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

by H. R. Knickerbocker

You recollect the President was asked why Lindbergh, who was given a reserve commission in the Army Air Corps after his flight to Paris, had not been called into active service. The President replied that during the Civil War both sides let certain people go; that is, did not call them into service.

He said the people who were thus ignored were the Vallandighams, and explained that the Vallandighams were the people who from 1863 on, urged immediate peace, arguing that the North could not win the war between the states. The President’s reference to Vallandigham sent many to their reference books where they found that Clement Laird Vallandigham, an Ohio Congressman “in 1863, made violent speeches against the administration and was arrested by the military authorities, tried by military commission and sentenced to imprisonment. President Lincoln commuted his sentence to banishment and Vallandigham was sent into the Confederate lines, whence he made his way to Canada.”

President Roosevelt was choosing his word carefully, in order to get the precise shade of meaning attributed to it. The President apparently tried to find in American history as accurate a parallel to the Lindbergh case as possible. His choice was significant. It would be interesting to know if the President had in mind that when this country is formally at war with Germany we shall incarcerate or deport members of the community who for whatever reason and with whatever motives hinder the prosecution of the war. The expulsion of Vallandigham to the enemy’s territory raises the question of the physical possibility as well as the political expediency of deporting our Fifth Columnists to German-controlled territory after we are formally at war. Few of us will dispute the desirability of just such a radical solution.

Lindbergh replied to the President by resigning his commission in a letter saying, “I had hoped that I might exercise my right as an American citizen to place my viewpoint before the people of my country in time of peace without giving up the privilege of serving my country as an Air Corps officer in the event of war.” Thereafter many professional critics of the President accused him of having attempted to gag Lindbergh. But the very opposite is the case since if the President had wanted to shut Lindbergh’s mouth, all he had to do was to call him to active service where the rule is universal that serving officers may not make public political statements.

It should be remembered that Lindbergh, although a reserve officer, had violently attacked his Commander in Chief’s actions in the field of foreign policy, which naturally involves military affairs, and this could certainly be regarded as a breach of discipline in the spirit if not in the letter of the officers’ code. If President Roosevelt had wished not only to muzzle, but to discipline Lindbergh, nothing would have been easier than for the President to have ordered the Colonel to duty in some obscure, remote, or unpleasant post, a frequent method of discipline in the armed services of all countries. But the President did nothing of the sort. On the contrary, by accepting Lindbergh’s resignation he released the flyer from any hindrance to the free speech which he has since been exercising so vigorously.

But Lindbergh is far more dangerous to American security than was Vallandigham a danger to the Union in our Civil War. Lindbergh is already the avowed candidate of our enormous crop of Copperheads for the Presidency of the United States. He has the applause of the enemies of democracy and of the United States throughout the world. A Belgian businessman, a devout “collaborationist” with the Nazis, told a friend of mine recently, “Lindbergh will be the next President of the United States. He could get along splendidly with Hitler. We are all for him.” By “We” this Belgian meant the entire herd of Hitler followers, from his own disciplined legions to the servile rabble of Vichy France and the Copperheads of the United States. Whether Lindbergh welcomes it or not, he has the enthusiastic applause of the Nazi Bund, the Fascist societies, and of all the most violently antidemocratic groups in this country, from the followers of Father Coughlin to the most eccentric Kluxers.

Q. But are we being fair to Lindbergh in calling him a Copperhead and a Fifth Columnist? Didn’t you say yourself that there is nothing to be gained by abusing him?

A. Yes, I maintain there is nothing to be gained by abusing him, but there is much to be gained by identifying him. Nobody has done it any better than the country’s wittiest enemy of our enemies, Alexander Woollcott, in his “Voice from a Cracker Barrel” broadcast, when he said: “By the pledges of both candidates in the last election, by the testimony of every poll yet taken by Dr. Gallup, by the action of our representatives in Congress and of the President himself, we pledged full aid to England. Ex-Colonel Lindbergh now argues that this assistance be withdrawn.

“He wants us to break our promise in the matter, to run out on the British, and, so curious is his mentality, he thinks to encourage us in such base desertion by assuring us that England is going to be defeated. On this point he may be right. I would not know about that. Neither would he. If the words of our retired eagle ever reach as far as England, Mr. Churchill must derive some comfort from his knowledge that all fighters in a tight place have heard such talk since the world began. Among Washington’s discomforts during the long winter at Valley Forge was the repeated prediction from the Lindberghs of his day that he didn’t have a chance. Yes, Lindbergh keeps announcing the doom of England, and always his statement is received with cheers and bursts of applause. This gives you a rough idea of what kind of people bulk large in his mass meetings.

“For here is a fact which Lindbergh and his colleagues of the America First Committee must face. Whether they admit it or not, whether they like it or not, whether, indeed, that is any part of their purpose, they are working for Hitler. Have you any doubt—any doubt at all—that Hitler would have been glad to pay Lindbergh an immense amount, millions, for the work he has done in the past year?