Dear Ed: Thank you for your note of the twenty-third. I appreciate your thoughtfulness in sending me David Lawrence's article, and, of course, I am delighted that you were so well impressed by Ezra Benson. I can tell you that he is just as honest and straight-forward as he appears to be.1
As to David Lawrence, I have known him for many years and, on the average, I concur with his views. However, in about one out of three of his articles, I find that he has not followed through very well in his thinking.2 You and I, of course, know that there is no neutral position as between honesty and falsehood, or, indeed, as between any moral value and its opposite. However, the concept of neutrality for a nation does not necessarily mean that that nation is trying to occupy a position midway between right and wrong. In the ordinary sense, neutrality applies to military combinations.
Now it is very true that we want every nation we can reach to stand with us in support of the basic principles of free government. But for a long time, I have held that it is a very grave error to ask some of these nations to announce themselves as being on our side in the event of a possible conflict. Such a statement on the part of a weak nation like Burma, or even India, would at once make them our all-out ally and we would have the impossible task of helping them arm for defense.
Moreover, if a country would declare itself our military ally, then any attack made upon it by Communist groups would be viewed in most areas of the world as a more or less logical consequence. Since so much of the world thinks of the existing ideological struggle as a power struggle, the reaction to the kind of incident I talk about would be, "Well, they asked for it."
On the other hand, if the Soviets attacked an avowed neutral, world opinion would be outraged.
We ourselves, in the first one hundred and fifty years of our existence, constantly asserted that we were a neutral nation. We have carefully respected the neutrality of Switzerland and Sweden.
All of this is just to demonstrate that over-simplified answers to the problems besetting the world today are extremely dangerous. To give you a more extended analysis of the same question, I am sending herewith a copy of an editorial by John Cowles, whom you may know. I do not mean to say that I agree with every word of it, but it does at least give you another slant.3
In order that you may have the two of them for comparison, I am returning also the David Lawrence article.
Thanks again for writing me. As ever
