The Noticing (September 1947)
[Der Weg 1947-04] An Original Translation of "Die Rundschau"
Title: The Noticing [de: Die Rundschau]
Author(s): The Noticer
“Der Weg” Issue: Year 01, Issue 04 (September 1947)
Page(s): 267-272
Dan Rouse’s Note(s):
Der Weg - El Sendero is a German and Spanish language magazine published by Dürer-Verlag in Buenos-Aires, Argentina by Germans with connections to the defeated Third Reich.
Der Weg ran monthly issues from 1947 to 1957, with official sanction from Juan Perón’s Government until his overthrow in September 1955.
Source Document(s):
[LINK] Scans of 1947 Der Weg Issues (archive.org)
The Review
I
Statesmen must weigh their words thrice—especially in critical hours—for speech is a blade as treacherous as a honed knife’s edge. Still shrouded in the oppressive air of the recent Moscow Conference—where the prelude to a peace symphony disintegrated into dissonance, deferring further efforts to London’s fogbound November—British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin declared the world (its statesmen, rather) now had six months to decide: peace or the plunge into war’s cataclysm.
No laurels yet grace the London Conference; instead, the Paris Interlude commands the stage, threatening to eclipse the final act. Were we to hold Bevin to his word amid unfolding events, Dante’s admonition might already etch humanity’s next chapter: Lasciate ogni speranza (“Abandon all hope”). Yet England’s vows often fray—and paradoxically, this very frailty offers solace. Bevin’s grim prognosis need not be measured harsher than he intended, even as Francesco Nitti (Dante’s compatriot and author of Peace-less Europe after Versailles’ cursed peace) sounds fresh Cassandra-cries.
II
Speech is silver, silence gold—a maxim too often ignored. Politics’ enfant terrible embarrasses not merely salons but global councils, where diplomatic faux pas flourish. Truman’s vexation at American oil’s impotence against Russia’s turbulent tides may explain much, but his blunt revelation—that Roosevelt’s secret pacts bear guilt for today’s chaos—startles like a cat loosed from the bag.
This confession arrives ill-timed, as bronze monuments to Roosevelt’s service still occupy public debate. The pedestal hastily carved by his successor—not in stone, but through statecraft—threatens to tarnish marble tributes to gratitude’s memory.
III
The Marshall Plan was conceived not as charity but as investment—capital to reignite Europe’s economic engine. Pragmatic and sound, yet misunderstood.
England, trapped in fiscal cul-de-sac, mistakes this aid for caulk to plug her sinking ship—last year’s $3.75 billion loan having proved inadequate. But American gold only serves vessels worth saving. Factories razed by war or stripped to the USSR might rise anew with funds and will—yet Britain’s decay runs deeper: her lords can no longer subsist on imperial rents, nor will “Brother Jonathan” sustain their idleness from kindness.
IV
To chide the Soviet bloc for Parisian discord ignores the West’s own barren soil. England’s grasping at Marshall’s offer sprouts no violets of cooperation along Europe’s ashen path; France’s cockcrow of security—a fowl long accustomed to clawing order from seedbeds—proves equally sterile. Their myopic self-interest walls the way; the cry of “L’Europe, c’est moi!” stifles reconstruction as surely as the East’s coerced refusal (though the latter, sovereignty-lacking, escapes full blame).
V
America shall not relinquish her gold to gild private parlors—her gaze fixes on the Ruhr, Europe’s economic linchpin. Frenchman Paul Reynaud (no novice) seconds this view, gesturing beyond the wall to where the East’s crimson sun ascends. The West has ever conflated Europe with self-interest; today’s hosannas for “Uncle Sam” must not obscure this calculus.
Those who sniff dawn’s breeze too soon risk the swamp. All who cram Europe into Procrustean beds of envy—or, like Churchill, forge her into English steel aimed at Russia—court ruin. Yet while eyes cling to pages of rancor and petty vengeance, the Norn enters silently—fate’s page awaits her turning hand.
VI
The United States must draw its bow across vast horizons. While Western Europe and Central Europe's Soviet-ungorged remnants demand urgent vigilance, the human-swollen expanses of East Asia weigh no lighter on Washington's mind. After years of neglect toward the Celestial Empire, General Wedemeyer now strides through its fields on official reconnaissance—a belated counter to Moscow's looming sickle that threatens to reap what American inattention left unguarded.
Chiang Kai-shek's significance in the global anti-communist struggle is matched only by his Asiatic endurance—subsisting on meager handfuls from the white man's rice bowl. Yet should that enfeebled hand drop its rifle, a crimson deluge would roar across the yellow sea of five hundred million, its foam lashing against two oceans: one churning under the Stars and Stripes by right of conquest, the other awaiting inheritance from Britain's faded maritime crown.
VII
Small wonder then that the power bearing the "White Man's Burden" upon its ocean-ringed shoulders strains to fortify Japan—this clasp before Asia's colossus, this Heligoland of the Pacific. MacArthur's reconstruction crusade advances unchecked by Soviet vetoes (though who buys the fruits of yellow hands' toil?), while peace talks with the island kingdom—again disrupted by Moscow's ideological searchlight—form not mere benevolence but the eastern wing of a broader offensive against the volcanic East. From its smoldering caldera rise red fumes, portending eruptions to scorch the world.
Moscow's refusal to join Washington's eleven-nation East Asian peace conference echoed Parisian rebuffs with threadbare consistency: East and West alike now survey a torn tablecloth between antagonists.
VIII
In China's north, the war-god Mars hammers ceaseless rhythms—blades kept sharp, cadence unbroken. Meanwhile, Soviet revolution's footmen scatter Gobi sands from Xinjiang's corridors onto Beijing's parquet, where Chiang Kai-shek buffers democratic veneers to court wealthy American patrons.
Lenin's ghost still guides the Kremlin's hand: "Apply levers at Eurasia's twin flanks—China and Spain—to unhinge the bourgeois world." Thus do Soviet feelers trace yellow Asia's contours, probing borders that defy demarcation. Nomads roaming no-man's-land hate all fences; these frontiers shift like desert sands. Ride the dunes clear-eyed, shun mirages, and the caravan advances—slow perhaps, but inexorable.
IX
In Sinkiang—this borderland China never tamed and Russia hungers to possess—the Soviet shadow stretches long, eclipsing Beijing's sun since the League of Nations' lyrical Geneva evenings. With Outer Mongolia as accomplice, it sprawls vaster than Britain's Indian Raj.
No olives swell in Central Asia's wastes, yet here a new empire-pillar stands rammed into stone—a spatial dominion unsettling the globe. Not the desert's worth, but what lies beyond: golden fringes Moscow deems ripe for plucking. For generations, Russia has dreamed of silvering its peasant smock with warm seas' azure belt.
X
China's powder must stay dry. The eternal wind-dance across its plains could birth a red storm over Asia—though Nehru welcomes these gales: "Only through tempests can our dreamed Asia rise." None predict the split Indian monsoon's path or fury. From Insulinde's liberated cauldron (Dutch lid now pried), steam rises—Java's 60 million stir while Moscow warms its hands at flames the colonizers kindled.
XI
In today's fractured concert, mellifluous flutes fall silent as dollar-clatter backs America's saxophone. Yet neither coin nor brass can drown the Soviet organ's baseline—its chords penetrating distant masses with virtuosic dread, though connoisseurs scorn the instrument. Lenin's heirs prove melodious pupils; rarely has a text been so mastered as that half-Asian's Manual of World Revolution.
White races hear sermons on fraternal internationalism while the same breath fans colonial embers: In Java's teeming storm-corridor (60 million of Indonesia's 80 million packed onto one tropical sliver), Moscow tends its brightest outpost—a conflagration fed by Mynheer's own tinder.
XII
Independence—electric tremor through the white man's fading glory belt—meets legalistic scalpels from those poised to lose. France, ever regressive, leads bayonets through Tonkin's jungles and mutes Abd-el-Krim's warnings in Morocco. Freedom is preached on corners yet jailed in home shrines.
Pragmatic commerce sharpens vision where dogma dazzles blindly. England and Holland retreat across Dominion bridges, clutching salvage from the quake—but brown sons demand freedom whole, unmeasured by white gauges of "readiness."
XIII
England, as a seasoned veteran of imperial decline, navigates colonial disentanglement with practiced finesse, salvaging dignity from inherently unsavory bargains. Holland, however, falters in liquidating its East Indies holdings despite borrowing Britain’s “Divide et Impera” playbook. While the Dutchman’s reluctance to embrace the dictum “to give is more blessed than to receive” proves understandable, it equally reveals his failure to grasp that Malaysia’s brown sons conceive freedom not as gradation but as absolute. When white tuans dismiss them as backward, they overlook how this same “simplicity” renders colonial sophistry—those fine distinctions between freedoms—incomprehensible. Herein lies the rub.
The variegated reflections of Indonesia’s flames arise not from open doorways but from tinted walls. No modern Don Quixote takes up arms for parchment ideals: Cervantes’ noble knight inspires no emulation today. That Quixote lacks voice among the great surprises none, nor does his ghostly nobility illuminate councils determining humanity’s fate. Stranger still, France’s Figaro—seizing the moment—proclaims fresh military ventures in Madagascar, cloaked in “eternal civilizing duty.”
XIV
Defiance against the goad proves futile. Every blaze scatters sparks; civilization’s gilded tree offers ample tinder. An Indonesian oracle whispers of a power that might heed Insulinde’s cry—though none doubt the Great Powers’ self-serving methods. Are we wrong to name this power Soviet Russia? Judged by the Atlantic Charter’s ideals, today’s statesmen earn no passing grade.
One hand funds dams against communism’s tide; the other digs anthills whose laborers dismantle them. Moscow’s omnipresent ideas float freely—a strategic edge Wallace underscored: only better ideas defeat ideas. But where find such thoughts when ledgers blind men to unwritten truths? A kingdom for an idea!
XV
The Balkans heap powder kegs high. Waving lit fuses to scatter them courts disaster. When Moscow deemed Truman’s Greek aid a UN matter, America now cites northern border clashes as the same. Each “UN case” seeds calamity, its fallout borne least by the uninvolved. The fledgling UN, half-formed and faltering, cannot steer this doom. Whether it matures into humanity’s tool remains shrouded.
Smaller states, their optimism withered, witness the UN’s founding breath sour into disillusion. Great Powers wield it for their ends, ignoring it when inconvenient. Even Holland—no colossus—grumbles at UN censure of its “police action.” As the elders sang, so the young chirp. Cadogan’s ire laid bare: Tear the Charter; go home. England, ever alchemist, palms Palestine’s Gordian knot to the UN—who dares cast stones?
XVI
Diogenes’ lamp finds no honest man; no technologic beam reveals peace’s isle. In the Holy Land, gallows rival crosses as symbols. Human cargo drifts Mediterranean tides; sterile measures mock the swaddled babe. UN envoys scribble dockside notes while Yugoslavia’s Simic—sun-squinting and Kremlin-harmonized—smiles. Beneath sludge, Soviet reptilian eggs ripen.
XVII
The earth spins her ancient arcs; the sun bathes just and unjust alike. Yet man, atop Babel’s tower, deafens to reason’s light—forgetful of how its dawn once raised him from beasts. Atom-obsessed, he stakes battlegrounds to loose rabid fury. The containment front spans Aleutian mists to Trieste’s sunlit Adriatic: steppe clashes sea, space wars space. Arctic ramparts melt beneath technology’s glare, exposing the Eurasian titan’s mythic armor.
Thus tightens the ring for a danse macabre—to commence should unreason reign and nations sleepwalk toward the abyss.