bombardment—on the enemy, and it was so desirous of peace that it hesitated to rock the boat in any fashion. Thus, the proposal to free the non-Communist POW's was denied, for fear of its effect on the enemy. And the U.N. cloak continued to bind United States operations tightly. To work within the U.N. the nation had to observe that body's wishes, and the U.N. wanted only peace.
By the fall of 1952, Americans could agree on one thing: that Dean Acheson's remark to Harry Truman in July 1950, 'that your decision may not always be the popular one,' was the understatement of the decade.
It was not the decision to intervene in Korea, however, that caused the frustration and anger and disquiet. It was the continuing stalemate. More and more people began to say, 'Win it, or get out.'
The anguish of the United States Government, politically unable to win, strategically unable to withdraw, can be easily understood. The government, from failure to understand clearly that Communists negotiate fairly only when it is in their interest to do so, or when unbearable pressure is placed upon them, had clamped itself in a Communist trap. The most difficult thing for all Western statesmen to learn was that there never had been, and probably never would be, a permanent community of interest between themselves and the Communist bloc. The understanding was so often rejected, no doubt, because its acceptance meant that the world was a checkerboard, the pressure unending, and that competition would prevail further than any man could see.
Oddly, in America, both pacifists and jingoes combined in anger against the Administration. Legislators who had never voted favorably on a single military budget cried for victory; while professional anti-Communists hinted that the POW's should be abandoned as the U.S. withdrew back into its own
Inside the government there was considerable sentiment to accede to the Communist demands on the POW question in order to achieve peace before the election. All this sentiment was centered in the domestic, or 'political,' area of the Cabinet. The guts of the Cabinet—State and Defense—remained adamant that the United States would have to continue present policy, however politically unbearable.
The opposition was also deeply split. Some wanted peace at any price; some wanted complete victory at any price; some wanted escape into a world with less danger and fewer insolvable problems. But an opposition party— as each party discovers periodically in America—has certain shining advantages: it can carp and criticize all past and current mistakes without being too specific with its own remedies.
In the presidential election of 1952, the majority of words and arguments did not concern Korea. The majority of words and arguments—on both sides—had no relevancy to any current problem.
Men tend to repeat political slogans and arguments a generation after they have become obsolete. There were Democrats running against Hoover, and Republicans opposed to Franklin Roosevelt, though 1929 was a generation gone, and the New Deal had sputtered and died for all practical purposes in 1938.
Yet, there is little doubt that political historians will grant the Korean War, and its side pressures, such as fear of Communism both international and domestic, the principal credit for the Republican victory.
There were inflation and high prosperity in America; there were guns, autos, and margarine in high plenty; there were millions of people happily content, unconcerned with the Far East.
But there were too many millions, touched in some way by the men holding the grim and dangerous battle line, who were troubled.
On its foreign policy, as opposed to its domestic, the Democratic Administration still could not effectively communicate. It was not that so many people did not approve; it was that they did not understand what had to be done and what had been done. Within the Administration there had always been a reluctance to use the hard sell on its foreign policies; the government had preferred to act in secret where possible rather than submit delicate questions to public debate.
In the middle of the century, this course was impossible. Neither Metternich nor Talleyrand's various bosses had had to stand for election. Harry Truman's boy Stevenson did.
Perhaps a little blunt speech, a declassification of government communications prior to the first week of November 1952, when it was much too late, a certain amount of public screaming by the Secretary of State that Communism was the Antichrist—however he personally would have detested such an emotional display—and the throwing to the wolves of a few cronies and misguided officials who in the thirties and forties had mistakenly thought that Communists were human beings, would have saved the architects of containment.
But perhaps it was time for a change, and nothing could have saved them. As it was, they won the election everywhere in the free world except where the votes were counted.
The Republican attack was many-pronged, but in its van were men trumpeting the traditional American views toward war: never get involved if possible, but once you're in, give 'em hell.
The moral issue, which sounded metallic and out of place in the mouth of an Acheson, rang cold and righteous in the tones of a Dulles. Americans had always fought for moral issues since 1776, not for the balance of power, not to restore world order. And they had always struck hard for victory, not balance, even if such victory left the world in ruins.
The Republican leaders, saying and implying that they would either end the war, or in one great upsurge end the evil underlying it, struck much closer to the hearts of the public than had the framers of containment.
They called for a rolling back of the iron curtain, which the architects of containment knew to be patently impossible, short of general war, and emotionally satisfied millions, who accepted a Soviet veto on U.S. actions only with frustration and grave disquiet.
Their views and their calls to action were far more in line with those of Wilson and Roosevelt, Democratic saints, than those of the Democratic leaders of 1952. The new Democratic leaders were much more inclined to accept the fact that the outside world had changed, in 1952, than were the Republicans.
It was probably necessary for the opposition to win, in 1952.
Whatever the domestic issues, only a Republican Administration could have dragged the American liberal middle classes into world affairs—an entanglement they violently distrusted. Only a Cabinet of men who never once, not even in college, had seen anything attractive in the far left could have brought to Americans understanding that Communism must be lived with, even while it is opposed.
This Republican Administration would do damage—it would toy with solutions such as 'massive retaliation,' and it would seek cheap answers: 'More bang for a buck.' It would continue to dislike professional legions, and try to do away with them. It would find, painfully, that all the old ideas dear to business-liberal society would not work.
It would, after a year or two, adopt containment, and continue virtually unchanged, every foreign policy of the Truman Administration.
They found, as would a new Democratic champion in the future, that despite the call for new looks, new solutions, such looks still revealed only the stone face of Communism and Soviet power; and new solutions, however appealing, remained too dangerous.
And therein continued the tragedy of Americans of these years. Containment of Communism could never be a solution, of itself; it could be only a ploy for time, a stopgap, a pragmatic attempt to hold a dangerous line as long as possible.
But the destiny of America, hopefully, did not lie in pragmatism or stopgaps. The pragmatic man worries about today or tomorrow, never the day past tomorrow. He rarely seeks, and he seldom creates.
Pragmatists create no new ways of life; they found no new religions, nor do they become martyrs to them. They believe in balance, compromise, adjustment. They distrust enthusiasms; they trust what works.
They make good politicians, excellent bankers, superb diplomats.
They never build empires, either of the earth or of the spirit.
They often preside, wisely and temperately, over their liquidation.
Pragmatists did not land at Plymouth Rock, nor did they 'pledge their lives, property, and sacred honor,' at Philadelphia.
Containment, forged in the forties and carried through the fifties and into the sixties, was a pragmatic policy. It was necessary, for there is a time for defense, even as there is a season for all things. But it was sterile; it could afford only time, and time, of itself, solves some problems, but not many.
In the middle of the century, hopefully, as Democrat and Republican hammered at each other on the hustings, mouthing moth-eaten arguments, and as men held high and lonely hills along the battle line of civilization in Korea, a new policy might have come forth.
