The Noticing [Der Weg 1948-01]
An original translation of "Die Rundschau"
Source Documents: German Scan
Note(s): None.
Title: The Noticing [de: Die Rundschau]
Author(s): THE NOTICER
“Der Weg” Issue: Year 2, Issue 1 (January 1948)
Page(s): 57-61
Documents Referenced:
[LINK] Fifth Meeting Of The Council Of Foreign Ministers, London, November 25-December 16, 1947 Report by Secretary Marshall, December 19, 1947
The Noticing
No matter how often his expectations have been dashed, man greets each new year with hopes—old or new, it matters not—for the distress that stands as the emblem of our times can only be borne while he clings to the prospect of better days: and even as he ends his weary course in the grave, he plants hope yet beside it.
It is not the enchanting glow of fresh hopes that lit the year’s beginning with fervor, but the faint flicker of the old, salvaged from the past year and guarded anxiously in the depths of the soul—a light that only steadfast hearts can shield from utter extinction, for the cold wind leaps again and again like a hyena from the darkness upon its meager gleam.
With the year 1947, 32 long months drew to a close since the clamor of the great war fell silent, yet the ominous rumble of a universal earthquake persists in a foreboding cadence, and the world cannot bring itself to trust in the peace whose advent, nearly three years ago, was proclaimed with strained pomp and grandeur.
Those chosen (by whom?) men, who for years have waged a titanic struggle on the public stage of international conferences and assemblies to force a reluctant peace to settle upon the earth, never tire of professing their good will and the full muster of their energies toward that lofty, noble aim—sung by the Atlantic Charter and emblazoned in tempting hues upon the banner of the "United Nations."
But where dwells this mysterious power, unseen by any human eye, against which governments contend—a force that could entomb a continent beneath its might and reduce it to rubble and ash, that could let an 80-million-strong people starve, that could pour millions and billions into crafting weapons of destruction, which by their nature hold no sway over warring armies and find their sole purpose in the sudden obliteration of millions in teeming cities?
Does not the earth, do not its peoples, lie powerless at the feet of these lords of the world? Does not their will reign supreme over all that human resolve can shape? And does not peace or war hinge upon the will of men? Where, then, are those who spurn peace?
Truly, it is a strange spectacle that the world is offered today under the guise of international politics, and one is tempted to see naught but illusion and shadowplay when talk turns to "peace negotiations" or "peace efforts." Since the vanquished are wholly cast aside, they can bear no blame or burden for the ever-crumbling order and security of the world; that weight rests solely upon the victors.
Never before has greater power been entrusted to a victorious coalition than at the close of the Second World War to the so-called "United Nations"—in truth, to the four dominant great powers. Has this power, purchased with rivers of blood and the ruin of Europe, been wielded for the good of the proclaimed ideals? The answer is no.
Thus, we must press further: Why not? At first, skimming the surface, one might reply: the coalition that stood as a united front against Central Europe has fractured into two hostile camps—Moscow and Washington. This enmity obstructs the world’s pacification and portends a new war, one with consequences too catastrophic to fathom.
We must delve deeper, and then questions surge forth like geysers from the earth: Who bears the guilt for this rift? Who has betrayed the shared ideals? (Were there any to begin with?) Is it treachery by one side or by both? Are other aims now in play, and what might they be? Does one party still uphold the avowed ideals, and if so, which? Or neither? And why are these new aims not laid bare to the world?
No court will ever be tasked with settling these questions, much less answering them. Yet history will one day assume that role. Until then, humanity must reckon with the path ahead. Plainly, the world has traced a circle, returning to a starting point eerily familiar and fraught with ill omen.
Will a new cycle commence along the same blood-stained path? It seems to us that the hour has come to forsake those old tracks, to venture forth with new minds and new thoughts, breaking free from the enchanted rails where the devil’s wheel of international politics spins the nations together and flings them into the abyss.
Still, the same slogans that have already cost so much blood echo on; the same hollow catchphrases hum and hiss like vampires through the night-dark air. For the third time in a brief human span, the rallying cry rises to salvage lifeless phantoms and withered doctrines—things that should no longer coax a dog from the hearth, more unreal than an opium vision, more perilous than a mire to a wayfarer beneath a starless sky.
Thirty-two months ago, the forces of good triumphed over evil on this earth—or so decrees the dogma that clings with iron brow against sense and reason. And now, from the very ranks of these good and beneficent forces, a new menace rises, precisely where the loudest laurels were heaped. Thirty-two months ago, the Soviet Union was hailed as the savior of civilization—"First Line of Democracy!" (sic!)—a peace-loving state, dwelling serenely in its toil and the safeguarding of religion and freedoms, taking up arms not for territorial gain or power’s reach, but driven by pure idealism to sacrifice itself for the civilization of this oh-so-lovely, perfect earth. Now that same state is branded a ravening wolf, a spoiler of peace, pressing ever onward, denying the rest of the world the blessings of progress, liberty, and calm.
How can this strange turn, this overnight shift, be explained? Are we to suppose the world has fallen prey to a colossal campaign of lies? And if so, who authored these falsehoods and willful deceits? Where stand the culpable?
The question demands an answer: Has Soviet Russian policy undergone a change—an unforeseen reversal that thrusts the world into an altered state? Did they know nothing of it in Moscow, Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam? Did they carve up the world and hand a vast, decisive share to the wolf in sheep’s clothing, blind to the fetid breath of that ravenous beast at their table? Did they appoint a felon as co-keeper of order and peace—one who murders, scorches, and plunders by night, yet struts by day in a tailcoat as a cultured citizen preaching virtue?
How has the world stumbled into this present impasse? Were the statesmen who forged an alliance with the one now recognized and reviled as the devil—Churchill foremost among them in both acts—those who bolstered and advanced Soviet might to the utmost, misled by a misjudgment of Moscow’s aims? Did they succumb to illusions and delusions?
This question—again with Churchill at the fore—admits a clear reply: None of the triumphant war-makers and faltering peace-makers could dare claim to have been duped by Soviet duplicity. Too plain has Moscow’s world-revolutionary bent ever been; too numerous are the English testimonies to communism’s threat. Piles of documents attest beyond doubt that London was kept abreast by its agents of world Bolshevism’s true face from the earliest days of the Bolshevik bloodlust. Churchill, above all, that quintessential figure of Britain’s moneyed elite, has never harbored delusions about communism. Even American journalists have openly declared that those now striving in vain with the Soviets to secure Europe’s peace are the very ones who, since the days of the shared war, came to know Moscow’s methods and goals intimately (late enough, we reckon, if they were ignorant before!).
Why, then, was an alliance forged with the Bolshevik scourge, which stood on the brink of being crushed by German arms and swept from the earth? Why were they bolstered and fortified, why infused with fresh vigor to overrun Europe—a place where today we would gladly see them banished? The answer rings clear, beyond all quibbling: to annihilate Germany. Yet the annihilation of Germany entails, as has long been plainly declared, the ruin of Europe—not mere ruin, but its delivery into the hands of Moscow’s Bolshevism, a specter that capitalism justly dreads. From Europe, Bolshevism can effortlessly spill into Africa; and as it presses forward in Asia, only America remains as the final coveted prize, a challenge it must meet by the relentless law of its own expansion.
How can this inexorable, long-foreseen—or at least foreseeable—unfolding be opposed? One path is a war that stakes everything, a gamble that could, with grim likelihood, culminate in the obliteration of the white race and its culture. The other is a desperate, eleventh-hour bid to counter Moscow’s ideology with a superior vision—not the flickering phantoms of spent and hollow constructs, but a true idea, a resolution to the social and economic riddles that have stirred the world since Marx, swelling now into perilous storm surges. These surges crash against the tyranny of capitalism—yet how could capitalism, from within its own depths and its beleaguered defenses, conjure an idea it would wield only to shield its dominion from the shock troops rallied and roused beneath communism’s red banner of blood and terror? Do not these advancing throngs already brandish the very slogans with which capitalism has duped the toiling masses—and still seeks to dupe them?
Where lies the redeeming idea against Bolshevism, so often heralded in speech and script, which Wallace—lacking it ready-made—once claimed might alone defeat communism and strip it of its menace? We pose this question to those who today hold humanity’s fate in their grasp, who clawed their way to this sway and this seat of power, pledging the world a brighter dawn. Yet no reply will come.
Let none cling to illusions: whoever fails to read the signs, whoever senses not the gathering storm, whoever piously shuns the root of things in ignorance and superstition, hoping to mend humanity’s writhing frame with empty chants and laying on of hands, paves the way only for calamity. We must cast overboard prejudice and rigid, outdated creeds, along with masks clutched in desperate spasms—for beneath such weights, the ship of the white peoples will founder in the tempest. Above all, we must own the blunders and gross missteps, even the sinister designs of a wayward policy, and at this final hour wrench the helm hard about. We must find men with the courage to confess these truths, to topple false idols from their thrones and drive false priests from the temple—lest Bolshevism shatter idols, priests, and temple alike, leveling all to dust. And with them will perish those who, blinded, would defend such priests and idols still.
The London Conference of Foreign Ministers adjourned fruitlessly on December 15. The date of its collapse alone startled as a fresh twist; all else offered nothing new to anyone.
In his closing address, U.S. Secretary of State Marshall framed the deadlock thus:
We have plainly struck a fundamental rift.
We have found no accord on the treaty with Austria.
We have found no accord on what “Germany” even is.
We have found no accord on what “Germany” ought to be.
We have found no accord on financial matters.
We have found no accord on the shape of Germany’s economy.
It is clear that agreement hinges only on enslaving the German people. (Thus, the victors’ cry: Morgenthau!)
The truth stands: the occupying powers bear the guilt for Germany’s dismemberment.
Hence, further talk is futile; better we close these sessions!
Here stands a document unmatched in the annals of history; we set it forth unadorned, letting its fantastic grotesquerie strike its own chord. Perhaps the world may yet concur that the amassed might of bankrupts cannot usher in golden days.
The tally flows on, relentless as iron, from Marshall’s own words:
Thus, we cannot bring peace to the world.
We cannot honor our pledges.
We cannot rebuild Europe.
We cannot shield Europe from Bolshevism.
We cannot restore liberty to peoples lost to Moscow.
We cannot safeguard liberty for other peoples left defenseless in Moscow’s grip.
With so bleak a reckoning at the close of the third year since the guns fell silent, it is evident new roads must be trod. No shift will come if patchwork fixes are slapped on while the core intent stays unchanged. A fresh sense of duty must awaken, a turn of heart must arise, if the new year is to climb upward. The perils encircling the peoples’ future loom too vast—and above all, the white race stands too imperiled in its very being—to indulge further in hatred, strife, and mutual slaughter.
The verdict on the past year’s politics boils down to two crushing words: utterly wanting. And at the new year’s dawn, let this urgent warning blaze in fiery script: Caveant consules!—Let the consuls beware!