Wednesday, January 05, 2005

 
Re NRO "1956 The Editors on the Hungarian Revolt"

From "Cold Friday" by Whittaker Chambers-


pages 294-295:
"For if the satellite revolution has challenged Soviet Communism as it has seldom been challenged, it challenged the West in a different way. It challenged the West to reverse the history of the last four decades, which has been characterized by this incongruity, that a Communism permanently strife-torn and precarious, and long weak in most material ways beyond anything imaginable to the average experience of the West, has repeatedly stood off or scored off a West in most material ways immensely more powerful. It was never a question of comparative physical strengths. Power, on the part of the West, was never lacking. Will was lacking.......
It is at this point of will - the point where the Hungarians challenge the discrepant will to act of the West and of Communism - that we sense that Budapest was a battle for the world. We sense that what is done, or is not done, in consequence, will define the course of the rest of the century, and therewith, the shape of the future - one way or the other. It is a strengthening of the West's will to act, and act intelligently, that Hungarian courage implores us even in disaster."