The Cold War was not often seen as a subject for poetry - but that didn't stop a popular versifier like Berton Braley (1882 – 1966). He took a look around at the post-war world and saw plenty subjects that rhymed:
"You'll meet, methinks, a lot of pinks
Whose statements are dogmatic
That Communists are Liberals
And really Democratic;
But when you hear that type of tripe
Keep this fact in your nut
- That Communists are Communists and nothing else but!"
His poem went on for three more stanzas... "Two continents apart, the Yalu and the Rhine wind down to the sea. But in the continuing struggle of freedom against Communism, they share the common roll of destiny."
"Of the two rivers, perhaps the Yalu is of more immediate concern, for behind its 500 miles of coursing waters stand the bulk of the Red forces under Red China chief Mao Tse-tung... Few people had heard of the Yalu until the Korean War began. But it gained world-wide prominence in November, 1950, when 200,000 Chinese Reds came pouring across its bridges to aid the North Koreans as they retreated before UN troops..." A small notice from the closing weeks of the 1952 presidential contest between retired General Eisenhower (R) vs former Governor Adlai Stevenson (D) in which Senator Joseph McCarthy stepped forth to muddy the waters with one of his characteristic insults:
"McCarthy charged Stevenson was 'part and parcel of the Acheson-Hiss-Lattimore group' and that Stevenson in 1943 (as a State Department official) had a plan to 'foist Communism' on Italy when Mussolini fell."
Whether the comment convinced anyone was not recorded, but Eisenhower won the 1952 election by a wide margin, as did all Republican candidates.
"The Truman Doctrine is the only road to lasting peace. Twice within 30 years the stubbornly-observed practice of 'minding our business' has brought war."
Illustrated with a chart that shows how much the U.S. Navy had shrunk after W.W. II and then expanded anew when faced with the war in Korea, this short article pertains to the various steps Congress was taking to meet the Soviet challenges abroad:
"A $2.3 billion ship-building and repair program, just approved by President Truman, will add a 57,800-ton carrier and 172 other new vessels to the fleet. And 291 more are to be demothballed-including 6 carriers, 12 cruisers, 194 destroyers.
[Stalin was incapable of responding to such growth, so he simply ordered the production of additional A-Bombs]
The Soviet Union was the first atheist government...
With the end of the Second World War in 1945 came numerous social changes to the nation. Among them was the Civil Rights movement, which soon began to find followers in the white majority and acquire an unprecedented traction in Washington as a result of the Cold War (an article on this topic can be read here). It was these two factors, the Cold War and the Civil Rights movement, that combined in the Fifties to call for the creation of a new immigration policy. It would be naive to assume that race alone was the sole factor in drafting a more inclusive policy because, as the attached editorial spells out, the Cold War climate demanded that the U.S. make more friends among the developing countries if the Soviets were to be defeated economically and militarily.
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