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.