THE EDITOR RESERVES THE LAST COLUMN
The Editor Reserves ... The Last Column THE PAST MONTH or so might well be called the period of "The Rude Awakening," especially for the more rampant of the internationalists—those wbo saw the war...
...The Last Column THE PAST MONTH or so might well be called the period of "The Rude Awakening," especially for the more rampant of the internationalists—those wbo saw the war as a great moral and ideological crusade which would culminate in a world state...
...One ardent supporter of the President's implored me to recognize that "there isn't really much difference between your position on foreign policy and Mr...
...I recalled the Davis article and column I had written on it...
...Burton K. Wheeler hailed Mr...
...Roosevelt's newly developed "nationalism...
...Their present dilemma on foreign policy was summarized by Time last week when it said: "U...
...Both Sides Of The Street...
...When I demurred, suggesting that Mr...
...or that he had all along been laughing up his sleeve at the 'internationalists...
...Churchill was followed a week afterward by a belting blow to the solar plexus by Mr...
...Roosevelt had indeed made a significant change, for as Time Magazine pointed out last week, "internationalists had insisted that 'sovereignty' was a wicked, isolationist word," and here was the President himself insisting on a 100 per cent preservation of American "sovereignty...
...Watchdog For Democracy This double blow at the so-called ideological internationalists came while I was bouncing around the East on a business trip...
...Davis had reported then, on "the highest authority," that President Roosevelt "looks with favor on the model [for international organization] furnished by the inter-American system...
...While the internationalists writhed under the impact of this unkindest blow of all, the nationalistic Chicago Tribune and Sen...
...Moreover, Davis had added, the President has decided against "an international air force or a United Nations military arm of any kind...
...In a crucial election year, Franklin Roosevelt was shrewdly working both sides of the street...
...Roosevelt might now be veering around for votes only, my friend recalled that fully 15 months ago the President floated a trial balloon by having Forrest Davis write an article in the Saturday Evening Post suggesting that the White House was opposed to the old League of Nations idea and to the concept of a world police force...
...flexible, representing no blanket surrender of sovereignty, affording the opportunity of frequent consultation and building a body of international law as it goes along...
...If this is Mr...
...Roosevelt...
...M.H.R...
...Far more wholesome, I found, was the growing interest in the Progressive movement and the fact that it had been able to develop and stand by a foreign policy which did not need to be changed every time Churchill made a speech, or Stalin issued an order of the day, or Roosevelt did a campaign-year somersault...
...Mr...
...Roosevelt's...
...This mauling of the ideological internationalists by Mr...
...Certainly this was precisely the form of international cooperation, based on Western Hemisphere experience, which The Progressive has been advocating for years...
...One official, who has never wavered in his support of the President, told me with great earnestness that while he did not agree entirely with Bob La Follette's foreign policy, he felt a great sense -of security because Bob was on the special Senate subcommittee working with Secretary Hull on postwar plans...
...They were floored first by Winston Churchill's brutally frank speech which acclaimed Franco the Fascist, tore to shreds what was left of the Atlantic Charter, and formally proclaimed the enthronement of power and expediency...
...Roosevelt's position, as my friend insisted it was, he has taken a long time and a devious road to make it known, and all the while some of his noisiest followers have been splattering mud at those who were taking and standing by a position so essentially the same in many respects...
...I talked with many high Government officials, some of them long identified as stalwart New Dealers, who thought the recently adopted Declaration of Progressive Principles was the most hopeful development in many dreary months...
...It has been increasingly difficult in recent years for Americans to understand their President...
...I feel better inside because he's our watchdog, protecting the interests of all of us who want a democratic peace, even though we may differ on the problem of enforcement...
...In a press conference-pronouncement the President said he was opposed to any form of international arrangement which involved tinkering with the "sovereignty" and "integrity" of the United States in any shape, manner, or form...
...S. voters could choose one of two pictures: that the President, a genuine 'internationalist,' was merely making a bid for some America First votes...
...The first signs of developing disillusionment which I observed and reported after my last trip East now took full form, and it was not a pleasant experience to talk with men and women who thought their hope was shattered and their faith betrayed, and whose new cynicism was too bitter and contagious to be healthy...
...Somehow I feel safer because Bob is on that committee," he told me...
Vol. 8 • June 1944 • No. 25
