A ROOM OF OUR OWN

...He hasn't the ghost of an idea what American policy is...

...In the past the purse strings were held by corporations and wealthy individuals and they wielded their power ruthlessly...

...But the organized opponents were so anxious to win the current election that they rendered lip-service to what they did riot really believe, on the theory that they could sneak into victory...

...We have learned to take hard personal defeats and to realize that we MUST accept them and go back to work to correct what had produced them, so far as that is possible...

...Foreign "isms" are attracting to their banners many people whose discontent with the status quo makes any change appear desirable...

...It is difficult to buck the holder of the purse strings...

...The actual experience of millions of men overseas in seeing us out-maneuvered politically while we are furnishing the wherewithal, the human and material sinews of war, leaves an impression which no radio'commentator or newspaper story can imprint on us at home...

...But more important is this: Forgetting how we all got where we are, Mr...

...Dewey were elected...

...Now that the election is over, we are getting the inevitable consequences of Mr...

...From it will come the leadership to translate democratic principles into action and then solve the great issues ahead...

...Roosevelt is a magnificent tactician on day-to-day moves, and his opponents fell into the pit of saying "me, too," instead of executing a merciless and continuing attack that the reason we- are in the position we are is because of bad strategy...

...Whenever the elder La Follette took a licking he took it because he was ahead of his time and hence he was "out in front...

...There will be millions of people with a new background, demanding a new and different future...

...Step by step with these periodic reversals we forged ahead...

...I am quite convinced that there must and will be a new approach to the postwar period...

...In the early days of the New Deal, Progressives enthusiastically saw their measures and their men go to Washington...

...Roosevelt stay in office, not only so that the footless internationalists and liberals could not say, "It would have been different if F.D.R...

...Few of these have the realism of the irrepressible Lady Astor who was quoted recently as saying that Communism was all right for Russia but she would have none of it for herself...

...The great strength of the Progressive movement was that it fought for practical ends with practical methods, but always recognizing that victory was never worth winning at the cost of what all the practicality was aimed to achieve...

...The American may be just as able and well-trained and hard-working, but he is working in the dark...

...At and for the moment there was no alternative...

...The cold hard truth is that as much as convinced Americans abhor either form of totalitarianism, the fact remains that these two "isms" have offered aggressive programs...

...The voters sensed their insincerity and repulsed it...

...So all in all it will be just as well to start with a new slate...

...In this light, we cannot over-emphasize the vital importance of this lack of basic grasp and program as we see it operating from the Allied council tables to the smallest local official...

...In these terms, it would be better to have Mr...

...Today the Government has a much bigger purse, and the strings are open...

...The inability of the old guard Republicans to deal with the economic problems of the postwar period would then have been shown up, and there would have been a better chance for a liberal group,to catch the reaction that would have followed the Republican bungling...

...The Britisher knows what he's there for, what his function is in the over-all British plan...

...And here again we face the necessity for leadership...

...These men have been dealing in terms of life and death where there is no buck-passing and mistakes are fatal...

...What has happened in the last few years among liberals and progressives generally is that they have been taking defeats because they were behind the procession...

...To Complete The Record' Incidentally, here is where I think the peace-by-force internationalists have made a real strategic blunder: they have insisted so blindly on the continuation of these muddle-headed policies that they will not trust anyone but Mr...

...One man more thoughtful than the average and whose experience gave him wide Allied contacts, put his finger on the cause of this common American feeling: "Everywhere you find a British and an American officer on an assignment, the Britisher has it over the American and this naturally galls the American...

...Democracy must play a far more aggressive and constructive role than it is now if it is to take its rightful place at the head of the procession of ideas...

...And so the "liberals" generally are pursuing their way on the road until apparently they will reach the end, after which we can begin with a fresh start...

...However, he has been the man at all these moments, for the past eleven and three-quarters years...

...Yet such is the slow evolution of political progress that, as many discouraged people forget, in the 40 odd years of Wisconsin's outstanding reputation for Pro-gressivism, there was a continual cycle of reactionary followed by progressive trends...

...But why is this...

...For Mr...

...Causes Worth Fighting For According to our basic political philosophy, Progressives have always sweated out a program to meet the basic issues, and then taken it to the people...

...Roosevelt again seems the best man for the moment...

...Tragic though it is, the war is the frontier of this period...

...had been there," but, more important, because in terms of commitments the Democratic "soft-thinkers" would be more likely to follow a Republican down the road to wishful-thinking internationalism than Republicans would follow a Democrat down the same road...

...A New Approach There are many of us Progressives who endeavor to be what William James called "tough-minded" as we face the future...

...In other words, one should have his eye on something besides—or rather, than solely—the immediate objective...

...To complete the record then, I think it is best in the long run that he remain in power...

...As time went on, however, they realized that these were no part of an integrated program, but merely hopeful straws which were tossed aside when some fresh idea or personality appeared on the horizon...

...The reactionaries had the simple program of merely opposing us...

...If he is not responsible for where we are, then no individual is...

...More profound students thinlrthat it is well within the realm of possibility that the action (not re-action) may be in a different direction, namely toward something new...

...The basic rule ought to be that one can take a defeat if after that defeat he becomes stronger...

...But as in medicine, in a democracy he can choose his doctor...

...According to mature Progressive philosophy, it is wiser to lean to the side of fighting for lost causes than to lose with "winning causes...

...The Administration has again dissolved into its confused and conflicting factions...

...If some of us went a bit too fast for the folks to follow, retribution ensued, but.we kept to our course...

...However, that is thinking in conventional terms of "liberal" and "reactionary...

...As they have fallen by the wayside one by one they have not left a great deal behind them...

...Just as it had at Versailles, the world has plenty of "experts" with knowledge by the mile, but what is needed is the character to make decisions and to see them through...

...The minute one makes a statement like the foregoing, liberals led by the Communists start shouting "Fascist!," while reactionaries shudder "Communism...

...I have made a point of talking to men returned from overseas and find an almost general anti-British sentiment...

...Roosevelt...

...As any thoughtful observer noted, they were consolidated during the campaign not on a fundamental program but on the desire for continued power...

...Roosevelt's type of leadership...

...Liberals' And The Election So in contemplating the recent election, one school of "liberal" thought felt it might be better in the long run if Gov...

...And there is something to this : namely, that only some one with his extraordinary powers for day-to-day action (and NONE for PLANNING AHEAD) would be able to wiggle out of the enormous blunders his failure to look ahead have led him and the country into...

...In the long run the only causes worth being with are those that from time to time are temporarily losers, but which in the course of human progress are the only winners there can or should be...