OCR Text |
Show Christmas This Year Finds World Still Without Peace By BAUKIIAGE News Analyst and Commentator. WASHINGTON. I've been looking over old Christmas cards! Christmas, 1945! The message I sent you that Christmas came from amidst the rubble and the ruin of shattered Nuernberg where I experienced the saddest Holy Day season of my memory. It was spent with the ugly symbols of "man's inhumanity to man" all about me, the bitter negation of our Saviour's teachings. I was in uniform, the uniform of -a non-combatant correspondent but I are gone and my eyes drop to the rushes. A tranquil water turkey! Wt slow down and pull in toward the shore, close to an island swamp, its edges laced thick with mangroves, man-groves, those mysterious plants whose grim brown fingers clutch deep into the water as if they sought some invisible and ghoulish enemy in the depth of the water. Low tide leaves them skeleton bare. The sun and part of the sky is overcast but the rest is robins' egg blue and the water about it is tinted lilac. Trout begin to bite. And the i ' , : 'I t : i ..- -4 r.s ' A I felt unhappy in it, though I had dreamed of wearing wear-ing what we called "olive drab" in 1918, once again. My "assimilated rank" was undeserved. unde-served. Young men had fought, survived or fallen, finishing a job that I and my generation genera-tion in high-necked "blouses" and wrapped leggings BAUKHAGE had onIy started-On started-On that day, Christmas, 1945, I wrote: "I was as homesick as any young soldier in a lonely outpost out-post with the threat of battle about him. I pictured my own hearthside, my wife and the others about the happy tree, my own tinseled packages unopened and my empty hands reaching out for them vainly over the oceans too wide to span." Everywhere I looked that cold, amp day I saw, not war, but something some-thing more tragically eloquent stunned, cramped souls in pinched bodies, hurrying amidst the wreckage wreck-age of a city which had seen the blossoming of art and handicraft in stone and canvas and parchment which had enriched the world for centuries. Now 1945 what is Nuernberg? Seat of the trial of Nazi war criminals. crim-inals. That was my Christmas, 1945! Christmas, 1946! "The second one in seven years when one could really talk about "peace on earth' without shamed and downcast eyes." That's what I wrote in this column then and I went on: "While armies struggled who could think of the message to the shepherds from the angel's chorus promising peace on earth for all men of good will." There was, indeed, much to be thankful for and much to be hopeful hope-ful about on Christmas. 1946. Then came Christmas, 1947! I was far away from fields whit-ened whit-ened with snow. No bright red of the holly berry. Instead, the burning burn-ing hibiscus and beyond it the feathery feath-ery tops of the Royal palms. The day started not with the creak of shoes over the frozen snow or a wind which "checked mid-vein, the circling race of life-blood to the sharpening face," but with the soft lap of water against the prow of our little boat which lulled me to lazy reminiscence. We slipped along the river and Into the inlet. High above coursed a flock of graceful, never-lighting, man-of-war "frigate" birds. To see them so far inland, said my nature-vise nature-vise companion, meant a rough ocean. These tireless creatures, it seems, prefer to hunt in the ocean unless the white caps are breaking too wildly. Out sweeps a fish-hawk. In close pursuit, an eagle, who prefers a pilfered pil-fered meal to one he must work for. The fish-hawk darts ahead, holding his dinner in his bill. The eagle sweeps down but the kingfisher banks and turns sharply. The big bomber must make a wide circle before it can change its direction. On the straight course he gains but loses again at each turn. This goes on until finally the eagle, disgusted, gives up the chase and the kingfisher fades, fat meal In mouth, to a tiny spot In the sky. The men-of-war come back, high above us, even at this d stance, with their seven sev-en to eight-foot wing 6pread, There Is poetrv of motion! They snooKi we are very busy lor a while. Then the fish begin to elude me so I take up the camera, A stubborn stub-born crane lures us on but always manages to hide behind the mangroves man-groves out of focus. One more cast! A fine, fat trout and it's time to go in. We push bak through the twilight. twi-light. Into the truck and we bounce back to a gay little tree with the familiar decorations on its branches branches which never knew the kiss of a snowflake, although the spot where I cut the pine tree the day before, a sandy flat, shone as white in the sunlight as a snowbank in Maine. (A photograph could fool you.) People Await Peace on Earth My thoughts weren't on the news that Christmas a year ago, but as I look back over what David Wills (who was broadcasting in my place) said, I read this line: "The collapse of the London conference of foreign ministers is a tangible result of the mistrust mis-trust pervading the world," broadcast Wills, "for the conference con-ference adjourned without having hav-ing taken those essential and decisive steps along the road of peace for which the people of the earth are waiting in anguish." an-guish." The aftermath of that collapse is still with us and the path which the nations have trod since has led us to an "uncertain" peace at best. On Christmas eve a year ago the pope, delivering his annual message mes-sage from the Vatican, spoke of a Europe "shivering and feverish from economic difficulties and social so-cial chaos." He talked about "the lie." The "deliberate lie," he said sadly had become an established weapon of international relations. The lie of "garbled word or fact," part and parcel of the modern technique tech-nique in the art of forming public opinion or controlling it and of making mak-ing it serve the political ends of those bent on winning at any cost the battle of Ideologies. That was a not-too-happy Christmas Christ-mas for all the world (despite my selfish pleasures and perhaps yours, too) but, if the past year has not greatly changed that picture, it has changed it a little for the better. I has given us some satisfaction satisfac-tion to know that one idcalistio concept has materialized. We have successfully prevented the spread of the powers against which the Christian world has been struggling. The Marshall plan, so far, has been a success. Between last Christmas and this we saw Russia's cold war offensive stopped. Stopped at the Adriatic, stopped along the Seine, stopped in the low countries. Within that time the theory of an economic campaign moved from an idea to a blueprint, to the active and effective European cooperation administration, an efficient effi-cient business organization headed by an efficient businessman, Paul Hoffman. That is America's Christmas gift to humanity. t 1 V , ! j - v ; Two of the world's architects for peace, President Truman and Secretary of State Marshall, were the chief figures In the launching and implementation of the Marshall plan to aid Europe and curtail Communism. It was America's Christmas gift to the world in 1948. |