BUT WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR?
Thomas, Norman
But What Are We Fighting For? By NORMAN THOMAS WHILE my ears still ring with the conventional praise the newscasters bestowed on the Administration's latest attempt to enunciate war aims—Secretary...
...None of the questions of Asiatics or Europeans is answered by the Secretary's amiable generalities or his renewed pledge of "no compromise with fascism...
...And these are the questions that matter—not the tepid or more ardent approval of the comparative handful of commentators and editors, most of whom are of the group that labored so mightily and potently to force us along the road which led us straight to war while they protested that it was the path to peace...
...What kind of brave new world will be built on hate...
...Witness what a few Japanese divisions have been able to do in their advance on Imphal in India...
...A triple or quadruple alliance of the major Allies of itself will tend to degenerate to a cartel of strong governments for exploiting the weak and thereby breeding enormous hates...
...Hull spoke, gave a definition of fascism as equivalent to what the preachers call sin, and lumped Prussian Junkers, greedy Americans, and "isolationists" among the sinners...
...Secretary Hull offers a poor substitute...
...And H. R. Knickerbocker, the war correspondent, devotes a long dispatch from Italy to his lament that American and British soldiers don't hate the Germans hard enough...
...Roosevelt mean by fascism...
...The answer, obviously, to all these questions is an emphatic negative...
...Hull or Mr...
...Building On Hatred It is no wonder that since our rulers cannot or will not give us better peace aims, there is an increasing effort to fill the vacuum with a gospel of hate, vengeance, and destruction...
...Even then the plan outlined is both dangerously belated and inadequate...
...But suppose you were an American soldier awaiting the zero hour of invading Fortress Europa...
...Nor will they save today's children from tomorrow's greater war...
...They do indeed involve the cooperation of free peoples, but on a basis not to be discovered in the Moscow, Cairo, or Teheran statements, or any interpretation of them which has come out of Washington...
...Fine words, but what does Mr...
...Or do they agree with their colleague, the Vice President, who in the New York Times on the same day that Mr...
...its leaders, its institutions, and the power which supports it must go...
...Hull, of course they can't be decided in the midst of this war, but the principle under which they are to be decided must be clearly stated or else the Poles and others are justified in believing that Mr...
...For the rest, the Secretary put his main stress on the necessity of continuing cooperation between the four major Allies in the preservation of the peace...
...Or if you were one of Asia's millions now at least as well disposed toward Tojo and his puppets as to any restoration of white rule, would you have been converted to that support of the Allied cause which is invaluable to victory in this war and almost a necessity for averting the next...
...By NORMAN THOMAS WHILE my ears still ring with the conventional praise the newscasters bestowed on the Administration's latest attempt to enunciate war aims—Secretary Hull's speech of Apr...
...We need a new principle born of a passionate and intelligent love of peace which will far surpass Secretary Hull's police force peace imposed by the strong...
...Their failure to understand the precise political and economic meaning of fascism and its origins is very serious and makes a pledge to go on indefinitely with the war as a means of ending it an appalling dangerous proposition...
...All well enough as far as it goes, but potentially dangerous because of the Administration's continued failure to open the doors of cooperation to all peoples and to specify for what the natives are to cooperate...
...That was in its promise of organized consultation of the State Department with Congress...
...Roosevelt is blindly underwriting Stalin's sphere of influence politics...
...Thus Gen...
...No man will die gladly for Cordell Hull's peace terms...
...The best one can say for Mr...
...Almost ever since Pearl Harbor I have been one of those who urged a far better plan...
...It -will not even remain a secure power politics alliance because a mere prudence of the strong will never prevail over their rivalries for power and profit of which Harold Ickes' oil imperialism in Saudi Arabia is only one proof...
...Hull's equally serious failure to give concrete hope to Europe which can only recover strength through a combination of freedom and European federation...
...Would he have warmed your heart with a sense of a great cause worth dying for...
...Only what the Germans have...
...As for the "thirty" boundary disputes in Europe, mentioned by Mr...
...Or if you were a German sick of war, suspicious of, if not hostile to Hitler—would it have inspired you to desert your national leader and trust in the great democracies...
...Mark Clark recently told us that the American boys in Italy were up front "killing Germans, and they love it...
...2. Mr...
...Hull's second try is that it was better than its predecessor a few weeks earlier...
...We Need A New Principle Only at one point did Secretary Hull's speech mark progress...
...Amiable Generalities Here the significant facts are: 1. Mr..Hull's continued silence on any promise to the peoples of Java, Indo-China, India, Malaya, and Burma of anything but restoration of white empires too weak to hold them, at least without costly American help...
...Every day makes it more imperative that we organize our thinking and our powers of action to insist on the earliest possible peace that will last, and to state persuasively the principles upon which it must rest...
...An admiral gives a graduating class of midshipmen no other war aim than: "I merely advocate that when this war is over there be no main street of Tokyo to walk down...
...namely, that Congress and the President should set up a permanent commission on peace terms representing the State Department, both Houses of Congress, and both parties, and also including citizens of standing, leaders in economic, civic, and educational groups, to help hammer out a national policy fit for peace...
...10—I want to rise respectfully to say: "But we still don't know what we are fighting for...
Vol. 8 • April 1944 • No. 17
