The rallying cry of an appeasement organization, portrayed in a recent novel on American politics, was “I would rather crawl on my knees to Moscow than die under an Atom bomb.” This sentiment, of course, repudiates everything that is courageous and honorable and dignified in the human being. We must--as the first step toward saving American freedom--affirm the contrary view and make it the cornerstone of our foreign policy: that we would rather die than lose our freedom. There are ways which I will suggest later on--not easy ways, to be sure--in which we may save both our freedom _and_ our lives; but all such suggestions are meaningless and vain unless we first understand what the objective is. We want to stay alive, of course; but more than that we want to be free. We want to have peace; but before that we want to establish the conditions that will make peace tolerable. “Like it or not,” Eugene Lyons has written, “the great and inescapable task of our epoch is not to end the Cold War but to win it.” I suggest that we look at America’s present foreign policy, and ask whether it is conducive to victory. There are several aspects of this policy. Let us measure each of them by the test: Does it help defeat the enemy? DEFENSIVE ALLIANCES Through NATO, SEATO and the Central Treaty Organization in mid-Asia, we have served notice on the Kremlin that overt Communist aggression in certain areas of the world will be opposed by American arms. It is likely that the existence of these alliances has helped discourage military adventurism by the Communists. Still, we should not overestimate the value of the alliances. Though they play a significant role in safeguarding American freedom, there are a number of reasons why it is a limited role. First, the alliance system is not co-extensive with the line that must be held if enemy expansion is to be prevented. There are huge areas of the non-Communist world that the alliances do not touch. Nor--even assuming America is strong enough to guard a world-wide defense perimeter--is there any prospect of bringing these areas into the system. The so-called neutral countries of the Middle East, Africa and Southern Asia have refused to align themselves with the anti-Communist cause, and it is in those areas, as we might expect, that the Communists are making significant strides. This is a critical weakness. If all of those areas should fall under Communist rule, the alliances would be outflanked everywhere: the system would be reduced to a series of outposts, and probably indefensible ones at that, in a wholly hostile world.