There Was No Reason to Believe Russia Would Give up Anything

Westbrook Pegler

Lexington Herald-Leader/December 1, 1955

The wistful efforts of President Eisenhower and his steering committee of quacks from the fields of journalism and banking have collapsed and our United States today are in worse position than we held before the convening of the so-called Summit Conference in July. Our position is worse because we were morally and politically “fine” as the phrase goes among athletes and we now find ourselves flabby and overhung from heavy indulgence in the addling brand of emotional bust-head which this time took the place of vodka We not only broke training but went off on a wild long toot. We are now morally out of shape; our sharp suspicions are dulled by inexcusable hopes and the traitors and their apologists among us are relieved of a hateful opprobrium which must be revived by special effort

Russians Gave Nothing

There never was the slightest excuse for any intelligent American adult to believe that the Russians would give up anything anywhere They did give back after 10 years a few thousand German slaves who had been convicted of “war crimes” in the court of the accuser and complaining witness, but they shut off the pathetic trickle of these “home-comers” without announcement or excuse. Thus many more thousands of lost Germans and their yearning families are damned again to despair, perhaps forever. That was not a concession however but a coldblooded trade which Moscow got the better of.

Moscow now can send Soviet Russians into West Germany where theretofore they were barred by signs on the Rhine bridges. The Russian people are as various as other peoples though generally debased by 38 years of Bolshevism, but it is juvenile to consider the character of peoples including our own in such manipulations. The Russian government is still the same brutal apparatus of a small group that it has been since a few reptilian American financiers underwrote the extinction of the czars in 1917.

No Mandate From People

Our government had no specific mandate from the people of our United States to weaken the moral defenses built by years of hard painful work of the House committee, the FBI and by all means Joe McCarthy. True, we had been exhorted all that time to seek some elusive good in Bolshevism and pie-in-the-sky moral profits of massacres and subjugation of civilized peoples. But our Red-baiters had done a good job against handicaps and we were lean and beautifully suspicious. Then one of the Russian geniuses hit upon the brilliant idea of Inviting American reporters and even a few tourists to visit Russia, take pictures of trivial and meaningless scenes and write freely about the lack of consumer stuff which was notorious anyway and undenied. All those 38 years this mysterious machine with agents planted in governments all over the world had been so frankly hostile against us that the mere muscular exercise of a few motivated smiles seemed to be the sunrise of a new age of peace and joy.

Made No Advance

Throughout that infatuation however Sen. Bill Jenner of Indiana was hollering “our defense against the many-sided Communist threat has made no visible advance within the last few years. The retreat of our anti-Communist forces must be ascribed to false hopes that we could dislodge a machine built by the cleverest political brains in Europe simply by changing the man in the White House and the party label of the administration.”

Father Leopold Braun the American priest who spent 13 years in Moscow as accredited Catholic chaplain wrote me on June 30 as I set forth for Geneva: “Let no one belittle the importance of the power-wielding Khrushchev who incarnates the high command of the presidium, the substitute for the old politburo. If it can be said that the Soviet Union is without a dictator since Stalin’s death let no one think dictatorship has disappeared. Sergei Kruglov as Beria’s successor continues to tighten the strait-jacket using the identical methods for which Beria and his two predecessors Yagods and Yezhev were liquidated. Apparent compromises in Russia are nothing but slowdowns brought about by peasant unrest and industrial and agricultural chaos within the country.”

Needed Breathing Spell

Russia was in trouble and’ needed a breathing spell to rearrange deployments military, agricultural and industrial. They wanted to switch idle soldiers from unnecessary military occupations to the homeland for productive work. For years countless divisions had been parasites on the economy. Now they are becoming productive and as the Army of Occupation checked out of Romania the puppet premier fetched them a snarling adieu, closing however with the dictum that all foreign military forces should quit similar posts and go home. He referred of course to American bombers in Morocco, Germany and England.

Jenner warned us not to discuss anything with Red China. But we started in July a pathetic talkathon between our Alexis Johnson of the State Department and a Chinese Red which was still going without the slightest hint of success after three months. We were pleading for the release of a few American civilians apparently including some traitors and an unknown number of soldier captives of the Korean War, probably beaten to death long ago.

British Sneered At McCarthy

Joe McCarthy stuck to his guns and was sneered at especially in the English papers, which had laid down on their obligation to fight treason in their own Foreign Office and connivance at treason in both their political parties.

On Aug. 25 McCarthy said Eisenhower had given ground every time the Communists exerted heavy pressure against the free world. “His is,” Joe said “ a record of appeasement, retreat and surrender in the pattern of the Truman administration.” The Russian psychological strength has improved to the extent that ours has been weakened by our indulgence in silly hopes which mocked our practical intelligence.