WILL IT BE A STALEMATE?

Villard, Oswald Garrison

Will It Be A Stalemate? By Oswald Garrison Villard WHATEVER else may be said about Mr. Hoover's latest speech, and whether one agrees with it or not, I think it must be recognized by all...

...Hoover inade, namely, that the only outcome of this war can be a stalemate...
...This article should be required reading for everybody who wishes to be informed about the European situation...
...Today I wish merely to discuss what is perhaps the most important of the statements that Mr...
...As I see it, after having been in Europe at the beginning of this war and making as careful a study of the situation as possible, there are only three ways in which Germany could possibly be defeated...
...In that case, it is conceivable that fresh American troops might march over the bodies of those dead or dying of hunger and reach Berlin...
...Students of what took place in the last war, and especially those who are aware that if the Germans had not surrendered when they did our Army would have collapsed for lack of transportation and supplies, cannot figure out how we can send 9,000,000 men to Europe and keep them provisioned and armed and supplied with the necessary ammunition and airplanes when we only managed by the aid of the French and British to keepsan AEF of 2,000,000 men going in 1918...
...Lindbergh so sorely lack...
...He is right in saying that this is the exact situation, and he dwells upon the fact, as do all of us newspaper men who have been in Europe while this war was on, that the American people and their leaders in Washington have ah utterly unrealistic understanding of what the situation of Europe really is...
...It was earnest and sincere...
...It was good-tempered toward the Administration...
...Again, military students insist that there is no case in modern history of warships being able to force coast defenses...
...Hoover's latest speech, and whether one agrees with it or not, I think it must be recognized by all fair-minded persons as a great contribution to the national debate...
...Bess thinks that the time has come for us to "put up or shut up...
...He who does that not only renders a disservice to America...
...This involves the expulsion of the Germans and the Italians from Libya, the successful defense of the Suez Canal and of Persia, and the clearing of the Mediterranean of all hostile craft...
...That is the forcing of a landing on the Continent, the defeat of the German army, and a successful march to Berlin...
...Bess simply re-states the actual truth that there are not Englishmen enough in the world to defeat Germany, and that the best England can hope for is to continue a successful defensive war...
...Hoover was careful to say that he did not even propose peace negotiations...
...It contained the denunciations of Hitler and Hitlerism which the speeches of Col...
...The first is through the complete collapse of Europe because of famine and pestilence, with that collapse including Germany...
...If we decide to make the attempt to conquer Germany on the Continent he says: "We should understand the price we will have to pay...
...The second possibility is a successful attack upon Germany through the Mediterranean...
...Not Enough Britons To Beat Nazis If to tell the truth as a man sees it is defeatism and an encouragement to the wicked men of Berlin, why that is most regrettable, but that should not mean that the truth about our own situation and that of Germany and England must, therefore, be withheld from the American people...
...Hull in discussing Japan and Hitler— both of them are curiously silent or friendly when it comes to dealing with Mussolini or Stalin, bloody and wicked as these men are...
...This has already been denounced as pure defeatism, as an encouragement to Hitler, as a blow at the courage and unity of the wonderful British people, as urging appeasement...
...Hoover's speech was just the kind of utterance that we need to keep the debate on an intellectual, a fair, a calm, and a just basis...
...So it seems to me Mr...
...It was obviously meant to be just...
...The cost will be incalculable in both lives and treasure and we shall have accepted the burdens of Europe, not for a year or for a few years, but for generations...
...We Should Put Up Or Shut Up' The third "possibility" seems to me, as to Herbert Hoover, and to many military men, almost an absolute impossibility...
...As for discouraging the British people, those among them who know anything know that they cannot win the war alone, as Demaree Bess points out in his brilliant article in The Saturday Evening Post for Nov...
...It was an appeal to reason, for a study of facts rather than a yielding to pure emotion, and therefore it was bound to be good if only because it was in marked contrast to the heat and passion of the President and Mr...
...Of course the latter charge is absolutely false...
...he comes perilously close to intellectual treason...
...Demaree Bess testifies in the article I have cited that German soldiers and their prisoners of war have been building coast defenses from the northern tip of Norway to the southern-most parts of France, doing as much on their side as the British have been doing to safeguard England...

Vol. 5 • December 1941 • No. 49


 
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