Letters: History & a Legacy

• Share

Sirs:

An olive wreath to you for the forthright article on the subject of aid, morally and financially, to Greece, the birthplace of democracy [TIME, March 10]. . . .

Britain, I am sure, has little if any "fat in the fire" where Greece is concerned, and with pressure being applied at home and abroad would probably thankfully withdraw all her troops and services but for the threat of an ever-expanding Russia in this last stronghold of Western culture and Western-type democracy ... in the Balkan nations. . . .

FRANK E. ASHDOWN Vancouver, B. C.

Sirs:

[The writer of] the Marshall article, with classic incisiveness and clarity, has assembled data with an inescapable meaning—America now enters the arena of history on her own. All the chill introspection which attends the individual at the death of a cooperative and sympathetic parent who, wisely or unwisely, consciously or unconsciously, shielded him from the full weight of the world, comes home to the heart and mind. America has lost its mother. . . . Great Britain has been that . . . and she has evoked the devotion, the suspicion, the resentment which fits into the personal relationship between a powerful, strong-willed parent and her equally strong-willed and powerful son. . . .

The inheritance and prerogatives are chimeras—the legacy has been dissipated in advance. ... If Britain could not hold the forts of Europe and Asia, surely the son, removed in interest and action, cannot. What then? Chaos and Communism? Not unless we forget the really important part of the inheritance.

There is religion, a tradition of progressive enfranchisement of spiritual truth in workable statutes; there is the reality of justice which all along has been the source of British power . . . there is the ideal of liberty which itself gave birth and secret strength to the early individuality of her children as well as to servants and to strangers.

Since money must be spent, 'and help must be rendered, America can convert every dollar into an ally . . . only by convincing Europeans and Asiatics alike that we hold by the spiritual ideal of Christianity, the intellectual idea of justice, the humanitarian ideal of liberty. . . . And we have much to do—so much to do—right here at home, before such professions will make sense or meaning to the world.

Kent, Wash. LINDEN DALBERG

Sirs:

... To put the shoe on the other foot, let us suppose that it became the policy of the Soviet to denounce as threats to her security, and threaten to counteract with troops and cash, all capitalist political and economic maneuvers occurring in the Western Hemisphere. Would not our cumulative rage soon border on national apoplexy, and justifiably so?

R. M. BENTLEY Los Angeles

Sirs:

No matter how much cramming Secretary Marshall may have done in preparation for the Moscow Conference, he won't succeed in moving the world any nearer permanent peace until he and the others who formulate our foreign policy face the unpleasant truth that the Soviet Union doesn't want a peaceful, prosperous world outside its own borders and those of its satellites.