1Why We Are Losing the Cold War
THE United States is losing the cold war. It is losing, that is, the intellectual and spiritual war, the war of ideas and ideals, which is the real war. Naturally, then, the great question is: Why?
U.S. News & World Report, in the issue of February 24, 1956, released an interview with Major William E. Mayer, United States army psychiatrist and one of the armys experts on brainwashing. Major Mayers report is a most disquieting document. He affirms that, for the first time in American history, one third of all the American soldiers made prisoner in Korea succumbed to brainwashing by the enemy:
...they became something called progressives. By the Communists own definition, this meant that a man was either a Communist sympathizer or a collaboratoror bothduring his stay in a prison camp.
Military weakness was not involved here. No, Major Mayer says, it is something more than that. It goes deeper. The behavior of many Americans in Korean prison camps appears to raise serious questions about American character, and about the education of Americans. {1}
When asked why, he answered: Because, in my opinion, the behavior of too many of our soldiers in prison fell far short of the historical American standards of honor, character, loyalty, courage and personal integrity.
Major Mayer was asked if these men had yielded under physical torture. He answered, No, this third that I am talking about were not subjected to physical torture, according to their own statements. They surrendered to brainwashing. Brainwashing, the major said, is a calculated attempt to distort mens convictions and their principles...and to supply them with a mass of specific information. It is the eroding of the mind, the infiltrating of the spirit, and finally the paralyzing of the will. The men who withstand it are those whose minds are firm and clear and in possession of the truth.
The major continued: It is my impression that brainwashing is an extremely effective weapon which, if it finally succeeds, will render mechanical weapons, if not obsolete, at least needless, since we are engaged in a war basically of ideas.
The brainwashing was based on the Communists contempt for the American mind as the product of American education. He said:
They obviously believed that the average American soldier was poorly informed to an extreme degree about his own country, his own economic and political system; was even more poorly informed about the politics, economics and social problems of other countries; was an individual who based his sense of security and often of superiority on transient, materialistic values, and was a man who, if deprived of material sources of support, would prove to be insecure, easily manipulated and controlled, lacking in real loyalties and convictions.
Major Mayer attributes this intellectual vacuum to the formal education of the one third who succumbed. He was asked, Where does our education seem to be falling down? He answered:
Again I can only retreat into things the prisoners themselves said . From these things it is tragically clear that the American educational system, fine as it is, is failing miserably in getting across the absolute fundamentals of survival in a tense and troubled international society. This failure needs to be publicized.
Major Mayer was specific:
A returning prisoner often made reference to the fact that he was given by the Communists a very intensive education about America, a Communist viewpoint of history which evidently emphasized every possible defect in our development and our attitudes, and the soldier would confess that his own knowledge of the American systemof our history, our politics, our economicswas insufficient to enable him to refute this Communist version, even in his own mind.
The major points out that during the brainwashing every fault of America was chalked in and every virtue of America was erased out; that the education of most Americans had failed to prepare them to meet the intellectual erosion and the political indoctrination. They had received no fundamental facts and no enduring principles from their formal education to counter the Communist brainwashing.
The major was asked, Werent they taught this [knowledge of the American system] in school? He answered, Many of them said they werent. Many of them said they didnt know.
One quality, the major found, had been especially lacking in their educationa love of country, a sense of patriotism. He said:
I think a great many people feel that references to patriotism and love of country are somewhat embarrassing, unsophisticated, or foolish flag-waving. I think this is to a very considerable degree the result both of well-meaning liberals, so called, as well as others whose intentions are clearly destructive, to create the attitude that we should abandon love of country and patriotic ideals, as being identified with this evil thing called nationalism.
Conclusions similar to Major Mayers were reached by the Defense Departments Advisory Commission on Prisoners of War, in a report of July 29, 1955, and by Admiral Arthur W. Radford, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff of the armed services. Admiral Radford said, in a speech at White Sulphur Springs, almost the same things that Major Mayer said. An INS news dispatch in the Richmond Palladium-Item, September 11, 1956, reports:
Admiral Arthur W. Radford told the southern governors council that the U.S. is failing to instill pride in the American way of life among its youth.
He said that if American youth arent taught more about what this nations democracy means, communism can come to the United States. He added:
We cannot write communism off the books simply by saying: Oh, it cant happen here. Because it can, if we allow ourselves to lower our guard or diminish our active patriotism.
The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff said bluntly: We seem either unable or too lazy, to do enough to explain, teach, and most of all to demonstrate publicly before the world the fundamental, basic facts of liberty.
