Atlantic and on all the seas. The difference between our naval action
if we were at war and as it is under the President’s orders to hunt
down pirates, would be considerable. At war we would fully collaborate
with the British Navy in the critical waters along the coast of Europe
and in the zone of greatest danger just west of England where the
Germans sink about nine-tenths of their victims. The reason the Germans
have been so much more effective in counter-blockading England in this
war than they were in the last war is of course the airplane, which not
only bombs and sinks as many ships as the submarine, but also provides
the submarine with eyes in the air.
Our air force, and especially our naval air force, greatly augmented
after our entry into the war, would play a large role in cleansing
the air of these German raiders. Eventually our air force operating
with the R.A.F. and based wherever the R.A.F. is based would, we hope,
become strong enough to dominate the air over the continent. That is
the goal toward which all efforts lead; it would be the turning point
of the war. Experts estimate that it will probably take two years to
reach quantitative superiority over the Germans, and then only if we
are not only formally at war but actually making war with all our might.
The site of the battlefields after the winning of the Battle of the
Atlantic and the Battle of Britain, depends upon too many unknown
factors to make more than a guess now. Possible landing places for an
expeditionary force extend from Norway to the Spanish frontier, North
Africa, the Near East, and the Balkans. There are also the immense
possibilities opened by the Battle of Russia. In considering the
possibilities of success for an expeditionary force to invade German
Europe we ought not to be discouraged by the failure of the Allies
in Norway, Greece, and Crete, because the German Army’s morale and
strength will be quite different whenever the conditions for invasion
of the continent exist. It was the German Air Force which, more than
any other factor, defeated the Allies in these three early affrays.
When the Luftwaffe has lost control of the daylight air and the German
Army is still further weakened by its colossal losses in Russia, and
the German people are weighed down by the fear of ultimate defeat and
apprehension of vengeance, and the population of conquered Europe,
elated at the prospect of liberation, is revolting, the chances of
success for an Allied Expeditionary Force would be strong. Military
experts are agreed that it would court disaster to try it before these
conditions are fulfilled. Ever since the Battle of Russia began,
impatient groups in England have clamored for an immediate attempt at
invasion of the continent, and one can imagine how painful it must
be for the perpetually aggressive Churchill to be forced to counsel
prudence. He knows that if such an attempt were made and failed it
could be fatal. On the other hand, if the Allied High Command waits for
the favorable circumstances which are to be expected if we enter the
war, we could justly hope not only to be able to invade the continent
successfully but at low cost.
Q. _Would United States troops be required for such an expeditionary
force? Are we going to have another A.E.F.?_
A. I should think so, although one must admit the bare possibility that
the Battle of Russia could make our participation with land troops less
necessary militarily, although the political reasons for our entry
would be strongest if the Red Army were winning. If the Russians were
to whittle down the German land army sufficiently, the British might
become strong enough eventually to deliver the knockout blow alone, but
I doubt it. There are just twice as many Germans as there are English,
and numbers still count, as we observe in Russia. A cool appraisal of
the future indicates that the chances are against our being able to
win the war without sending an A.E.F. If we go to war, it cannot be
with any reservations. We cannot make war on a limited liability basis.
There are strong reasons also for us to want to be represented in the
armies of liberation. By the time matters have reached the stage for
contemplation of an invasion of Europe, the temper of America may have
so changed that there may be a great popular demand for an A.E.F.
Q. _What are the strong reasons for our wanting to be represented with
the armies of liberation?_
A. In order to be fully represented at the peace. There is no
substitute for an army at a Peace Conference, and we may be sure that,
no matter what arrangements may be made between Mr. Churchill and Mr.
Roosevelt, if we are not in the war we will not be in the peace. There
were many jokes about the famous eight-point meeting to the effect
that we were trying to get in the peace before we got in the war. I do
not agree that that was the purpose of Mr. Roosevelt in meeting Mr.
Churchill, but if it were, it is unlikely to succeed. We will have the
influence we wish to have at the peace conference only if we have done
our full share in making peace possible by beating Hitler. We ought
not to deceive ourselves. We are unpopular enough as it is now. If we
stay out of the war, and by a miracle not now foreseeable, Hitler were
after all to be defeated, what do you think the victors would think of
us? Do you think they would invite us to come in and tell them how to
rearrange the world?
Yet if we do not look forward to establishing a peace which will
postpone for a long time, if not forever, a repetition of this war,
many Americans would feel too discouraged to act. We would be foolish
not to fight the Germans now even if we were mathematically certain
that we were going to have to go on fighting them once every twenty
years for the rest of time. Nevertheless we do not want to face such a
prospect; we want to rule out war for as long a time as possible, and
we can do it only by repairing at this Peace Conference the errors made
after the last one.
These errors were not what they have been represented to be, faults
in the Versailles treaty. The mistake we made was that we dodged our
responsibility for the peace after we had helped finish the war. First
we invested our blood and treasure, and then after the victory, when
we were about to gather the dividends of international security and
prosperity in the League of Nations, suddenly, because everything in
the peace did not completely please us, and because a few politicians
hated the President, we withdrew and declined to collect our profits.
This ruined the peace, made the League impossible, and another war
certain.
Q. _How much American blood and treasure did we spend in the last war?_
A. Very little blood compared with our Allies. Out of our total
mobilized force of 4,355,000 we lost 126,000 dead of all causes, or
two and one-half per cent. Out of the total of 17,314,000 British and
French soldiers, 2,266,171 lost their lives, or 13 per cent. If we
had been compelled from 1914 on to fight as totally as our Allies,
with our population more than double the combined French and British
populations, we would have lost more than 2,000,000 dead during the
time we were leaving the fighting to our Allies, from 1914 to 1917. We
sent money instead; altogether our war loans totaled thirteen billion
dollars. It is fair to say that this investment of money took the place
of investment of lives. It cost us less than $7,000 apiece to save
2,000,000 American men’s lives. Any insurance company would call that
a bargain, considering the American man merely from the point of view
of what he is economically worth to his nation. Nevertheless we asked
for the thirteen billion back. At the same time we put up our tariffs
so high that the nations concerned could not pay, but aside altogether
from the economic aspect of our war debts, consider what could have
happened had we been wiser.
Suppose, at an appropriate period after passions had subsided, we
had proposed to Britain and France that we cancel the war debts if
they would cancel the reparations owed by Germany. There was a time
when such a proposal might have succeeded. What would have been
the probable, or at any rate possible, outcome? No war debts, no
reparations, no inflation in Germany, no Hitler, no war now. Even if
there were only a chance of such miraculous results, it would have
been well worth trying, since the actual results of our unenlightened
egotism were that we were never paid the money anyway, and the chain of
reparations--inflation--Hitler--brought us to this war upon which we
are planning already to spend as a mere first installment four times
as much as the whole sum we lent the Allies and lost in the last war.
It is significant that the very men who urged that we press without
respite for full payment of our World War debts, and thus helped make
this war inevitable, are the very men who today continue to try to make
America shirk her responsibilities.
Q. _Do you think a new League of Nations could be successful, since the
old one failed so miserably?_
A. Yes, if we do our duty and make it possible for the League to work.
We blew the old League up when we refused to join it, and rejected the
Versailles treaty and declined to join France and England in a treaty
of mutual guarantee. With us not participating, the League was doomed
from the start. Our withdrawal from Europe upset the balance of power
so heavily in Germany’s favor that France, and eventually Britain, had
to make out of the League a coalition against Germany. This they did.
Even so it failed to keep the peace because Germany was stronger than
all the League members together. Had we stayed in the League we might
have made collective security really work.
Q. _How could America have made the League work?_
A. There is a popular belief that Germany might have remained a good
neighbor and respectable member of society if the Weimar Republic had
been better treated by France and her Allies. I am not sure of that,
but if it is true, let us ask why France treated Germany harshly
throughout the life of the Weimar Republic. The answer is that France
was afraid of Germany, and as we see today, with good reason. The
French fear was based on the facts that there were twice as many
Germans as French, and that these Germans had just about beaten France
and all her Allies, including Great Britain, until the United States
stepped in. Obviously the French reasoned the United States’ protection
was indispensable to French security. Without the United States in
the League the French had to look for security elsewhere. They sought
it in encirclement of Germany and conversion of the League into an
anti-German alliance.
If you object that the League is impracticable, let us ask what
there is to put in its place. I use the term League to indicate any
association of nations for collective security. Isolationism was our
policy from 1919 to 1941. Its failure has been cosmic. The group of
Senators and Congressmen who killed the League by preventing us from
joining it were as responsible as Hitler for the war today. Twenty-two
years later the political successors of Wilson’s “willful men” made it
appear to Hitler and Mussolini and the war party in Japan that we would
never stir and that aggressors could leave the United States completely
out of their reckoning. Many of these men in the Senate and the House
are today, as the isolationists were in 1919, actuated chiefly by an
ignoble hatred for their political opponent, the President.
Carlton J. Hayes, professor of history at Columbia, says: “We were the
final determining factor in winning the last World War, but more than
any nation, even more than Nazi Germany, we have been responsible for
losing the peace and bringing on the present world war. We insisted
on our rights and spurned our duties. Victim ourselves of a bad kind
of narrow nationalism, we repudiated the League of Nations which our
President had fashioned and we thus set the pace for all of its later
floutings by other powers. Moreover we selfishly and shortsightedly
refused to forgive the inter-Allied debts and thereby prevented any
timely forgiving of the fateful German reparations. The result is that
Germany now has Hitler, while we are accumulating a debt for national
defense which makes the inter-Allied debts and the reparations of the
last war seem trivial.”
Q. _If we did defeat Germany, could we then return to the kind of
peaceful lives we led before this war began?_
A. No, but the defeat of Germany is the indispensable condition for
us to have any kind of tolerable life again. After this war, which is
likely to last many years still, we are going to be a different nation.
We are going to be more united than ever before. We are going to have
shared common dangers, hopes, and fears, and for the first time since
the Civil War we are going to rise above our materialism and act for an
ideal.
We have never had to face real trouble together since the thirty
million new members of our family arrived between 1870 and 1930. We did
not really suffer in the first World War; we never had a chance to test
the strength of our arms or the temper of our spirit. How many times
have we heard the question asked, whether we were “really” a nation?
Now we shall have the chance to prove that we are. Now America will
come of age.
7. FIFTH COLUMNISTS
Q. _What makes Lindbergh the way he is?_
A. I am glad you asked this question because Lindbergh is our greatest
native individual threat to American safety and so deserves careful
scrutiny by his fellow citizens who some day may be compelled to decide
what to do with him. There is nothing to be gained by abusing him, nor
is there any merit in arguing that his sincerity ought to protect him
against the charge that he assists America’s Fifth Column.
Hitler’s most effective Fifth Columnists in every country have for
the most part been sincere men, but their sincerity has not relieved
them of the verdict of the fellow citizens they betrayed, nor of the
verdict of history. The President of the United States has delivered
that verdict upon Lindbergh already. In the most polite and restrained
language he classified Colonel Lindbergh as a “Copperhead,” which was a
Civil War name for a man in the North who sympathized with the Southern
cause. Translated into today’s situation it would mean an American
citizen who sympathizes with the enemy of America, Germany.
You recollect the President was asked why Lindbergh, who was given a
reserve commission in the Army Air Corps after his flight to Paris, had
not been called into active service. The President replied that during
the Civil War both sides let certain people go; that is, did not call
them into service.
He said the people who were thus ignored were the Vallandighams,
and explained that the Vallandighams were the people who from
1863 on, urged immediate peace, arguing that the North could
not win the war between the states. The President’s reference to
Vallandigham sent many to their reference books where they found
that Clement Laird Vallandigham, an Ohio Congressman “in 1863, made
violent speeches against the administration and was arrested by the
military authorities, tried by military commission and sentenced to
imprisonment. President Lincoln commuted his sentence to banishment and
Vallandigham was sent into the Confederate lines, whence he made his
way to Canada.”
President Roosevelt was choosing his word carefully, in order to get
the precise shade of meaning attributed to it. The President apparently
tried to find in American history as accurate a parallel to the
Lindbergh case as possible. His choice was significant. It would be
interesting to know if the President had in mind that when this country
is formally at war with Germany we shall incarcerate or deport members
of the community who for whatever reason and with whatever motives
hinder the prosecution of the war. The expulsion of Vallandigham to
the enemy’s territory raises the question of the physical possibility
as well as the political expediency of deporting our Fifth Columnists
to German-controlled territory after we are formally at war. Few of us
will dispute the desirability of just such a radical solution.
Lindbergh replied to the President by resigning his commission in
a letter saying, “I had hoped that I might exercise my right as
an American citizen to place my viewpoint before the people of my
country in time of peace without giving up the privilege of serving my
country as an Air Corps officer in the event of war.” Thereafter many
professional critics of the President accused him of having attempted
to gag Lindbergh. But the very opposite is the case since if the
President had wanted to shut Lindbergh’s mouth, all he had to do was
to call him to active service where the rule is universal that serving
officers may not make public political statements.
It should be remembered that Lindbergh, although a reserve officer,
had violently attacked his Commander in Chief’s actions in the field
of foreign policy, which naturally involves military affairs, and this
could certainly be regarded as a breach of discipline in the spirit if
not in the letter of the officers’ code. If President Roosevelt had
wished not only to muzzle, but to discipline Lindbergh, nothing would
have been easier than for the President to have ordered the Colonel to
duty in some obscure, remote, or unpleasant post, a frequent method of
discipline in the armed services of all countries. But the President
did nothing of the sort. On the contrary, by accepting Lindbergh’s
resignation he released the flyer from any hindrance to the free speech
which he has since been exercising so vigorously.
But Lindbergh is far more dangerous to American security than was
Vallandigham a danger to the Union in our Civil War. Lindbergh is
already the avowed candidate of our enormous crop of Copperheads for
the Presidency of the United States. He has the applause of the enemies
of democracy and of the United States throughout the world. A Belgian
businessman, a devout “collaborationist” with the Nazis, told a friend
of mine recently, “Lindbergh will be the next President of the United
States. He could get along splendidly with Hitler. We are all for him.”
By “We” this Belgian meant the entire herd of Hitler followers, from
his own disciplined legions to the servile rabble of Vichy France and
the Copperheads of the United States. Whether Lindbergh welcomes it or
not, he has the enthusiastic applause of the Nazi Bund, the Fascist
societies, and of all the most violently antidemocratic groups in this
country, from the followers of Father Coughlin to the most eccentric
Kluxers.
Q. _But are we being fair to Lindbergh in calling him a Copperhead and
a Fifth Columnist? Didn’t you say yourself that there is nothing to be
gained by abusing him?_
A. Yes, I maintain there is nothing to be gained by abusing him, but
there is much to be gained by identifying him. Nobody has done it any
better than the country’s wittiest enemy of our enemies, Alexander
Woollcott, in his “Voice from a Cracker Barrel” broadcast, when he
said: “By the pledges of both candidates in the last election, by
the testimony of every poll yet taken by Dr. Gallup, by the action
of our representatives in Congress and of the President himself, we
pledged full aid to England. Ex-Colonel Lindbergh now argues that this
assistance be withdrawn.
“He wants us to break our promise in the matter, to run out on the
British, and, so curious is his mentality, he thinks to encourage us
in such base desertion by assuring us that England is going to be
defeated. On this point he may be right. I would not know about that.
Neither would he. If the words of our retired eagle ever reach as far
as England, Mr. Churchill must derive some comfort from his knowledge
that all fighters in a tight place have heard such talk since the world
began. Among Washington’s discomforts during the long winter at Valley
Forge was the repeated prediction from the Lindberghs of his day that
he didn’t have a chance. Yes, Lindbergh keeps announcing the doom of
England, and always his statement is received with cheers and bursts of
applause. This gives you a rough idea of what kind of people bulk large
in his mass meetings.
“For here is a fact which Lindbergh and his colleagues of the America
First Committee must face. Whether they admit it or not, whether they
like it or not, whether, indeed, that is any part of their purpose,
they are working for Hitler. Have you any doubt--any doubt at all--that
Hitler would have been glad to pay Lindbergh an immense amount,
millions, for the work he has done in the past year?
“Indeed, if Lindbergh shares the opinion of Hitler held by the rest
of us--on this point, to be sure, he has thus far been ominously
silent--his heart must skip a beat when, in the still watches of the
night, he realizes that if he had returned to this country as Hitler’s
paid and trusted agent, his public activity would have been in every
particular just what it has been to date.
“Now don’t get me wrong about this. I doubt that Lindbergh has taken or
would take German money. It so happens that we do not know, and, thanks
to the reticence of General Wood, have been unable to find out just
who has put up all the money for the costly goings-on of the America
First Committee. But I should be greatly surprised to learn that any
considerable part of that money came directly or indirectly from
Hitler. That does not alter the fact that they are all working for him.
For they, like the rest of us, are trapped in a tragic irony. In this
world today there is no such thing as neutrality. You are either for
Hitler or against him. You either fight him or you help him.”
Q. _Why can’t we put Lindbergh away somewhere now, so he can’t do any
more harm?_
A. It is certainly an index to the feelings of the vast majority of
the American people that despite the fact that Lindbergh and Senator
Wheeler can draw large crowds of their Copperhead followers, I have
received hundreds of questions like the one you ask, and there seems to
be little sectional, geographical difference in American feelings on
the subject.
Just as many have made the inquiry in California as in Texas or
Pennsylvania. The answer is that we cannot, and if we reflect upon it,
we do not want to put any limitations upon free speech for American
citizens in peacetime. Until we are actually at war it is the right of
every American to advocate, if he likes, that we should ally ourselves
with Germany and go to war against Great Britain. The distinguishing
characteristic of democracy is not merely that the majority shall
govern, but that the majority should always give to the minority
exactly the same rights and privileges as the majority enjoys.
We often overlook the fact that this is the essential nature
of democracy. Rule by majority may obtain under any successful
dictatorship. Hitler undoubtedly has a strong majority of Germans
behind him and will probably continue to have it until he falls by
force from abroad. But that does not make his rule democratic. He
refuses to give the minority opposing him any rights whatever. He
considers it contemptible weakness of the democracies that they should
protect the rights of their minorities, and even of minority groups
who, if they were to come to power, would abolish democracy.
Here is our central difficulty. We recognize that Lindbergh and his
followers, the Nazis and Fascists, as well as that other antidemocratic
group, the American Communists, would destroy America as we know it if
they were successful in their policies. Yet if we suppress them for
anything less than formally treasonable acts, we shall have violated
the most precious tenet of democracy. Giving aid and comfort to the
enemy in wartime is a formally treasonable act, and we may take
consolation in the fact that Wheeler and Lindbergh and their lesser
associates are not likely to be able to continue after we have gone
to war to render to Hitler the aid and comfort they now render him.
At this moment, when we are not yet in a formal state of war, about
the most effective control that can be exercised over Lindbergh and
his associates is for the President to have identified him publicly
as a “Vallandigham,” and for others to do what they can to expose his
purposes.
Q. _Why do you single out Lindbergh for special attention, since there
are many others of equal prominence who are also helping Hitler, such
as ex-President Hoover, Senators Wheeler and Nye, Congressman Fish, and
so on?_