A Voice to Be Heard

Far from the traditional forgotten man, Vice-President Wallace is the target of more scathing attacks than any man on the Washington front. Mainly as a result of two speeches, he is being called everything from a misguided idealist to an out-and-out Communist.

In his November address before the Congress of American Soviet Friendship Mr. Wallace discussed the now familiar, often ridiculed, conception of the democracy of the common man, which would include economic and social, as well as political democracy. Wallace's thesis, which seems painfully obvious, is that the United States has overemphasized the political or "Bill-of-Rights" aspect of democracy to the exclusion, or at least subordination, of the economic, while Russia has done just the opposite. He points out that political democracy carried to an extreme led in the past to the rugged individualism of laissezfaire, and envisages a practical middle ground toward which the United States and Russia are now working.

A striking example of the nationwide protest against this apparently innocent viewpoint comes from the pen of Eugene Lyons, author of "The Red Decade," who, in an open letter in the January issue of the American Mercury, maintains that "American boys are not fighting on scattered fronts...for any practical balance between our democracy and dictatorship of any brand." Lyons and other critics charge that Wallace is more sympathetic to the Russian cause than our own, that in his unbridled enthusiasm for the Kremlin he is forgetting what his "common man" is fighting for.

The self-styled realism of those who label Communist anyone who can find any merit in the Russian system is as short-sighted as the thinking of the "practical" isolationists of the twenties and thirties. For those who think that this war is being fought to spread the American system of private enterprise throughout the world are in for a tremendous surprise. Russia, England, and China will be at the peace table, insisting just as strongly on their views as the United States will on hers. The recognition of the important element of compromise and collaboration beforehand is the only realism that will not turn sour when the leaders of this generation meet to draw up the peace.