The Chestnut Tree

Just nine years ago, men drinking in languid Paris cafes, staring at the sky from Polish fields, listening to tremulous radios in American living rooms, were afraid of war. Their fears were justified when on Sept. 1, 1939 German bombers started battering Poland to a pulp.

Nine years ago, war broke out chiefly because there were too many men too much afraid of war. Because of their fear they sold or forgot the faith, the common sense, and the courage which might have prevented war. Today, the danger of war lies, as it did in 1939, with the men who fear war too much.

Insecure Guilt. Peace was not and never would be a serene and beautiful woman watching children at play. Peace at best was a squinting sentinel or a farmer building a fence or a man walking the hills with an urgent message which might quell or check or soften hatred. Peace at its worst was the smug illusion of safety--or else it was a panic flight, more terrible than war, away from war.

Last week peace for millions was represented by a professor of physics who knew how atomic bombs went off but did not know how to stop them from going off (see cut). Dr. Daniel Q. Posin, professor of physics at North Dakota Agricultural College, had nothing very startling to say about The Bomb. He was newsworthy merely because when he said it he looked the way a lot of people felt.

In Berlin, where military men met last week to labor on a wary truce (see below), the Communist press had a peace message of its own. World War II, the Communists declared, had been started not by the Nazis, but "by the infamous instigation of the German people by the golden bedbugs of Wall Street." The accusations that whirled back & forth between the victors who had only recently tried Germans as war criminals induced a German humorist to crack: "It is almost enough to make one feel insecure in one's guilt complex."

Symbol of a City. Some impenitent Germans were cockily confident that their anti-Russian hatred was the only certificate they needed to be acclaimed as valiant brothers in the Western fraternity. Rage at this fact misses the truth that in Berlin today tens of thousands of other Germans are risking their lives to defy Communist tyranny. Tens of thousands, within sight of Red Army tanks, are fighting Communism openly and well. They know that if the Communists ever control all Berlin, they will be done for. They fear war, like all reasonable men; they would be the first to feel it. But they do not fear it badly and blindly enough to buy "peace" at any price.

It is men & women like these who would be sold out all over Europe if the Western delegates make major concessions to the Reds.

Berliners last week found a strange symbol of their city and of Europe. In Prinz Handjery Strasse stands a chestnut tree. Six weeks ago, a U.S. plane flying in Operation Vittles crashed against it, killing two U.S. flyers. The flames of the crash scorched one side of the tree, whose branches now hang black and dead, while they warmed the other side into defiant, unseasonable bloom. Last week beneath the tree were small bunches of asters in a cracked, cheap drinking glass, and forget-me-nots in an empty grapefruit can.

The chestnut tree spoke to Berlin of courage and danger, which are never far apart; in other words, of peace.

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