Editorial Note
The World Congress of Partisans for Peace was held in Paris, April 20–25. The initiative for the congress apparently came from the International Liaison Committee of Intellectuals for Peace, a body set up at the conclusion of the Communist-dominated World Congress of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace, held in Wroclaw, Poland, in August 1948 (see page 841). Over 2,000 delegates—including some prominent non-Communists—from 42 countries and a number of international organizations attended the congress. In view of the pro-Communist character of its organization committee, the proposed agenda, and the opposition of non-Stalinist leftists and liberals, the congress was widely recognized as a Communist enterprise. The transactions of the Paris congress were extensively reported upon in the world press. A detailed 121 page report on the congress was transmitted to the Department of State as despatch 535, June 7, from Paris, not printed (800.00B/6–749).
A special section of the World Congress of Partisans for Peace was hastily convened in Praha, April 20–25. According to the detailed [Page 827] report, transmitted to the Department as despatch 307, May 10, from Praha, not printed, the Praha conference appeared to be composed chiefly of those delegates (nearly 400 in number) who had been refused permission to enter France to attend the Paris congress. The Praha conference included delegations from the so-called Provisional Democratic Government of Greece (the Greek rebels), anti-Tito Yugoslavs, and a substantial contingent from Communist China (800.00B/5–1049).
On April 21 Michael J. McDermott, Department of State Press Officer, expressed the official U.S. reaction to the Paris congress as follows:
“The Paris conference is merely another in the series of conferences which have followed the parent conference held at Breslau last year and is similar in motivation to the one recently held in New York. It is part of the current Cominform effort to make people think that the Soviet Union alone favors peace and that all the Western powers are governed by warmongers. The same group of performers will go through their acts in Paris as they have done before.
The Department of State has taken no action to encourage or discourage the conference. No American has been denied a passport to attend. We are confident that this conference, like the one in New York, will expose the position of those who, while claiming to be free men, follow a dictated party line.” (Department of State Wireless Bulletin, No. 94, April 21, 1949, page 8)