Sunday, July 21, 1940

"I SEE NO REASON WHY THIS WAR MUST GO ON." Hitler’s peace speech to the Reichstag on Friday came out of the blue, with only vague hints coming in the last week that a new Nazi peace offensive might be coming. But this appears to be less an "offensive" than a quick blitz -- the Fuehrer called this new bid a "last" appeal to reason. Lots of hoodoo about lots of things, like the alleged British bombing of "hospitals, schools, and kindergartens" in western Germany, and of Herr Hitler’s oh-so-pious "grief" over the husbands and sons on both sides who will lose their lives in the coming Nazi annihilation of Britain. Sigrid Schultz’s account in the Chicago Tribune plays up a quotation that well sums up the tone of Hitler's remarks --

"In this hour I feel compelled for the sake of my conscience to address one more appeal to the common sense of England. I believe I can do this because I am not asking for something as a vanquished man, but I am speaking as a victor for common sense. I see no reason why this war must go on."

Guido Enderis points out in the New York Times that the speech contained no specific ultimatums and was bereft of practical proposals for ending the war. But he writes that Hitler "left no doubt that the conditions under which he would consider a peace step from Britain presupposed some other spokesman than Mr. Churchill." The Fuehrer did warn that he would bring about the "destruction of a great empire," meaning Britain, if his words were not heeded.

BRITAIN REPLIES – NO! (I) Berlin’s Kroll Opera House had hardly emptied of the beefy Reichstag deputies when a reply came in a B.B.C. broadcast. And it was unambiguously, emphatically, no. William Shirer said in his C.B.S. talk last night that within minutes of leaving the building he heard the British radio denouncing Hitler’s honeyed words. However, he added, the Nazi press and radio wasted little time circulating the Britain’s first, unofficial negative replies, and letting Germans know their enemy was determined to struggle on to the bitter end.

BRITAIN REPLIES - NO! (II) Hitler is such a masterful orator that, listening to the speech on radio, you start feeling a twinge of fear that people in Britain (and the U.S.) will actually fall for it. But Saturday’s British papers, as quoted in the New York Times, weren’t hoodwinked one bit. Some examples --

Daily Telegraph -- "Not a shred of one constructive or conciliatory proposal emerges between the first word and the last. We are, in effect, to stand or deliver, or our blood be on our own heads....But we are not going to be intimidated by any raucous rodomontades from Berlin."

Times of London -- "Presumably any terms [Hitler] now proposed would be based on acquiescence and cooperation with the so-called ‘new order’ in Europe -- an order that is now exposed in practice, having been long ago defined in theory, as the reduction of most of Europe to serfdom in the interest of the hegemony of the self-chosen German race. That is the supreme violation of the dearest political principles held by the English-speaking peoples."

Manchester Guardian -- "It would be fatal for the United States and the rest of the unconquered world if the spirit of appeasement and compromise were now to be allowed to raise its head. President Roosevelt’s courage in braving all prejudices of constitutional custom, and the equally sincere misgivings of many of his countrymen, is the best guarantee that in critical months ahead the greatest democracy will not falter in action."

Daily Herald -- "Between this man, eaten by lust for world domination, and the people who stand between him and his ambition there can be no peace. When he talks of peace he lies and prepares for war. The history of seven years is the reprover of it....We do not deceive ourselves. The struggle will be long, grim, and costly. We will go on until it is won."

DEMOCRATS RUMBLE WITH DISCONTENT. I would have thought that after the high drama and exultation of President Roosevelt’s not-so-spontaneous nomination for a third term, the Democrats would have left Chicago this week-end happy and confident. But not so -- an anti-third term movement is growing among Democrats, and it’s not just the heartily biased Chicago Tribune that’s saying so. Bruce Pinter reports in Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune that Senator Burke of Nebraska has bolted to Willkie, and he predicts "the formation of a national organization of Democrats to defeat the President." The movement has also attracted a former party chairman, Vance McCormick, and last year’s national commander of the American Legion, Stephen Chadwick. Meanwhile, an article in Friday’s Chicago Tribune by Chesley Manly lists no fewer than seven other Democratic senators who might refuse to back the third term. They’re all said to be as repulsed about the Administration’s string-pulling at Chicago as Republican Senator Vandenberg, who denounced the Chicago gathering as a "totalitarian convention."

It wasn’t quite that, judging from the rebellion that greeted the choice of Agriculture Secretary Wallace as the President’s running mate. Despite being Roosevelt’s hand-picked man, Wallace received only 624 delegate votes, not that much more than a simply majority (the President received just over 946 votes for his nomination). Arthur Sears Henning reports in Friday’s Chicago Tribune the astonishing story that Secretary Wallace sat through "storms of booing" during the nominating process, intent on giving an acceptance speech at the close of it. But one of F.D.R.’s men at the convention, Senator Byrnes of South Carolina, warned Wallace that "you’ll ruin the party if you do," by provoking a new round of boos and catcalls. Mr. Henning claims that this embarrassment "must have done Democratic prospects incalculable injury," though that sounds like anti-New Deal hyperbole.

BUT F.D.R. BROUGHT THEM TOGETHER. Administration men retort that the President’s acceptance speech Thursday night, broadcast to the convention from the White House, helped unify the party more than anything that could divide it. It was a great Roosevelt address, in which he portrayed a presidential draft as a "call to service" ("My conscience will not let me turn my back...If such a draft should be made upon me, I say, with the utmost simplicity, I will, with God’s help, continue to serve with the best of my ability and with the fullness of my strength."). In any event, the first Gallup survey of Roosevelt vs. Willkie two weeks ago put the President ahead, 53% to 47%. It’ll be interesting, to say the least, how the polls will be shaken by this topsy-turvy convention week.

DEMOCRATS IGNORE AN "ANCIENT SAFEGUARD." Mark Sullivan suggests in his Washington Post column Friday that the Chicago Democrats engaged in a form of mass hallucination, and dangerously so, in seeking to violate the third-term tradition --

"They were saying, ‘It is not true we must keep a limit upon the power of men we set over us – that is just an old wives’ tale.’ It was like men denying a primitive truth. It was like men saying ‘Fire does not burn,’ or ‘water does not drown.’ They were saying it very loudly, and in unison, so as to convince themselves. Each knew that if he said it alone, to himself, he would know it was not true. But they hoped that by saying it all together, they would believe it. Yet even as they said it, and tried to believe it, in their hearts they were a little afraid. They looked around at each other, and nudged up to each other and leaned against each other. They hoped that what was wrong for one to do might become right if done by all. There was being taken down, before their eyes, and by their consent and participation, an ancient safeguard, which had been built by their ancestors 150 years before. They saw it falling. But they said to themselves, ‘Oh, we do not need to guard the dike -- there is no danger -- the sea does not destroy."