IN THE SWEET NAME OF PEACE

...They would be wise to leave plenty of room in that world for the Four Freedoms...

...Once in the mess, the nation was willing and glad to go all out for a better world...

...Or else—to put it bluntly and baldly—they will find the United States instinctively reverting to a policy undeniably native to this country in the past and recently misnamed, by those who oppose it, "isolationism...

...Our men and our money are to be on call to help maintain the status quo of the world as partitioned and governed after the war—no matter how imperialistic, how undemocratic, how squarely at odds with every American instinct for fairness that status quo may happen to be...

...They will demand that the United States officially insist on a democratic, anti-fascist, anti-imperialist, deeply and truly democratic peace for the whole world before this nation joins any sort of world order to enforce that peace...

...For I somehow cannot get out of my head the fact that the same citizens who ran so many "isolationists" out of office on a rail are quite resigned to the belief that the United States, after winning the war, is going to "lose the peace...

...What matters—and matters tremendously—is that the people of the United States, utterly disillusioned about a decent and democratic set of postwar aims, are suddenly being high-pressured into accepting a shoddy substitute, in the sweet name of permanent peace...

...And while it lasted it would simply mean that the world would be run by the mighty, and peace, sweet peace, would be a one-sided peace imposed by the powerful in their own selfish and still national interests...

...Somewhere, something doesn't quite fit...

...It also and incidentally gave a somewhat more satisfactory point than did mere self-protection to the shipping of millions of men thousands of miles overseas...

...and both Presidential candidates in the 1940 campaign were forced to pay lip-service to the ideal of keeping out of war although it was clear to most voters that both F.D.R...

...But the United Nations would be able to slap down India if it should try single-handed to win its independence—or to squelch attempted revolutions in the Dutch East Indies or French North Africa or anywhere else where "backward" peoples might like for a change to try to govern themselves...

...And in Britain the people have been far more vocal, though as yet ineffective, in opposition to their government's semi-fascist foreign policy than United States citizens have yet become, For American citizens are somewhat stunned by the Administration's light-hearted abandonment of every decent war aim save only victory—an abandonment all the more stupid and shocking in that the United States has no empire to cling to and no territorial ambitions anywhere in the world...

...As is too often forgotten today, the United States did not go to war to save Europe or Asia from fascism or even to save Britain from- the Nazis...

...Only out in the Philippines, when Gen...

...The Unit- -ed States Government, by deed if not by word, chimed in "Me too...

...witness Spain and more recently Belgium...

...With a single voice, they blasted all those who had dared question the sanity or the sanctity of the Administration's foreign policy, past, present, or future...

...Yet the American people rarely stay stunned—or fooled-—for long...

...Certainly the winds of public opinion seem to be blowing against us...

...Just as it is perfectly apparent that no so-called world government which depends for its entire strength .on the pooled strength of separate and sovereign nations is going to stand for two seconds once any strong nations start quarreling with each other...

...It is against this background of idealism turned sour that Dumbarton Oaks and all the pretentious plans for a postwar United Nations set-up must be considered: The United States did not go to war to Save the World...

...A substantial majority of American citizens consistently and strongly opposed going to war for either of these purposes...

...It does not much matter that Russia on one side and the United States and Britain on the other are already at bitter odds over a voting technicality...

...The United States landed in North Africa, spurned the Free French, and made a deal with collaborationist Darlan...

...Shoddy Substitute For Peace And now the United States is presented, take-it-or-leave-it (but if you leave it, you're an isolationist), with a half-built, jerry-built house in which the nations of the world are supposed to live happily ever after...

...And the slick salesmen of a world set-up to perpetuate any-old-peace-at-all betray .their %gf\v that the United States people may soon come to "S-cir senses, in their frantic rush to change or by-pass the old Constitutional requirement of a two-thirds vote in the Senate for foreign treaties...

...But the bulk of American citizens, as poll after poll proved, remained "isolationists" right up to Pearl Harbor...

...There was no arguing with the mightiest smear machine the nation has ever known—-a machine made up of such strange bed-fellows as New Dealers and Wall Streeters, PM and the Herald Tribune, the Communists and the League of Women Voters...

...Even the Good Neighbor Policy began to fall apart as United States indignation at Argentina was made absurd by appeasement of Spain and by open-arms friendship for every Latin-American dictatorship willing to play economic ball with the United States...

...Having got into the war purely for purposes of self-protection, the United States was soon and easily persuaded by the Administration that it was also fighting an idealistic war, for the principles of the Atlantic Charter and for the Four Freedoms...

...They will not let the nation be party to any new-fangled Holy Alliance, dedicated to the defense of the British Empire, the Dutch Empire, the French Empire, the borders of Russia, the borders of China, fascism in Spain, monarchy in Greece, dictatorship in Poland, and an effort to freeze forever the global status quo...

...The United States went to war with Japan only because the United States was attacked by Japan...

...But it was not only Britain that brushed idealism aside...

...some hated it and shrugged...

...That the label was applied every bit as indiscriminately, inaccurately, and unfairly as the label "Red" was once applied to all who favored progress made no difference...

...MacArthur brought President Osmena back with him, was United States foreign policy so much as tinged with a feeling for true democracy...

...For it is perfectly apparent that— no matter which way the technicality is settled—when the next international blow-up comes, no written rule is going to stop any powerful nation fronv doing exactly as it pleases in its own national interest...

...Then, like an avalanche starting slowly, came disillusionment from every quarter...

...Brushing Idealism Aside Suppose we begin at the beginning...

...Every G. I. knew it in his bones...

...But before forking into a personal portion of crow, there are one or two points I'd still like to raise, one or two matters I'd still like to see cleared up...

...The war had become a war for raw victory, with no more moral meaning than was incidentally involved in the licking of Germany and Japan...

...Germany declared war on us...

...Every informed citizen sensed it...

...So maybe we've been wrong—we querulous cranks, we anchor-draggers...

...They know, these salesmen, that time is running out on them...

...Smuts, made clear that Britain was fighting only to save and keep its Empire, and that talk of freedom for men with brown skins or black skins was so much rot...

...Or failing this, the American people will wash their hands of any world order at all...

...And even those British and American Russophobes who frantically and f utilely objected had nothing much better to offer Poland than a return to its pre-war anti-Semitic dictatorship...

...The United Nations set-up for peace would last precisely as long as peace between the Big Three or the Big Four or the Big Five would last without any United Nations set-up...

...Churchill announced— with an air of "Don't be silly"—that the Atlantic Charter was not to apply to India...

...Unless— Unless the foreign policies and the international plans of Britain, Russia, and our own Government should suddenly switch from the undemocracy of their present false "realism" back to the Atlantic Charter and the Four Freedoms...

...Unless the meat of a world order worth fighting for and working for should be publicly put into the otherwise empty shell of the Dumbarton Oaks scheme...

...Time Is Running Out Only the people can do it—or force it to be done...

...The United Nations would never fee able to stop a war between Britain and Russia if any such war should ever be in the making...

...Some hated it and squawked in private...

...Moving into Italy, the United States, again on orders from Washington, turned its back on democrats and did business with fascists...

...some just shrugged...

...and Willkie thought we ought then to be fighting at Britain's side...

...Meanwhile Russia made plain that the Atlantic Charter was not to apply to the Baltic states or Poland...

...The United States soon learned that this is no World-Saving war...

...British treatment of subject peoples in Asia and Africa, along with the statements of official spokesmen like Gen...

...They would be wise to forget their blue-prints for a while and look to their ideals...

...Stunned, the people vote vilified "isolationists" out of office, vaguely favor Dumbarton Oaks, and resign themselves to "losing the peace...

...It does not much matter that the structure is quite a lot like the late League of Nations...

...The United States, at war, was willing to help try to Save the World...

...The United States is a generous people, and while the notion of again making the world safe for democracy had a slightly corny ring, it was something very close to that idea which inspirited the nation and the men in the services during the first many months of the war...

...The label "isolationist" was usually the kiss of death in the November elections...

...And so I wonder whether the blank-check "internationalists" who have been riding so high so recently may not be riding for a fall...

...What matters is that we are being bulled and bullied into lending our national strength, by way of a blank check, to a streamlined 20th Century version of the old unholy Holy Alliance...

...They would be wise, I believe, to concentrate less on the formal structure of their new League of Nations and more on the kind of world it is built to run...

...Then Churchill, last Summer, pressed about his support of a forthright fascist regime in Spain, made explicit the complete disinterest of the British Government in "ideologies," anywhere in the world...

...Maybe those of us who have declined to toss our hats in the air and Heil every time we read or hear of "internationalism" or "Dumbarton Oaks" or "Council of the United Nations" have been just as blind and just as benighted and just as surely boils on the ascent of civilization as those who scoff at our skepticism insist...

...For if and when the people awaken, they will rise up, sure as shootin', and demand that their Government do one of two things...

...Maybe we who have made bold to wonder whether the United States is being sucked in, like a yokel at a casino, to a rigged postwar poker game, where the nation is due to lose not only its virtue but its shirt, are just mean old obstructionists and isolationists after all...