Psychological Warfare

The alternatives to victory and defeat are forms of survival of the competitors. The entire health of each competing civilization matters. It is obvious enough to Americans that we must remain prosperous, free, constitutional, democratic. It goes without saying that we must, as far as our individual fortunes permit us, retain our belief in God and derive from religious beliefs those spiritual strengths not available to the Communists. What is not often raised is the equally important factor of the conquest of probability.

Wars are much more often won by people who are sure they are going to win than by people who know that they would like to win, but who think at the same time that they will probably be defeated. The over-confidence of a Cortez or a Mao Tse-tung may seem insane to many of us. With the passion for security so prevalent in individual and national lives, both the Western powers and the individuals comprising them grotesquely exaggerate the margin of safety which they need in which to survive.

Part of this springs from the fact that much of our civilization is not forward-looking, that neither young Americans nor old Americans have a clear-cut or hopeful picture of what the world should be, will be, and must be, by A.D. 2055. On the Communist side it is frequent, but not universal, to discover that the best Communist cadres are made up of men who are dead sure that Communism will win, who are equally sure that Communism does not have to be right in order to win, and who are sure that "objectively and scientifically" (whatever that may mean), the Communist system is almost certainly destined to succeed. If Communism cannot get out of succeeding, the responsibility of the individual Communist becomes bearable; he is still seriously and tragically responsible for the expediting or the delaying of the inevitable, but he does not take the mantle of God or Karl Marx and state that this is the world as he wishes it to be and that the world of his desires will come into existence if, and only if, he fulfills his personal responsibilities to the utmost.

In Asia, perhaps more than in Europe, there are many persons who are turning toward Communism, not because they think it is good or just, or even because it is powerful, but simply because it is likely. Every individual in his own life has known that he cannot undo the passage of time, the aging of his body, the death of his loved ones, the loss of opportunities which might have been seized, or even his own death; in their individual lives men of all nations perform the feat, characteristic of the human being and apparently shared by no other species of life, of living from day to day in a constant reconciliation of the past and present with their own estimate of the probable future. At times in history, that which should happen seems to be unleashed like spiritual lightning and men rally in frenzy around causes which for the year or the decade seem inspiring, terrifyingly beautiful, and within human reach; through most of history, that which is apt to occur provides a more sober guide to the future and men prepare to live in accordance with its standards.

In the battle of the probabilities the PsyWar of the Western powers has been weak, high-pitched, and uncertain, while the insistence of the Communist themes has been as monotonous and hypnotic as a jungle drum. For better or for worse, the Communists have broken a path through to what they think to be the future; we of other nations have not.

The Communists, on the contrary, have unreasonably, provocatively, and untruthfully raved, screamed, shrieked, and lied to bring about that better world which, curiously enough, their most effective cadres considered to be an inevitable world. Thus the UN prisoners held by the Communists during the Korean war were subjected to a constant bombardment of Communist propaganda concerning their personal responsibilities before history and the opportunities which they would have to serve peace and mankind, as these noble concepts are set forth on the Red side.