THE BOGEY MAN OF FOREIGN POLICY

...Even while this war is on Jan Smuts and others have raised their cry of alarm...

...Their revolts may be aided by Japanese immigrants, out for revenge, and, sooner or later, by Russia or China or both...

...Roosevelt has given evidence of no frontal attack upon the poverty and unemployment which predispose the masses to accept imperialism, militarism, and ultimately war itself, as bringers of some economic security to them...

...and the promotion of "a steady expansion of economic activity" to conquer poverty "as indispensable to democracy and peace...

...Inevitably the extension of the Russian sphere of influence in a Balkanized Europe will be challenged by Great Britain which has never been content that any power should dominate the continent...

...I know of no comparable discussion of the faults of the State Department, of the difficulties in the way of a democratic foreign policy under our form of government, and of a practical program for dealing with them...

...BUT that's only half, and not the most important half, of the story...

...He writes with admirable clarity...

...My criticism is that Mr...

...They write as if we could be saved by cooperation with our strong Allies more or less regardless of the questions how, and for what, we are cooperating...

...There is of course much to be said for some of these principles...

...Roosevelt really trusts that policy of appeasing Stalin and Churchill which has thus far dominated his actions in respect to Europe and the Far East...

...Certainly I want a continuance of cooperation between the nations which unquestionably will hold the preponderance of power, but it is essential to any hope of lasting peace that that cooperation, for the sake of the well-being of all of us, from the beginning should be inclusive, and on terms that mean a conscious abandonment of that frantic struggle for profits and power of which militarism, the war system^ and finally war itself, are the products...

...He is a little more realistic than Walter Lippmann, but he is guilty of the same overstatement of our own and the world's indebtedness to Great Britain for peace in the 19th Century...

...For the second and third of them I have nothing but applause...

...In a few years, unless we can radically change the whole concept of power politics, the same sort of people who now cry out for the complete destruction of Germany and Japan, will be putting us on guard against Russia, and for much the same reason...

...will have the population, birthrate, strategic position, and probably the pan-Slavic and Communist support, to make it immensely the most powerful single nation in the world as soon as it has recovered from the war and further developed its industries...

...Jones, despite his merits, vitiates his most important chapter by making a bogey man out of an isolationism that never really existed, whereas the great enemy to peace will be an imperialism equally, dangerous whether Americans go into it for themselves alone or as partners in an uneasy and shortlived triple or quadruple alliance...

...Britain will be far less able to frustrate Russia, without the United States, than to defeat Germany...

...Roosevelt, has been determined in the White House...

...His principles begin with the necessity for a Four Power Alliance...

...In terms of power politics, if that's the game we're going to play, the immediate superiority of the United States at the close of the war will soon yield before Russia's rising star...

...To this criticism Mr...

...It is being determined there now and commitments are being made tacitly or explicitly by the President in his personal dealings with Messrs...

...They go on to the support of the "principle of freedom" in the world...

...The U.S.S.R...

...Jones almost completely ignores the Asiatic situation, is entirely too optimistic in appraising Stalin's record, and expects the basic principle of alliance to bring forth fruits impossible until-figs grow from thistles...

...He does not join our totalitarian liberals in flinging around the word "fascists" to describe what he does not like...

...Here in our own country the growing demand for postwar military conscription, apparently favored by the Administration, and its oil imperialism in Arabia are proof how little Mr...

...One or another of the Allies will find it convenient for its own purposes to champion the cause of the millions of those peoples in Europe, Asia, and Africa who today are so largely excluded from any share in formulating the shape of things to come...

...It is entirely incredible that the Indo-Chinese, Javanese, Malayans, Burmese, and Indians will long tolerate the restoration of white empire over them to which we seem to be committed...

...Contrary to logic and history they preach the doctrine of peace almost solely through the police...

...It is precisely at this all important point of the nature of "a modern foreign policy" that Mr...

...The German "master race" will be too exhausted, its total numbers too few, and its birthrate too low for a third time to challenge the world...

...The author, now an associate editor of Fortune magazine, speaks with the authority of 10 years service, for the Government, four years for the Tariff Commission, and six years in the State Department...

...The only thing that might have made these chapters stronger would have been a little fuller recognition that whatever the faults of the State Department, and however seriously they handicap the formulation and execution of a sound foreign policy, in every important respect, for weal or'for woe, American foreign policy, under Mr...

...Stalin gives every evidence of playing pure power politics in Europe...

...They are silent or almost silent on imperialism and the revolt of the colored races, they ignore the "revolution of our times...

...MY bitter complaint against the whole company of liberal anti-isolationist writers on foreign policy, is that they simply do not face these facts...

...Jones has presented only very partial exceptions...

...The chances are very small that that new war will come primarily from a new drive by Germany or Japan, still less from both of them in alliance, for world power...

...Let's forget it for a moment and ask ourselves the probable channels along which we drift to that World War III which is now at once so likely in itself and so fatalistically accepted by large sections of the public...

...There is absolutely nothing in the present relations of the Big Three to make it in the least probable that a permanent alliance of them will continue unbroken by that strife for profit and power which has always broken up alliances based on self interest...

...Meanwhile Mr...

...His criticism of .the State Department is the more persuasive because it is not abusive...

...Churchill and Stalin at which the American people have to guess, although their consequences literally will mean life or death for the little children who laugh and play in our homes...

...adequate provision for international control over civil and military air power everywhere in the world...

...He does not discuss imperialism at all except perhaps as it may be involved in some of his fair sounding generalizations...

...Jones' book is least- satisfactory...