Is Tomorrow Hitler's? 200 Questions on the Battle of Mankind

by H. R. Knickerbocker

6. THE UNITED STATES

Q. What is the greatest danger we face as a nation?

A. Our complacency. It is colossal, cosmic, suicidal.

Q. Can you still call us complacent after we have conscripted an Army, begun to create an Air Force, gone far toward building a two-ocean Navy, flung a line of outposts from Iceland to South America, appropriated and recommended fifty billion dollars for defense, and told our Navy to sink German fighting ships?

A. The very list you name reeks with complacency. All of that put together does not equal a week of what even the “despised” Russians are doing now. The bitterest thing yet said about us was: “Better a Bolshevik who kills Germans than a Democrat who kills time.” We still unwaveringly and unblushingly expect somebody else to do the job for us. Now it is Russia.

To begin with we said France and England would do the job; then Norway; then the Low Countries; then the Balkans; and now we sit back and actually rely on the Russians. We cheer the news that the Navy is going to fight but shrink at the idea of an American Expeditionary Force. Why? For the same reason that war with Japan has many more advocates than war with Germany, because we could leave a sea war to the professional fighting men of the Navy. We shirk calling things by their proper names. Never have we used so many weasel words. Conscripts are “selectees”; naval war is “hunting pirates”; hiring the British to do our fighting for us is “lease-lend”; isolationists become “noninterventionists”; interventionists argue tediously for “all-out aid,” but few of them ever come out plainly and say we ought to go to war. All of this evasion stems from the refusal to face the supreme reality, namely that we have to go to war, that it is our war and was our war from the beginning.

Q. But haven’t we gone far toward recognizing that it is our war by our lease-lend appropriations of around thirteen billion dollars?

A. Do you realize that we actually delivered only $190,000,000 worth of goods in the first six months of lease-lend to Britain and China? That is only a little over one per cent of the total lease-lend money involved. If it takes us six months to deliver one per cent, how long will it take to deliver 100 per cent? Certainly, the beginning is slowest; certainly speed of deliveries will increase almost geometrically after the new factories begin to produce. But the fact is that we will never produce enough to win this war without going formally to war. As Donald M. Nelson, chief defense buyer, suggested, the only way to get capacity production for armaments is to make the program so big that civilian needs will be irresistibly pushed into the background, and every factory capable of producing armaments will be forced to drop its civilian business and go immediately to work on war materials.

What does “pushing our civilian needs into the background” mean? It means sacrifice; it means a lowering of our standard of living. Do you know anyone, have you a single person in your acquaintance in civilian life, whose standard of living has deteriorated as a result of sacrifice for our so-called defense effort? Leaf through your smart magazines, read the news of the shops, and ask yourself what the fighting folk of Europe would think of the war effort of a country whose rugged males in the bloody autumn of 1941 are asked in full-page advertisements: “Have you seen the new brown diamonds for men? These interesting, subdued stones are rapidly becoming a major item in the well-dressed man’s wardrobe.” Would this make very good evidence against Hitler’s assertion that we are a “decadent, degenerate democracy not to be taken seriously in war”?

Q. But how can we expect to improve morale by criticism? Isn’t it true that if you tell a healthy man he looks ill, and tell him frequently enough, he may actually fall ill?

A. Yes, but if you tell an ill man he looks well, and he therefore fails to take care of himself, he may die. It is not fear that we need; it is awareness. What was the common cause of the death of the fifteen nations which have fallen to Hitler? It was lack of awareness of his threat to their national existence. From Poland to Greece they were all overconfident and hence for six long years did nothing to bring about that coalition which might have saved them. Overconfidence is our danger, not defeatism. The moment our Navy was given orders to convoy and shoot, one prominent voice was raised to suggest that now we might diminish our Army, as though the war were virtually won.

Q. Our morale is very bad, then?

A. No, that is not true. Our morale is high. That sounds like a contradiction but it is not. It is my conviction after talking to audiences all over the country that the American people are eager to find out the truth and when they hear it they are eager to act; that they are far ahead of their leaders in Congress, and even of the President; and that if the President wanted it, he could get directly from the American people, not from Congress, but from the twenty-seven million Americans who voted for him, plus many million more, approval of any measure he advocated, including a formal declaration of war. National morale depends so much on leadership that a great figure, as Roosevelt in this country and Churchill in England, can influence it to great decisions with one broadcast.

But without leadership we soon sink back into smug apathy, and the kind of thoughtlessness which led Americans in the first six months of 1941 to buy 35 per cent more automobiles, 42 per cent more refrigerators, and 51 per cent more electric ranges than in the same period of 1940—all of these luxury articles being built of materials vital for our defense industry. The French too, right up to the collapse, went on eating tremendous meals, loafing behind their Maginot line, and reading illustrated magazines with pictures just like ours showing magnificent fleets of planes and tanks. An unwitting reader of some of our great periodicals would get the impression that we have one of the world’s most powerful tank armies and that our warplanes could darken the skies. We lay down the magazine with a sigh of content. Good old U.S.A. We knew we could do it. What was all that talk about unpreparedness?

Q. Haven’t we a tank army?

A. We have four armored divisions now being organized. We see them under such titles as “Uncle Sam’s Mighty Tanks Move Into Action,” and only the closest examination of the picture reveals that most of the tanks are armored cars. In 1940 we produced 20 light, no medium, and no heavy tanks a month; in 1941, 260 light, 130 medium, and no heavy tanks a month; and in 1942 we shall produce 390 light, 300 medium, and still no heavy tanks a month. I quote from an authoritative release of July 4, 1941: “None of the four existing armored divisions is regarded as complete and ready for combat on the European scale because medium and heavy tanks have not arrived yet, and because coordinated practice with the air arm regularly attached to the divisions has not yet been possible and because much of the training time must be devoted to the basic training of new men.” There is the mechanized force of the United States of America in the third year of the mechanized world war. Our armored strength consists of light tanks only, completely useless against heavy or medium tanks. But most appalling is the revelation that this late in a war in which every victory has been won by the famous dive bomber plus tank team, we seem not to possess any such team at all, for that must be the meaning of the statement that there has been no practice of coordination between planes and tanks. These teams cannot be improvised. An army without them today is like an army would have been without artillery yesterday.

In effect we still do not possess an effective armored force and the production figures indicate we shall not have one in 1942 either, for until we have heavy tanks we cannot face heavy tanks. What have the Germans in the way of mechanized armament? We cannot tell what changes have taken place since the Battle of Russia began, but we know that their losses are constantly replenished from the industrial plants of all Europe now working feverishly for the Germans. At the Battle of France the Germans had ten Panzer divisions and it was these steel hack saws which cut the body of France into bleeding ribbons and ended the French nation in five weeks. The Germans captured from the French 4,000 or 5,000 tanks and since that time have produced incessantly until it is estimated that they entered the Battle of Russia with a total of 20 to 30 Panzer divisions and with at least 25,000 tanks. The German Army is obviously the army we are preparing to fight. Its armored strength is conservatively estimated about twenty-five times ours, and it has more than two years of battle experience. We not only have not got an army that could take part in modern warfare at all, but we are not even preparing to create such an army. We may get one. We will get one if we have time. We will get an army if we go to war in time to keep the British between us and our enemy for the period it will take to build an army. We will never get an army so long as we are satisfied with what we have.

We American people have been like a neurotic who refuses to listen to bad news; who will not go to a physician for fear of what he may find out. We could afford to view the matter less darkly if it appeared that our production would give us an effective fighting machine sometime in the future, but this does not seem to be the case. Our gun production indicates that we expect to be ready to fight a modern army sometime around the 1950’s. It shows that in the middle of 1941 we had a production of 4 big, 29 medium, and 20 small antiaircraft guns per month. At that rate it would take a year to make enough antiaircraft guns to guard New York City alone. In mid-1942 we shall, if we are lucky, have a production of 22 big, 23 medium, and 300 small antiaircraft guns monthly. At this rate we should be able properly to guard the large cities of the Eastern seaboard in about ten years.

In 1941 we did not produce any 155 mm. cannon, but we will make fourteen of them monthly in 1942; just as we produced no 105 mm. cannon in 1940, but put out 22 per month in 1941 and in 1942 hope to make 155 a month. At this rate we ought to be able to finish enough artillery to match the German artillery in about 1951. We are still turning out 37 mm. antitank guns, although tests have shown that this gun will not penetrate the armor of the tanks it would have to meet. Even our famous Garand rifle apparently cannot be manufactured anything like fast enough to supply the growing army. In mid-1941 it was being turned out at the rate of 22,500 a month; and in 1942 it is due to be produced at the rate of 52,000 a month. That is only 624,000 a year. At this rate it would take well over three years to equip the two-million-man army which is our initial goal in the face of the fact that the forces it is being built to meet number upward of ten million.

In airplanes we have the one advantage that we came so late into the field that we have few obsolescent types. The British and Germans have the immense advantage of daily contact with battle experience. In mid-1941 we produced 206 fighters and 60 bombers per month for ourselves and sent an average of 390 planes monthly to Britain. Our aid to Britain, “all out, short of war,” amounted to this, that after two years of war we were sending Britain about one-eighth as many warplanes as Germany’s production, believed to be around 3,000 a month. Even in 1942 when we shall have reached capacity production, we expect to send Britain only 650 planes a month, and to make only 600 bombers and 600 fighters monthly for ourselves. That is, even in the third year of war we propose to have a production of only about three-quarters the German production. We have pitched our sights far too low. We might as well quit if we cannot set the sights up.

Raymond Swing always tells me as he rakes in the pot, “Knick, it is not good hands that win in poker; it is better hands.” So it is in this war. We shall never win with a good army, navy, and air force; they have to be better than the enemy’s and bigger too. Before the Battle of Russia some military critics held that we did not need even the 1,500,000 men we now have under arms; that we needed only a highly mechanized force. Now we see that to win in this war an army needs mass as well as machines. As yet we have neither.

Q. Why haven’t we at any rate planned an adequate army of four or five million men with at least as many armored divisions as the Germans?

A. Because to plan an adequate army would indicate we intended to go to war. To make it big enough and well enough equipped to fight the Germans would indicate that we intended to fight the Germans. The consequence of our ostrich hypocrisy, our faint-hearted catering to the pacifist, isolationist-obscurantist bloc is that we not only do not but we cannot build an army to perform the function for which it was called into existence: fight the Nazis. If we equip it to go abroad, up go cries of alarm from the Wheeler-Lindbergh crowd: “Foreign war! See, the President is going to put us into a foreign war!”

Q. But if we have nothing to fight with, how can we go to war?

A. Only by going to war can we guarantee the continued existence of the British fighting machine and the control of the Atlantic by the British Navy and our own. As long as the Atlantic is thus controlled we can arm ourselves in safety.

Q. But why can’t we arm ourselves, as we are now doing, without going to war, and after we are thoroughly prepared, then, if it is still necessary, go in and win? Wouldn’t that be more sensible?

A. No, because until we go to war we shall never arm ourselves adequately or send to Britain and Russia anything like the supplies we would send if we went to war. Second, if we do not go to war at once there exists always the possibility of German victory. Although the German Army is busy for the time being in Russia, Hitler knows he has to conquer Britain to win. He intends to return to the Battle of Britain. The Battle of the Atlantic is constantly going on. Events move with such lightning speed in this war that a sudden overwhelming Hitler victory is still quite conceivable. Beaverbrook only the other day said he was convinced Hitler still intended to try to invade the British Isles.

Q. Do you think Hitler could succeed in invading Britain?

A. If Hitler is willing to lose half a million or a million men in a super-Blitz—and we know that he is quite willing to invest that many more German lives in his dream of 1,000 years of Nazi Empire—even British authorities admit he might get a foothold in England. The German tactics would probably be similar to the attack on Crete, except that against the British Isles they would try many more landings by sea. Everything would be on a gigantic scale. The air bombardment to precede the attempt would surpass anything experienced in the Blitz of the autumn of 1940 which I witnessed. In this super-Blitz the Germans would attempt to paralyze the R.A.F. They were not able to do it before. The R.A.F., as Churchill said, won the climacteric victory of the First Battle of Britain by knocking down three German planes to every one they lost, and in that fight the Germans outnumbered the British three to one. But if Hitler gets the airplane factories of Russia, to add to the production of the French, Czech, Belgian, and Greater German production, is there anyone who would undertake to prove that he could not concentrate in one furious attack more force than even the dauntless R.A.F. could repel?

The Germans can never beat the British but they might suffocate them. Hitler so far has never used more than 500 or 600 warplanes in a single attack on England. Suppose he uses 5,000. Why has he not done this before? Every aviation and military authority I talked with during the Blitz in England was baffled at this. There were scores of guesses. The most popular answer now is that the Germans did not have the airfields from which to launch so many planes at once. This is a limiting factor in air warfare which is now given great weight. It is pointed out that it takes a huge airfield to send off 100 planes. It is even argued that the British are bound to lose the war eventually because their island can accommodate only a restricted number of airfields, which fix an upper limit for their R.A.F., while the Germans can build an indefinitely large force. Since the First Battle of Britain the Germans have had plenty of time to build airfields from Norway to France sufficient to take care of the air fleets of all the world. We know they have built many secretly along the coast of Northern France and the Low Countries. Hitler’s tactic of surprise would lead him to keep them in reserve for the great invasion. Few observers would exclude the possibility that the Germans may be able to use thousands of planes in the Second Battle of Britain where they used hundreds in the first.

Q. Why doesn’t Hitler use poison gas?

A. I am convinced he will use it whenever he becomes desperate. Why has he not used it before? The British know he has vast quantities of it. He may be afraid of reprisals. When he uses gas at all I should think it would be in a once-for-all storm. Imagine what the effect of a giant attack with a heavy gas might be on London where as many as 4,000,000 persons sleep in underground shelters. The English have virtually ceased to carry gas masks. At the beginning of the war not one person in a hundred appeared on the streets of London without one. Today not one person in fifty carries one.

Hitler would probably not use gas at all except as a part of a knockout blow so violent that the British would not have a chance to strike back. Whatever the outcome, it is possible that such a mass gas assault might kill hundreds of thousands in one night. While the gas attack was being poured upon the large cities, in the hope also of wiping out the government and other leaders in urban headquarters, swarms of flat-bottomed scows and other vessels would put out from the coasts of the Channel and the North Sea, to make for landings at perhaps a dozen different places, anywhere along the coast of both England and Scotland. Some of these objectives would be feigned to divert English defense forces from the real ones, which might number five or six. Meanwhile great numbers of parachute troops would be landed to capture British airfields and hold them long enough for troop planes and gliders to land reinforcements, and these landings would also be attempted at the immediate rear of the coastal points where the German troops were coming in by sea.

British authorities admit that it would be a serious matter if the Germans could establish one or more such bridgeheads on the coast and land heavy tanks, for the British even yet are not satisfactorily equipped with this indispensable weapon. The British believe they could concentrate and recapture any points seized by the Germans, but who knows? Crete showed what could be done with air-borne troops, and although the British Isles would be in most respects more difficult to capture than Crete, they would not be in all respects. The Germans are much nearer the British Isles, and could concentrate many times the force they used on Crete.

If the invasion of Britain ever takes place, Hitler will doubtless make it a win-the-war or lose-the-war battle, on a scale of the highest concentrated violence. Neither side will hold back reserves, as the R.A.F. did even in the worst days of the 1940 Blitz, because they were waiting to use their last fighters and bombers against the expected invaders. The British Navy will drive regardless of mines or submarines through the narrow waters of the Channel to throw itself between the invaders and the island. The odds would still be on the British to win, in my judgment. They are in an incomparably stronger position than in 1940 when after Dunkirk they were practically weaponless. Today they have two to three million first-class, well-equipped, and well-trained troops and over a million Home Guards on the island; their coast defenses, as I have seen on visits around the island, are formidable and deep; the R.A.F. is present in full strength on its home bases, and the British claim it is growing steadily stronger relative to the Luftwaffe; and the Royal Navy, sallying from its home ports, here has the protection of air forces which were not available at Crete. Finally, the British would be defending their homes, and this lends an astonishing extra strength to fighting men. I would not like to be a member of the German Army trying to occupy and pacify England. At the school of Cad’s Warfare, run by Tom Wintringham outside of London, they have taught the old fellows and the youngsters in the Home Guard many odd and useful tricks, from the best way to strangle a German sentry from behind, to the best way to stab a German sentry from in front.

Even if the chances are in favor of the British, there are so many surprises in war, and especially in this war, that it would be folly for us to behave as though we knew Britain would win without us. If she falls, we must be prepared to meet the whole German war machine alone.

Q. Is it true that the Germans once tried to invade Britain and failed as we heard rumored here?

A. I am convinced those rumors were without foundation; I do not think the Germans have ever tried to invade the British Isles. I remember the September story. I was in England then and about mid-September I learned that the highest British authorities believed the invasion might come at any moment. With the invincible Virginia Cowles we went “Looking for Trouble” and motored to Dover and spent a week along the coast, in constant contact with the British military authorities. We heard not a whisper of the yarn about invasion until later in London when rumors came from the continent that the R.A.F. had broken up a fleet of German invasion vessels and drowned or burned with flaming oil on the surface of the sea thousands of German soldiers. Now it is perfectly possible that the R.A.F. may have surprised and thus treated German invasion vessels engaged in maneuver or in moving from one port to another, but it is out of the question that it should have been a serious attempt at invasion. When that happens there will be 500,000 Germans concerned, not 50,000, and there will be no attempt at concealment.

The decisive consideration is that if the Germans had tried an invasion and the British had beaten it back, the British would have been certain to advertise their victory as widely as possible. But British authorities never said anything about a repulsed invasion attempt. We may be sure that when and if the invasion attempt comes, there will be no question about what is happening; not even the most enterprising American newspaperman will be able to get a scoop on the story.

Q. Would the Germans first invade Ireland in order to be able to attack the British Isles from all sides?

A. Possibly, though not necessarily. The Germans might consider the disadvantages of taking Ireland greater than the advantages. The Irish Channel is as wide as the English; the Germans would be no nearer England than they are now. The possession of submarine bases in Ireland would be the most important gain for the Germans. Against this the Germans have to balance the cost of the operation, since there are strong British units in Northern Ireland; the time lost; the alarm given; and the effect on the Irish in America.

Q. Why doesn’t Ireland allow the British to take over for the duration of the war or at any rate let them use the Irish naval bases they need so badly?

A. Because the Irish still consider Oliver Cromwell a far more unpleasant fellow than Adolf Hitler. They still distrust and to a degree hate the British. Also they know they would be enslaved if Hitler won; but they do not expect Hitler to win. They expect Britain to win, but they will do nothing or practically nothing to help win. To be fair to the Irish, their attitude is based less on historical prejudice than on today’s life or death. If De Valera were to give the British permission to occupy the Irish ports, the moment the news became known, the Germans would bombard Dublin and other Irish cities, and deliberately attempt to kill as many Irish men, women, and children as possible to punish them for siding with the English. This is the threat that so far has kept the Irish from allowing the British in.

Q. If the Russians hold the German Army long enough, won’t the time come when the German people will revolt? Why not wait for that?

A. Because it is extremely unlikely ever to happen unless we go to war. The German people will revolt only when, as Walter Lippmann expressed it, they feel that it has become more dangerous to go on with Hitler than to get rid of him. Such a time will come only when the German people become convinced that they are going to be defeated and invaded. It will not come merely because the German Army falls into a prolonged deadlock with the Russians.

There has to be the conviction that foreign troops are going to enter Germany itself, and that if the German people overthrow Hitler they will receive milder treatment at the hands of their liberated victims. The danger of going on with Hitler has to be very imminent and great to move the German people to revolt, because the crimes of the Nazis have been so atrocious that the Nazis know they will be killed if they are overthrown. There must be ten thousand Nazis who anticipate death if they lose their power either by revolt or by loss of the war. They will meet any attempt at revolt with the utmost mercilessness. In the last war there were no Germans who expected to be killed if Germany lost. The Nazi gang whose life and death hang on the outcome of the war is larger than the clique of the German ruling class which had an urgent, though not life-and-death interest, in seeing the last war to a successful conclusion. Any hopes that a German revolt would end the war if the deadlock lasts long enough are based on wishful thinking.

Q. What makes you think Hitler would want to destroy us?

A. First, because he could not afford to allow any democracy, any free state, to exist in his totalitarian world. In his world there would be only one kind of freedom, the freedom of the German to do as he likes with all other varieties of men. If Hitler is not interfered with and has time to accustom his slaves to slavery, his dynasty of tyrants might last far beyond our lifetime, but not if a single democracy persists to tempt and challenge his slaves to revolt. Witness today how for a long time the subjugated peoples of Europe seemed sunk in abject apathy, but awakened to demonstrate against their despot the moment Russia’s resistance awakened the hope of eventual victory. If Hitler wins over the rest of the world, he must destroy us in order to be safe in his own Empire.

As long as a democracy exists on earth it will hold out before the eyes of hundreds of millions of Hitler’s subjects the vision of a place on earth where the body and soul of a man belong to himself and there are no masters and slaves. Especially dangerous to his rule would be a democracy which not only offered this vision but was potentially powerful enough to be a positive threat, as the United States. For this reason alone Hitler could not allow us to continue to exist, a free oasis in his vast helot Reich.

Second, Hitler could not afford to give us time to translate our potential into real strength. He professes two opinions of America. One is that we are negligible; the other is that as the last war was decided by America, this one may be. He once told a diplomatic official of his who still occupies a high post in this country: “The United States is a degenerate democracy in the backwash of civilization and too demoralized by pacifism to play any important role in the war to come.” He is truly contemptuous of our democracy, as of all democracies, which he judges on the basis of those he has overthrown or conquered, from the German to the French. He concludes that we must be weak, since our democratic system dispenses justice, as far as humanly possible, to the weak as well as to the strong, and because since the conquest of the continental United States we have shown little or no interest in building an empire. To the Nazi heart justice to the weak is a proof of weakness; and to the Nazi mind only one thing prevents a human being from seizing the property of a neighbor, weakness. So Hitler on the one hand thinks us weak, but on the other hand he recognizes that we could become strong.

As he once told me that he admitted the entry of the United States into the last war had decided the struggle, so now when America is preparing to throw its whole weight against him, he shows signs of wishing to keep us out. By now Britain has taught him that even a democracy can become tough if it has time. Would Hitler, after he had crushed the British, willingly give us time to become morally strong enough to fight him as the British fought him? Could he afford to let us have the two years or more still necessary for the physical job of creating the cannon, tanks, airplanes, and naval vessels and for the training of the officers and men for an armed force strong enough to face his?

The third simple reason for his wishing to subjugate the United States is that he wants the loot of America, richest on earth, and wants us to pay tribute to the Greater German Reich as France and the other conquered countries are doing now.

Fourth, and not the least, important reason to believe that Hitler wishes to destroy the United States, is because he has said so. You remember his speech in the second year of the war when he said, “We shall destroy Britain and every country which has fed Britain.” To whom do you suppose he referred if not to the United States? And do you not think now that it is high time to pay attention to this no longer funny little man when he announces what he intends to do? He is unique among conquerors, because he always, by one means or another, warned his victims of what he intended to do to them, and in most cases, the Lindberghs of the world have looked up appeasingly and archly inquired, “Oh no, Mr. Hitler, you surely don’t mean that, do you?”

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?

A. Reason with them. Many honest conscientious objectors can be converted by the right kind of reasoning, and the more honest they are the easier it is to straighten out their misunderstandings. If this fails then they ought to be given work to do at some enterprise of national interest, and be compelled to do it, as the government is now doing in its camps for conscientious objectors. If they refuse to register, they go to jail, as no government could afford to tolerate deliberate defiance of its laws. We as a democracy must observe the rights even of a minority which would bring ruin upon the country if its policies were to rule. This is something we can be proud of, something that marks us more than any other one thing as different from the tyrannous Nazi state where conscientious objectors and every variety of pacifist or obstructionist is put to death. We can afford to treat our objectors as we would defectives. Hitler has to kill his. He held from the beginning that pacifists were the greatest danger to the state, and from the moment he came to power he has sought out and executed every German pacifist who has revealed himself. Hitler thus proves he feels that pacifist doctrine would be dangerous to his regime, as it would.

The German nation is being led by Hitler in aggressive war. Opposition to aggressive war is a form of pacifism which makes sound sense. The war we and the British are called upon to fight, a war we did not want but are compelled to carry on in order to save our national lives, is a war that even a pacifist ought to support. In this war the man who refuses to fight for his country is like a person in a lifeboat who refuses to pull an oar. In England a conscientious objector was asked at his examination whether he would do non-combatant war work. He answered, “No.” The Judge asked “Would you not help build an air-raid shelter?” The man answered, “No.” The Judge then asked, “But if there were an air raid on would you go into a shelter someone else had built?” The man answered, “Yes.” I wonder how many of the 1,800 young Americans who have been classified as conscientious objectors would contend that this is honest, and yet it is fundamentally the attitude of all conscientious objectors. The nation shelters the lives, liberty, and property of all its citizens. Everyone living in the nation is enjoying this protection. Everyone has a primary obligation to help maintain it. In England today, however, the government permits more than 40,000 registered conscientious objectors to enjoy the protection of the air-raid shelters, and of the Royal Air Force, Army, and Navy, without contributing to it. Is this not a tribute to the invincible liberalism of Anglo-Saxon democracy?

The conscientious objector had a better case in almost all other wars than he has in this one. The modern pre-Hitler war had a superficial course something like this: The victor occupied the vanquished country, made a peace treaty, collected an indemnity, then withdrew to his own country with what loot he could carry. A part of the vanquished country might be annexed to the victor. The defeated nation smarted under the humiliation but in time the population resumed its ordinary life, and within a few years a stranger could hardly find signs of any change as a result of the loss of the war. A pacifist might argue that under these circumstances it would pay not to resist since the loss by fighting would be greater than the loss by nonresistance, considerable though that might be. This is not that kind of war. Hitler does not intend to restore the sovereignty of the nations he conquers. All Hitler’s wars are more or less Carthaginian. For as long as Hitler remains the master, his vanquished will be slave states, with their citizens chained to the Nazi machine, their women degraded, their religion persecuted, their schools closed, their books burned, and all this will continue until Hitler is overcome by force. It is not a choice between greater or lesser evils. It is a choice between life and death, for those who physically survive under the Hitler tyranny are condemned to a living death, as the Poles can testify.

Most of the great pacifist leaders have been converted by their observation of Hitler. Albert Einstein was thought of as the world’s greatest pacifist, but he abandoned the doctrine of non-violence after only a few months spent under the Hitler regime before he escaped to America. On his way here Einstein passed through Belgium and in an interview published in a Brussels newspaper declared: “If I were a young Belgian today, I would not refuse military service.” From a man who all his life had been a militant pacifist, taking part in world campaigns against war, this statement ought to persuade any young man. Britain’s leading pacifist, Bertrand Russell, has likewise been persuaded to give up his “isolationism” and to advocate that we give up ours, because the airplane, annihilating distances, has made it impossible for any nation “to secure peace for itself by isolation.” But Hitler is more persuasive, it seems to me.

Hitler writes that the Germans “will give what many blinded pacifists hope to get by moaning and crying,” namely, “a peace, supported not by the palm branches of tearful pacifist professional female mourners, but founded by the victorious sword of a people of overlords which puts the world into the service of a higher culture.” And again he wrote: “Indeed the pacifist-humane idea is perhaps quite good whenever the man of the highest standard has previously conquered and subjected the world to a degree that makes him the only master of this globe.” That is surely clear enough to convince the most conscientious objector that if everyone refused to fight Hitler he would conquer the world, and as President Conant of Harvard says, men would have no more freedom than horses have now. It is not pleasant to have to agree with Hitler, but one must admit he defined the conscientious objector correctly when he declared the healthy, unspoiled boy would willingly give his life for his country and thus “obeys the deeper necessity of the preservation of the species, if necessary at the expense of the individual,” while the pacifist egotistically puts his interest ahead of the nation. The charge of cowardice is easy to make, and I for one shall not make it. I prefer to think of most conscientious objectors as men who have not thought the problem through. After all, one of them was named Sergeant York.

Q. Why don’t we have a department in our Army to tell the soldiers why they are in uniform?

A. We have a morale section in the Army but it cannot operate effectively until we are at war. It is forbidden to discuss “politics” with the soldiers and it would be “politics” now to explain that they are in uniform to fight the Germans. Yet nothing could be more valuable for our war effort than to have qualified men visit each army camp, and after a series of public lectures on America and the war, conduct a question-and-answer period, followed by individual conferences with soldiers interested enough to ask for them. Officers would probably benefit as much from such instruction as the men.

One of the most useful departments of the German Army is its morale section which teaches a recruit above all things to be proud to be a soldier, and that it is the highest honor for him to be permitted to fight for his country. It is my impression that we would have to be even more elementary than that. Some American youths need to have it explained that from time immemorial the young men of a family, a tribe, or a nation have been by nature required to be its physical defenders; that the old men, women, and children have other duties to perform, but the young men are the only ones strong enough to go out and fight. Statements as simple as that are necessary after our last twenty years of pacifism and materialism. Too many times young men have asked me why they should fight for a society they do not approve, a society which does not provide them with good jobs and a comfortable life. The answer is that if they do not understand now, Hitler will provide a sufficient explanation later, as the pacifist students of the University of Paris found out when the Germans occupied their city and shot a score of them as a lesson.

Hitler will make it plain that this is no class war. Hitler will make it clear that it is a simple tribal war of a brute soldier-state bent upon the subjugation of all other states and peoples, good, bad, or indifferent, and of all classes. The English have learned this is no class war and every kind of Englishman, rich and poor alike, are united now in one great fighting tribe. Our youth could learn from the example of the youth of conquered Europe that if they do not successfully defend their country, imperfect though it may be, they will be conquered and cast into slavery.

It would be useful to point out that this generation of American youth is alive and enjoying the privileges of this country because other young men years ago and centuries ago fought and defeated the enemies of America. It would clear up many a young soldier’s difficulties if he were given an explanation in the simplest language of the origins and issues of the war. Many of them hardly know the bare facts of who is fighting whom. The American soldier has a right to be given the overwhelming evidence that Germany intends to destroy the American form of life, and subjugate us if she can; and that just now while Britain and Russia are absorbing so much German energy is the best time for us to defend ourselves by the only method of defense that has ever succeeded, by attack; by striking with all the power we possess at the enemy while he is still far from our shores. The American soldier should understand that much as we may wish for it, there is little hope that Britain and Russia alone could defeat the mighty German war machine, built as it was during the nine years while we slept. He should understand that this means we must fight in Europe, help destroy the German Air Force, invade the continent, and finally occupy Germany; that this will require every available resource of muscle and money and brain and blood and several more years of war, but that the reward for this immense payment is the immense reward of freedom. The American soldier has a right to have outlined to him the kind of world Hitler would make if he won; and the kind of world we hope to make if we win. This is the ABC of war, and it is what our soldiers desperately need, but it is unlikely that they will get it until we go to war.

It takes a great deal of re-education to counter the last two decades of intellectual rule by our “Irresponsibles,”—professors, writers, artists, and scholars who debunked our past history and every ideal, taught that man’s economic life is all that matters, that soldiers are suckers, that we fought the last war for J. P. Morgan, and so on until bewildered American boys exclaimed: “My country owes me a living; I owe it nothing.” Yet that is not youth’s natural way. Hitler won the German youth not by offering them fun or comfort or material reward; he appealed to them to sacrifice themselves for their Fatherland, and they responded joyously, “like demons,” as Colonel Schieffer said. Nobody can persuade me that our American youth would not respond even more joyously to an honest appeal, but the appeal has to be clear, simple, ringing as the notes of a bugle in the morning. Let the cynics and the selfish jibe, but American youth will eventually respond to the call of President Roosevelt for the Four Freedoms, not just for themselves, but for all the world.

Q. But weren’t we suckers in the last war?

A. No, we were not suckers in the last war. By fighting and beating Germany in the last war, side by side with our Allies, we won twenty-three years of national independence.

Q. But didn’t we fight the last war to “make the world safe for democracy” and to “end all war”? We certainly failed to do either. Weren’t we suckers to have tried and failed?

A. Don’t you think it was worth while for us to gain the right to live in peace and freedom from 1918 to 1939 even if we failed to achieve our whole program? We did not fight the last war just “to make the world safe for democracy” or to “end all war.” We fought the last war primarily to make the world safe for the United States, and we succeeded in that for a good many years. The world has not been safe for democracy everywhere for a score of years, but only now do we find it necessary to fight again because only now has it become plain that the world is again no longer safe for the United States. In the last war we fought first to preserve America, second to make the world safe for democracy, and to end war. In this war we are fighting first to preserve America, second to establish the Four Freedoms everywhere we can, but we modestly refrain this time from announcing that we expect to end war. Instead we have much more practically declared that when we win we will disarm the nations that made this war.

Q. But what difference would it have made to us if we had not entered the last war at all?

A. It would have meant that the Germans probably would have won the war. The Commander in Chief of the Allies, Foch, and the actual Commander in Chief of the Germans, Ludendorff, both admitted that the American entry into the war was decisive. It was not that America “won the war,” but that without us the Allies could not have won.

Q. Suppose the Germans had won the last war; what difference would that have made to us?

A. If the Germans had won, we should certainly have had to fight them thereafter and fight them alone. We may have had a few years respite, long enough for the German Navy to become strong enough to challenge ours. The general situation today is parallel with the one in 1914-1918, except that Hitler’s Germany is much more powerful and evil than Hohenzollern Germany. Nevertheless Kaiser Wilhelm had the same ambition Hitler has. He believed also that the Germans were a master race, with a divine mission to rule the world. The Germans came late to nationhood, too late to receive “their share” of the colonies. This helped give them a bitter sense of resentment against a world which refused to recognize their superiority. This German belief that they are superior to everyone on earth is unfortunately strengthened by the fact that in this industrial age they are among the most talented of all peoples, and in the natural sciences superior to most others. They have proved themselves incorrigible except by force.

Q. Some people argue though, that Hitler actually wants the United States to come into the war, so that we would keep our war supplies, instead of sending them to England and to Russia. Is this true?

A. How could it ever have been true, since Hitler always, at any moment, could have brought us into the war if and when he wished. He has only to order one or more of his transatlantic submarines to come over and sink a few American ships in our territorial waters and even a pacifist Congress would vote war. A score of other easy devices have always been at his hand if he wanted war with us, but wished us to declare it. But why should he wish to bring against him the greatest single potential power, even if he thought that our entering formal war would cause us to withhold supplies from Britain and Russia? And what is there anyway to make anybody think that if we ever became sensible enough to go to war we would at the same time become so unintelligent as to cripple the war effort against our enemy? What point would there be in withholding supplies from Britain and Russia just because we had gone to war with Germany? Would we in the United States be in any more danger after having gone to war than before? No, we would actually be safer, since the safety afforded us by the British Fleet’s control of the Atlantic would now be augmented by removal of all limitation on the use of the extra power of our own Atlantic vessels. Suppose, however, that we thought it desirable for a time to curtail some shipments to the Allies while we filled in certain gaps in our own armament. Could this temporary diversion of strength outweigh the danger to Hitler of America’s strength in the long run?

I venture to say that this argument against our going to war has done as much harm as almost any other, and upon examination it seems it must have been of German origin, despite the fact that many a good American and even some good Englishmen have thoughtlessly repeated it. The person most competent to judge whether Hitler wants us in the war is Hitler. As I recently recollected when looking over some old clippings, Hitler in an interview in 1932 expressed it to me this way: “I was a soldier in the war and it was my conviction that without American participation on the side of the Allies, we would surely have won the war.” This is what he thought of America in the last war. You may be sure he thinks exactly the same of America in this war.

Q. But the Germans have frequently expressed not merely indifference but contempt of us, and have spoken as though they did not care whether we entered or not. Isn’t it then an exaggeration to say that our declaration of war would have such a tremendous effect on their morale?

A. No, because the Germans have expressed indifference to whether we enter the war only because they were absolutely convinced that we would not do so; when we do enter the war it will be an even greater shock than if they had anticipated it all the time. Our official behavior for a long time, and the utterances of our isolationists all the time, led the Nazis to believe we were really for peace at any price; that nothing, neither injury nor insult, could move us to war. When the first Neutrality Act was passed in August, 1935, the Germans, as I have recently been reminded by a friend who was in Berlin at the moment, chortled with glee, and editorials boasted that now Europe could settle its troubles secure from the meddlesome Yankee. No one can estimate how much influence this surrender of American rights had upon Hitler during that critical time when he was weighing his strength against all his possible enemies. The Germans are convinced we are a money-loving people and when the Johnson Act was passed, forbidding credit to any nation in default on payment of its debt to us, they exclaimed: “Now the Americans will never go to war again because they can’t make money out of it.”

The Johnson Act almost persuaded some Germans that we had changed sides, and Nazis revived their chatter about the essentially Germanic character of America. We Americans may be wishful thinkers, but the Germans, fortunately, are even more addicted to the vice than we. Goebbels’ control of the press promotes it. Every isolationist speech made is printed at length in the German newspapers and the voice of Lindbergh is taken as the voice of America. The re-election of Roosevelt was the first warning the German people had that America might act to defend herself. Now sensible Germans are beginning to be frightened. I know how the German people regard America. They call it the “land of unlimited possibilities.” It has always been the dreamland of the Germans, and if our immigration laws had permitted it, we should have had tens of millions of Germans coming to this country after the war. The tremendous size and economic power of America fascinate all classes of Germans; they have never forgotten the shock they received when, after the armistice in 1918, they learned for the first time what their government had concealed from them, that there were over two million American soldiers in France. Hitler tried to stamp out German admiration or regard for any foreign country, and doubtless German successes in this war have influenced the German attitude to a degree, but the fundamental element in German thought about America is their ineffaceable memory of the last war: “America joined our enemies; we lost. If America goes to war against us again, we cannot win.” It would be decisive.

Q. But where would we fight Germany? What is the good of America’s entering the war if there is no battleground?

A. We would fight her first where we are fighting her now, in the 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.