Source Documents: German Scan
Note(s): None.
Title: The Noticing [de: Die Rundschau]
Author(s): THE NOTICER
“Der Weg” Issue: Year 1, Issue 6 (November 1947)
Page(s): 411-415
Documents Referenced: None.
The Noticing
When the myriad commission deliberations within the United Nations General Assembly at Lake Success—ironic, for the name promises triumph, yet here it rings hollow—began to weary the world’s attention with their endless stalemates between the two dominant powers, the clarion call of world communism pierced the air on October 5th. It shattered the monotony of futile chatter over misframed, thus insoluble problems, and the trite murmurings about the one true path to usher humanity into a golden age of paradise, even as the nations lay powerless in the dust, unable to surmount the rubble-strewn barriers blocking their way.
Vibrant and unburdened by the taint of scruple or prejudice, the lungs that sounded the Moscow hunting horn summon hunters and drivers to the final drive against the frantic hares of the bourgeois-capitalist world, scattered across the last clearing of Western Europe. This world is weary and aged, and as a North American legislator—who spent his congressional recess touring the lands of those crying out for aid—declared, it craves younger leadership. Strange how such truths are voiced only when the hour has passed, yet it’s undeniable that the men, parties, and ideals holding the frail European rampart—with their backs pressed against the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, facing the relentless surge from the boundless East—lack the bloom of youth. Communism, by contrast, now sets forth on its final hunt to line its Eurasian halls with the last European trophies that fuel its ambition, standing in the prime of its vigor. The signal on October 5th heralds the opening of festivities to honor its 30th year with solemn grandeur.
The global press, which on May 15, 1943, rejoiced in proclaiming the “dissolution” of the Comintern as a turning point in the rise of international Bolshevism, balks at retracting its words today. Yet it’s now common knowledge that this dissolution was a sham, crafted to deceive the naive—a truth chirped by every knowing voice. Beyond this, we have the weighty testimony of Angelika Balabanoff, once a secretary of the Comintern, who, on October 12 in Rome, delivered these terse remarks to the United Press:
“The re-establishment in Belgrade is by no means a novelty, for the Comintern has never ceased to exist. The announcement now brought to light is nothing but a cunning maneuver, much like the dissolution of the Comintern in 1943. Never was the Comintern more vigorous or effective than during the period of its supposed dissolution. The Soviet Union disbanded the Comintern in 1943 because it was embroiled in war and required the urgent assistance of the United States and England. Beyond this, it had become essential to underscore the national character of communism. In 1943, it was all a matter of tactical necessity.”
It might well prove intriguing to consider what the knowledgeable Angelika has further to say about communism:
“The communists draw financial support from sympathizers among the wealthy elite, from intellectuals and the half-educated, as well as from Jews who harbor hopes of finding in the Soviet Union—its revolution no longer seeming so perilous to them today—a final sanctuary from anti-Semitism.”
We present these verbatim declarations not because we view them as startling revelations of hitherto unknown truths, but because they issue from an authoritative source and resist easy contradiction. That world communism hardly languished in idle repose during the brief years of its ostensible vanishing behind the curtain is amply evidenced by the recent exposure of the sabotage network in Chile, to say nothing of the espionage scandals in Canada and the United States themselves, which once more diverted public discourse from matters of international political pragmatism. Stalin’s operatives were already diligently at work long before the final refinements were applied to the democratic manifesto of communism in Warsaw. That this realization, though gradual, is piercing even the dimmest minds is reflected in a comment from the New York Times, which voices suspicion that communist organizations akin to those now unmasked in Chile likely persist elsewhere too. We believe it is no overly audacious claim to suggest, with due modesty, that we too find this highly probable, as the New York paper so shrewdly and circumspectly phrases it.
Beyond the polished world of international rostrums at Lake Success, beyond the endless conferences and the diplomatic maze where sinister threats are cloaked in intellectual rhetoric and cynical sophistry, beyond the dark storm clouds painted rosy by the floodlights of propaganda, there persists a realm of raw, unpolished politics—a realm of primal candor and harsh tones. This truth is thrust upon us once more, with striking clarity, by the declaration of the Warsaw democratic manifesto. Moscow has grown weary of the bourgeois starched collar that stifles its shaggy breath. Having endured countless dainty teas and decorous chatter in the salons of Western democracy—suffered through the lean war years and after, all to snatch the crumbs of war relief and food aid—it now aches to play the rogue again, to roar in its own untamed tongue. And so we ponder: how long can such a guest be borne in the genteel parlors of democratic idealists? For some time, its crude manners have grated on nerves. If only a sturdy porter stood ready, this rough intruder would have been tossed out long ago—but as it stands, they shrink from the brawn of this guest, one they invited in themselves.
Moscow, effortlessly maneuvering its pieces across the chessboard at Lake Success and other international arenas, remains unfazed when fellow players balk at its rules. After all, its purpose is not to bow to the etiquette forged by foreign realms or to serve their whims—it pursues its own ease and delights. It revels in the raucous cry of wild hunts sweeping through Europe’s domains, territories so magnanimously ceded to it, despite its claim of seeking no conquests, only the liberation of peoples from tyranny, as others have done. Now it sets about shattering the final windows of Europe’s residential quarter, leaving elderly prime ministers coughing in the chill draft, powerless to tame the ruffians of the streets. It is but a truism to see in the aimless ebb and flow of postwar European “politics” a game of catch orchestrated by Moscow’s world-communist forces; and when liberation is invoked, it can only mean the unleashing of Bolshevism’s anti-national, anti-cultural, anti-state, and anti-human elements—those that thwart Europe’s healing. The Kremlin’s satellites grow ever more spirited, reveling in their victims’ helplessness, and if they find further glee, it is in their rosy-red socialist brethren, whose blind mediocrity and rigid dogma in decisive hours pave the path for red dominion. Anarchy, draped in the threadbare cloak of parliamentary supremacy, has seized the reins; law and order lie in ruins, and the bulwark against the plunderers of the Asian steppes has been meticulously, deliberately razed. There is nothing startling in this unfolding, as the simmering of Europe’s witches’ brew reaches its full, dark bloom.
Though we may suspect that the incessant talk of looming war—stirred by Soviet bustle and more—exaggerates its nearness, none can deny the heat is steadily rising. The march of events permits scant room for other readings: Mars, the war god, may soon be summoned once more to hold supreme judgment. Yet it’s plain to foresee that the clashing factions might fare like the fabled ravens, bickering over a chunk of cheese and naming a monkey their arbiter. The shrewd beast splits the prize, but to carve it into perfect halves, he nibbles here and there until only a scrap remains—just enough for his magistrate’s fee. So too has Mars, in the last two world wars, shown this merciless impartiality. And though global debates weave fiction with fact in a hopeless snarl, with fables aplenty, none of the players care to glean wisdom from these parables. Thus, the fever of politics climbs relentlessly, and only in this grim, foreboding sense can we call it “progress.” No current stirs to sweep humanity upward to redemption.
As the northern autumn bore the ripened fruit of the Comintern’s rebirth in its offshoot, the Cominform, so too do the Arab states stand poised to reap their harvest in Palestine. The Jewish Agency has gallantly offered to shoulder the “sacrifice” of partitioning Palestine—implying it’s their land to split, not the Arabs’? Such selfless valor, accepting a land gifted by one with no claim to give it, must surely inspire awe! In retort, the League of Seven Arab States, facing the partition plan’s endorsement by the USA and now the Soviet Union, has rallied troops to Palestine’s frontier—prompted by Britain’s avowed retreat from that cursed Holy Land. The British are singed not only by the Arab-Jewish crucible in that turbulent nook of the eastern Mediterranean—a mess they’d gladly dump on their sturdier kin, Uncle Sam—but also by Soviet pressure at the Dardanelles, testing their fragile span. Thus, the balance tilts to East Africa, with murmurs of shifting London’s seat to Kenya should Soviet bombs, in the next war, reduce the once-invincible City to dust and ruin.
As for Palestine, the result is modest indeed: after much toil and sweat, a partition is proposed—one already contemplated a decade prior—while England, with its oft-lauded political cunning, lets others sup the broth it has stirred. Yet to blame its chronic indigestion, born of two world wars, solely on a lack of appetite would scarcely be a misdiagnosis, for British schadenfreude hangs thick in the air when, say, in India, the mice cavort as the cat slips from the house. Still, how far the cat itself laid the lure is hard to prove, for it glides on velvet paws through the shadows—neither seen nor heard in its stealthy deeds.
As Moscow steadfastly drives its thirty-year quest for world revolution, the USA yields no ground in the grand sparring of power. Against Soviet Russia, it holds fast in Greece—intervention barred only by the Atlantic Charter’s ink, not the grit of political truth. It forced through a standing Balkan commission at the UN. From that European powder keg, telling signs will soon resound, and it’s no blind whim that the Comintern’s throne has settled in storied Belgrade. The seers of statecraft have marked the Balkans as the forge of brewing gales.
For Germany’s core quandary, few balms remain to be dispensed at this month’s London Conference. The healers of policy drift further apart in their counsel, and surgery looms as the likely recourse. The USA is sketching a policy overhaul, yet the conference—crippled by communist clamor before it starts—heralds only a darker turn in humanity’s ailment, hastening crisis while dimming hopes of endurance. Let not peace-longing breed wild optimism, even as Truman vows anew—words I hear, yet cannot trust—that his regime craves peace and plenty. His forebears, too, traced firm paths only to backtrack after supper. In the weave of human and political life, wish and fact, will and might, myth and reality meld into a dizzying, fickle tableau—one our frail mortal sight can only half-decipher.