Part 27

As someone expressed it, Hitler has never kept a promise but never failed to carry out, or at least try to carry out, a threat. His threat to destroy us has been documented scores of times. Hermann Rauschning quotes Hitler as declaring privately to friends that he would conquer the United States first from within, with his Fifth Column, and Walther Darre, his Minister of Agriculture, has developed the topic thus: “I have been asked about my opinion of America, especially the United States, and the danger of this pseudo-democratic Republic’s possible attempts to hinder us in our historical development. There is no fear that this demoralized country will mix in this German war. In the first place, as in France and other countries, also in the United States, we have many of our compatriots and even more friends among the citizens of the United States. Many of the latter hold the most important positions in political and economic life and will not permit public opinion to allow something so senseless and insane as war against Germany.... The United States is at present so demoralized and so corrupted that, like England and France, it need not be taken into consideration as a military adversary.... The United States will also be forced by Germany to complete and final capitulation.”

Finally, as we discussed before, Hitler as every conqueror, cannot stop trying to conquer, and after he had finished with the Old World, his momentum would force him to attack the New.

Q. _Haven’t we plenty to do at home, without getting into a foreign war? Why don’t we try to make a real democracy in America before we go out to try to improve the rest of the world?_

A. This argument that we should pay no attention to the fire in the house next door because we are busy cleaning the windows of our house, polishing the floor, and cleaning up the kitchen has the same amount of logic and common sense as the doctrine that we ought not to fight on our enemy’s territory but only on our own. President Hutchins of the University of Chicago has put this argument of perfectionism in scholarly form. He maintains that we are going to war to establish throughout the world the Four Freedoms--of speech, of worship, from want, and from fear--but he says we have no right to crusade for them until we have established them at home. But we are not going to war to crusade for the Four Freedoms; as we have pointed out before, we are going to war to make the world safe for the United States, and at the same time or thereafter do what we can to establish the Four Freedoms elsewhere as well as in America. If we do not go to war, we risk losing even what we have of the Four Freedoms, even the small quantities of them measured by Dr. Hutchins.

Something of what he says about the failure of the Four Freedoms in this country to reach perfection is true; not all of it. He says we have freedom of speech to say only what everybody else is saying, but Dr. Hutchins will admit we have more of this kind of freedom than any other country at this moment. He will also admit that everyone else is not saying the things Dr. Hutchins is saying and yet he may say them without let or hindrance. He says we have “freedom of worship if we don’t take our religion too seriously,” but one must ask oneself what examples of religious intolerance have given rise to such a statement? Where are the persecuted religionists and to what country would they flee to escape from the alleged deficiency of freedom of worship in America?

Dr. Hutchins says that as for freedom from want and freedom from fear, so long as one-third of the nation is ill-fed, ill-clothed, and ill-housed, as Roosevelt says it is, we have no right to try to establish these freedoms in other countries. Again, we can admit that the matter is precisely as President Roosevelt has stated it, and yet assert that the people of the United States have as a whole better food, clothing, and living conditions than those of any other country with comparable climatic conditions. He says that as for democracy, “we know that millions of men and women are disfranchised in this country because of their race, color, or condition of economic servitude.” But if by reason of the passive attitude toward the war advocated by Dr. Hutchins, this country should fall under Hitler’s power, whether directly, with der Fuehrer in Washington, or indirectly with der Fuehrer’s Gauleiter, chosen from the America First Committee as our President, all of America’s 133,000,000 men and women would be wholly disfranchised.

Dr. Hutchins says that we must abandon the Four Freedoms if we go to war, and that “We cannot suppose, because civil liberties were restricted in the last war and expanded after it, that we can rely on their revival after the next one.” Why not? If we cannot rely on experience, what can we rely on? In every war the United States has ever fought we have delegated to the executive the powers necessary to win victory and afterward we have always taken them back, but without even an argument, much less any forcible attempt to prevent such action. Dr. Hutchins says, “If we go to war we cast away our opportunity and cancel our gains. For a generation, perhaps for hundreds of years, we shall not be able to struggle back to where we were. In fact, the changes that total war will bring may mean that we shall never be able to struggle back. Education will cease. Its place will be taken by vocational and military training. The effort to establish a democratic community will stop. We shall think no more of justice, of the moral order and the supremacy of human rights. We shall have hope no longer.”

Why should these things happen to us if they have never happened in past wars? Because, says Dr. Hutchins, “this war, if we enter it, will make the last one look like a stroll in the park.” But has the war done any of these things to Britain? On the contrary it is the unanimous judgment of observers of Britain in wartime that the British are more just, humane, democratic, and obedient to a higher moral regime than ever before in their history. The British are nearer their enemy and more deeply immersed in total war than we can ever be. Why should we be expected to fare worse than the British?

Dr. Hutchins expresses concern for “suffering humanity” and declares we could best serve it by staying out of war, and extending aid to Britain and China “on the basis most likely to keep us at peace and least likely to involve us in war.” Is it really helpful to suffering humanity in Britain, China, France, Russia, Norway, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Luxembourg, Holland, Belgium, Austria, yes and in Italy and Germany itself, to practice a policy directed solely to avoiding conflict with the author of the misery of half the world?

Aside from that, there is only one choice before America now and the choice is not between going to war or not going to war. The choice today is between going to war in time to win it, and going to war too late to win it. We can best serve “suffering humanity” by attempting with all the strength of our bodies and souls to destroy the prime, immediate mundane cause of humanity’s suffering. Finally, Dr. Hutchins declares that the argument that we should go to war now when we have Britain to help us, to avoid having to go to war later, when we should have to face the whole world alone, rests on the improvable assumptions that Britain must fall and that the totalitarian powers will wish to, and be able to, and will attack us. We could debate on these grounds and make a strong case for even this simplest, most direct form of possible events. But the argument for war now does not rest alone on this succession of possible events.

Germany may not be able to conquer Britain, but Britain may become so weary and so convinced that she cannot defeat Germany without us, and so persuaded that we shall never come into the war, that Britain might make a negotiated peace. Such a peace would be as disastrous to us as a lost war; to prevent it is as strong a motive for our going to war now as is the motive of preventing the actual fall of Britain. Again, unless Britain falls or makes a negotiated peace, how is any kind of peace to come to the world? By Britain’s defeating Germany? No, if Russia falls or defects, Britain alone certainly cannot conquer Germany; no informed person thinks it possible. Does Dr. Hutchins think Britain could? Does he think it would be desirable to allow Bolshevik Russia the credit and opportunity of the land conquest of Germany, which by now is Europe?

Failing to enter the war, we have to face the alternatives; First: Fall of Britain followed by Axis economic, political, and military attack on the Western Hemisphere and probable American defeat by Nazis within as well as without. Second: A negotiated peace between Britain and Germany; followed by Nazi attack on the Western Hemisphere as before. Third: Defeat of Germany by Britain at sea and in the air, and by Russia on land; followed by Russian Communism throughout Europe. Does Dr. Hutchins believe this a desirable end, or that the United States would remain immune from its effects? Fourth: An interminable deadlock in Europe with the entire world from year to year slipping backward politically, economically, and morally with no prospect of anything except more ruined cities, more starving people, more dead from battle and bombardment, famine and pestilence. Is it helping suffering humanity to remain aloof and permit any of these alternatives to come to pass?

Q. _Why do you think we ought to go to war with Germany today?_

A. Because until Nazi Germany is defeated the world will never be safe for us to live in; because it will require the total war effort of the United States and Britain and Russia to defeat Germany; and because our formal declaration of war would be worth more in the struggle against Germany than all the material aid we shall be able to send the Allies for the next year or more.

Q. _But wouldn’t it be better to wait and let Hitler declare war on us?_

A. It would best serve our interests if Hitler would declare war, but since he knows this is true, he is not likely to do so under any provocation. I should think he would hesitate to declare war even if we were to have a pitched naval battle and sink his ships and announce it. He knows that even if our Navy is fighting his, there is still a body of American public opinion which is opposed to the participation of our Army in an A.E.F. He knows that if he declared war it would help immensely to unify the American people. He might go into a fury and declare war, but it would be unlike him. Behind all his tantrums there is usually calculation.

Q. _But isn’t our present state of “undeclared war” just as effective as being formally at war? Why would our declaration of war be worth so much immediately?_

A. Because of its moral effect upon ourselves, our enemies, and our friends. We can talk all we like about being in a state of undeclared war, but until we are formally at war we will continue to behave as though we were at peace. Only by going to war can we discipline ourselves, our workingmen, and our employers to defeat the Axis in the battle of production. At this moment when Britain and Germany are devoting four hours of each working day to making arms, we are devoting thirty minutes to making arms. Only by going to war can our citizens’ army get the morale to be a fighting force.

On the Germans the effect of our declaration of war would be catastrophic. Every German would say to himself, “Now we can’t win; we can hold on for a long time, perhaps, but we can’t win.” On the Italians the effect would be to depress their feeble efforts still further toward zero.

On the British the effect would be to give them what they lack and what they most need: the assurance of victory. The British are convinced that they cannot be defeated, but how are they going to defeat the Germans without the United States actively in the war?

Upon the Soviet Union the effect would be to strengthen the resolution of Stalin and the Russian people not to make a compromise peace nor succumb to any of the temptations Hitler may offer; and the longer the Red Army fights the Germans the fewer sacrifices will have to be made by the United States to help win the war.

To France our declaration of war would bring the will to live again. Belief in eventual German victory over Britain was the basis upon which the French surrendered. It was the foundation of Vichy’s policy. Our declaration of war might not change Pétain and his men of Vichy, for they are prisoners of their own deeds, and probably cannot withdraw from their fatal collaboration with the Germans, but it would move the people of France profoundly. Pétain does not represent the people of France. I believe far more in the spirit of my French friend who wrote me: “Soon we shall all be starving, but send no food. When we are starving will be a good moment to throw by parachute on every French farm and on the suburbs of Paris thousands of small machine guns, with the necessary bullets. Then the German Army will be in France as Napoleon’s Army was in Spain in 1813.” America’s entry into the war would be worth to Frenchmen like this more than machine guns. It would give them the certainty that France will live again. General de Gaulle’s army would swell by the tens of thousands.

We could reckon on the possibility of being able to occupy the strategic positions we need in North Africa and on any other advantages within the power of the French to give us. We could for the first time anticipate serious revolt by the peoples of all the occupied territories when the time came; and help for the Allied Expeditionary Force which some day must invade the continent. All the enslaved peoples would be equally affected. The Nazi Terror works perfectly so long as its victims feel that it is hopeless to revolt. Revolt becomes possible only when the victims feel that they can afford to risk all, since freedom will eventually be the reward.

A very important effect of our declaration of war upon Germany would be the effect upon Japan. The Japanese mental processes are difficult indeed to understand but I venture to guess that if they saw us formally aligned with the British for the duration, they would be likely to take a milder rather than stronger attitude toward us. Needing principally smaller vessels in the Atlantic, we could base our main Battle Fleet on Singapore and confidently await any move Japan might make. Our declaration of war might well force Japan out of the Axis.

China, like Britain, would be given the most precious possession in warfare, the assurance of final victory. For even if Japan continued to fight China, once the Allies’ main task was performed and Germany defeated, the combined British and American navies could be counted on to bring Japan back to reason without much difficulty. On all the other countries, as neutral Portugal, non-belligerent Spain, encapsuled Sweden and Switzerland, the effect of our going to war would be revolutionary. Our South American friends would become even better neighbors. All over the world the conviction that now Germany will be defeated would become the decisive element in the policy of every government.

Q. _But would we really go to work if we did declare war? Britain didn’t at first and neither did France. What makes you think we would?_

A. You are right. It took Dunkirk to wake Britain up and France never did awake; she passed without regaining consciousness from deep sleep to death. Perhaps we too would not awaken even if we went to war, but we will never awaken until we do go to war. Most nations in this war have remained curiously apathetic until their first battle experience; this may be true of us. But the fact of our being actively belligerent would be bound to improve our spirit since it would put our moral position right. Ever since the beginning of the war we Americans have suffered from a divided personality. Half of our minds clung to the idea that we could keep at peace if we wished for peace hard enough, and this half declared: “It is not our war.” This half of our minds made the Neutrality Act. The other half of our minds realized all along that we should have been in the war from the beginning, that Hitler was fighting to conquer the world, that it was for us a matter of life or death to keep him from succeeding and that every consideration of self-interest, as of honor, urged us to take our full part in the world-wide struggle against the new Barbarism. This half was responsible for the Lease-Lend Bill, a half-measure, condemned by the very definition: “All aid to Britain _short of war_!” Our souls remained divided, and this division has made us an ailing nation, hypochondriac, complaining of low morale, nervous, and subject to fits of depression alternating with elation. We are unreasonably discouraged or cheered as the tide of battle ebbs and flows, and always we try to interpret whatever happens as a sign at last that we do not have to do our duty, that after all we can get out of this task, so onerous, so painful, and so unavoidable.

Completely opposite arguments are employed to prove that we may escape our obligation. If the British suffer a setback, up goes the cry: “The British are already beaten; there’s no use trying to save them now; let’s not throw good money after bad.” If the British win a victory, there is a rousing cheer: “The British are winning without us; thank God now we will not have to fight.” When I came home from the Battle of Britain, it struck me as it had struck many others who have come to America from the war zone, that we were far more nervous and agitated than the peoples at war, even and especially more than those under actual heavy bombardment. Eve Curie, that admirable French patriot and gallant fighter for civilization, who was one of our group when we escaped from France, put it perfectly when she said: “There is no fear in the countries which are fighting. Extraordinarily enough, fear has gone somewhere else, to the countries which are not menaced, to the countries ‘at peace.’”

Is there any reason to suppose that our reactions would be substantially different from those of the peoples at war? Once we take a bold stand for the position we know to be just, right, and inevitable, we shall for the first time since this war began, lose our fear and become well, strong, hopeful, and proud. The sense of guilt which has made us nationally unhappy will leave us and we shall rejoice in a clear conscience.

Q. _What effect would our declaring war have upon the morale of the Army, particularly on that of the selectees, which has been criticized so much?_

A. Going to war would unquestionably cure all the troubles of the Army sooner or later. It is not our soldiers’ fault if today in peacetime they are restless and discontented at being compelled to do what must seem to them very like playing at being soldiers. Would the spirit of a football team be good if the team did nothing but practice football all day long, month in and month out, and never played a game, and had no games scheduled? What would be the spirit of a cast of players if they had rehearsals every day for months and never staged a performance to an audience, and had no performances scheduled?

Q. _From your travel throughout the country have you formed any impression of what the morale of the Army actually is?_

A. Yes, from personal observation, I have reluctantly had to admit the impression that many of the selectees, at any rate, do not understand why they are in the Army, nor why there should be conscription, nor why their period of service was extended. In a word, they have no desire to fight. Now this could be a most serious matter, since any nation is doomed if its youth, or any considerable number of them, are not willing to fight for it, yet this mood would vanish on our entry into war. The boys are not to blame. To blame are all the leaders who have confused and deceived them, the teachers who taught them pacifism and the isolationist politicians who do the work of Hitler. One of the elements most confusing in the Army mind is the promise rashly made in the presidential campaign that we should never engage in a “foreign war,” a promise no American should have made because nobody except Hitler had the power to fulfill it.

Now we are paying the penalty democracy always has to pay for hypocrisy and for deceptions in elections. The penalty is the state of mind exposed in a questionnaire taken at Camp Callan, San Diego, among selectees, and published with elation by an isolationist journal. The soldiers answered: (a) Should the United States go to war with the Axis immediately? Affirmative, 1 per cent. (b) Should the United States continue its policy of all-out economic aid to Britain and expand America’s military and naval forces in order to fight the Axis powers overseas if the Axis powers are not defeated by Britain? Affirmative, 25 per cent. (c) Should the United States guard the Western Hemisphere but send no military aid outside this area? Affirmative, 39 per cent. (d) Should the United States be strictly neutral and prepare to defend only our own territory and possessions? Affirmative, 37 per cent. These answers would have distressed Count Leo Tolstoy if Tolstoy were an American living today.

Tolstoy, who was as great a student of war as he was a novelist, has a formula whereby he could interpret this poll and give us a rough estimate of the military effectiveness of an army made up of soldiers with the attitude revealed by this questionnaire. In _War and Peace_, his epic novel on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, he says: “_In warfare_ the force of armies is the product of the mass multiplied by something else, an unknown X. X is the spirit of the army, the greater or less _desire to fight_ and to face dangers on the part of all the men composing the army.” Note that Tolstoy says “_desire_ to fight” not just “_willingness_ to fight.” The emphasis is on the positive desire not passive willingness. This is another way to express the paramount importance of morale. What is morale? It is knowing what you have to fight about and having the desire to fight for it. But only one per cent of the selectees questioned indicated they knew what they had to fight about and desired to fight; one-third thought we ought to be “strictly neutral,” and three-fourths were against fighting anywhere outside of our hemisphere.

Q. _The selectees evidently had been influenced by the arguments for passive hemisphere defense, but what do you think of the argument that we should never fight on foreign soil, but if we have to fight, let it be in America?_

A. It reminds me of the Chinese and the Japanese soldiers at the beginning of their war. I saw the fall of Shanghai, and I couldn’t help but remark that while the Chinese soldier said, “I will die for China,” the Japanese soldier said, “I will kill for Japan,” and so for a long time the two got along perfectly together. For every American who may declare, “I don’t want to fight on foreign soil; if I have to fight I want to fight only at home,” there is a German who declares, “I don’t want to fight at home; I fight only on foreign soil,” as the Germans have consistently done to the best of their ability for the last hundred years. May we never accommodate the Germans in this respect. Surely of all the isolationist arguments this is the least intelligent, to prefer that the fearful destruction of war be wrought on our own homes. It is an argument you will never hear in our Southern states.

Q. _What should we do with conscientious objectors?_