That’s all. That completes the offer of negotiated peace.
Q. Why do they call it a negotiated peace?
A. It is not “negotiated.” It is a dictated peace; it represents a complete Hitler victory but that is the only kind of negotiated peace he would consider until he is himself defeated.
Q. But is it possible that these are authentic, genuine terms of the Axis? It seems to me that the publication of such arrogant demands upon America was an undiplomatic step, contrary to the interests of the Axis, since it would be bound to arouse our indignation.
A. It was a “semi-official” publication of the Japanese Foreign Office at the very time when the then Foreign Minister Matsuoka advised Anthony Eden that Japan was ready to mediate a negotiated peace if she were requested to do so. Its authentic character can hardly be questioned. If it is arrogant it is because the Axis is arrogant, and considers that Britain is already beaten and that the United States was beaten before she began to fight. As the Japan Times Advertiser put it: “These may be called victors’ terms but the Axis powers have achieved a dominant position permitting liberty of dictation.” These terms could not be worse if we had entered the war and lost it. They would mean that from now on until perhaps centuries later when the Nazis shall have become soft and self-indulgent and until some new, rougher race arose to oust them, the Germans would rule the earth. For of course if Britain or America were to be willing to accept such terms it would prove they really were beaten.
During the period immediately after the signing of the negotiated peace which would be used by the Germans to consolidate and strengthen their military position, we should probably be allowed to retain our nominal sovereignty, although we should not be able to do anything in the realm of foreign politics or economics that was not permitted by Germany. During this period our Lindberghs would declaim that they had been right after all since we had not been invaded and we still elected our own president and still sang “God Bless America,” and still called ourselves the land of the free and home of the brave; and the Lindberghs would insist that the sacrifices we had made were far better than to have fought a war. But soon we should find that Hitler’s idea of “equality” in South America meant complete Nazi monopoly. Soon we should find we had lost all our world trade save that permitted us by the Axis with the Axis on Axis terms.
Q. Would the Nazi use of slave labor be an advantage? Can’t free American labor always produce better and cheaper than slave labor?
A. That is one of our popular fallacies. We proclaim this doctrine at the same time that we use tariffs to protect American industry from the products of foreign workers who receive lower wages than American workers. Japanese manufactured articles, the cheapest in the world because they are made by virtually slave labor, were able to flood our market in spite of our high tariffs. For ordinary mass production, for nearly every type of manufactured article save quality goods, slave labor is more profitable than free labor. If it is not so efficient, it makes up for that by being so much cheaper. If Hitler were to get his slave Europe organized, he could turn out products which would undersell anything we could make.
Q. Wouldn’t he try to make us take his goods also?
A. He would. We are talking now of the alternative to our going to war and defeating Hitler. We are visualizing the situation as it would be after Hitler had won, and had made all of those arrangements with the rest of the world which we have described, and was now in process of adjusting his Empire to the United States, or rather of adjusting the United States to his Empire. We are discussing now how we would have to behave if we wished to continue to be at peace with Hitler. We would of course have to make some kind of trade agreement with him. What kind of trade agreement do you think Hitler would propose? We can suppose he would offer us the same kind of agreement he has concluded with other states before they fell, or before they volunteered to become his vassals—the sort of agreements he had with Jugoslavia, or Greece, and with Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria. These agreements provide that German goods may enter at lower tariffs than the goods of other countries or that tariffs on German goods are abolished altogether, and usually the country concerned must promise to take a minimum quantity of whatever articles Germany wishes to export. If we hoped to have any kind of trade agreement with the victorious Germans at all, it would have to be one like this. We should probably have to consent to receive German goods in such quantities and at such prices that our own industry would step by step be ruined. This would be the German aim. They intend to make German industry not only the only industry in Europe, but the master of the manufacturing world. They intend to wreck any industry they cannot control.