The Pittsburgh Press (November 3, 1941)
Says safety of U.S. demands Neutrality Act repeal
Editor, The Pittsburgh Press:
The Neutrality Act serves no one but Hitler. It keeps American ships out of combat zones and belligerent ports, but German submarines repeatedly torpedo and sink ships flying the American flag in non-combat areas. No ship is safe anywhere on the Atlantic.
Self-preservation is the first law of nature on the sea as well as on land. For the sacred right of self-defense, merchant vessels should be armed. Even Hamilton Fish, the ardent isolationist, voted for this change in the Neutrality Act.
To escape Hitler’s piracy, the United States would have to surrender the freedom of the seas even in non-combat areas. But such an unprecedented act would not mean peace for the United States. Hitler wages war for the domination of oceans as well as countries. Once in control of the Atlantic, he would soon attempt an invasion of America.
If Russia does not hold out and England falls, we would have to submit to Hitler slavery or go to war alone against Germany’s war machine augmented by the combined naval and air forces of the vanquished nations.
Hitler may win the war if the Neutrality Act is not repealed or drastically revised. He can’t win against mass American production and American ships carrying supplies to the nations fighting Hitlerism.
Hitler will never reach our shores if the Neutrality Act is soon repealed or modified.
FRED C. MURPHY
Parma Heights, OH
Rep. Marcantonio explains remarks
Editor, The Pittsburgh Press:
On Oct. 22, you published an account by Thomas L. Stokes of remarks I made to the House of Representatives. Since Mr. Stokes based his account on a section of one paragraph of a fairly long address, and since this section was quoted out of context, I am sending you this letter.
I have always opposed and I continue to oppose all types of Fascism and imperialism without regard to national characteristic. My position on the war has been entirely consistent with this opposition to imperialism and Fascism, opposition to war for empire, opposition to war for the purpose of exploiting people.
A great change in the character of the war took place when Hitler invaded Soviet Russia and in my remarks to the House I set forth some of the facts upon which I base this opinion, facts which Mr. Stokes evaded completely in his account. I stated that:
The first reason [for the change in the war] is one of geography. A look at the map will demonstrate that a conquered Soviet Union would place a Nazi military bridgehead within rowboat distance of our northwestern shopres, Alaska. Secondly, in the world of 1940 and the early part of 1941, Hitler could not move against the Western Hemisphere. We were not in military danger so long as Hitler had on his eastern boundary a powerful, well-armed Soviet Union…
Imagine a world with a conquered Soviet Russia, commanded by Hitler, with all of the natural and industrial resources of the Soviet Union, with its tremendous oil reserves, with everything that Hitler needs to carry on his program of world conquest…
Further, let us examine the situation in the East for a moment. It is bad enough that we have to deal with a Fascist Japan, serving a Fascist ideology and Japanese Fascist interests, but imagine what kind of a Japan we would be dealing with if the Soviet Union were conquered. It would place Japan, from a military standpoint, in the same position that Mussolini was placed by the conquest of Austria. italy became a Nazi-dominated peninsula, playing Hitler’s game from A to Z… A Nazi-dominated, Fascist Japan would be ready to do the bidding of Adolf Hitler in his moves against the United States.
These are only a few of the facts which I presented to prove that a Hitler conquest of the Soviet Union would be a direct and dangerous threat to the United States, to our liberty and our independence. Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union has created this direct and dangerous threat.
Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union therefore makes it essential that we in the United States, in our own national interests, give aid to the Soviet Union and all other nations fighting Hitler. There exists today, a military threat to the United States which did not exist before June 22 when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.
I submit that it is not I, but the war which Hitler is waging, which has changed.
VITO MARCANTONIO
House Representative NY-20
Editor’s note:
Mr. Stokes’ article pointed out that Rep. Marcantonio voted against every appropriation for national defense, and every policy designed to aid Britain, up to the day when Germany attacked Russia.
All evildoers get ‘reward’
Editor, The Pittsburgh Press:
All cheaters, crooks and thieves get their reward. It’s coming to them soon. The world is still a paradise but the people in it are going from bad to worse. There is no love for God and neighbor but only selfishness. It is high time to get rid of unworthy rulers and teachers who keep the people in ignorance of the truth for Mammon’s sake.
SENTA HORL
811 Woodward Ave.
McKees Rocks, PA
Satan’s empire is toppling now
Editor, The Pittsburgh Press:
Empires have come and gone in this world but the greatest empire of all time, Satan’s, is toppling now. Oh, I know there are millions of people scoff at the idea of a devil. But some evil genius has led humanity astray and made of the earth what we have instead of the paradise it could be.
Anyone can see how easy it is to lead the masses. Look at the millions that follow Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and other world leaders. They love and die for them. So people could be led just as easy in the right direction as in the wrong way and the leaders have been sincere enough. But they have been deceived, for it is still true by their fruits they shall be known.
Those who have had the riches and privileges that go with wealth and the glory are crying the loudest now, because they see these things slipping from them. And of course, just to rely on old human nature alone to run the affairs of this world they can’t see it would be any better with the poor in power than the rich. The poor don’t do so well now just among themselves.
The only hope as I see it is Christ’s kingdom on this earth. And it is coming, the time is here for it. Such a great change is bound to bring trouble in a world that does not know what it is all about.
BELL LEAKE
Frank, PA
Defends his stand as isolationist
Editor, The Pittsburgh Press:
Why do our President and the puppets of this Administration – Ickes, Hull, Wickard, Stimson, Knox, Pepper, Willkie, etc. – scream to high heaven against any proposition for peace or arbitration of the wholesale murder going on in the Eastern Hemisphere? Where is their humanity and vaunted Christianity when they insist that more millions of young boys, men and also women and children must still continue to be murdered?
The only answer is that they are afraid they will lose their fat incomes and jobs of power. They would sacrifice the lives and blood of our boys willingly to retain this dictatorship status.
They have discarded majority public opinion, but only for the present. We will see the time when they will be down to digging ditches along with the rest of us then we will get back representative government and start at scratch together.
How can they be so short sighted that they can’t see that their underhanded maneuvers to get us into this Foreign War, if accomplished, will bring rebellion here at home? Those kind of tactics brought on the French Revolution.
Their chicanery, unfairness and dishonesty has caused me, a Democrat, to lose confidence in the whole Administration and I will never vote the ticket again. Many more lifelong Democrats feel the same disgust.
IRA E. MATTHEWS
Coalport, PA