TOWARD A PEOPLE'S FOREIGN POLICY
Howard, Harry Paxton
Toward A Peopled Foreign Policy By HARRY PAXTON HOWARD THE Republican Party chose a point with widespread appeal when it pledged itself to keep the American people "informed concerning all...
...It is one of the deep vices of personal government that when a great issue becomes a personal matter^evidence, reason, persuasion, compromise, common sense have to contend against pride and prejudice...
...It was also clear that they were growing puzzled and angry at the silence of their own Government...
...So secret were these moves that Stimson was able five years later to convince many Americans/by specious "explanations" and misrepresentations, that he had "tried to stop the Japanese" but "the British wouldn't cooperate...
...There is no doubt that in our foreign relations today, in a situation where a quarter of a million American youths have already given the last blood-stained tribute of patriotic devotion to their country, we have not popular government but personal government...
...I reminded him that I had gone so far...
...It becomes necessary to trim the argument to his moods...
...It is not enough for a party seeking Presidential power for its candidate to promise that it will keep the American people "informed...
...Can the private interests promoting war, destruction, and death secretly and successfully intrigue with the five hundred...
...as to urge our own press not to publish any matter which would inflame American sentiment against Japan, but that now in the interest of the position of my own Government I must reserve full liberty of action to make public the whole matter...
...They are the interests of special groups or individuals...
...The opportunity is there, and mere "self-denying" pledges are not enough...
...The interests of the Sugar Trust in Cuba, of "Big Navy" men in grabbing the Philippines, of railway or airway investors or missionaries in China, of the House of Morgan in Europe or elsewhere, of oil companies in Arabia and the Indies, of munition interests in war-promotion everywhere, of personal aspirants for political power in our own United States, of the British Empire or of Red Empire or of Chinese militarism—all these things combined do not add up to genuinely national interests of the American people...
...The overwhelming majority of Congress was determined that "it shall not happen again...
...Only two practical alternatives are open to us today: Dictatorial personal control, as exemplified by the Administration and openly advocated by its spokesmen, with secret "Executive agreements" in place of treaties...
...The Neutrality Act was violated, and Nazi and Fascist aggression steadily built up...
...The same Administration got us into war with the liberty-loving Filipinos by a deliberate attack upon the Filipinos, accusing the latter of a "sneak attack" and successfully thwarting the bill then passing Congress which would have assured the Philippines of self-government...
...Why, then, did it happen again ? The record is terribly clear...
...In fact, the direct opposite was the case...
...In this case, American economic influence was far greater than in the Spanish conflict, since the United States was the principal source of supply of the Japanese invaders...
...Where Hoover and Stimson left off, Roosevelt and Hull carried on...
...The American people are always "informed" sooner or later— usually much later...
...Congress voted almost 100 per cent for war on Japan...
...Presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey has more than once censured the present White House occupant's secret meetings and agreements with the heads of other governments...
...We had the same legal alternatives as in Spain...
...Congress had many years previously passed the Johnson Act, aiming to keep us out of war...
...As a result of demands from Congress, the Administration perforce made public in January the text of much of the correspondence of previous months, including Stimson's note in which he assured the Japanese militarists of "complete sympathy" in their attempts to "secure respect for their treaty rights in Manchuria...
...This collaboration with the Japanese militarists against China and the League of Nations was in definite defiance of American public opinion, as expressed both through the press and through Congress...
...And it was this which opened the whole Black Decade of aggression, fascism, and war...
...It is not enough for a Presidential candidate to declare that his foreign policies will be open, that fee will not secretly intrigue with foreign governments or with sinister elements at home...
...When they come into conflict with our basic national interests of peace and democracy, they must be flatly opposed and rejected...
...The hour is already late...
...Was it the prelude to the American ultimatum to Japan of Nov...
...Generation after generation, the peace-loving American people have been engineered into foreign wars by the machinations of war-promoting elements operating in or through the White House...
...The first alternative is the road to continued war, militarism, power-politics, imperialism, and personal dictatorship...
...With the repeated acts of defiance on the part of the Japanese army and the failure of the Japanese government to make good its assurances, popular criticism throughout the country had been rising...
...We may not have it long...
...The Hour Is Late We have reached a stage, today, where some of our political checks and balances are no longer operative...
...It was American fuel oil that flew Japan's bombing planes to Pearl Harbor...
...And an outstanding supporter of the President, Sen...
...The Bushido boys hired a whole fleet of Standard Oil tankers to take the fuel of death across the Pacific, and to build up adequate supplies not only against the Chinese but against us...
...Such was the situation on Dec...
...The embargo that had been applied against the Spanish Republic was not applied against the Japanese militarists...
...As no war was formally declared, the Neutrality Act might have been left in abeyance, and we might have supplied the Spanish Republic with desperately needed arms to fight the Fascists and invaders...
...feeling in our own country was rising...
...Instead, it supplied the Japanese invaders with all the oil and other supplies they needed to bomb the Chinese forces along the coast into mangled flesh and submission...
...26, 1941, to which the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was—in Secretary Hull's own words—"the reply...
...Or was it the prelude to the convoying of British ships by American naval vessels, and American attacks on German submarines which attacked the British ships, in September, 1941...
...President Hoover in 1931-'32, with Stimson as his Secretary of State, carried on secret policies not only of "appeasement" but of definite collaboration with the Japanese militarists in their invasion of Manchuria and their attack upon the Chinese forces of Tsai Ting-kai at Shanghai...
...That American foreign policies are not public, but private, is a fact which is not only emphasized by Mr...
...If so, can it honestly be referred to as a method of "winning peace...
...In 1936 Hitlerite Germany, already emerging as a Great Power in Europe, joined hands with Mussolini, with British Tories, and with Spanish Fascists in an attack upon the Republican Government of Spain...
...President McKinley got us into war with Spain (for which see our most eminent historian, Charles Beard) by deliberately suppressing the desperately appeasing note the Spanish Government had sent, and untruthfully telling Congress that Spain had not answered the American note...
...We may judge the ugly consequences of this personal adventure in diplomacy by the news from Algiers that the French there distrust the intentions of Mr...
...America's National Interests The entire history of our overseas imperialism, starting with our war against Spain in 1898, bears witness to this...
...Surely there must be some way...
...Roosevelt's political critics and opponents, but frankly acknowledged by the more candid ef his supporters...
...But the problem lies deeper than the problem of Roosevelt II and his personal government...
...Furthermore, during the period of Hoover-S.timson collaboration with Tokyo there was growing resentment among the American press and people which Stimson himself described in his book as follows...
...Gerald P. Nye, of the means by which we were gotten into World War I, had revealed clearly the sinister forces which had operated...
...For Peace And Democracy During the past few weeks, I have addressed audiences as far west as Chicago and Des Moines, and southward in North Carolina, and have found widespread interest in the suggestion that the way to a genuinely democratic foreign policy, aiming at the preservation of peace and the maintenance and advancement of democracy as the only truly national interests of the American people, lies in the vesting of power over foreign policy in Congress...
...This was the act of the Administration, not of Congress...
...We were gotten into war when the Administration in 1940-'41, deliberately and completely reversed its previous policies with regard to Germany and Japan...
...We still have our choice...
...Through the press the growth of this American feeling became very manifest to us at the Department...
...In 1937, the Japanese militarists launched an unprovoked war of aggression in China...
...The Constitutional authority of Congress over declarations of war and conclusion of peace treaties can be and has repeatedly been nullified and rendered meaningless by the secret intrigues and moves of war-promoting Executives...
...Defying Public Opinion All this, of com*se, makes excellent political ammunition against the Roosevelt Administration...
...But the Administration continued its secret and shady policies, building up the Great Powers against which we are today at war...
...and expanded...
...Building Up The Aggressors The Roosevelt Administration, however, did neither...
...Acting upon these two falsehoods, it proceeded to embargo military supplies to the desperately beleag-ured Spanish Republic, and continued to supply them to the German and Italian invaders...
...Congress passed the Neutrality Act and the Johnson Act, but enforcement was in the hands of the Chief Executive...
...But the Administration, on the pretext that war had not been "declared," this time declined to apply the Neutrality Act...
...26, 1941, which resulted—as Secretary Hull expected—in the attack on Pearl Harbor...
...To ask the question is to answer it...
...After its re-election in 1936, it proceeded to violate the Neutrality Act on behalf of the Fascist aggressors...
...Was the secret meeting between Roosevelt and Churchill in August, 1941, the prelude to continued peace...
...President Wilson, elected by the American people in 1916 on the campaign plea that he had "kept us out of war," violated his trust and engineered us into war in the Spring of 1917—under the influence of the House of Morgan, fearful for the fate of their investments in British victory...
...The second alternative is the way to peace and democracy—the only permanent and genuinely national interests of the American people...
...It was made safe for the Morgan investments...
...The American people have only two genuinely national interests—the preservation and advancement of peace, and the preservation and advancement of the democratic way of life...
...It was clear that the American people were following the proceedings both here and at Geneva with great interest...
...Would this be possible with 500 elected representatives of the American people, in Congress assembled...
...Or, if the Administration was quite indifferent as between Fascist aggressors and democratic victims, an embargo on arms might have been applied to both sides...
...Which would mean, in effect, by-passing the Constitution and wholly evading its clear provision for Senatorial concurrence in the making of treaties...
...Debuchi, the Japanese Ambassador...
...The pacts secretly entered into by the American President with foreign rulers, sometimes by-passing even his own State Department and dealing either directly or through personal envoys, are not known even to the representatives of the American people in Congress...
...It is not enough, however, to attribute the influences which got us into war to the personal attitudes of President Roosevelt...
...And by keeping Russia in the war in 1917 against the resentment and hostility of the mass of the Russian people, the opportunity was given for the Communists to seize power and start the whole infernal cycle of Bolshevism, Fascism, Nazism, and racial war which has plagued the world for a generation and is leading us ever nearer to the abyss of a new Dark Age...
...Even more clearly and indubitably than in the case of Spain, it was an aggressive war by one government against another...
...The world was not made "safe for democracy...
...Roosevelt and believe that he has designs upon their colonial empire...
...Walter Lippmann, for instance, in writing on June 17 of the Rooseveltian policy towards de Gaulle at that time, remarked: "In a system of personal government, where the will of one man is supreme, forthright discussion of public questions is difficult...
...Practically, this has been repeatedly and increasingly nullified by secret Executive intrigues and foreign agreements...
...7, 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and declaration of war...
...Congress had many years previously passed the Neutrality Act, aiming to keep us Out of war...
...Or popular control through the elected representatives of the American people, actually exercising their proper authority over war and peace and foreign policies...
...19...
...of rising above this personal feud to a statesmanlike treatment of the problem...
...Claude Pepper of Florida, voices what is unquestionably the Administration attitude when he starts off an article in the New York Times, entitled "Peace Despite the Fili-busterers," with: "If the United States is to win the peace and begin effective world collaboration at the end of World War II, it will have to be not by treaty of peace but by executive agreement...
...It is through the White House and through the State Department that these little pressure groups, generation after generation, have promoted war and gotten us into it...
...Toward A Peopled Foreign Policy By HARRY PAXTON HOWARD THE Republican Party chose a point with widespread appeal when it pledged itself to keep the American people "informed concerning all agreements with foreign nations...
...Throughout those years there was widespread and increasingly bitter resentment among the American people, both inside and out of Congress, against this continued aid to military aggression both in Europe and in Asia...
...The real gravity of the situation lies in the fact that the President possesses the power, working directly, through personal and secret envoys, or through his State Department, to get us into a position where there is no alternative but war...
...I invited in Mr...
...Accordingly, on Nov...
...But what happened in 1941 was the continuation of what had been going on for years...
...But Congress was not consulted about the note to Japan dated Nov...
...The Congressional investigation, so courageously promoted by Sen...
...Constitutionally, Congress is vested with ultimate authority on decisions of war and of peace...
...Secret Pacts And 'Peace' Turning from "campaign oratory" to the actual record, what have been the results of the secret "executive agreements" reached by President Roosevelt with various foreign governments...
...Secondly, that the Neutrality Act was applicable to "civil" conflicts...
...It set forth two propositions, both of which were demonstrably false: First, that the Spanish conflict was simply a "civil" war...
Vol. 8 • August 1944 • No. 33
