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  • The Oppressed Nations and National Strength

    The Oppressed Nations and National Strength

    By MassisPost
    Updated: December 31, 2014

    Vartan Derad

    Mr. Derad, born in historic Armenia in September 7, 1900, at the age
    of thirteen immigrated to the United States where he furthered his
    education and attended the Emerson college of Oratory in Boston and
    the Boston University Law School, where he earned his Juris Doctorate.

    Mr. Derad became an active leader and public speaker, also editor of
    Armenian newspapers, first in the New England area and then in
    Southern California. He authored many books and contributed numerous
    articles to various English papers. In the political field, he had
    managed many local elections, having spoken from the same platform
    with many prominent candidates for office, such as Thomas E. Dewey
    former New York State Governor and Jasper McLevy, former famed Mayor
    of Bridgeport, Connecticut, among others. Mr. Derad held responsible
    positions in the Armenian Church structure and for four years served
    as secretary to the Armenian Church of America. He was an ardent
    member of the Social Democrat Hunchak Party, maintaining various high
    level positions of Party in the East as well as the West coast of the
    United States. He had also been a devoted student of economics and
    political science and a close follower of world affairs. Mr. Derad
    passed away in 1971.

    Tomorrow's Horizon, written in the midst of World War II, was Mr.
    Derad's analyses of the depths of the national and international,
    economic, political and social problems which caused the war, and was
    an aim to demonstrate the logical beginning for a world-wide union of
    nations (a United Nations) and to peacefully avoid future conflicts. A
    beginning where the belief that real democracy, personal liberty,
    individual rights and political independence can survive and make the
    machinery of a government function as the servant of the people,
    instead of being the master over the people that constitutes the
    nation.

    With 2015 marking the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide as
    well as the 70th anniversary of the United Nations, Mr. Derad's
    analysis of world affairs, primarily questions in dealing with small
    nations and remembering and learning from historical political
    blunders made by "BIG" powers, resonates in today's world. MassisPost,
    therefore presents a chapter entitled The Oppressed Nations and
    National Strength from Mr. Derad's book Tomorrow's Horizon.

    S.K.

    The Oppressed Nations and National Strength

    We are not going to let history of the oppressed nations repeat
    itself. The liberation of oppressed peoples is constantly proclaimed
    during the more chivalrous phases of the war. The United Nations who
    will hold the future destinies of the small, conquered and enslaved
    nations on the peace table must refrain from further political
    sleights.

    The democracies will and should have the right to demand an accounting
    of the statesmen into whose hands the labor and agonies of millions of
    men placed free disposition over the fortunes of conquered nations.
    The economic aspirations of the international financiers must cease to
    exist in order that the fire of independent nationalism will not burn
    out in international intrigues and again be forgotten forever as it
    happened in Versailles after the first World War.

    It is very important to have foresight and not hindsight when the
    question comes to deal with small nations and remember one of the past
    political blunders as the poor Armenians were treated after one
    million Armenian men, women and children were brutally massacred, and
    tens of thousands of women and girls were carried off into the most
    abominable slavery. Two hundred thousand Armenians of military age,
    who might have helped to defend the frontier of a real Armenian state,
    were unhappily slain and the history tells us how the main cause of
    Armenia's woes were the torturous and immoral diplomacy of Europe.

    The pioneers of democracy and Christianity failed to understand the
    cynical treatment which Armenia did have at the hands of the foreign
    offices of the European Powers. The chief obstacle which Armenia had
    to encounter in winning for itself "a place in the sun" had lain in
    the fact that its legitimate boundaries had conflicted with the
    boundaries of the zones with which the Allied Powers had
    checker-boarded Asia Minor.

    The Allies hesitated to talk too much about Armenian independence
    while Romanoff Russia was in the war and when imperial Russia vanished
    from the horizon, there was no good reason why the Allies should not
    then have recognized the independence of those Armenians who hitherto
    had lived under Russia and forgetting Turkey who still was the "sick
    man of Europe."

    Yes, the reason was very obvious. Downing Street and Quai O'Orsai were
    flirting with Deniken at the time, and Denikin, who desired a "great,
    inseparable Russia," would have none of an independent Armenia. And
    why?

    Because the British wanted Armenia's Black Sea and Caspian gate which
    might link her up with the rest of the world; the French wanted her
    promised outlet to the Mediterranean on the south. More than that, the
    Arxes valley and the mineral wealth of the Karabakh mountains the
    British foreign office preferred to vest in the hands of the nomad
    Moslems, who in all probability, would shortly come under British
    influence and custodianship.

    The historical truth remains that the Powers of Europe were only
    interested in Armenia and the poor Armenians to the extent of how much
    and in what ways and means they would have benefitted if they had made
    an approach to this land and the lands of other small nations who
    suffered and sacrificed, who bled and died in order that the BIG
    powers and wealthy lords live and be happy.

    History never recorded such a betrayal as that of Armenia, whose body
    was crucified by the Turks and whose faith was destroyed by the BIG
    POWERS after the first World War.

    The great need of the world today and after this war is leadership and
    there can be no higher tribute to international unselfishness and
    kindness than the fact that every nation in the world is willing to
    accept the proposals and just dealings of such a leadership. Let us
    not cause the downfall of democracy by a provincial, distrustful and
    disunited play and overthrow the civilization in the hands of greedy,
    selfish money mongers and demagogues.

    Anthony Eden, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in his
    July (1942) speech said a number of things that also should serve as
    inspiration during and after trying periods ahead for the United
    Nations. Note the following: "Let there be no doubt in the minds of
    our enemies. Whether the struggle be long or short,' we, together with
    our allies, are in this war to the victorious end. No temporary
    setback or disappointment or even lost battles can alter our
    resolution to continue the fight against the dictator powers until
    they are all finally disarmed and rendered powerless to do further
    injury to mankind...

    "We must either build an orderly, law-abiding international society in
    which each nation lives and works freely without fear or favor or we
    shall be destroyed in a welter of barbaric strife..."

    Now we have come to the point where the free thinkers in every nation
    must express himself in terms of internationalism, because the spirit
    of nationalism now in effect forces each nation to watch every other
    with suspicion, jealousy or menace. And what has been the result?

    "Honor and vital interests of our nation," exclaims the blood-thirsty
    politician or the industrialist of each and opposing nation, "are in
    danger. We must fight ... carryon the war ... war is human." Then the poor
    dupes begin to butcher one another at the word of command from higher
    up. The schools that hold the future generation of mankind, become not
    only the training ground, but actually a recruiting ground for the
    army with the spirit of severe nationalism.

    The motto of the school of "my country, right or wrong," is no longer
    a practical menu that can be served on the desks of our school
    children. "My country, right or wrong," is but the highest degree of
    egotism, in common with the name HITLERISM. Had this been the motto of
    General Washington and his compatriots the United States would still
    be a part of the British Empire.

    History proves and the events testify, that in the name of NATIONALISM
    and without the spirit of internationalism we always have had wars,
    butchering of brothers by brothers. A torrent of blood has flown from
    the deep, damned war-wound in the breast of the working class. When
    war is declared, the command is given immediately "Kill! Slay!
    Slaughter! Plunder! Destroy! Rape! and crucify in the name of
    NATIONALISM."

    Robert G. Ingersoll once wrote about the agonies of war, created by
    the fire of stupid nationalism, combined with the greed of
    international industrialists or war-mongers:

    "Nations sustain the relations of savage to each other ...no man has
    imagination enough to paint the agonies, the horrors, the cruelties,
    of war. Think of sending shot and shell crashing through the bodies of
    men. Think of the widows and orphans! Think of the maimed, the
    mutilated, the mangled ..."

    Narrow and shortsighted nationalism made the Turks massacre the
    Armenians during the World War I, but in 1942, this time the turn was
    shifted to the helpless Greeks. In "Life" magazine, August 3, 1942,
    issue, there appeared some heartbreaking photographs of dying Greeks,
    showing how the famine and death rode into Greece at the heels of the
    Nazi conquest. These pictures were collected and privately printed in
    April with the legend SECRET-NOT FOR PUBLICATION, by exiled Greek
    Minister of Information, A. Michalopoulos.

    The Germans came to Greece as conquerors. They picked it clean as a
    bone and then announced that the Third German Reich has no
    responsibility for the feeding of such conquered nations as Greece.

    The last state of Greece was described as follows by Associated Press
    Correspondent, Richard G. Massock:

    "Stinking, ragged columns of men, women and children, who no longer
    wash now that there is no soap, pick over the garbage of the Germans
    and Italians. The poor lie in squalid homes, too weak to move, their
    swollen bodies covered with sores. In processions, the Athenians go to
    the city dumps. When one finds a sardine or other food can, he cleans
    the inside with his tongue as a cat would do. The hospitals are
    over-crowded, sometimes with three or four starving patients in a bed.
    The courtyards of the morgues are filled with naked bodies. Three
    hundred bodies at a time are buried in large pits, without lime.

    "When people die, relatives place the corpses in the gutters without
    reporting the deaths so that they won't have to surrender the bread
    cards of the deceased. The tragedy of Greece is not so much the dead
    picked up in the streets each morning, as the famine and condemnation
    to death reflected in the faces of those dragging their starved bodies
    through the streets."

    As to what a terrible war is doing to an innocent, unarmed and
    guiltless civilian people at their own homes, on their own city or
    country streets, here the report about Greece carries on its tale in
    more details in the same issue of "Life" magazine as how the Greeks
    had expected to go hungry, but the Germans killed their cattle and
    took their milk for the occupying German armed forces. They took their
    boats so that they could not even fish. When an occasional wheat boat
    arrived from Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, Turkey, they claimed that it
    was German wheat and confiscated more Greek food supplies.

    The International Red Cross continued the report, fed about 700,000
    people in Athens a daily bowlful of olive oil, rice and dried
    vegetables. The price of bread was $4 a pound, butter $18, oil $12,
    coffee $50, eggs 75c apiece and shoes $100 a pair.

    Here is another heart-breaking report, when we are told how people
    steal and kill for food, husbands abandon wives and children. Citizens
    lie across the pavements, spitting blood into the gutter. A certain
    sort of thud means that somebody else has fallen to the pavement. The
    survivors do not look around.

    There are many more bad, inhuman, uncivilized conditions caused by the
    war under and at the point of the brutal warriors. Thus a war is a
    plague that afflicts many nations and humanity. It destroys families,
    kills everyone who raises his or her head in the name of patriotism.
    In war, even God is forgotten because the churches are bombed and the
    priests are brutally killed in the churchyards.

    In Secretary of State Cordell Hull's address on July 23, 1942, on the
    war situation he said: "Governments can and must help to focus the
    energies by encouraging, coordinating and aiding the efforts of
    individuals and groups."

    Of course this "helping" philosophy will be put into action only and
    when the governments, besides being willing to help, also get the
    cooperation of so-called leading industrial individuals in their own
    respective .lands. These individuals particularly who are in economic
    power and have the means of dictating and in many cases, commanding
    the legislative bodies to do certain things not for the benefit of all
    the citizens, but for the benefit of the leading lords only. The
    governments in this case should command these industrial lords to lay
    down their selfish and money making weapons and extend their hands to
    the rank and file of the people united as one man without any
    expectation, ready to help the government direct the national 7efforts
    to the creation of a lasting peace and preserving the same.

    Secretary Hull continues: "In our own country we have learned from
    bitter experience that to be truly free, men must have as well,
    economic freedom and economic security, the assurance for all alike of
    an opportunity to work as free men in the company of free men; to
    obtain through work the material and spiritual means of life; to
    advance through the exercise of ability, initiative and enterprise; to
    make provision against the hazards and human existence."

    History shows us that no nation can enjoy its national peace while its
    citizens are in the grip of constant fear of economic depression,
    unemployment, bitter class struggle, strikes and what not.
    A free nation will be able to contribute its worthy share to the
    freedom of the world and to the people of this world when the citizens
    of this nation are free first, free economically, politically and
    socially. Free from shallow nationalism and baptized with the spirit
    of internationalism.

    Secretary Hull carries on his speech and says: "One of the greatest
    obstacles which in the past have impeded human progress and afforded
    breeding grounds for dictators has been extreme nationalism.

    "All will agree that nationalism and its spirit are essential to the
    healthy and normal political and economic life of a people, but when
    policies of nationalism, political, economic, social and moral, are
    carried to such extremes as to exclude and prevent necessary policies
    of international cooperation, they become dangerous and deadly.

    "Nationalism, running riot between the last war and this war, defeated
    all attempts to carry our indispensable measures of international
    economic and political action, encouraged and facilitated the rise of
    dictators and drove the world straight toward the present war.

    "During this period, narrow and shortsighted nationalism found its
    most virulent expression in the economic field.

    "It prevented goods and services from flowing in volume at all
    adequate from nation to nation and thus severely hampered the work of
    production, distribution and consumption and greatly retarded efforts
    for social betterment.

    "No nation can make satisfactory progress when it is deprived, by its
    own action or by the action of others, of the immeasurable benefits of
    international exchange of goods and services."

    The biggest and most cruel thing in the world is WAR and the way it is
    conducted. The fundamental reason for war is the constant struggle
    against want, and all its concomitants. Hence modern wars are
    essentially wars for foreign markets for the benefit of the ruling
    class or for the selfish greed of the stronger nation, which often
    leads to the destruction of a former powerful industrial nation, or
    nations, and as a result of that all nations during peace time if
    there has ever been a peace time, will live in the shadow of
    threatened coercion of war, in the shadow of fear that someday the
    other nation will get stronger and strike a deadly blow.

    http://massispost.com/2014/12/the-oppressed-nations-and-national-strength/




    From: A. Papazian
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