U.S. ENVOYS STARTED THE WAR? Germany has touched off a controversy in the U.S. Congress following publication of a Nazi “White Book,” which claims the European war was secretly fomented by a pair of U.S. ambassadors under President Roosevelt’s direction. Saturday’s New York Times has partial transcripts of the “sensational diplomatic documents,” which the Germans claim came from captured archives at the Polish Foreign Office in Warsaw. In these papers, Polish ambassadors report on diplomatic talks with their foreign counterparts, most notably the American ambassador to France, William C. Bullitt, and the ambassador to Britain, Joseph P. Kennedy.
According to Sigrid Schultz in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune, most of the papers cover the period prior to the Anglo-French commitment to defend Poland, which was made exactly one year ago today. Miss Schultz reports that in one of the documents Ambassador Bullitt pledges to Poland’s ambassador to the U.S., Count Potocki, that America would “finish” any future war on the side of the Allies. Ambassador Bullitt also said, in Count Potocki’s paraphrase, that “only strength...could in the future put an end to Germany’s mad expansion.” The ambassador also supposedly referred to a “psychosis” of anti-German feeling in the U.S. Another documents claims Ambassador Kennedy promised the Poles he would lobby British leaders about “the necessity of helping Poland at once with cash.”
Easily the phoniest-sounding document of the bunch is a purported dispatch to Warsaw by Count Potocki on Jan. 12, 1939, described by Miss Schultz thusly -- “After asserting that hatred in the United States against all forms of Fascism was growing and was being incited by Jewish propaganda which, the document said, controls the radio, press, films, and magazines nearly 100 percent, the alleged Potocki report continued: ‘President Roosevelt was first to give expression to this hatred for Fascism. He thereby pursued a two-fold object. First, he wanted to distract the attention of the American public from difficult and complicated domestic problems....Second, by conjuring up a war psychosis and conjuring up danger in Europe, he wanted to persuade the American people to accept America’s enormous preparedness program, a program which goes beyond defense needs.’”
IS THERE ANYTHING TO IT? It’s hard to imagine how anybody who isn’t a follower of Hitler could swallow this Potocki report. In effect, the Germans are asking us to believe that a Polish diplomat, in early 1939, would issue confidential communications that mimic Dr. Goebbels’ current propaganda line almost word-for-word. As for the alleged statements by Ambassadors Bullitt and Kennedy, an article by William V. Nessly in Saturday’s Washington Post records their emphatic denials, as well as Secretary Hull’s remark that the U.S. government doesn’t give any of these documents “the slightest credence.” So who’s lying, Hitler or Hull? No contest there.
What galls even more is that, even if the Ambassadors Bullitt and Kennedy were “guilty” of making any private statements in support of the Allied cause, the main Nazi allegation here is that the U.S. started the war by (1) endorsing the right of Poland to defend herself against German aggression, and (2) encouraging the Allies to help her in this task. According to the views of the men who wrote this “White Book,” the correct “peaceful” approach presumably would be for the Roosevelt administration to sit by and watch the Nazis bomb, pillage, ravage, invade, murder, and extort neighboring countries -- and not give a fig. It’s amazing to me that anyone can claim President Roosevelt has been too emphatically pro-British and anti-German. In most respects, the administration’s approach these past few months has been quite mild. And if anything, our foreign policy needs to be more emphatically opposed to the deeds and goals of the dictators -- not less.
SHAME ON THE ISOLATIONISTS. Some in Congress have assailed the “White Book” disclosures as Nazi propaganda, and others are withholding comment. Then, there are those like Hamilton Fish, the Republican representative from New York – he claims the charges are so “serious” that the House Foreign Affairs Committee should investigate. He even says, according to the Chicago Tribune, that “if President Roosevelt has entered into secret understandings or commitments with foreign governments to involve us in war he should be impeached.” Maybe Congress should do so, if such secret commitments exist. But do we really start investigating on the basis of Hitler’s word alone? Thankfully, another Senate Republican isolationist, Danaher of Connecticut, has the sense to say that the source of these documents is “open to suspicion.”
Maybe the dumbest comment of all so far comes from Senator Holt, Democrat of West Virginia, who seems eager to vouch for the authenticity of the Nazi claims, based on nothing but his own silly class prejudices. He told the New York Times, “Frankly, I believe Bullitt did say that....We have too many Ambassadors who can’t stand foreign liquor and when they get too much of it they do too much talking. But you will never see them leading the soldiers in the front-line trenches. They haven’t enough time to get away from their teas and cocktail parties.”
MASSACHUSETTS LEANS TO THE REPUBLICANS. Dr. George Gallup is reporting in the Washington Post on a series of state-by-state polls which look at how the Republicans and Democrats would do if the Presidential race were held now. Without naming a specific candidate, the current Gallup survey, in Massachusetts, shows the Republican trend of two years ago continuing, with 54% of voters there favoring a Republican for President this fall. As in other states, Bay State voters oppose the Third Term, 55% to 45%. The best news for the Democrats so far in these statewide polls is that the bigger states are leaning Democratic -- New York by 53% to 47%, and Pennsylvania by 51% to 49%. California leans strongly Democratic in the Presidential race, 58% to 42%, while New Jersey leans toward the G.O.P., 53% to 47%.
ANOTHER REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE? A story in Friday’s New York Herald Tribune says another Republican might join the presidential race, though he’s being coy about it -- “Republican leaders, awaiting the results of important Presidential primary contests next week, have been comparing notes on the availability of Wendell L. Willkie as a compromise candidate, should a deadlock develop among the Dewey, Taft, and Vandenberg forces at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.” Mr. Willkie, the president of the Commonwealth and Southern Corporation, was the subject of a highly favorable profile last month in Current History. That article portrayed the tall Midwesterner as a standout among the Republicans -- a utility executive not averse to unions and government regulation, an independent thinker whose fitness for President is touted by figures such as Alfred E. Smith and General Johnson, a self-described “La Follette liberal.” There may be one problem with a Willkie candidacy -- according to the Herald Tribune, he “is listed in the record books as a Democrat.”
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