THE EDITOR RESERVES THE LAST COLUMN

The Editor Reserves The Last Column A CURIOUS NOTE of uneasiness is creeping into the thinking and the writing of some of the more thoughtful interventionists. The old cocksureness is fading, now...

...A good example of courageous self-analysis by an intelligent interventionist is the article in the November Harper's by D. A; Saunders, a recognized authority on propaganda analysis...
...More than anything else, they seem to be brooding over the character of the war and the nature of the peace to come...
...There are doubtless many factors which explain the new moodiness among sincere interventionists...
...He took the position that it was enough to beat Germany, and that we would always have to go on fighting for freedom, presumably in a succession of world wars...
...He hasn't abandoned interventionism, but he isn't quite so sure about where he is going as he was a while ago...
...Saunders wrote: "Our minds say this is a crisis requiring brave action, but our hearts aren't in it...
...Groping for an explanation of the worldwide lack of flaming spirit, Mr...
...Saunders is right...
...H. R...
...They have waited for more than two years for a statement of war aims and peace objectives which would set them and the world on fire...
...There are only watery words of dealing alike with all peoples "with due respect" for "existing obligations...
...But he isn't so rampantly sure of everything right now...
...It means that our propaganda has failed...
...In a remarkably provocative column a week or so ago Clapper expressed the deep-going doubts of millions of Americans, interventionists and non-interventionists alike, who have wondered if there were anything more to the Anglo-American or Churchill-Roosevelt foreign policy than shooting up Hitler and maintaining the worldwide status quo as it existed when the guns went off in September, 1939...
...But the statement hasn't come...
...There is no vision of the "Brave New World" for which peoples all over the earth yearn...
...I'd certainly hate to go back to the situation I was in in New York, with no pros-pect of anything happening that would break things up and give a fellow a chance of a better deal...
...Roosevelt devoted most of his Armistice Day speech to denying the common assertion that the last war was in vain...
...The old cocksureness is fading, now that there are no more steps to take except a formal declaration of war...
...Saunders knows this...
...Phil La Follette Summed It Up There it is, wrapped up in the few italicized words— the desperate hope of a better deal...
...Clapper is undoubtedly one of the ablest of the Washington correspondents...
...These millions will flame with enthusiasm only at the prospect of a world to be built, of things to be achieved, not merely retained...
...If I thought there was no hope of organizing the world so that we would not have these recurring world wars, if I thought we faced another such war as this one and the last one 20 years hence, I would be standing with Lindbergh right now . . ." * * * Selling Something Cold And Stale Mr...
...They felt strangely ill at ease when President Roosevelt, in his Armistice Day address, justified the last World War and intimated that hanging Hitler was an end in itself...
...Doubts and questions are being raised—doubts and questions which, when broached by non-interventionists months ago, were brushed aside as defeatist and appeasement talk...
...So far as I can see," he wrote, "the Administration is showing little interest in anything more than a 'lick Hitler' goal...
...Saunders doesn't see much hope in the stodgy, conservative phrases of the Atlantic Charter which he regards as a "dismal "failure...
...Clapper isn't alone in his forebodings...
...Take the case of Raymond Clapper, for instance...
...Propaganda has failed, but far more basic is the fact that it has failed because it was trying to sell something that was cold and stale and dead and utterly uninspiring...
...During the past year or more he has been a tireless, all-out advocate of the President's foreign policy and an unsparing critic of those who sought to check the drift toward war...
...There has been an increasing amount of soul-searching in public...
...More Than Shooting Up Hitler...
...The Churchill-Roosevelt school talks of preserving, defending, saving, continuing, and is generally silent about changing, improving, sharing, modernizing...
...They were disappointed in the Atlantic Charter...
...Phil La Follette summed it up in his speeches throughout the country when he said that the President was engaged in a great venture to save the life of yesterday while the people were far more interested in building a better tomorrow...
...This is all to the good for it represents a healthy movement away from the blustering, intolerant attitude of the past...
...They were shocked when the Churchill government said that even the anemic provisions of the Eight Points did not apply to India...
...He sums up his case by quoting the simple remark of a draftee on leave from camp: "Well, I suppose that the worst thing that could happen now would be that the war would stop...
...That may not be fair to him, but it is the impression his words left on me...
...Mr...

Vol. 5 • December 1941 • No. 49


 
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