Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (October 2, 1941)
DOROTHY THOMPSON SAYS —
War and peace
War
Before suspending this column for four weeks of vacation, it seems fitting to analyze a little more completely the basic issues of our day, which are war and peace. Actually, war and peace are part of the same issue, which is that of America’s role in the world of today and tomorrow.
We are in danger of timidly and conventionally going to war over incidents, instead of over fundamental issues. If we do so, we are likely to compromise the cause for which we fight, and confound confusion, both at home and amongst the peoples of the world.
The basic question is not whether the Nazis sink our ships carrying out goods in waters we have declared to be essential to American defense. The basic question is whether the United States can preserve its institutions, insure its prosperity, and maintain its equality as a great nation if the Nazis, allied with the Italian fascists and the Japanese, control Europe, Asia and Africa – that is to say, nine-tenths of the earth, and the strategic points on all the oceans and seas.
The question is whether, were Britain defeated or forced into a peace of collaboration, we could ever demobilize our armed forces, or be safe from blockade, and from political, economic, and eventually armed intervention in Latin America on the side of anti-American revolutionary movements there.
The answer to these questions cannot be awaited. The answer is a matter of judgment and statesmanship. If, on the basis of the existing evidence and in considered reason, the answer to these questions is that our institutions would be imperiled by a Nazi victory, that we would be exposed to blockade, that Nazi intervention in the Western Hemisphere, already vast, would become aggressive and virulent under the spur of victory over the Old World; if, in cool judgment it is foreseen that we should be unable to demobilize, unable to take the initiative, and be confronted by a hostile power and counter-revolutionary movement in possession of vastly greater material resources, industrial potential, ship-building and plane-building facilities, and trained manpower than we possess it could mobilize – if this is what is foreseen – then we should go to war and go under the best possible conditions, while we have Britain and Russia as allies.
And if we go to war, we should go to war because we foresee what would happen in case of a Nazi victory, and because we do not intend to allow it to happen. And we should go to war, not only in defense of the United States, but in defense of humanity, for the noblest of causes and the loftiest of arms.
No one, who is not able in his own mind to answer these basic questions, has the right to appeal to or harangue the people of the United States on behalf of this course or that one.
If there are those who believe, with conviction, that this country can live, prosper, engage with absolute equality in commerce and political relations with all countries, enjoy its historic freedom from militarism, maintain its traditional liberties, and pursue its destiny with the Nazis in control of the rest of the world – if there are those who so believe then it is their duty to counsel this country to keep out of war.
If there are those who believe that a Nazi victory over Russia and Britain, with the repercussions of that victory in the Far East, in Canada, and in South America, would put the United States in a position of disastrous isolation, then it is their duty to counsel the people of this nation to take up arms.
So far there are very few persons in public life who are willing to give a candid answer to these questions and draw the clear conclusion from it, one way or the other.
Mr. Hoover counsels us to keep out of war, not because he thinks a Nazi victory would be a matter of indifference, but because he thinks Britain, Russia, and the revolt of the subject populations of Europe will defeat Hitler without us. This seems to me to be the most pusillanimous and unrealistic of attitudes. The continuation of the British resistance against great odds, and the very revolt of the subject populations, is stimulated and maintained by the conviction that America will not let Hitler win. Should doubt arise on this question, the entire constellation of things would change, and a worldwide crisis of appalling dimensions would be precipitated immediately. Indeed, it is not outside the range of possibilities that the entire Old World achieve some sort of artificial unity on the basis of its hatred of the New World.
For the Nazis have always regarded the United States as their greatest ideological enemy, and the struggling and oppressed peoples would certainly be propagandized into the view that the United States had proved an unreliable, false, and craven friend.
Among the isolationists, only Mr. Lindbergh has, it seems to me, really faced these questions. He, also, has not raised or faced them publicly, but there are things in his speeches that indicate that the man who refuses to explain himself knows what he is doing. Unless I have utterly misread his speeches, and I do not think I have for they have always had a very familiar ring, Mr. Lindbergh wants us to buy our way into Nazi graves, and share the world with them under a Führer and an American Nazism of our own.
Leaving aside the fact that this would mean the end of the America of Jefferson and Lincoln, it is also, I believe, highly unrealistic. For in such a setup we should be a very weak junior partner, and weak junior partners become subservient or are liquidated.
At any rate, these are the questions that Americans must answer, and they must answer them courageously, regardless of whether the conclusion to which they come is pleasant, or likely to make them unpopular. The business of patriots in a moment like this is not to be popular, but to be right.
And if we fight, let us fight for fundamental things; let us fight for the basic issue of freedom and equality, as between persons and nations. Let us not fight over “incidents.”