Part 13

It proved effective, as was to be expected. A brutal, simplified economy which ignores most of the people’s wants and devotes all its energy and materials to preparing for war, is better able to prepare and to make war than a more complete economy devoted to satisfying its people’s peacetime needs. Sparta was stronger in battle than Athens, but should we measure the value of a society by the efficiency with which it makes war? If so, we ought to value the Nazis above all others, since they are still leading in this activity. Hitler’s society took Sparta as its model; Stalin’s took Spartacus. The Nazis met their identical twin when they struck the Red Army in battle. Hitler wishes us to believe he is crusading against a fundamentally different regime in a “crusade for civilization.” We shall not be deceived.

Q. _What would be the result if Stalin were really to try to hold out indefinitely? Could he do so? Has he the resources in the Urals to carry on there?_

A. He has almost everything he needs in the Urals except sufficient oil. If he were cut off from oil in the Caucasus, he would have to import supplies over the trans-Siberian, already overburdened. If he really were determined to carry on in spite of all odds, and could make Sverdlovsk or Cheliabinsk another Chungking, it would compel Hitler to keep an important fraction of his total forces in action in Russia; it would probably prevent Hitler from being able to attempt to invade England; it would lead to a deadlock which could be turned into victory by our intervention.

Q. _Would it be possible for us to supply the Russians with sufficient to make up for their losses? Could we enable them to carry on?_

A. Our shipments to Russia are as important morally as materially; indeed their token strength is greater than their real strength. We shall never be able to make up for the territory Russia has lost to the Germans--60 per cent of their steel supply, 45 per cent of their manganese, 49 per cent of their tire production, and so on. Our shipments will always be limited by the transportation facilities of the trans-Siberian railway and the route through Iran, both of which are long and time-consuming. Actually we can scarcely hope to get enough American supplies in the hands of the Red Army to make much real difference before next spring, no matter how hard we try, and we ought to do our best. It is the publicly announced policy of both Washington and London that Russia shall have priority on the vital war materials. But everything is up to Stalin. If he wishes to quit and announce that he had not received sufficient aid from Britain and the United States, he will be able to do so any time during the next several months, and make a case at least among his friends.

If Stalin decides to hold on, we have a two to one chance to beat Hitler in the long run; if he decides to quit it means we face much worse odds. There is only one way we can persuade him that we are going to put our full powers into the struggle. It is our crystal-clear duty to ourselves, our children, and our national future to keep Stalin in the war by ourselves going formally to war against Germany. It is a crime against America to wait.

3. ENGLAND

Q. _What place do you think Churchill will have in history?_

A. If Churchill brings his country victorious out of this war, he will without a doubt go down as the greatest man in English history. No Prime Minister of the sixty ministries since Walpole, and none of the Monarchs when they exercised unlimited power, nor any Admiral or General has upon his tombstone: “He saved England from death.” Many have saved England from defeat. Many have added to England’s power and glory. But only Churchill will be entitled to the supreme rank, for never before has England been threatened with the supreme penalty of national extinction. Among the Prime Ministers Lloyd George would have a place near Churchill, but the alternative to victory in the first World War was not the alternative in this war. Among the defenders of England, Nelson, Wellington, and the Great Duke of Marlborough would rank near Churchill. But the alternative to victory against Napoleon or Louis XIV was not the alternative England faces now. And no England of the past ever faced such odds as Churchill and his people faced at the fall of France. Whatever the decision, Churchill has already achieved greatness. This man who used to be accused of playing at politics and acting only for himself has been lifted by his responsibility to forget himself in the Battle of Mankind.

Q. _Is Mr. Churchill really backed by all the British people?_

A. Mr. Churchill is the most popular and trusted leader the British people have had within the memory of living man. The man who caused the defeat of the General Strike in 1926 is if anything more popular among the working classes than among the upper classes. In the House of Commons he usually receives heartier applause from Labor members than from Conservatives even though he is the head of the Conservative party. This is partly because the Conservatives cannot rid themselves of a tinge of resentment at the man who was always, consistently, unfailingly right about the coming of the war, and what it would be like, while they were always, consistently, unfailingly wrong. The Conservatives out of a rooted misconception of the character and intentions of Hitler, felt an instinctive sympathy for him almost up to the time he actually began to drop bombs upon them. The Labor party on the other hand shared Churchill’s antipathy for Hitler from the very beginning, and there was thus early established a bond between the great British aristocrat and the British working classes which has been greatly strengthened by his leadership of the war. I doubt if there is a single Labor party leader with as devoted a following among the British workers as Churchill has.

Q. _What part in the war has the British workingman played under Churchill’s leadership?_

A. The British workingman, inspired and informed by Churchill, has been superbly and intelligently patriotic. It is this union of Churchill with Labor which has warded off defeat in the most desperate hour, and which with our help will eventually win the war. British Labor’s attitude toward the struggle which will decide the fate of all the world for generations to come is a reproach to that minority of American labor which has failed to understand the fact that the liberty and the life of every individual American workingman depends on the outcome of this war. During those awful months following the evacuation of Dunkirk, the British trades unions voluntarily gave up all the trades unions rules which, designed to protect the interests of labor in peacetime, hampered production and became a danger in war. They lengthened hours, took less pay for more work, stayed on the job to the point of complete exhaustion. In the course of about three months the British workingman doubled the production of weapons and munitions, and almost tripled airplane production by the end of the year. It could not have been done without Churchill. From 1932 to 1939, for seven years, Churchill had been tirelessly teaching, preaching, exhorting, and pleading with the British public and the British government to meet the German menace. By the time the war came the British working classes had learned from Churchill what it was about. They learned much faster than the Chamberlains and many a muddleheaded rich appeaser.

Another impressive sign of the wisdom of the British Labor Party from the leaders to the rank and file is that you do not hear from them the demands for a “definition of war aims” which are so loudly voiced by groups of American liberals. These Americans who are so concerned about establishing the chemical purity of British intentions, and who insist on a blueprint of the peace settlement, and a guarantee that the world will be made over in a style that meets with their approval--these Americans show precisely the incomprehension of Hitler that Chamberlain showed with his appeasement. Your ordinary British dock worker knows more about the meaning of the war than scores of American intellectuals who are still bleating about war aims. As the British Labor publicist, G. D. H. Cole, put it, “The Labor leaders and the great majority of their followers alike believed firmly that the defeat of Hitler mattered immeasurably more than anything else. For this reason they were ready to put aside even their socialism and the greater part of their reforming policy and even to abstain from criticizing openly the government’s mistakes rather than run any risk of dividing the national elements which stood for a vigorous prosecution of the war.”

Q. _Is Churchill what you would call a realist or an idealist?_

A. Churchill is both. He is a hardheaded, tough-minded idealist and an imaginative, generous realist. He is convinced that the policy which works for the good of all will also work best for the good of the individual. This is the foundation stone of civilization. Hitler believes that the smart man is the man who exploits others. Hitler’s are the ethics of the “heel,” the gangster, the racketeer, the cheat who is always on the lookout for a chance to swindle, or rob, betray, or murder for profit. The Churchill attitude is that of the moral man, the member of society. The Hitler attitude is that of the amoral man, the bandit preying upon society.

I do not think Churchill is formally a religious man, although he attends divine services and thus sets an example for the nation under his leadership. But Churchill’s beliefs add up to something closely approaching practical Christianity. It seems to me that very few Americans really understand what Churchill stands for. He is so much in the public eye as a war leader, that we are bound to think of him as a warrior first. We forget or never were told that he is first of all a builder. Before the war, in the field of international relations he believed passionately in the life-and-death necessity of sustaining the League, of collective security through the League.

Then as now, and in England as here in America, there were great numbers of persons who thought they were being hardheaded realists by rejecting the League as romantic. Their successors today are our isolationists or noninterventionists, as they shamefacedly call themselves now. Churchill remorselessly revealed how suicidal was this refusal to cooperate among nations for the maintenance of security for all. Long before Litvinoff coined the phrase Churchill was preaching that “peace is indivisible,” that only through collective security could the security of any single state be secured. His scorn for the British counterpart of our isolationists was withering: “It is of the utmost consequence to the unity of British national action that the policy of adhering to the Covenant of the League of Nations shall not be weakened or whittled away. I read in the _Times_ a few days ago a letter in which a gentleman showed that these ideas of preventing war by international courts and by reasonable discussion had been tried over and over again. He said they had been tried after Marlborough had defeated Louis XIV and after Europe had defeated Napoleon, but, he said, they had always failed. If that is true it is a melancholy fact but what was astonishing was _the crazy glee_ with which the writer hailed such lapses from grace. I was told the other day of a sentence of Carlyle’s in which he describes ‘the laugh of the hyena on being assured that, after all, the world is only carrion.’”

It is of course plain to everybody now that the world is being torn apart because _crazy_ people prevented the League of Nations from functioning, _crazy_ people who believed they were as shrewd as the Americans who today would like us to wait for the Germans to land on United States soil before we fight. It has always been considered by cheap and vulgar men that it is clever to be entirely selfish, and so our Lindberghs, Wheelers, and Nyes even whisper temptingly the base suggestion that we may profit by this war if Britain falls and her Empire crumbles. What retribution would be ours were we to listen to such voices! Churchill, whom no detractor has ever called a stupid man, is not afraid to come out boldly and declare: “I think we ought to place our trust in those moral forces which are enshrined in the Covenant of the League of Nations. Do not let us mock at them, for they are surely on our side. Do not mock at them for this may well be a time when the highest idealism is not divorced from strategic prudence. Do not mock at them, for these may be years, strange as it may seem, when Right may walk hand in hand with Might.” This he spoke in 1937. How the words are crammed with meaning now for America whose vital self-interest to bring about the defeat of our enemy is identical with the highest idealism.

Q. _Can Churchill be trusted?_

A. I will answer by citing Mr. Churchill’s attitude toward Ireland. In 1938 when the bill to turn the Irish naval bases back from British to Irish control was being discussed, Churchill protested that when war came, if Ireland refused to lend the ports to England, there would be no way to get them back. Because, he said, “It will be no use saying, ‘Then we will retake the ports.’ You will have no right to do so. To violate Irish neutrality should it be declared at the moment of a great war may put you out of court in the opinion of the world and may vitiate the cause by which you may be involved in war. If ever we have to fight again we shall be fighting in the name of law, or respect for the rights of small countries.” Can you imagine Hitler nourishing such scruples? Churchill has proved, moreover, the hardest way, that he meant what he said. The British still abstain from occupying and using the Irish ports. They have lost scores of ships to German submarines which might have been stopped if the Royal Navy had the use of the Irish bases. Many people think it wrong for the British to imperil their cause by respecting the neutrality of Ireland, which like every other country outside the Axis owes its hopes for national independence to a British victory.

Q. _What does Churchill think of the United States? I know that his mother was American and that now during the war he wants as much help from us as he can get, but what does he really think of America?_

A. We can go as far back as 1932 and find that he had this to say: “Of course if the United States were willing to come into the European scene as a prime factor, if they were willing to guarantee to those countries who take their advice that they would not suffer for it, then an incomparably wider and happier prospect would open to the whole world. If they were willing not only to sign but to ratify treaties of that kind, it would be an enormous advantage. It is quite safe for the British Empire to go as far in any guarantee in Europe as the United States is willing to go, and _hardly any difficulty in the world could not be solved by the faithful cooperation of the English speaking peoples_.” This was his view of the possibilities of Anglo-American cooperation before the war; his faith in it now is stronger than ever. As for his opinion of the American people, one can deduce a good deal from some of the adjectives he has used about us in the past. He has called us “active, educated, excitable and harassed”; and “the most numerous and ebullient of civilized communities.”

Q. _What does Churchill think of Roosevelt and the New Deal?_

A. I am sure he has a profound admiration for Mr. Roosevelt quite aside from the help he wants from him. Churchill and Roosevelt are both aristocrats, both expert politicians, both highly cultured men, both believers in humanity, and in the destiny of the English-speaking peoples. There are only two factors to make them differ. The first is that they are rivals, friendly rivals, of course, and allied rivals for the duration of the war, but rivals just the same, and when the time comes to translate victory into peace terms it is going to be exciting to see which of these powerful, determined men will do the leading. It will be a struggle of titans. As one reviews the chief characteristics of each man it seems as though each possesses to the ultimate possible degree the qualities of courage, intelligence, imagination, and stubbornness.

Churchill has called Roosevelt “this great man, this thrice chosen head of a nation of 130,000,000.” Another time in 1934 he described Roosevelt’s administration as a dictatorship, writing: “Although the Dictatorship is veiled by constitutional forms it is none the less effective.” Hastily he added: “To compare Roosevelt’s effort with that of Hitler is not to insult Roosevelt but civilization.” Now both men have become dictators in the classical sense of the word as it has been so sapiently defined by Frederick L. Schuman. “‘Dictatorship’ is a form of power which is resorted to voluntarily and temporarily by democracies to meet dangers of invasion or revolution. It is a device to save democracy, not to destroy it.... The disposition of democrats to regard dictatorship in times of crisis as fatal to democracy rather than as fundamental to its preservation reflects a tragic confusion resting upon ignorance of history and misuse of labels.” Schuman points out that Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini are tyrants or despots, but not, if one uses the word properly, “dictators.”

The reassuring fact is that both Roosevelt and Churchill believe that a Pax Anglo-Americana is the key to the future. Churchill believes that the British ought to take the leading role in such an arrangement because they have borne the heat of battle to a greater degree than we shall have done even with our troops in Europe. Roosevelt believes America ought to be the leader since we are coming out of the war considerably stronger than Great Britain and the younger nation is now ready to take over guidance of world affairs from the parent country. Out of this fundamental difference could come a massive dispute, but since it will have been based on victory we can hope fervently that the opportunity for the discussion be provided as quickly as possible.

Churchill has a second difference with Roosevelt in the field of economic theory and practice. He is distinctly against the New Deal. There was a time during the period of the Blue Eagle when Churchill seemed almost to fear that communism was coming to the United States. He warned: “It is irrational to tear down or cripple the capitalist system without having the fortitude of spirit and ruthlessness of action to create a new communist system.” With Churchillian directness he proclaims his belief in profits. “There can never be good wages or good employment for any length of time without good profits.”

With equal candor and with much wit he defends rich men. “A second danger to President Roosevelt’s valiant and heroic experiments seems to arise from the disposition to hunt down rich men as if they were noxious beasts.... It is a very attractive sport, and once it gets started quite a lot of people everywhere are found ready to join in the chase.... The question arises whether the general well-being of the masses of the community will be advanced by an excessive indulgence in this amusement. The millionaire or multi-millionaire is a highly economic animal. He sucks up with sponge-like efficiency money from all quarters. In this process, far from depriving ordinary people of their earnings, he launches enterprise and carries it through, raises values, and he expands that credit without which on a vast scale no fuller economic life can be opened to the millions. To hunt wealth is not to capture commonwealth.” All this, his own economic philosophy, he sums up in the formula: “Whether it is better to have equality at the price of poverty or well-being at the price of inequality.”

Does this indicate a narrowly selfish interest by Churchill in his own class? Not at all. He believes profoundly in the possibility of extending leisure and well-being to all mankind through the benefits of science. He takes the evidence of Soviet Russia that the means to general affluence is not communism, nor does he think it can come through any form of nationalization of production. He believes the essence of the problem is monetary. He believes the rights of man are more important than the success of any economic system. He believes in the British Empire as a mighty instrument of civilization. He believes profoundly in cooperation with us. There is no reason why the two mightiest democratic dictators, Roosevelt and Churchill, should not emerge from the Peace Conference with a harmonious plan.

Q. _Is it true that Churchill is gifted with a peculiar power to foresee the event?_

A. I know of no statement which summed up in so few words a complete forecast of history as was contained in one sentence of Churchill’s delivered April 6, 1936 in a speech on the fortification of the Rhineland. You will remember that Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland March 6, 1936. Mr. Churchill had this to say: “The creation of a line of forts opposite to the French frontier will enable the German troops to be economized on that line and will enable the main forces to swing round through Belgium and Holland.” There in thirty-six words you have the entire story of the Battle of France, told four years before it took place.

Q. _Tell us what you know of Mr. Churchill as a person. What are his principal characteristics?_

A. Courage is his principal characteristic. I hesitated a moment but decided to put his courage ahead of his intelligence, because courage is a more important quality than intelligence. I remember I once had a spirited argument on this point with Henri Bernstein, the French playwright. We were at the country home of Louis Bromfield in Senlis, the point outside Paris where the Germans during the last war came nearest to the capital. Bernstein insisted intelligence was the most valuable quality a man could have, and with enough of it he would not need more than a minimum of courage. I argued that without courage the keenest intelligence is useless in a world of action. A couple of years later Bernstein and I were on the same refugee ship, the _Madura_ of the British India Line, fleeing from Bordeaux to England after the fall of France. I reminded Bernstein of our argument and insisted that the disaster of France proved my contention was right. Surely the French were still what they have often been called, the most intelligent people on the continent, but for some reason which nobody has yet completely fathomed, they had at this moment of their national history lost the desire or the willingness to fight. I suppose it would be fair to define that as lack of courage, although I would be the last to assert that this is a permanent state of mind or of heart on the part of the French.

The collapse of the French was the signal for Churchill to display the finest quality of his character. Senator Gerald P. Nye once, with the good taste characteristic of our isolationists, said: “Britain is a dead horse. America should not team up with a lost cause.” To France in her death agony Churchill made the offer that she merge with Britain and establish a single Franco-British government and cabinet, unite the resources of the French and British Empires, and fight on to the last drop of British blood, even if all France were occupied. It took a Churchill’s imagination, generosity, and audacity to make such an offer. The French did not have enough strength left to reach out and accept the hand of rescue. We have heard a great deal about fighting to the last drop of blood, but Churchill is the only man I have ever seen among the belligerents who makes it absolutely convincing.