The moment we become realistic about our independence we will be able to collaborate effectively with other nations. We got a few lessons in realistic dealings in 1941—lend-lease and the trade for the naval bases were blunt, statesmanlike but most undiplomatic—moves to strengthen the British fleet, to extend our own area of safety, and to give us time against the threat of Japan. They protected our independence, but they also compromised it; the British by any concession to Japan might have weakened us; we took the risk, and our action was in effect an act of defensive war against Germany. Like Jefferson, buying Louisiana to protect us against any foreign power across the Mississippi, President Roosevelt acted under dire necessity and as Jefferson (not Roosevelt) put it, was not too deeply concerned with Constitutionality. The situation in 1941 required not only the bases but the continued functioning of the British fleet in the Atlantic; and we got what we needed.
The economic agreement of 1942 is probably a greater invasion of our simon-pure independence of action; although it empowers a post-war President to decide how much of lend-lease was returned by valor in the field, it specifically binds us to alter our tariff if Britain can induce its Commonwealth of Nations to give up the system of "imperial preference". All our tariffs are horsetrades and the most-favored nation is a sweet device; but heretofore we have not bartered our tariffs in advance. Certainly a post-war economic union is in the wind; certainly we will accept it if it comes to us piecemeal, by agreements and joint-commissions and international resolutions which are not binding, but are accepted and become as routine as the law of copyright which once invaded our sacred national right to steal or the international postal union which gave us the right to send a letter to any country for five cents.
When we think of the future our minds are clouded by memory of the League; we are psychologically getting ready to accept or reject the League all over again. We are worried over the form—will it be Geneva again or will headquarters be in Washington; will Germany have a vote; will we have to go to war if the Supreme Council tells us to. These are important if we are actually going to reconstitute the League; but if we are not, the only question is what we want the new world organization to do. In keeping with our political tradition we will pretend that we want it to do as little as possible and put upon it all the work we are too lazy to do ourselves; but even the minimum will be enough.
Everything points to an economic council representing the free nations of the world; the lease-lend principles in time of peace may be invoked, as Harold Laski has suggested, to provide food and raw materials for less favored nations; and the need for "economic sanctions" will not be lost on the nation which supplied Japan with scrap-iron and oil for five years of aggression against China and then was repaid at Pearl Harbor.
If there is any wisdom—in the people or in their leaders—we will not have a formulated League to accept or reject; we will have a series of agreements (such as we have had for generations) covering more and more subjects, with more and more nations. We have drawn up treaties and agreements with twenty South American States, with forty-six nations united for liberty; we can draw up an agreement with Russia and Rumania and the Netherlands so that England and the Continent and China get oil; and another agreement may give us tungsten; we may have to take universal action to stop typhus—and no one will be an isolationist then. If the war ends by a series of uprisings we may be establishing temporary governments as part of our military strategy. Slowly the form of international cooperation will be seen; by that time it will be familiar to us—and we will see that we have not lost our independence, but have gained our liberty.
We began the war with one weapon: liberty. If we fight the war well, we will begin the long peace with two: liberty and production. With them we will not need to rule the world; with them the world will be able to rule itself. All we have to do is to demonstrate the best use of the instruments—and to let others learn.
Before our part in the war began, it was often suggested that America would feed and clothe Europe, send medicine and machinery to China, and make itself generally the post-war stockpile of Democracy as it had been the arsenal and treasury during the war; and the monotonous uncrushing answer was about "the money". Realities of war have blown "the money" question into atoms; no sensible person pretends that there is a real equation between our production and money value; we can't in any sense "afford" bombers and battleships; if we stopped to ask where "the money" would come from, and if the question were actually relevant, we would have to stop the war.
Another actuality of war relieves us of the danger of being too generous—the actuality of rubber and tin and tungsten and all the other materials critical to production in peace time. Since we will have to rebuild our stocks of vital goods, our practical men will see to it that we get as well as give; we may send food to Greece and get rubber from Java, but on the books we will not be doing too badly.
Neither money nor the bogey of a balance of trade is going to decide our provisioning of Europe and Asia; the cold necessity of preventing revolution and typhus will force us to rebuild and re-energize; in the end, like all enlargements of the market, this will repay us. The rest of the world will know a great deal about mass production by the end of the war: Indians and Australians will be expert at interchangeable parts; but we will have the immeasurable advantage of our long experience on which the war has forced us to build a true productive system. We will jump years ahead of our schedule of increase and improvement because of the war; and we will be able to face any problem of production—if we want to, or have to. The choice between people's lives and the gold standard will have to be made again, as it was by many nations in the 1930's; only this time the choice is not without a threat. After wars, people are accustomed to bloodshed; they prefer it to starvation.