It can even be argued that Yalta, and everything for which Yalta stands, was a tragic mistake and yet a blessed one. If the Western powers had not attempted to deal amicably with the Soviet Union at Yalta the Western peoples, already hypersensitized in matters of conscience, might have attributed to themselves and to their posterity an unbearable burden of guilt. We and our children might have gone down fighting while wondering in our innermost hearts, "Why didn't we make a real try to avoid war with Soviet Russia?"
Though the Teheran and Yalta agreements have been violated by the USSR almost from the moment they were concluded, it can be argued that the Western world was wise in experimenting with appeasement because it liberated our consciences for future struggle. No one can possibly argue that we did not try to get along with the Communist system, that we failed to offer the Communists a reasonable share in the world of power politics, or that we threatened the Communists with aggression during the course of our anti-fascist struggle. For better or for worse, we did try to get along with them. We have failed.
Why have we failed?
The failure seems to be much more on the side of the Communists than on the side of the free nations. Though it is possible for Left-liberals or hypercritical intellectuals to find fault with the U.S. and British position in this respect or that, short of extreme nit-picking it must be argued that the Communists jumped the gun on the Western powers in almost every case. Tito, while still in agreement with Moscow, proved implacable toward the constitutional Yugoslav government and the Church as they had existed before 1941. While Roosevelt was still living the Lublin Poles prepared a savage double-cross of the London Poles. Whether Communist action arose from a lamentable fear of our own aggressiveness, or a Machiavellian plan to conquer the world does not, at any time, matter very much; what matters is the almost indisputable fact that in many parts of the world the Communists undertook the initiative against the anti-Communists.
(The first edition of this book, Psychological Warfare, was written in 1946 and published in 1948; the second edition is being completed eight years later, in 1954. Any reader who contrasts the two editions will see at a glance that the author, although suspicious of Communism, had no real anticipation of the fury or seriousness of the Communist attack upon the non-Communist world, nor of the strategic arguments and responsibilities which the free world would therewith be forced to accept.)
The Cold War and the Actual Fighting.
Figure 71: Official Chinese Letter. This surrender pass from Korea shows intelligent American use of materials from another culture—The ancient format, in this case, of the traditional Chinese bureaucratic letter.
A curious division of responsibilities not anticipated by the Creel Committee of World War I or the OWI of World War II arose in the Washington of the Cold War period. While the military establishments were given jurisdiction over propaganda activities connected with actual combat, other propaganda activities were kept largely in civilian hands, though simultaneously the direction of civilian policy at its very highest level became para-military through the influence of the National Security Council.