To Tell The Tale

Published in the Braintree Observer Forum on February 8, 1970
Written by Donald W. Smith

On January 1,1929 Winston Churchill wrote concerning mankind’s capacity for self-destruction, “Without

having improved appreciably in virtue or enjoying wiser guidance, it has got into its hands for the first time the tools by which it can unfailingly accomplish its own extermination.”

Ten years before Adolph Hitler marched on Poland, Churchill pondered a scene in which he said, “Death stands at attention, obedient, expectant, ready to serve, ready to shear away the peoples en masse; ready, if called on, to pulverize, without hope of repair, what is left of civilization. He awaits only the word of command. He awaits it from a frail, bewildered being, long his victim, now-for one occasion only–his Master.”

To those who reflect upon the destiny of men and nations, history has writ large the accuracy of his prophetic words in the uncircumscribed convulsion of the Second World War.

In that day, force marched with no regard for law or human anguish.

On New Year’s Day, 18 years later in 1947, statesman and this great prophetic historian wrote of the responsibility which rested upon Britain, France and the United States for allowing international conditions to build up to the climax they most dreaded.

He then penned words which should burn into the minds of those establishing the foreign policy of our nation today. Said Churchill, “They have only to repeat the same well-meaning, short-sighted behavior towards the new problems which in singular resemblance confront us today to bring about a third. convulsion from which none may live to tell the tale.”

Twenty-three years have moved across the earth since this admonition was inscribed upon a page. The free world has let it gather dust upon a shelf.

What story will these years tell?

They will tell of the providential victory of the Allied Nations over a barbaric force which was capable of genocide. They will make clear to the perceptive that the conquest of Nazi Germany was merely the unseating of one despot and the enthroning of another; for in the midst of unqualified victory we, the United States, relinquished control. Through our shortsighted passiveness, we subjected Europe to Communist domination. The United States, singularly the most powerful nation in the world at the end of World War II, stepped aside and watched the tentacles Totalitarianism reach out to strangle.

These years will speak of the one hundred thousand men who died in the throes of Communist aggression; a force of ideological and military might to which we had given, and are still giving, sustenance. It began with the necessity of equipping Russia to fight as our “circumstantial” ally and our self-inflicted blindness in not seeing this Russia as the far greater threat to peace and freedom; the real enemy in the midst of conflict.

It continues today as we are involved in trade with Communist nations which seek to bring us to our knees. This practice is justified by some as “economic necessity.” There would appear, to this writer, to be a confusion here. To trade with an enemy, thereby rendering the enemy fit to inflict destruction upon its benefactor, is absurdity.

But, you see, it’s all SO complex in the vast world of economics that we fail to see it for what it is — a silly game of buying “peace in our time” – a desire for prosperity now with eyes closed to the future.

The clouds are gathering. The thunder rumbles in the distance. We see skirmishes on every hand which are precursors of what is to come.

Yet, we as a nation will not face reality. We listen to the threats; we are told that we will be buried; the Totalitarianists tell us that we and they cannot coexist upon this earth. Still, we don’t listen. We insist that they don’t really mean what they’re saying. We persist in seeking common ground for trust when none exists.

If we do not remove the scales from our eyes, history will see us as a nation that went to its doom because it could not believe such a Gargantuan evil possible.

If we do not see soon, who will live to tell the tale?