Part 29

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?_

A. No, they are not of equal prominence, not even the ex-President, because Lindbergh had something that appealed so profoundly to America that he has not lost it all yet, and he towers in influence above our other isolationists, some of whom are plainly patriotic but deluded citizens. Lindbergh, however, is, I am convinced, mainly responsible for the long hesitation of this country to go to war to defend its life. I do not intend to impugn Lindbergh’s sincerity, but surely there is something wrong with a man who declares as he does that we should not go to war, among other reasons, because we are not united, then does his utmost to disunite us still further.

Mayor La Guardia, in his capacity as Director of Civilian Defense, pleaded at a mass meeting in Philadelphia for all Americans not in agreement with the Administration’s foreign policy not to do or say anything that might give aid or comfort to a potential enemy. Exactly twenty-four hours later, stepping on La Guardia’s heels, Lindbergh addressed another mass meeting in Philadelphia and attacked the President of the United States in terms so violent that they were widely interpreted as calling for a revolution against the Administration.

It was that famous speech which he was compelled to retract in part since it alarmed so many even of his followers. Mrs. Kathleen Norris, the novelist, a prominent member of the America First Committee, and present on the platform with Lindbergh, told reporters that afternoon, in answer to a question, that she could “swear that no member of the committee is mixed up with any subversive activity.” “Subversive” means “tending to overthrow, upset, or destroy,” which is precisely what Lindbergh’s speeches attempt to do to the Administration of the United States.

None of the isolationist crowd can compare with Lindbergh in importance to the Fifth Column in America. From the point of view of American national security and the future of this country he is America’s Public Enemy Number One, because he was once so incomparably America’s National Hero of Heroes, and some American people still hope that now from their former idol, politically unbranded, apparently disinterested, they can finally get the truth and the light. For the most part, Americans do not realize what has happened to their National Hero, although fortunately throughout the country there is a deep-seated distrust of anyone who has taken up an attitude so palpably favorable to the nation’s enemies.