MR. WILLKIE MUST CHOOSE
Mr. Willkie Must Choose LAST SPRING, when Wendell Willkie's "One World" was selling a million copies and threatening to become another "Gone With The Wind," Fred Rodell wrote a sobering dissenting...
...Beard offers a one-sentence foreign policy which w.e think is a gem: "In my opinion, the supreme object of American foreign policy should be to protect and promote the interests, spiritual and material, of the American people, and, subject to that mandate, to conduct foreign affairs in such a manner as to contribute to the peace and civilization of mankind...
...Willkie regards Dr...
...Willkie is loyal to the Lamont-Mor-gan-Lehmann Bros.-Chase National Bank crowd which has been backing his career and candidacy, or he is loyal to the common man and progressive principles he professes to embrace...
...If that is isolationism, it is indeed dead...
...If Mr...
...Willkie has reformed and become a progressive, but the mere fact that a man swears he has reformed doesn't make it so, as every parole and pardon board will testify...
...He can't have it both ways...
...Willkie IS the Wall Street lawyer...
...Willkie's confusion is not unique, as William Henry Chamberlin points out so brilliantly in his new series of articles...
...No man who is all things to all men can be anything to any man of principle...
...Beard is right, of course...
...And Dr...
...Willkie was placed in that firm through the influence of Thomas J. Lamont of J. P. Morgan & Company—the same Lamont who is credited with organizing and financing the "spontaneous" boom for Willkie in 1940...
...We were reminded of Rodell's observations last week when Willkie breezed into Wisconsin, showing well the results of a postgraduate course in charm...
...After all, Mr...
...The kind of head-in-the-sand isolationism which Mr...
...that foreign wars are none of our business...
...Willkie will ever know, replies: "If that is a correct definition of isolationism, I must say I never heard of an American of the slightest importance in public life who favors isolationism...
...Where most so-called isolationist Americans differ from the rampant internationalists is basically in insisting that chief emphasis must be placed on the terms of the peace itself so as to get at the causes of war, and not on the method of enforcement, as advocated by imperialists and internationalists...
...No responsible American advocates letting the world go hang, or refuses to cooperate to maintain peace...
...Beard, who has forgotten more about America than Mr...
...His firm, we are informed, is general counsel for the U. S. Steel Corporation...
...His perpetual smile, his carefully rumpled hair, his easy readiness to discuss any and every subject—all these made friends and influenced people...
...International bankers and the promoters of worldwide cartels will naturally oppose the Beard objective as inconsistent with their post-war plans, but nobody who is spending all his time trying to influence people and win votes can ignore it...
...Asked whether he thinks isolationism is dead, Dr...
...Willkie is said to have been made president of 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation at a salary of $100,000 a year through the influence of the Chase National Bank and some of the movie magnates...
...He was also appointed a director of Lehntann Bros., a large banking house which, like Morgan and Chase National, has far-ranging international connections...
...Either Mr...
...In this connection, there is an interesting passage in "The Republic," the splendid new book by Charles Beard, America's greatest historian...
...Willkie's "off-the-record" assurance that he's really a great progressive is sincere and how much of it is, to borrow his own description, "campaign oratory...
...or rather, it never came to life...
...Prof...
...Willkie was surprised not to find in Wisconsin never existed, of course, except in the minds of those who fight best when they are fighting straw men of their own creation...
...In the same chapter of his fine book, Dr...
...Willkie Must Choose LAST SPRING, when Wendell Willkie's "One World" was selling a million copies and threatening to become another "Gone With The Wind," Fred Rodell wrote a sobering dissenting opinion for The Progressive...
...I hope," wrote Rodell, "I shall not be classed with the adult meanies who tell small children there is no Santa Claus if I take time to wonder, just a little bit, whether Wendell Willkie talked out loud in church solely from the depth of his convictions or, perhaps, for a purpose...
...He seemed shocked to discover that there wasn't any dragon at all that he, like many another Eastern killer of Mid-western dragons, had been hunting monsters which existed only in his own imagination...
...Now, it is quite possible, of course, that, despite this companionship with the money-changers, Mr...
...The Dragon That Wasn't There WENDELL WILLKIE came into Wisconsin primed to slay the dragon of isolationism...
...Beard's definition as "isolationism," he will find that the overwhelming majority of the American people is "isolationist...
...Millions of Americans, in the Middle West and elsewhere, who opposed involvement in war before war was thrust upon us and who now oppose writing a blank check for the restoration of a Tory status quo, believe whole-heartedly in international cooperation to achieve democratic, but not imperial objectives...
...that the United States should shrink behind nationalist walls, let the world go hang, and refuse to cooperate in efforts to maintain peace in the world...
...Carrying water on both shoulders may be smart politics—for a while—hut certainly it is not good progressivism...
...That's why we hope we won't be regarded as old meanies if we wonder, just a little bit, how much of Mr...
...Why," he exclaimed, "we Easterners have been under the false impression that the Middle West could not countenance cooperation with other nations after the war...
...Rodell, an authority on Willkie, urged progressives to examine carefully the credentials of this passionate pilgrim who had only lately directed the affairs of a utility system, one of whose companies had violated the Wagner Act, bribed newspapers, and sought to destroy the TVA...
...Dr...
...A character in the book, a rampant internationalist, offers this definition: "Isolationism is the creed that America owes nothing to other countries and has no moral responsibilities in the world...
...Beard replies: "Before I agree to the proposition that isolationism is dead, I should like to hear a definition of the term...
Vol. 7 • November 1943 • No. 47
