WAR & PEACE: Story of a Tide

WAR & PEACE

(See Cover) Last week William Allen White sat on the porch of his cabin in Rocky Mountain National Park—as he has almost every summer for the last 30 years—and stared thoughtfully at the vast expanse of Longs Peak that rises in the southern distance.

The weather always comes up on the other side of that mountain. The White cabin stands at 9,000 ft. above sea level; Longs Peak rises in its square-topped majesty 5,255 ft. above that; and north and south the peaks of the Rockies repeat like mirrored reflections in the depthless blue air —the Never Summer Range on the Continental Divide, Mount Alice and Flattop, Estes Cone and Specimen, Thunderbolt, Mummy, Sawtooth and Nimbus—some of the more than 10,000-ft. mountains that lie within the Park and give it the peaceful air of being the top of the world.

The old Kansas editor, wearing the grey tweed suit and grey cap that he always wears in the mountains, looking more than ever like an apple dumpling with a smile carved into its outer crust, beamed on his mountain neighbors. The nights were growing cool. When William Allen White left Emporia with Mrs. White two weeks ago, the thermometer stood at 105° on the bleached Kansas plain; here he needed his topcoat ; the snows of October were on the way. Now elk grazed in the meadow before the house at sundown.

In the entire U. S. there would seem no spot less disturbed by World War II, no site better fitted for a Shangri-La, if one could be found anywhere, than the high, autumnal fortress of Rocky Mountain Park. And if there was one U. S. citizen who seemed entitled to meditate on the mountains, undisturbed by the war, it was the genial, autumnal William Allen White, 72, editor of the Emporia Gazette for 45 years, onetime novelist, commentator, amateur politician but now chairman of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies.

Last week there were few spots in the U. S. that did not hear the reverberations of the war, few citizens whose lives were not disturbed by it. In his mountain cabin Editor White often pushed his way through the rocking chairs in the front room to the old, buzzing wall telephone —to talk to Committee members in far cities, to consult with some of his 20 advisers on the Committee’s next step. Last year during his mountain stay the U. S. waited, alarmed but unbelieving, for Adolf Hitler to plunge into Poland and launch the War. Last week it waited for a blow nearer home—for the full force of the Nazi onslaught to fall on the British Isles. No longer was it necessary last week for William Allen White or the Committee to argue that the U. S. had a vital interest in the way the war turned out. There had never been any doubt that the overwhelming mass of U. S. citizens hoped for a British victory. But there still remained big arguments and deep doubts about what the U. S. as a nation could and should do to help Britain win. In Editor White’s view, his Committee functioned to give citizens a chance to speak for the things they wanted done.

Last week the Committee, winding up its first 84 days, had gone far:

>Had 550 chapters throughout the U. S., with over 10,000 active members.

> Had shipped to the White House and Congress petitions—bearing some 3,000,000 signatures—urging aid of different kinds: the sale of World War destroyers to Britain, the release of as many U. S. planes and guns as possible without injuring national defense, assistance in bringing refugee children to America.

> Organized a Woman’s Division, to be set up in each of the 3,070 counties in the U. S.

> Set out to raise $150,000 to carry on its activities through the fall, and gave an accounting of its finances to date: $131,543.56. Touchy since Senator Rush Holt linked it with Wall Street, the Committee reported it had received 4,666 gifts, 3,000 of them under $10, only two for more than $1,000. (When the Committee was first organized. Chairman White endorsed two checks for $500 each, one from J. P. Morgan, one from Labor Leader David Dubinsky.)

> Organized an Aviation Division, with 30 pilots for a starter, including Rear Admiral Byrd, Bernt Balchen. Clyde Pangborn, Roscoe Turner, to publicize the Committee with a nationwide air tour.

> Opened a second office in Chicago, a new branch in Seattle, held a rally for 10,000 at Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, sent out a Youth Caravan of young speakers to plead for aid to Britain in 45 New York and New England towns.

Destroyers. But the Committee’s chief remaining objective remained: to secure the U. S. release of 50 World War I destroyers to plug the biggest gap in British defenses. When General Pershing urged it as a measure of U. S. security (TIME, Aug. 12), prompt objection came from Columnist Hugh Johnson, who pointed out that his old commanding officer and No. 1 hero among U. S. military men was a great general, but no expert on the sea. Last week two retired sea dogs, under the White Committee’s auspices, added their voices to General Pershing’s: Rear Admiral Harry Yarnell, Commander in Chief of the Asiatic Fleet from 1936 until he reached the retirement age of 64 last year, and Admiral William Standley, Chief of Naval Operations from 1933 to 1937. Said Admiral Yarnell at a White Committee rally at Boston: “If Britain loses the war, we will face years of danger, with our nation converted into a huge armed camp. . . .”

The question of destroyer sales to Britain was entangled in naval, legal, international complications before General Pershing finished his appeal. International, unpredictable Senator Key Pittman, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, came out with another idea. This time he favored trading the destroyers for “a few British battleships.”

Naval: Major George Fielding Eliot, who has long urged all possible aid to Britain, hedged on the question of destroyers, asked for expert opinion on the central risk: “the only competent authority . . . is the President of the U. S., after carefully weighing the advice of the War and Navy Departments.”

Legal: The Law Journal editorialized that General Pershing’s proposal, “however sound and wise and prudent,” was illegal under the statute of June 15, 1917. Promptly four lawyers including onetime Under Secretary of the Treasury Dean Acheson, rebutted with a contrary legal opinion.

The White Committee based its case on a simple argument. It wanted destroyers released so that they could give the utmost service for U. S. defense. The bargain was no trade, as suggested by Senator Pittman, no question of strategy, as raised by Major Eliot, no legal labyrinth. Said William Allen White: “If the British Empire, with all the weight of its democratic economic power and its military strength and naval force, should fall, the United States would be alone in a warlike world. . . . If war is not checked and thwarted in Great Britain, war will come inevitably to the United States. Because our first line of defense lies around the coast of Britain, in this crisis, we should turn to Great Britain in her hour of danger and agony with such neighborly help as public opinion in the United States may seem legally to justify. . . . Whoever is fighting for liberty is defend ing America.”

Most of all, the White Committee wanted to turn sympathy for Britain into effective action, to overcome the greatest of aid to dictators — delay, and in Editor White’s mind that was to test within the U. S. itself the strength of democratic sentiment, making use of democratic procedures to aid an endangered democracy.

To Chairman White democracy was not only legislative forms and procedures : “In every human heart are two conflicting forces, the altruistic urge and the egoistic instinct . . . the yearning to give and the desire to get. . . . [If] in any human unit, be it home or community . . . men are more kindly, decent, and reasonable than mean . . . then that human unit, large or small, is democratic. . . . But if . . . [it] is greedy, if it is suspicious of everything without and credulous of everything with in . . . turns to force to hold its place and win its way, then that social order . . . must turn to a tyrant for its hero and leader.” Democracy, “awkward, sluggish, often sadly wasteful,” nevertheless gives the freest play to the “common kindly impulse of organized humanity,” but it will only survive if the democratically trained citizen — “naturally a bit lazy, instinctively inclined to improvidence, by birthright glad to let well enough alone” — decides in his heart that the democratic way of life is a good way.

Public Opinion. Last year when William Allen White returned to Emporia from the Rockies, like many another citizen he was brooding on the question: What case could democracy make for itself to justify its own survival? He followed his accustomed path from his house on Exchange Street to the Gazette offices off Commercial, spoke to his neighbors, squared off for work before a desk that shed old letters, mementos, galleys, gifts, ideas, books and last year’s calendars like some queer surrealistic fruit tree ready to drop its harvest. His thoughts were gloomy, but no trace of gloom showed on his round cherubic features which, he says, make him look like a rear view of Cupid and prevent his being taken as a serious thinker. He went home for the dinner that in Emporia comes at noon. After dinner he stretched out on his double mahogany bed that stands beneath three ivy-shaded windows, put two pillows under his head, and slept.

How rapidly had democracy awakened to the totalitarian challenge? Had it actually awakened at all? Five years ago polls of public opinion showed that most U. S. citizens cared little about foreign affairs, had few opinions about other countries. In 1935 the FORTUNE Survey found citizens least friendly toward Germany (17.3%) and most friendly toward England (28.6%) but 51% made no distinction among foreign powers. Two years later 31% listed Germany as the country they liked least. When the Munich crisis shifted the course of European history, it shifted the course of U. S. public thought. When it was past 56.3% answered Yes when asked: “Should democratic powers now stand firm together at any cost? . . .”

Belief that the U. S. should aid neither side went down as fast: 65.6% in September 1939; 24.7% the next month. As the war went on (although 40.1% believed that Germany would win, and 30.3% thought the Allies would), U. S. public desire to give more aid to Britain increased, despite the greater peril. At the time of the Republican Convention, 34.2% wanted the U. S. to give more aid; 57.4% believed that the U. S. should do no more. Three weeks later 53% wanted the U. S. to give more.

As public sentiment mounted by stages, so William Allen White was drafted by stages to take an active part in converting opinion into action. When the Congressional debate on repeal of the Neutrality Act was at its height, his old friend Clark Eichelberger, director of The League of Nations Association, called him from Manhattan, asked him to head a committee to advocate repeal of the embargo. Editor White steadfastly refused, but Eichelberger induced other friends to press him, and White finally made several speeches. In Emporia when repeal was certain, he received a two-word telegram from Franklin Roosevelt: “Thanks, Bill.”

When Adolf Hitler moved his troops into Norway, U. S. public opinion welled up again. Republican White, Kansas delegate to three Republican Conventions, hustled to Manhattan to try to keep an isolationist plank out of the Republican platform. On May 1, when the Allies were still struggling in Norway, he sat in his favorite Manhattan haunt—the venerable National Arts Club on Gramercy Park—debating ways & means of converting pro-Ally sentiment into increased Allied aid. On May 6—when Chamberlain was on his way out over the Norwegian failure—White drafted a brief statement, left it with Eichelberger, returned to Emporia.

On May 19, when Germany had broken through the Low Countries, he telephoned Eichelberger: “I think it’s about time to act.” His appeal went out to 60 men—Governors, college presidents, editors, a sprinkling of actors, lawyers, writers and one prize fighter (Gene Tunney): “From this day on, America must spend every ounce of energy to keep the war away from the Western Hemisphere by preparing to defend herself and by aiding with our supplies and wealth the nations now fighting to stem the tide of aggression. . . .” Next day 20 telegrams of acceptance hit the Emporia Gazette office in one hour; the Western Union office two blocks away stayed open overtime to handle Committee business. In 35 days a Historians’ Committee had been set up under President Charles Seymour of Yale; a Scientists’ Committee under Nobel Prizewinner Harold Urey; a Theatre Committee under Robert Sherwood, who drafted a “Stop Hitler” advertisement and raised $25,000 to have it printed. The day after the advertisement appeared, 500 volunteers appeared at Committee headquarters in Manhattan. The week that Italy entered the war, 5,000 swarmed to the Manhattan office to urge increased Allied aid.

But no more positively than last spring could U. S. opinion on World War II be said to be clarified. Hard-working Committee volunteers found plenty of support, but they also found the familiar U. S. dilemma—a desire to aid Britain, coupled with a desire to shun all contact with war. They found that some are afraid of war. if aid is given some afraid of losing it—by letting Britain lose—if aid is denied.

In this strange spectacle of the U. S. wrestling mentally with a problem of world policy, nothing is stranger than the sight of William Allen White, an editor from a small city in Kansas, leading the argument. The kind of U. S. which Editor White has known and believes in has been traced in his innumerable Emporia Gazette editorials, in his 14 books that included The Court of Boyville in 1899 and wound up with The Changing West last year. It is primarily a land of small cities and small towns a good deal like Emporia, each with a broad business street, usually called Commercial, running right down the centre. It has about ten churches for every 12,000 inhabitants, and has fine-looking schoolhouses that somehow developed out of the red rural school, of the sort he attended years ago. It is full of small dwellings, lawns, trees, and moderately prosperous businesses like the Gazette, where the average employe has been with the company 17 years, and three drive better cars than the boss.

It is the kind of country in which the Ku Klux Klan loses and in which class arrogance on both sides of the fence is bad form. It has its poverty, but its freedom to discuss and to limit the rights of private property “gives even the most acutely underprivileged groups—Marx’s proletariat—a sense that their case is not hopeless.” It has its scandals and tragedies—Charley Cross, Emporia’s leading banker, got his bank in difficulties in 1898 and rode to his farm on the edge of town to kill himself. “I wonder what he thought when he rode down Commercial Street for the last time.” It has its twisted characters like Negro Tom Williams, Editor White’s friend, who was thought to be dangerous because he talked wildly, but who was just a night owl seeing too much going on under Emporia’s placid surface—”just interested in knowing why men strayed and women fell and how the devil kept his fires going.”

But mostly it is made up of people like the Hiram Dales (“There are scores of people who have pinched more pennies in Emporia than the Dales”), Dan Hirschler, Belle Harris, Cass Friedburg, Warren Harding, Woodrow Wilson, people who become presidents, people who graduate from high school, give a concert, get married, celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary, or just move from one house to another. And with all its injustices and monumental blunders, it has been flowering—”In my lifetime I saw unfolding before me the magnificent vision that humanity had been gestating since man came out of the forests—the golden age of applied science. . . . Why should I mourn the fact that I have come to the end of my length of days?” It is a country of machinery, of the highest approximation of economic justice ever achieved, of medicine, of education, where Indian relics of the Stone Age still lie beside the railroad tracks, and where, in spite of everything, society evolves to create more generous, kindly and decent people. “Has man wandering in this worldly wilderness ever devised a better system than ours for making the desert blossom as the rose?”

But the kind of U. S. of which Editor White is part and partisan, has typically refrained from looking beyond the seas. Yet now he does so and to him there is no wrench in doing so. He is not even surprised, as he well might be, to find William Allen White climbing through the ropes into the ring with Adolf Hitler. He has long been a one-man committee to defend the kind of democracy that he has known and in his view events have simply given his Committee a new title.

Some others distrust the change but few Americans can distrust the spirit with which Editor White outlines the job of his Committee after the war is over, win, lose or draw: “We shall try then to give to American youth the same joy and enthusiasm for freedom of speech, peaceful assemblage, free conscience, trial by jury and the benefits of personal freedom that the Germans have put into their youth by teaching them national pride, race arrogance, and international hatred. We be lieve this is our really big job, bigger than saving Britain as our first line of defense —for what good will it do to defend Britain to save our own hides and have our own youth insensitive to those precious rights which our ancestors for a thousand years have bought with their blood and treasure?”