A Report From Europe
Howard C. Thomas '43 of Newton, Mass.,attending the Graduate Institute of International Studies at Geneva, Switzerland, in aletter to Class Secretary Fred Stockwell, givesa very enlightening report of conditions inEurope as he sees them. He has traveledthrough Italy, Spain, France, and Switzerlandand has had other first-hand reports.
I SUPPOSE YOU MAY BE wondering why I'm not more disturbed over events over here and why I'm perhaps not planning to come home right now, let alone making all of these plans as if nothing were happening. Well from all I can gather the war hysteria at home, generated largely by sensational and irresponsible newspaper reporting and foolish and unfounded statements by supposedly intelligent people, has given you all a much different perspective on events than it has us over here. Many of my friends have received frantic cables from their families demanding that they come home at once. This is slightly hard to understand, to say the least, for us who know of this hysteria only vicariously. Here where one would think that people would surely be terrified since they would be the immediate victims of events, that hysterical fear of the unknown is wholly lacking. It seems quite strange that it should have taken hold only in a place thousands of miles away and of a people the best qualified in the world to defend themselves against it.
I think it can be attributed to two things: one, the manner in which most American newspapers present the newsand I understand that even such usually reliable papers as The N. Y. Times and the Christian Science Monitor are becoming infected—and two, the fact that America is naturally nervous since it is new to this war of nerves. Here you might contrast our attitude to that of the British, who, being old hands at the game, do not have this attitude noticeably.
I would be willing to thrust my neck out far enough to say that the Russians do not want a war now or in the immediate future but they could bungle into one quite easily. Their crude tactics, the opportunistic manner in which their foreign relations are conducted, their complete misunderstanding of the West which they make the mistake of measuring by the Marxian standard alone, their extraordinarily poorly informed condition in regard to U. S. opinion—for I am quite convinced that they fully expect to see Mr. Wallace elected since they have convinced themselves, also probably by the approved dialectical method, that the majority of Americans support him—this is a wonderful example, I think, of their degree of grasp of America. But, on the other hand, I think we would gravely weaken our own position were we to assume that they are simply a crude bunch of incompetents who, if we present a strong and unyielding front, will always back down. The $64 question of course is to know that point at which they consider their interests so vital that they will not compromise or refrain from pushing forward, and conversely this is equally true. Unhappily for us, despite the ERP, they have the initiative, they choose the ground for the periodic tests of strength and the weapons (they can even deny all guilt of participation such as in the case of the Czech affair by merely using the local Communist party to gain their ends for them), and they never are embarrassed by having to wait until Congress decides whether money will be appropriated or not or just what policy shall be, which of course means by the time we have decided to counter one of their moves we are faced with not only a faitaccompli but a situation that has already hardened beyond redemption.
From my few contacts with the Communists over here I am convinced that we are going to have to do a lot more than send over food and machinery—most of the recipients are for the most part unaware these items ever arrived, let alone from America. Russian methods and propaganda, in contrast to ours, are completely successful—the Voice of America and our Information libraries are outnumbered by the Commie equivalents 100-1, at least, and ours never have enough information or funds or personnel. In Czechoslovakia before the "putsch" some of my friends who are students at Prague voluntarily spoke to various groups around the country because our Information Offices had no one to do this and in many cases were not interested in doing so even when requested to. So far, I just have to admit that the Commies are just one hell of a lot cleverer than we are. It is fortunate for us that we have some allies who know how to fight them with their own methods—l am referring to the European Socialist parties (anti-Communist ones), and most of the democratic Christian groups such as in France and Italy.
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