Third, what comfort can we take from the increasing strains and tensions
within the Communist bloc? Here hope must be tempered with caution. For the
Soviet-Chinese disagreement is over means, not ends. A dispute over how
best to bury the free world is no grounds for Western rejoicing.
Nevertheless, while a strain is not a fracture, it is clear that the forces
of diversity are at work inside the Communist camp, despite all the iron
disciplines of regimentation and all the iron dogmatisms of ideology. Marx
is proven wrong once again: for it is the closed Communist societies, not
the free and open societies which carry within themselves the seeds of
internal disintegration.
The disarray of the Communist empire has been heightened by two other
formidable forces. One is the historical force of nationalism--and the
yearning of all men to be free. The other is the gross inefficiency of
their economies. For a closed society is not open to ideas of progress--and
a police state finds that it cannot command the grain to grow.
New nations asked to choose between two competing systems need only compare
conditions in East and West Germany, Eastern and Western Europe, North and
South Viet-Nam. They need only compare the disillusionment of Communist
Cuba with the promise of the Alliance for Progress. And all the world knows
that no successful system builds a wall to keep its people in and freedom
out--and the wall of shame dividing Berlin is a symbol of Communist
failure.