In other words, Germany doesn’t like the U.S. aiding Britain, and Japan doesn’t like the U.S. opposing her plans for more Asian aggression. Under the terms of the new axis treaty, if we go to war to help Britain fight Germany, we’ll have a war with Japan on our hands as well. The Axis has concluded that America’s one-ocean navy would be too intimidated to try and fight a two-ocean war.
There’s only one proper answer for the Administration to give in the face of this, and according to William V. Nessly in Saturday’s Washington Post, President Roosevelt is going to give it -- "Greater determination to aid Britain and China in their resistance to aggression, along with acceleration of the defense program."
IS IT ALL AMERICA’S FAULT? Naturally, the Chicago Tribune responds to the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo agreement by rounding up its isolationist friends in Congress to announce an amazing discovery -- President Roosevelt is completely to blame! Yes, it’s hard to imagine how somehow the President hypnotized the Japanese into becoming warlike. Goodness knows they’ve practically been Quakers throughout the last decade. But here’s Senator Nye to explain it to us -- "Our policy has succeeded in driving Japan into the arms of those who were the last ones we wanted her associated with." And Senator Wheeler suggests the Roosevelt policy should be "a cessation of attacks on every other nation." Has the Senator not noticed that Japan, not the U.S., is the one who’s been "attacking" in French Indo-China? Has he forgotten that we maintained a hearty commercial trade with the Japanese for eight years while they brutally warred against China? Did this make Japan inclined to be less aggressive? No.
Will the Administration’s announcement of a scrap iron embargo make Japan inclined to be less aggressive? No, but it will make her less able to carry out future aggressions, and that is just as good.
AN AMERICAN WAR IN INDO-CHINA? The Chicago Tribune goes a step farther than its isolationist colleagues, painting a picture of a future America fighting wars in far-off lands because of President Roosevelt’s alleged willingness to take sides in "old-world quarrels" --
"If war is the consequence, it is not likely to be one war. Twenty years after Germany was prostrate she had developed the most powerful military machine the world ever saw, and was again on the march. If we prevent Japan from taking Indo-China from the French, the East Indies from the Dutch, etc., we have solved no problems. We have only assumed a responsibility for the future of those territories. We don’t want them, and whoever has them, whether native governments or some one else, will hold them, thanks to our power to maintain the status quo which we shall have created. That means a continuing liability. It means that we must, at any moment, be ready to defend these places, 6,000 miles and more from our shores, against any nation or combination of nations which may covet them. The acceptance of such a responsibility means that the America which we have known is dead....The cost of maintaining such a policy will be stupendous and not the least of them will be the loss of our democratic faith."
That might be a point worth considering -- in the future, and not in a present when the continued existence of democracy is being threatened world-wide as never before in human history. The question right now is not whether the U.S. will be forced to fight wars 6,000 miles from home, but whether we could fight well enough on our own shores to survive as a free country, if we end up sandwiched between a pair of all-encompassing totalitarian empires, having no allies of our own, our economy stagnant, unable to procure goods or materials from abroad. By far the best way to deal with such a situation is to prevent it from happening.
OUR TIME MIGHT BE NEAR. Joseph Driscoll’s account of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo pact in Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune contains a chilling forecast --
"The day’s developments strengthened well informed observers in Washington in their belief that the United States may be at war by next spring, if not sooner. Army officials who returned here recently from England, where they inspected the defenses as guests of the British government, are understood to have reported that the British were holding out well and would continue to do so until next March, but that they stood no real chance of defeating the Berlin-Rome axis without American intervention."
"The day’s developments strengthened well informed observers in Washington in their belief that the United States may be at war by next spring, if not sooner. Army officials who returned here recently from England, where they inspected the defenses as guests of the British government, are understood to have reported that the British were holding out well and would continue to do so until next March, but that they stood no real chance of defeating the Berlin-Rome axis without American intervention."
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