VIEWPOINT

Appeasement in our time

GEORGE GALE Most of us realise perfectly well that it is good for us to remind ourselves, or to be reminded, from time to time of the tyran- nous and brutal and totalitarian condition of Germany during the twelve years of Hitler's rule. And in fact we are frequently so reminded. Likewise it does none of us any harm to have brought constantly to our attention the persisting offensive aspects of the racial policies and practices of the South African government.

The more people are made to bear in mind, are compelled to contemplate, the kinds of activities their rulers and servants will do in the name of the ruled—the more, that is to say, ordinary people realise what ordinary people will do and put up with--the less likely will they be to consent to tyrannous and brutal and totalitarian rule. Politicians are either rulers or would-be rulers ; and they cannot be relied upon, therefore, to take the side of the ruled (however amiable they may personally be, however liberal and humane their expressions of senti- ment). That instinct of the public to regard their rulers as 'them' as opposed to `us' is most sound. Politicians seek continually to persuade the people that there is no 'them' and 'us', but in civilised and edu- cated societies the people, prudently, will have none of it and continually escape from the proffered embrace.

To avoid the contagious grasp, the people have two prophylactics, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Journalists are privileged in that their free- dom of speech, through the publication of their views, is effectively larger than other members of the public who can only express their views in conversation and in votes. Journalists benefit from freedom of speech. Their misuse of that freedom could imperil it. just as their proper use of it must not only justify it but enhance and enlarge it. A most proper use of that freedom is con- tinually to remind the public of the threats upon it, threats made particularly by tyran- nous and brutal and totalitarian systems of rule. A misuse of that freedom is to gloss over such threats.

One of the odder aspects of popular, and political, opinion over the past forty years or so has been the leniency with which most of us tend, at any rate unthinkingly, to regard

the Soviet Union. It is not that we do not

know, when we come to think about it, that

for the past forty years or so the condition f the Soviet Union has been tyrannous, rutal and totalitarian, and that at no time as any freedom either of assembly or of eech been tolerated. It is, rather, that we scount such knowledge, and push it aside, if it did not matter, as if it were irrele- ant. It has not sunk in. We do not know hat Stalin's terror and camps cost, say, enty million lives in the same way as we now that Hitler's terror and camps cost, aY. six million, although the statistical umentary grounds for such knowledge re. as a matter of historical fact, strictly mparable.

Despite the appalling examples of Hun- and Czechoslovakia, the behaviour of

the Soviet Union does not make most of us more than briefly angry. We are mostly much more angered, and more constantly angered, by the behaviour of Americans in Vietnam, South Africans in South Africa, and ourselves over Biafra. I think many if not most of us have been conditioned to be- lieve that behaviour which was inexcusable in Nazi Germany and which is inexcusable in South Africa is somehow to be excused, or at least shrugged off, in the Soviet Union. The terrible collusion between rulers and ruled which we deplored in Nazi Germany we defend in the Soviet Union.

There were two aspects of pre-war appeasement. The first was political and diplomatic and had to do with pursuing policies which avoided, or at least post- poned, war with Hitler. The second aspect. far less forgivable, had to do with liking some of Hitler's Germany, and not seeing. and not writing about, and not minding. the rest. Those apologists, journalists and others, for Hitler's Reich are subjects of contempt and hatred. Our feeling for Stalin's apologists is usually more amiable. Profes- sor G. D. H. Cole, for instance, was really no more than teased for writing, in his Intelligent Man's Guide to the Post-War World. of the pre-war Russian trials : 'I . . . came in the end to the conclusion . . . that the trials were in no sense mere frame-ups ... I also dismissed as sheer nonsense that the prisoners had been tortured or drugged into confessing . . . As far as I am able to see, the internal policy of the Soviet Union has been consistently directed in the interests of the main body of the people .

Now this sort of stuff, published in 1947. is not too bad: it could be explained as the product of a charitable disposition and insufficient knowledge. But what are we to make of Cole's defence, in the following pages, of what he admits to be 'the undoubted suppression of freedom of speech and of association wherever these involve any possibility of attack on the government in power'? He says : 'The Revolution could not have won power except by being intolerant ; and it is doubtful if it could possibly have held power after its initial victory except by taking over, and applying to its own pur- poses. the intolerance of the preceding regime. The Soviet Union inherited intoler- ance from Tsardom: and it is unrealistic to judge it as if it had the same historic reasons as we have for venerating free speech and freedom of association.'

If, we may legitimately ask, the Revolu- tion was not to obtain freedom of speech and of association for the workers and serfs. what then was it to obtain which could not just as well have been obtained through fascism or national socialism? But I have no doubt that such a question will be regarded as improper or inappropriate by those who appease the Soviet Union.

The most recent example of such appease- ment was provided in the Times of Friday, 7 November, which contained a ten-page 'special report' on the Soviet Union. It was, in fact, an advertising supplement based apparently upon the fifty-second anniversary of the November 1917 Revolution in Rus- sia. The trouble about such advertising sup- plements is, first, that they are tarted up and called special reports ; and second, that their editorial content might fool people that everything in Russia is more or less hunky-dory as far as the Times is concerned. The headlines are cosy and rosy: 'The prob- lem of living together' the paper editorial-

Ises ; 'When trade unions have last word', 'State farm bonus system works well', 'Research aids human needs'. 'Shop prices stay steady', 'Quality in service now the target', 'Cult of fitness breeds success', and so forth. Some of the articles are pure pro- paganda.

When I was on the Daily Express I was once asked to contribute towards an adver- tising supplement, and I refused on the grounds that editorial content should not he associated with advertising matter. The Express did not press the matter, and I respected the editor for respecting my views. I think that all journalists should refuse to have anything to do with advertising sup- plements, whatever their subject matter. But above and beyond this. I believe it to be a gross dereliction of journalistic and pro- prietorial duty to publish as a 'special report' such an advertising supplement as the Times did on 7 November, when its subject matter is the biggest and richest and most power- ful tyranny in the world today. Is this what free speech is for, or about? Is this what the Times has sunk to?