THE REPUBLICAN PEACE PLANK. Only some of the press men at the Republican Convention in Philadelphia this week are writing on suspenseful battle for the nomination between Dewey, Taft, and Willkie -- others have been following the platform committee’s back-and-forth discussions over the “peace plank.” Jack Beall writes in Wednesday’s New York Herald Tribune that the platform committee finished up its work late Tuesday night after nine straight days of work. The upshot is “a strong peace, defense, and non-intervention plank” which the isolationists have succeeded this week in making more anti-Roosevelt and less specific in support for aiding Britain than it started out to be.
In fact, Monday’s Washington Post featured a story by Robert C. Allbright describing the Republicans as having swung toward aid to the Allies, on the basis of the way the peace plank was shaping up. Although it did accuse the President of making “provocative statements” which have brought the nation closer to war, and declared against American “involvement” in foreign wars, the plank explicitly called for sympathy and aid for “oppressed peoples” resisting aggression. But John B. Oakes writes in Wednesday’s editions of the Post that isolationists subsequently insisted on making the plank “punchier,” with still more language accusing the Democrats of promoting war, and watering down the support for aid to the Allies (“People of the United States feel and express a sympathetic interest in all oppressed peoples everywhere...”).
The platform wasn’t as explicit as former President Hoover’s address to the Convention Tuesday night, where he spoke of the impossibility of isolation and advocated sending munitions and materials to foreign nations fighting for their freedom. But Mr. Hoover’s own vagueness is disappointing. Is it too much to hope that whoever wins the G.O.P. nomination will somehow gather up the courage to support military aid to Britain by name? The Republicans need to show a healthier balance of determination to keep America out of war, while making it clear they’re willing to help Britain in her life-and-death fight with the common enemy of every civilized people.
ITALY SETTLES FOR LESS. So much for Mussolini’s haughty demands that Italy be given control of the entire French Mediterranean coast as the spoils of her two-week pop-gun war against France. The New York Times prints the peace terms that France and Italy have signed, and the Italian gains turn out to be quite a bit more moderate than first anticipated –- “military occupation of only a slim border belt in the Alps, demilitarization of French colonial outposts in North Africa and full rights over Jibuti, the only rail outlet to Italian East Africa.” But that’s not all, says the Times. “Italy got control of the French section of the railway running from [Jibuti] to Addis Ababa.” One can only presume that the Italians’ original extravagant demands were too much even for Petain’s defeatist regime, and that not even the Nazis could keep a straight face in pressing for their junior ally’s interests. Of course, this hasn't stopped the Duce from decreeing a lavish two-day “celebration” throughout Italy in honor of this famous victory.
SENATOR PITTMAN SAYS ENGLAND IS “LOST.” At least one prominent Senator now seems to say that Hitler will inevitably seize the British Isles and that the British Fleet should sail to the Americas without any further delay. An Associated Press story says Key Pittman, Democrat of Nevada, distributed a statement to reporters which said, among other things, “It is no secret that Great Britain is totally unprepared for defense and that nothing that the United States has to give can do more than delay the result.” But he hopes that the British will carry out Churchill’s pledge to fight on elsewhere --
“Churchill’s statement, ‘We will never surrender’ and that if any portions of the British Isles are subjugated ‘we will fight from the New World with our navy,’ if carried out and carried out immediately, will end Hitler’s ambition for world conquest. It is to be hoped that this plan will not be too long delayed by futile encouragement to fight on. It is conclusively evident that Congress will not authorize intervention in the European war.”
It’s worrying when Senators talk this way. Not necessarily because what they’re saying might be true, but because such opinions might discourage Congress from giving all-out military aid to Britain for the defense of the British Isles. And in discouraging American assistance, Senator Pittman and others of similar views might make their predictions into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let’s not write off the British homeland yet. As James B. Reston wrote in last Sunday’s New York Times, that “big moat” surrounding Britain should be a tougher challenge for the Nazi warriors than the French defenses were.
AN AXIS INVASION OF AMERICA. Then again, if you want something to worry about, look no farther than the current issue of Life magazine, which offers an illustrated three-page exploration of how a combination of Germany, Italy, and Japan might attack, and conquer, the United States. It drives home, as few other articles have done, just how important a powerful navy will be in keeping Nazi claws off the Americas.
Life’s scenario starts far away -- Japanese dive bombers launch a surprise raid on the Panama Canal, a Fascist fleet occupies the strategic port of Para, Brazil, and German bombers defeat U.S. planes in a battle over La Guiara, Venezuela. Naval battles take place in the Carribean between U.S. and Fascist cruisers, and Fascist bombing fleets lay waste to St. Thomas, Guayama, Barahona, the U.S. naval base at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere. Then, the U.S. fleet is completely destroyed in a battle off the Brazilian coast. The way is cleared for German and Italian troops to land on the U.S. mainland, and they do -- first at Bay Head, N.J., and then at Wilmington, Delaware, beating back “small U.S. forces.” A Fascist air raid destroys the Croton Dam, leaving New York City’s millions in desperate need of water. The Fascist tanks and artillery then defeat “small, under-equipped U.S. forces” in the climactic Battle of Pittsburgh, while Nazi planes pulverize Akron, Chicago, and other Midwest industrial cities. Finally, in a ceremony inside the swastika-bedecked Independence Hall in Philadelphia, U.S. diplomats agree to a humiliating peace. Life concludes, “Although most of the U.S. remains unconquered, it cannot fight as its great arms centers in the East have been destroyed or captured.”
The most chilling part of Life’s dire fantasy is its date --- the magazine approached the “best available military sources in Washington” in February 1939, and asked them how the Germans and Italians might plan an invasion of America. The situation given was “that it was July 1941 and that Germany and Italy have defeated Britain and France.” But the editors decided not to publish their article and charcoal sketches showing step-by-step how the Axis attack would develop. “They appeared too sensational at the time,” says Life. But alas, not any more.
IT’S ALL IN BRITISH HANDS. The Chicago Tribune, in an uncharacteristically moderate and thoughtful editorial, doesn’t write off Britain’s chances against Hitler, but they don’t seem to imply much faith that the British war effect will eventually lead to victory, either. Still, the Tribune describes a hope that some people aren’t even daring to voice right now --
“The French as a people will survive. Their culture will continue. Their experience, if the experiences of Poland and other subjugated peoples are any guide, will be humiliating and hard to bear. Their fate for generations, it would seem, is in the hands of the British. The only power which now can save them and restore them to the position occupied last September is the British sea power and the ability of Mr. Churchill’s government to make better use of the war potential of the British empire than Reynaud succeeded in making of the French. The British are in an explicably angry mood. They, nevertheless, as long as they can carry on, are fighting the battle of France which the French have abandoned. If they win they will have the extraordinary opportunity, magnanimously used or not, of handing back to their insolvent allies the domain and the resources which have been surrendered. If the invader leaves French soil and restores all the provinces...if he is to be driven back and stripped of his power to coerce, it will be because again the British have proved themselves able to overthrow a continental military autocracy just when it seemed to have all of Europe firmly in its clutch.”
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