THE CRISIS: Cross Purposes

Brigadier General Wood wrote: “Dear Mr. President, The America First Committee … asks that you [submit] to Congress a resolution for the declaration of a state of war between the United States and the German Reich.”

President Roosevelt wrote: “Every schoolchild knows what our foreign policy is. It is to defend the honor, the freedom, the rights, the interests and the well-being of the American people. . . . The real end, the inescapable end, is the destruction of the Hitler menace. . . .” These two spokesmen, representing two different aspects of the changing U.S. mind, were completely at cross purposes.

Although in times past they have spoken face to face, this time there was no direct exchange between them. Like characters from two different plays who have somehow got on the same stage at the same time, they gestured in response to different cues, and each read his lines without regard for what the other had just said.

In the eyes of General Wood, chairman of America First, the play was as brutal as a realistic melodrama, without elevation, without adventure, with all the characters, from the leading man on down, dominated by motives of hard self-interest.

In the eyes of President Roosevelt, the play was as idealistic as a tragedy in blank verse, full of lofty speeches, sacrifice and noble sentiments—except that every now and then bits of the intellectual scenery fell down and sounds of tumult arose when the stagehands began to battle offstage.

Did every schoolchild know what U.S. foreign policy was? General Wood and the America Firsters were certainly not schoolchildren. If every schoolchild could translate the honor, rights, interests and well-being of the U.S. people into terms of foreign policy, many a troubled U.S. citizen in the audience would be willing that such a youthful prodigy should lead them.

Wrote General Wood, in his open letter to the President: “The integrity of this nation and loyalty to the Constitution demand that the decision between peace and war now be made by Congress.”

Said President Roosevelt, continuing his message to the Foreign Policy Association: “When mighty forces of aggression are at large . . . our foreign policy cannot remain passive.”

To a great many listeners, in the audience, there seemed something fishy in this kind of talk. Many a convinced interventionist, listening to the deflated language of General Wood, dismissed his appeal as an attempt to put the President on the spot. Many an isolationist, listening to the President’s lofty statement, felt that the big words were inflated, covering some other purpose.

But if the U.S. took both General Wood and President Roosevelt, or either of them, at face value, why should the U.S. not declare that a state of war existed with Germany? In many respects, the U.S.-German war had gone far beyond the stage it had reached when the U.S. declared war in 1917.

The U.S. had taken official sides in the struggle far more than in 1917, was officially supplying one side, officially denouncing the other, was providing, patrolling, feeding and financing one of the belligerents. Last week, when the Senate passed (59-to-13) the second Lend-Lease appropriation, the total amount authorized by Congress for aid to Hitler’s enemies reached $12,985,000,000.

Said General Wood with undeniable truth: “Each step thus far taken in the international situation has been upon the solemn assurance that it was for the pur pose of preserving peace. Actually, we have been led to the brink of a devastating war. . . . This subterfuge must end. We must now squarely face the real issue, war or peace.”

Last week no interventionist Congressman, debating repeal of the Neutrality Act, could believe that Congress would vote for war. But if the U.S. was fighting to defend her honor, as President Roosevelt said, if every schoolchild knew it, if the shooting had started, why could not such a vote be taken? Somewhere between the hard common-sense drama of General Wood and the idealistic quandary of President Roosevelt, most U.S. emotion and attention was centered. General Wood’s blunt words did not leave enough room for U.S. reactions to such Nazi blows as the killing of hostages, the speed and power of the Nazi conquests. The solemn words of President Roosevelt did not take in enough of the practical, blundering world of Congressmen, isolationists, and people who look with abhorrence on fighting.

What the cross-purpose debate proved was that the U.S. as a whole still had no central core of conviction about its place in the world that would tell it automatically at any point whether it was ready or unready to fight. It did not have a Concord Bridge of the spirit, where its own people knew it would make a stand, regardless of the difficulties, regardless of abhorrence of war. This week President Roosevelt, in his most direct speech for a long period, came closer to a direct answer to General Wood—he declared in effect that the U.S. is at war with Germany. But he did not accept the other half of the General’s challenge—that he ask Congress to declare that a state of war exists. There was no sign that General Wood expected him to. No isolationist could believe that “every schoolchild knows what our foreign policy is.” But at last it seemed that President Roosevelt was beginning to state it in terms that even schoolchildren could grasp.