t h e war.ince

nothinghadhappened by the ime

of t h e municipallectionspur

montlls ater, heelectorate ended

to tur n against heGaullists, if not

againstdeGaulle himself.Cornmu-

nistswhohadvoted ordeGaulle

in the referendumnowwentback

to voting Communist. In bout a

quarter of th e bigger provincial con-

stituencies the Socialists, sick of Guy

Mollet, ganged up wlth the Coqmu-

nists, so much. so that i t was possibl

for the first time in ma ny ye ar s to

speak of a Popular Front eviving

inrance. No doubtherewere

mental eservations on both side

but the fact that a high proportion

of Sociallstswas n o longerwilling

to obey Mollet’s orders t o “keep ou

the Communists” at any plice (even

at th e price of lettmg in the Gad lisandeactionaries) was slgniflcan

Th e “anti-Fascist” movement, which

faded so lamentably t o materializ

when theourthepublicas

threatened with extinction last May,

washowing igns of coming int

being--lf onlyasaprotestagainst

th e’ Algerianwar.

And I f the left-wingvictory wa

not amoreweeping ne, it va

because there continiles to be a wide

spread belief that, in the end, d

Gaulle is determined to mak e peac

in Algeria, though on whaterms

stillremains ;L mystery.

The big press we 0 de Gade OW

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comer n o t ‘from he Left but fromt h e e x t r eme Right By this I do nor

mean Big Business, which is essen-

t~ al ly Gaullist,” bu t from the large

Fascist ringe of theEuropean Al-

gerians and of the Army.

Some observers, like Claude Bour-

der, think i t not improbable that, to

appease th e Army and the extremlsts,

de GauIlc will give the right-wingandro-Fascist elements-particu-

larlynhe Army-a muchreer

hand in Fra nc ek re tu rn for a peace

settlement in Algeria. Another’pos-

sibility is th at the Berlin crisis (when

it comes) will’ give deGaulle n

excuse for proclaiming an emergency

situation in which the prksent free-

dom of the press, for example, wouldbeabolished-much to the satisfac-

tion of the Algiers u tms wh o have

formonths been screaming or th e

suppression of the “treason press.”A more ptimistic view .is t h a t

de Gaulle will refuse t o surrender

to the Army and the Algiers ultim

but will waituntilgeneral dissatis-

factionw~lllhave grown sufficiently

(because of economic difficulties,

Algeria, etc.) t o enablehim t o dis-

solve th e present National Assembly,

with its incredibleight-wingnd

71Lt.r.nmajority, and to hold new elec-

tions which ‘would produce a left-

wing majority. This would be more

representative than he present As

-

sembly (in which the 200 odd“Ganlhst” ‘deputies represent 19,000voters each, as against t h e ten Corn-munist depuries represgnting 4OO OOO

voters each)’. F o r ,what it.ls worth,

the atest ofiinion -poll shows tliat

63 per -cent of the French wa nt a

n’egoriated peace ili Algeria; this

.widh’is certa inly nbt reflected in the

compositionI of &e, pr isent Assembly.

IT S E E M S that.a large part of thenon-Communist ,Left,JS -hoping €or

an early dissohtion of ’parlialnerit.

Is this‘theresult of wis&ful thiok-i ? Wh at’ does the,non-Com‘munist

Left re‘preseht, anyhay? Ubw big a

force can i t become without join-

ing forces with the Communists who,

in a general election ‘ tod,ay, would

again have over ive million votes?

Instinctively,growingproportion

of Socialists, though istrustful ofthe Communists, have been pre-

ferring an alliance withhemo

toeing theGu y Mollet line; this

process P o d d undoubtedlybe in-tensified;iif the Fascistmenace became accentuated. The role of Men-

dksiErance is of doubtful importance

at he Moment; he epresents no t

a political orce but atheran in-tellectual attitude. I n any case heis certainly not seeking a rapproche-ment with the Communists, r any-

thing resembling a PopularFront.

Other left-wingers,” ostensibly le

hostlle to he PopularFront, clai

tha t the , impossibility of’ Laving on

mpst be attributed ‘to the ‘domina

role the Communists would’want ‘

play ; i t (which, numerically,

any ’ rate, is understandable); i

truth , the Communist “obstruction

has, n fact, been greatly exaggerate

nQtably in the pro-Bevan pressEngland.Otherstill,ikeCIaude

Bourdet, hold th$t any alliance wlt

th e Communists (even “acainst fas-

cism”) is doomed to failure, so lon

asThorez s “still a Stalinand no

a Khrushchev.” In reality, it seemthat the futur e of the Popular Fron

largelydepends on de ‘Gaulle him

self. If he gives in to the Army and

the ultrar and a serious Fasci

th reat in France develops, there w

be aPopularFront,whatever th

intellectuals may say. If de Gaulbehaves in a reasonably liberal rnan

ner, keeps the Army inorderand

holds out theprospect of. an Algeria

settlement before very long, and

also economic conditions do not d

.teriorate disastrously, then there w

be no need for one.

Meanwhile, watch out for May 1th e anniversary of the “.revolution

Somethingmay appenhat ay.

Anotherevolution?No . B u t ,pe

haps some kicd of showdown force

by the Right.

v

WE, AMERICANS have been neg-

lectingur iherkage. Seduced by

such riviaasnatlonalsecurity, the

education of our children and he

explorationof’

uter space, we haveallowed th e tr ue essence of America

t o ’ sicken near unto death.

Minor-leagueaseballlubs are

losipg money. Many small boxing

arenasare being forced intobank-

ruptcy.Television as ltered th e

delicateinancialmachinery which

ROBERT COULSON is c1 member

of the Illi x State L e g i d a t w e

t h e state represeated in the Ameri-can Eeague b y those p e r e m i d mw

mers-up the Chicago WhiteSox

4 45

once permitted fortunes to be wominthe minor leagues of sport. Soon,

unless we act quickly, wisely and

courageously, the salaries and bo

nusespaid to players ‘will diminish,promoters will turn heirattention

toothermatters nd thletes willbecome champions merely by eating

Wheaties.

T h e loss of money is not important ; the promoters, impresarios and

managershave. assured us of that.

What +lorries Ithem is thegradual

loss of.’skill whith will afflict our

minor-league athletes.nevitably,

thequality o€-play in ’the larger

arenas will deteriorate. Our future

boxing. champions will suffer from

comparison wit h he champions

old. Major-league baseball gam

will have more errors, fewer hits an

less curve-ballitching. Worst

all, the performerswho might havbecome champions will abandon the

sp or t o become coaches, salesme

laborersor andidates orpolitical

office.

It is this last spec ter which haun

rhe impresarios, andprompts hem

to appeal t o Congress and he S

preme Court for special rulings, ne

laws and personalexemptions rom

the Constitution which defines t

rights of the rest of us. If we fail

save baseball and boxing from t

competition of free‘ tdevision, t2 5 NC T

8/13/2019 A. Werth 1959


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A. Werth 1959