Reading Eagle (February 3, 1941)
DOROTHY THOMPSON SAYS –
Footnote to Colonel Lindbergh
Under the title “The Lindbergh Doctrine of American Defense,” Mr. Lippmann write a lucid and brilliant article on Thursday to prove the fallacy of Colonel Lindbergh’s reasoning on air versus sea power. I hope that Mr. Lippmann’s article has been carefully read several times over by all the members of Congress…Mr. Lippmann took up Col. Lindbergh’s actual testimony before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House and answered it incontrovertibly from history and in logic.
But Col. Lindbergh’s reasoning is as fallacious in the things he does not take acco8nt of as in the things he counts. There is nothing in any of his speeches to indicate that he is conscious of the power and pull of economic factors.
And this is where a Western Hemisphere policy such as he advocates – America for the Americans – would break down even if, or when, the seapower of the United States were equal to that of the triple Axis plus Great Britain.
We cannot furnish a market for South American products. The United States does not have consumers for those products. The consumers for those millions of tons of wheat, corn, meat, copper and cotton are neither in the 90 million who are the total number of inhabitants of the South American continent nor in the 130 million of the United States nor in the 11 million of Canada – all of whom have wheat, corn, meat and copper already.
The consumers are in Europe: In the 396 millions of that overcrowded, highly industrialized peninsula of Asia – western Europe, exclusive of Russia.
Every year, Europe purchases South American products to the tune of $2.5 billion. Every year, the United States purchases South American products to the tune of $200-300 million. Every year, Europe sells manufactured goods for South America for over $1 billion and the United States sells for $600 million. But we can sell only if South America has the money with which to buy. And that money she must get as the result of the turnover of all of her trade.
Now if the Nazis win in Europe, they will, at one stroke, have become South America’s sole, greatest and absolutely indispensable European customer, as South America is an absolutely indispensable source of certain foods and raw materials for Europe. And if the United States attempts to interfere with or cut down that trade we shall become the worst enemy of South America.
South American ports will be crowded with German ships; Nazi commercial, technical and eventually, military advisers will be in every South American republic. To keep in with these Nazi representatives will be a necessity for every South American government, and the end will be a series of Nazi states south of the Rio Grande.
With extreme rapidity, the Latin-American states will be as peacefully penetrated, reorganized and reoriented by the Master of Europe, plus his Italian and Spanish satellites, as Spain itself has been.
Now, what are we going to do about all this, even if we have seapower and airpower to burn? Are we going to go down and blast out the Nazis by force? Then we shall become an “aggressor nation” and Germany will become “the defender of Latin-American independence.”
The Nazis won’t have to invade Latin America; they will be invited in to defend Latin-American freedom, trade and prosperity against “the Colossus of the North!”
And against the “menace” airdromes built by the Nazis for “purely commercial purposes” will shortly be supplied by the Nazis with bombers and fighters.
The independence of Latin America has always been guaranteed by the United States plus Great Britain.
When the Monroe Doctrine, which was formulated by the United States and Great Britain, was under discussion, it was submitted to Jefferson, who sent President Monroe the following memorandum on it:
America, North and South, has a set of interests distinct from those of Europe. She should, therefore, have a system of her own, separate and apart from that of Europe. While Europe is laboring to become the domicile of despotism, our endeavor should surely be to make our hemisphere that of freedom. One nation [Great Britain] could most of all disturb us in that pursuit; but she now offers to lead, aid and accompany us in it. By acceding to her proposition, we detach her from the bands, bring her mighty weight into the scale of free government and emancipate a continent at a stroke…. With her, then, we should most sedulously cherish a cordial friendship, and nothing would more knit our affections than to be fighting once more, side by side, in the same cause. Not that I would purchase her amity by taking part in her wars. But the war in which the present proposition might engage in is not her war, but ours.
Thus Jefferson admits that the Monroe Doctrine originated in London and that it involved on Britain’s part the risk of war, which however, would not be Britain’s war, but ours.
Should Britain lose the war to the Nazis, a feature of American policy that has been supported by Britain for over 100 years would go into the ash can. Not only would we be incompetent to defend it alone in a hostile world, but we should be unable to hinder the inexorable pull of economic interest and of cultural interest between a German-monopolized Fascist Europe and Latin America.
The fall of Britain would mean the encirclement of the United States, north, south, east and west; the end of our position of unparalleled land and oceanic power, and either capitulation or war under the most unfavorable possible conditions.
Col. Lindbergh’s viewpoint shows a complete lack of knowledge of history and of naval;, economic and cultural factors. His personal biases are quite unimportant; whether or not he has sympathy with the Nazi system of politics is quite unimportant. His program would mean the end of the freedom and equality of the United States as a great nation.