HITLER DEFEAT WOULD MEAN PEACE TO U. S.
Rice, William Gorham
Hitler Defeat Would Mean Peace to U. S. By WILLIAM GORIIAM RICE IN the last month the world has changed. Hitler has conquered Norway: he has invaded and conquered Holland, Belgium, and Luxemburg:...
...All this in five weeks...
...And now the president has spoken at Charlottesville and has really asked us: Ls the outcome in Europe so important that we must enter the war to secure our own future...
...1) If we should use our military strength to combat Atlantic dangers, we might expose Pacific areas to new aggression...
...2) The lowering of standards of living and the limitation of freedoms of action and of speech that a severe war reqnires, as well as the hardships and dangers of military service and, above all, the cruelty of killing others, even to frustrate the greatest of crimes, are odious to us, and particularly odious to young people who carry the heaviest and most repulsive burdens of w:ir...
...and it acknowledges that the outcome in Europe overshadows our future...
...But when aggression began to move westward in Europe, we were shaken, shaken by the Soviet attack upon Finland (and relieved when its objective proved to be limited), shaken far more by the German invasion of Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, and Belgium, none of which in over a century had ever engaged in war except against German invasion...
...All these wars we condemned privately but tolerated in our national official relations...
...Moreover, if our inaction, which is all neutrality can be in a war in which neutrality is utterly disrespected, leads, as it may, to Spain's following Italy into the war, the unity of the Americas will become a myth...
...Then the 21 American republics officially condemned Hitler's aggression...
...1) Our influence by remaining neutral was likely to restrict the conflict, we thought...
...But Germany's push to the east seemed far away—as far away as Japan's push to the west, or Italy's reduction of Ethiopia...
...Hitler heeds no protests...
...We modified our neutrality act so that his opponents could buy the sinews of war in this country...
...it foresees that force, which was used by every American republic to win its liberty, may be equally necessary to retain that liberty...
...Hitler has conquered Norway: he has invaded and conquered Holland, Belgium, and Luxemburg: he has taken Paris...
...We were sure that his grievances did not justify his barbarisms, his persecution of Jews, his absorption of Czechoslovakia, and his use of war as an instrument of national policy...
...Italy has made war...
...Thus the warlords have rendered neutrality useless as an instrument of national policy...
...The choice they gave us is between suffering the extension of slavery and fighting its extension...
...As for the second argument—granted that war means terrific hardship and sorrow, still is it worse than having to live with an agrressive military empire controlling the vast resources of western Europe and Africa—perhaps Asia too—and perpetually threatening us, if not fighting us, so that we spend most ot our natural and human resources in armament-England had to make a similar choice when Napoleon was conquering the continent of Europe...
...We hoped to save neutral countries from involvement: to prevent Italy's participation...
...Unless fortified by affirmative leadership of the United Stales, the unity of the western hemisphere is doomed...
...For Europe is nearer to every part of the continental United States and to Latin America—both geographically and morally (or immorally)—than is Asia...
...SHALL we now turn words that are not heard into acts that are...
...And against the oisruption of Pan-American unity neutrality Ls no longer a safeguard...
...There have been four considerations holding us out of the conflict...
...he fully threatens to overrun England...
...We have to make it now when the Atlantic has become almost as narrow as the English Channel was then...
...The infirm democracy of Latin-America could not withstand such a blow to democracy in Europe...
...For America to enjoy peace and prosperity, Hitler must be defeated and we must join in creating a just enough and strong enough world government to prevent physical assaults on decent neighbors...
...OF THESE four considerations the first has now completely vanished...
...Fiance and Great Britain and Canada declared war...
...SO, though America wants peace, it now knows that it takes all to make peace but only one to make war...
...and the freedom from European rule that the Latin-American republics gained in the 19th century will be lost in the 20th if Hitler wins his war...
...Spain has seized Tangier...
...How great the danger in the Pacific may be is almost pure surmise...
...How soon and how best do we put all our strength into achieving these ends...
...eventually to be a peacemaker between warsick nations...
...Despite the president's utmost efforts Mussolini has crossed the Rubicon...
...it learns that being a good neighbor and a strict neutral is no shield against an aggressor nation...
...4) The maintenance of closely concerted action with the rest of America, essential to the generally accepted aim of hemispherical defense, might lie more difficult...
...The United States has undergone mass conversion to the belief that we do not live in isolation from Europe, but that the course of Hitler's war requires us with utmost haste to build untold armament...
...In my opinion it can not possibly threaten the vital interests of the United States as potently as does the menace of Hitler as master of Europe...
...When Hitler invaded Poland, public opinion In all America generally condemned his action...
...By the course of events a large piece of America is already involved in the war—from Greenland and Canada in the north, through the West Indian colonies of Britain, France, and the Netherlands, to the Falkland Islands in the far south— and all this territory is natural prey for Hitler in the event of his triumph...
Vol. 10 • June 1940 • No. 25
