WHO ARE THESE 'ISOLATIONISTS'?
Rubin, Morris H.
Who Are These Isolationists'? By MORRIS H. RUBIN EDITOR'S NOTE: William T. Evjue, editor of a Madison newspaper, devoted part of a recent radio address to a bitter attack on The Progressive for...
...He does have a liberal lingo, I know, but almost everything in his record contradicts the assumption that he is genuinely a progressive...
...Here was an editor who called himself a liberal supporting a man who rose to national recognition by fighting the TVA, who bossed a company which violated the Wagner Act and was exposed by the Senate Civil Liberties Committee for employing labor spies, and who made and never retracted this remarkable statement: "No duty has ever come to my life, even that in the service of my country, which has so appealed to my sense of social obligation as to say and do what I can for the preservation of public utilities privately owned...
...Working With The World IN your broadcast you sought to create the impression that the United States withdrew from the world after the last World War and we decided to mind our own business...
...DEAR BILL: I have just read the text of your Sunday broadcast, and regret the necessity of calling your attention to some of the more obvious and serious inaccuracies...
...HERE was an editor who called himself a liberal supporting a Wall Street lawyer, whose backer was the head of J. P. Morgan & Company...
...it is a plan for keeping the peoples of the world from making too much of a fuss should we fail to do these things...
...Beard if he thinks isolationism is dead...
...Willkie And The Liberal Lingo IT wasn't America's failure to join the League which made Hitler the military menace he became, and enabled him to plunge the whole world into war, because as the liberal and internationalist New Statesman and Nation of London said recently, the power of Britain and France in Europe was absolute...
...Would you say we ivere "going it alone" when Americans gave as no other nation on earth to relieve famines and other disasters in China, Russia, Armenia, Greece, and other countries...
...The world police force is not a plan for feeding the hungry, or for improving the world's standard of living...
...regime to degenerate into an "Administration that has become old and tired and quite naturally prefers not to have to explain and justify its policies...
...Stimson, Mrs...
...So great was American participation in international affairs between the two World Wars that Mr...
...To put it very simply, Bill, the real danger lies in the possibility that too many people will find ab« sorption in the form of world organization an ex« cuse for running away from the real problem—the substance of the peace settlement itself...
...nor did he make any attempt to reconcile these corporate, banking, and Wall Street connections with his professions of progressivism...
...Shades of Old Bob La Follette...
...And Dr...
...Would you say we were "going it alone" when we committed ourselves to the administrative integrity and territorial sovereignty of China 20 years ago...
...They seem to be pretty sure they're going to get the kind of peace settlement they want, aren't they...
...We feel, in other words, that if the next peace conference does not come to grips with the causes of war—some of the more important of which are imperialism, harsh indemnities, a spirit of vengeance, unequal distribution of the world's resources, territorial expansion, monopoly and cartels, special economic privileges, competitive armaments, and racial discrimination—then no world organization can hope to keep the peace...
...Although the temptation is great, I do not propose to trespass on your space to reply to your curious comments about Phil La Follette...
...When he began his campaign in Wisconsin, The Progressive urged him to stop carrying water on both shoulders...
...No responsible American that I know about—and, of course, I'm not pretending to understand or speak for certain crackpot and lunatic fringes—advocates letting the world go hang or has any intention of "sabotaging all postwar attempts to stop future wars through international cooperation...
...and failed to do so, not for lack of arms, but because they preferred a strong Germany as a bulwark against the Soviet Union...
...There must be a lot of fun banging away at a target like that, even if it exists only in your own mind...
...in fact, they approved Fascism and praised the words of the Duce...
...This we refused to do because, as Bob La Follette, Sr., put it, the League was an instrument to stand guard over the imperial swag, and because, as Franklin D. Roosevelt put it, "political profit, personal prestige, and national aggrandizement attended the birth of the League of Nations and handicapped it from its infancy...
...That is why I can't understand why you find it necessary to ignore the fact that The Progressive has repeatedly recognized the "oneness of the world" and emphasized the need for international cooperation...
...As a matter of fact, the United States played an active, generous, and constructive role in most of the major world developments between wars...
...Were we "going it alone" when after much fumbling, the United States took a firmer stand against Japanese aggression in Manchuria than any other power...
...Surely it isn't this sort of thing that you went for, Bill...
...Beard replied: "Before I agree to the proposition that isolationism is dead, I should like to have a definition of the term...
...A Tory In Action I come finally to your expression of pain at the manner in which The Progressive greeted the defeat of Wendell Willkie...
...That's a pretty serious charge, and I don't see how you can agree with the man who made it and the man it was made about...
...When you come right down to it, what was there about this man's record, Bill, to indicate that he was a liberal—except his own word for it...
...Hitler said in Mein Kampf that any falsehood will be believed, if it is only big enough and repeated often enough...
...We are not members and we do not contemplate membership...
...Would you say we were "going it alone" when we played a leading role in promoting the Far Eastern settlement embodied in the Washington treaties of 1922...
...And that is exactly what has happened in this case, and I hate to see you fall for it...
...Beard is right...
...I do ask for space to reply to your outcry against all those who raise honest doubts about our foreign policy, or lack of one, and your tendency to impugn the motives of anyone who dares to question the policies of the Messrs...
...Willkie...
...We decided to go it alone," you said...
...He denounced the President for supporting "tired old Fascists in the areas our armies control," for propping up "the senile monarchy in Italy," for playing around with "Fascist turn-coats" in France, for cover-ing up its "slow, fumbling procedures," for resorting to repeated expediencies, and finally for allowing hia...
...Eichelberger jubilantly announced to the Journal that "Chambers affiliated with the United States Chamber of Commerce recently voted 1,800 to 71 for the enforcement of peace by military means, if necessary...
...You know, too, Bill, don't you, that just about every reactionary in the Southern Tory bloc in Congress is a steaming supporter of internationalism—apparently on the theory that the more we focus our eyes and attention on distant disturbances, the less will we.notice the disorder in our own home...
...Here was Bill Evjue marching side by side with the Wisconsin State Journal and the Milwaukee Journal, the two Tory papers which fought the elder La Follette hardest, and which now, 20 years after his death, are still attacking him...
...If we decide he meant it, then how can you possibly support Willkie and be for Roosevelt too...
...No one doubts today that in 1935 they could have upset the ramshackle empire of Mussolini if they had desired...
...In fact, if we get the wrong kind of peace settlement—an imperialist, anti-democratic, cartel-strengthening, hate-perpetuating settlement—then a world organization and international police force would largely become the repressive instrument for freezing and policing a reactionary status quo around the world...
...While the reply below was written to meet the specific points raised in the broadcast, it is addressed to like-minded "Bill's" everywhere who have fallen into the same errors, especially the accusation that Progressives are out to "sabotage" plans for world peace through international cooperation...
...I did think it rather ironical that at the very moment you were complaining about his fraternizing with Gen...
...Of course Prof...
...A character in the book, an internationalist of your type, Bill, asks Dr...
...Samuel Grafton, the syndicated columnist whose stuff appears in the Chicago Sun and who is an internationalist who appreciates the dangers involved in the uncritical acceptance of every scheme that calls itself internationalist, put it this way: "Any flight from reality is reactionary...
...By MORRIS H. RUBIN EDITOR'S NOTE: William T. Evjue, editor of a Madison newspaper, devoted part of a recent radio address to a bitter attack on The Progressive for successfully opposing Wendell Willkie in the recent Presidential primaries in Wisconsin...
...Roosevelt, Churchill, or Stalin...
...Now, either this was more "campaign oratory" or Willkie meant it...
...The Tories Are With You THIS point is amply confirmed by the fact that much of the pressure for the kind of organization and police force that you're talking about comes from the reactionary forces in America and Britain —those who want a ready-made instrument to police an intolerable status quo, and to "stand guard over the swag," as the late Robert Marion La Follette, Sr., put it after World War I. Your claim that "isolation" and "reaction" are synonymous just doesn't stand up under examination, Bill, and no amount of repetition will make it so...
...MacArthur, the General, and I think Phil, too, were busy with the great new assault on the enemy in New Guinea...
...I assume from the frequency with which you comment on or quote from The Progressive that you read it with considerable care...
...Beard, who has forgotten more about foreign affairs, world politics, and American history than you and I will ever know, Bill, replied: "If that is a correct definition of isolationism, I must say that I never heard of an American of the slightest importance in public life who favors isolationism...
...Were we "going it alone" when America invested some 16 billion dollars in overseas developments...
...Willkie that swept you off your feet, Bill, unless it was the fact that his progressive vocabulary bewitched you...
...The internationalist offers this definition (and it would seem to be yours, too) : "Isolationism is the creed that America owes nothing to other countries and has no moral responsibilities in the world...
...And they could have stopped Hitler dead in his tracks had they wanted to...
...Where most so-called "isolationist" Americans differ from your type of internationalist is in insisting that the chief emphasis be placed on the terms of the peace settlement itself, and not on the method of enforcing the settlement...
...I don't pretend for a moment, of course, in spite of this impressive evidence, that all the Tories are on your side, or vice versa...
...We refused to take any part in any program of international agreement and cooperation designed to stop future wars...
...If that is isolationism, it is indeed dead...
...I do not know what it was about Mr...
...We are giving cooperation to the League in every matter which is not primarily political and in every matter which obviously represents the views of the good of the peoples of the world as distinguished from the views of the good of political leaders, of privileged classes, and of imperialist aims...
...Roosevelt, Clark Eichelberger, etc., while the demand for progressive reduction of armaments by the United States, if other nations go along, comes from us so-called isolationists...
...For, if we are to believe Mr...
...Were we "going it alone" when we took the lead in advocating sanctions against Italy when Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, and while Britain and France made a deal with II Duce known as the Hoare-Laval Treaty...
...If it was his foreign policy that swept you off your feet, how on earth can you be for him and for Mr...
...That "isolationist" has been 10,000 miles away, on overseas military duty for 20 months, and certainly there can be no more effective reply to innuendoes about him than the brilliant record he has been making in the Southwest Pacific as reported by returning soldiers, officers, and war correspondents...
...Any cutting of paper dolls, when there is really work to be done, is reactionary...
...Surely you must know, Bill, that this is not so, that we cooperated with the other nations on countless occasions...
...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...
...I just don't think the issue divides people that way at all, and it's slightly ridiculous for you to try to make "isolationism" and "monopoly capitalism" similar or synonymous...
...True, we are not quite so ready as you to underwrite, sight unseen, and with the blood, of American boys, a peace treaty which has not yet been written, but we have made it as clear as our understanding of the English language makes possible, that we most certainly favor cooperation with the other nations of the world in writing a decent, democratic, anti-imperialist peace, and if successful in that supremely important undertaking, to cooperate with the other nations in enforcing that kind of settlement...
...The kind of isolationism that you attacked last Sunday makes a nice, easy target...
...And I'm sure that isn't what you want, Bill...
...We pointed out then that for all his liberal language, he was the general counsel for U. S. Steel Corporation, that he was placed in his present firm through the influence of that great internationalist, Thomas Lamont of J. P. Morgan & Company, that he was made president of the 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation at a salary of $100,-000 a year through the influence of the Chase National Bank, that he was appointed a director of Lehmann Bros., a large banking house which, like Morgan and Chase National, has far-ranging international connections...
...Would you say we were "going it alone" when America gave Europe the Dawes Plan, the Young Plan, and the Hoover moratorium to ease the harsh burdens of the Versailles Treaty for Europe...
...And even you, Bill, have noted on occasion that the Chambers of Commerce generally represent the most conservative, if not the most downright reactionary elements in any given community...
...Willkie, the President is cynically prepared to let the present confusion continue until election time, "even if the entire nation is weakened...
...Don't you know that the National Association of Manufacturers, the United States Chamber of Commerce, the American Bar Association, and, I think, the American Bankers Association are lined up solidly behind a world league backed by armed force—just as you are...
...Roosevelt, too ? On the very day that he decided to drop out of the Republican race, he made a speech in Nebraska which was as pitiless a denunciation of Roosevelt policies as I have seen anywhere...
...Any pill that puts people to sleep is reactionary...
...Charles Beard, the noted American historian, makes this clear in his excellent new book, The Republic, lately reprinted in Life Magazine...
...Roosevelt was able to say with pride after he took office: "Today the United States is cooperating openly in the fuller utilization of the League of Nations machinery than ever before...
...or rather, it never came to life...
...The speech also sought to lump "isolationists" with "reactionaries" and "monopoly capitalism...
...You said in your Sunday broadcast that if "we decided to go it alone" again—which nobody advocates, of course—that we would be letting ourselves in for the biggest military establishments in the world, with all its staggering costs...
...Said that global-minded magazine: "Until Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936, the combined Powers of the League could have kept Germany disarmed without adding a gun to their armaments...
...Where We Differ YOUR difficulty, Bill, in understanding our position and the position of millions of Americans who hunger for peace and world cooperation just as passionately as you do, is not unique among the internationalists who like to claim a monopoly on righteousness and peaceful purpose for themselves...
...I mention this point of yours only to point out that the greatest demands for record-breaking military establishments, and permanent conscription of American boys, comes mostly from the members of your internationalist club—like Mr...
...Speaking of where the reactionaries stand on this issue, look at the interview carried this week by your new-found friend, the Milwaukee Journal, with Clark Eichelberger, the Wall Street lawyer, who is one of the hardest-working of your internationalist spokesmen...
...that foreign wars are none of our business...
...None of this was denied by Mr...
...Now, the myth that we refused to cooperate and decided to "go it alone" rests on the single fact that we refused to join the League...
Vol. 8 • May 1944 • No. 19
