Dear
Swede: A few nights ago I made a talk before the American Newspaper Publishers' Association.1 In the course of the talk I urged the need for better understanding in America of today's domestic and world problems; I likewise urged the need for a greater two-way flow of information between us and nations abroad. I tried to point out that regardless of other means of developing understanding and providing information, the most effective vehicle was still the publicity media of the several nations. The consequences of this kind of thinking is that newspapers have a very definite responsibility to our country to inform it accurately and adequately, and that while we must sustain the rights of a free press, it seems clear that the free press must try to promote reader-understanding as well as to cater to reader-interest.
To this talk I have had no adverse reactions from outsiders or laymen; but I have received a number of criticisms from publishers themselves. The central theme of the criticism has been "Why should he attempt to tell us about our business?" Personally I thought I was rather mild in expressing my feelings in the matter, but where I have made any attempt to reply to the friendly publishers who have shared this critical view, I have said only two things--first, "Are you operating a grocery store for immediate profit or do you regard the publishing of a newspaper as partaking of a public service? If the latter is the case, then you certainly assume responsibilities the discharge of which are of great interest to governmental officials."
My second observation has been, "When have you hesitated to tell me how to run my business? Admittedly I am a public servant and therefore subject, in all my public actions, to criticism. But, again, assuming that you do admit that the publishing of a newspaper should be as much a public service as a `commercial venture' you are also to that degree a public servant and I have a right to criticize you."
Beyond this, I did not, of course, make any sweeping allegations against the American press. Consequently any hurt feelings must be because someone felt that the shoe fit--but uncomfortably.
In my last letter I remember that I mentioned Dien Bien Phu.2 It still holds out and while the situation looked particularly desperate during the past week, there now appears to be a slight improvement and the place may hold on for another week or ten days. The general situation in Southeast Asia, which is rather dramatically epitomized by the Dien Bien Phu battle, is a complicated one that has been a long time developing. It involves many talks on the international level and the frantic desire of the French to remain a world power, but at the same time defeating themselves through their deep division and consequent indecisiveness at home.
For more than three years I have been urging upon successive French governments the advisability of finding some way of "internationalizing" the war; such action would be proof to all the world and particularly to the Viet Namese that France's purpose is not colonial in character but is to defeat Communism in the region and to give the natives their freedom. The reply has always been vague, containing references to national prestige, Constitutional limitations, inevitable effects upon the Moroccan and Tunisian peoples, and dissertations on plain political difficulties and battles within the French Parliament.3 The result has been that the French have failed entirely to produce any enthusiasm on the part of the Viet Namese for participation in the war. (Incidentally, did you ever stop to think that if the British had, in our War of the Revolution, treated as equals the Americans who favored them--whom they called Loyalists and we called Tories--the job of Washington would have been much more difficult, if not impossible. I have read that when the entire colonial forces in the field numbered no more than twenty-five thousand, that there were fifty thousand Americans serving in some capacity with and for the British. Yet no really effective service was rendered by these people because the British persisted in treating them as "colonials and inferiors.")4
In any event, any nation that intervenes in a civil war can scarcely expect to win unless the side in whose favor it intervenes possesses a high morale based upon a war purpose or cause in which it believes. The French have used weasel words in promising independence and through this one reason as much as anything else have suffered reverses that have been really inexcusable.5
The British are frightened, I think, by two things. First, they have a morbid obsession that any positive move on the part of the free world may bring upon us World War III. Secondly, they are desperately concerned about the safety of Hong Kong. For the moment the Chinese Communists are not molesting Hong Kong and the British are fearful that if they should be identified as opponents of the Communists in the Indo-China affair, they might suffer the loss of Hong Kong at any moment. All this is conjecture, but in respect to this particular point, my own view is in almost direct opposition. I personally feel that if the Communists would take a good smacking in Indo-China, they would be more likely to leave Hong Kong severely alone for a long time. Moreover, if a "concert of nations" should undertake to protect Western interests in this critical section of the globe, it would appear that Hong Kong would almost automatically fall within the protected zone.
Just what the outcome will be, of course, is still largely a guess, but in any event I feel that the situation is a shade--but only a shade--brighter than it was a week or so ago.
The McCarthy-Army argument, and its reporting, are close to disgusting.6 It saddens me that I must feel ashamed for the United States Senate. Other than that, I doubt that I have any opinions on the subject that are greatly different from your own, so I will pass it up for the moment.
One of the features of service life that I miss in this job is an "Inspector General's" service. Visitors here--usually meaning to be helpful--are quite apt to leave with me a hint that something is wrong here or wrong there, and sometimes these allegations or charges are of a grave nature.7
In the Army it was so simple to turn [over] to a properly trained and dedicated group any inspection job ranging from suspected peculation to plain incompetence, and it never occurred to me that a similar or equivalent agency would not be available in the Federal Government. But there is no readily available agency to look into hints of this character. Even when they are referred to the interested departments of government, they are very likely to be handled in a rather lackadaisical manner for the simple reason that people are not accustomed to the standards of administrative accounting and responsibility that prevailed in the armed services.
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I had two other subjects--but I stop here in desperation.8
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Love to the family. As ever
