MORE TOUGH TALK FROM CHURCHILL. The Prime Minister’s Sunday radio talk, according to Edward Angly in the New York Herald Tribune, "cheered the British people and their well-wishers" with a stern message that Hitler, for the first time, "faced a great nation whose will was equal to his own." The dig at France wasn’t meant to be subtle. Churchill noted that a number of countries trampled by Hitler "have been rotted from within before they were smitten from without. How else can you explain what has happened to France?" After giving that fitting Bastille Day greeting to Marshal Petain’s gang of ersatz fascists, the Prime Minister bravely reiterated the difference between what the French government refused to do and what the British are irrevocably pledged to do --
"Should the invader come to Britain there will be no placid lying down of the people in submission before him...We shall defend every village, every town and every city. The vast mass of London itself, fought street by street, could easily devour an entire hostile army, and we would rather see London laid in ruins and ashes than that it should be tamely and abjectly enslaved....We must show ourselves equally capable of meeting a sudden violent shock, or what is perhaps a harder test -- a prolonged vigil. But be the ordeal sharp or long -- or both -- we shall seek no terms, we shall tolerate no parley. We may show mercy; we shall ask none."
To raise so realistically the possibility of a destroyed London must pain the hearts and chill the bones of ordinary Britons. But what alternative is there? The Nazis give their opponents only two choices – submission or ruin. Britain is seeking to survive long enough to add a third choice -- destruction of the German war machine. And according to the Herald Tribune account, Mr. Churchill predicts "that by 1942 the British forces would be ready to turn from the defensive and begin an attack which one day would lift from the earth what he called the ‘dark curse of Hitler.’" This sounds like a measured, serious expression of cool confidence in the face of great odds. And whether or not this forecast actually pans out, it is indeed the talk of somebody whose will is equal to Hitler’s own.
WILL HE OR WON’T HE? (III). As the Democratic Convention in Chicago starts its second day, it appears clear that the party is either (1) splintering into pro- and anti-third term factions, or (2) preparing to draft President Roosevelt for a third term by near-acclamation. It depends, as it has in the last several days, on which papers you read. Robert Albright writes in Monday’s Washington Post about a "growing rift" in the "ominously quiet convention" which might bring four names to the fore on the first ballot Wednesday night -- Vice President Garner, Postmaster General Farley, Senator Wheeler, and the President. According to the Post, the New Dealers managing the draft-Roosevelt plan hoped "there would be no first ballot competition for Mr. Roosevelt from any other candidate." But Mr. Farley, chagrined over the aggressiveness of the draft-Roosevelt machinery, says now he’ll "definitely" be a candidate, and a Post story by John B. Oakes says that Senator Wheeler will carry his fight for a strongly isolationist peace plank to the floor of the convention.
On the other hand, according to Arthur Sears Henning in Monday’s Chicago Tribune, the Roosevelt faction has a "daring, spectacular plan" to nominate the President for a third term while dispensing with small technicalities -- such as actually placing Roosevelt’s name in nomination or making nominating speeches on his behalf. Mr. Henning explains, "The beauty of this plan, according to its authors, is that Mr. Roosevelt would not seem to be seeking renomination and his choice would have the appearance of a commanding call to the party’s leadership, the two term tradition to the contrary notwithstanding." And James A. Hagerty’s story in Monday’s New York Times appears to accept the President’s renomination as a sure thing. Mr. Hagerty says in his opening paragraph that the draft-Roosevelt backers have decided "to leave the Vice-Presidential nomination open for the present in the belief that after his renomination Mr. Roosevelt will be able to name his running mate with little opposition."
Incidentally, if you were listening to the convention’s first night on the radio, you might have noticed a curious thing. Not only did House Speaker Bankhead’s keynote address defending the last eight years of the New Deal not mention anything about the third term issue, it barely mentioned the President’s name at all. It was as if the New Deal had just sprung up out of the mud. Odd.
DEMOCRATS ON THE THIRD TERM. "We declare it to be the unwritten law of the Republic, established by custom and usage of 100 years and sanctioned by the examples of the greatest and wisest of those who founded and have maintained our Government, that no man should be eligible for a third term of the Presidential office" -- from the Democratic Platform of 1896. It was adopted at that year’s party convention, which nominated William Jennings Bryan. The convention was held in...Chicago.
WHAT PROGRESS ON PREPAREDNESS? In Sunday’s New York Times, Hanson W. Baldwin takes a detailed look at America’s "titanic effort to rearm" and finds that the plans haven’t yet caught up with the emergency money appropriated for them --
"Two months ago...the President stood before Congress, warned of the ‘necessity for the protection of the whole American hemisphere from control, invasion or domination,’ and asked for the appropriation of $1,182,000,000 for strengthening the national defense. That message was followed, as the German victories increased in scope, by another request for funds on May 31, and last Wednesday, citing ‘the grave danger to democratic institutions’, the President made his third and largest request to strengthen the Army and Navy....The potential defense bill of the nation has reached the staggering sum of $20,000,000,000 since Jan. 1, most of it made available or authorized since May 16....The urge for action was immediately translated into action...more ships, more planes, more guns, more men....[But] some military observers here find it difficult to escape the conclusion that we are attempting to prepare against anything and everything, and that the specific measures now being taken are not yet clearly implementing any one basic military, naval, or national policy. Hemisphere defense is still the ostensible goal, but the primary requirement of hemisphere defense -- to acquire bases outside the present continental and territorial possessions -- has received no Congressional attention....Many military observers here are inclined to feel that we had better abandon hemisphere defense for something more practical."
Saturday, July 16, 2016
Thursday, July 14, 2016
Sunday, July 14, 1940
“THE PAUSE BETWEEN THE BATTLES.” If the numbers given by Frank R. Kelley in Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune are correct, then Britain seems to be getting in a few blows in her smoldering air war with the Luftwaffe. He writes, “Since June 18, when the Germans began massed aerial assaults on Great Britain, the defenders of this island fortress say they have destroyed 109 enemy planes.” Of that total, 72 Nazi warplanes were downed in the last six days. The R.A.F. is also pounding Nazi targets inside of France, the Low Countries, and northwestern Germany. But the Germans are getting in their licks as well -- the Associated Press reports 14 British civilians killed and 47 wounded in air attacks on England’s southeast coastal ports, while a second A.P. dispatch says Reich bombers scored “deadly blows” Friday on industrial Scotland, and also struck at southwest England and in Wales. What may be worse from a morale standpoint is news that Nazi planes came within a few minutes Thursday of killing or wounding King George VI. According to the United Press, the bombers struck shortly after the King inspected troops at “a town on the east coast,” and caused heavy casualties.
But William Shirer said last night in his C.B.S. broadcast from Berlin that the early editions of Monday’s German newspapers don't mention German bombing of objectives inside Britain, as they have in the past several days. Instead, they’re emphasizing the air battles over the English Channel, and reporting stories of “great distress and even panic” in Britain -- sabotage, strikes, hopelessness. Mr. Shirer says the Nazi papers call the relative quiet of late “a pause in the battles”, and that the average German thinks the his country’s armies will attack England in a “mere few weeks.”
THE INVASION MIGHT BE NEAR. Weeks? I’d guess maybe days. Some months ago Barnet Nover of the Washington Post described Hitler as “a man in a hurry,” before it became apparent just how much in a hurry the Fuehrer actually is. And, before it became apparent how much the Germans continually defy expectations. I wouldn’t doubt that we might wake up some morning before the end of this month to startling news on par with the biggest headlines of this spring. Say, a German paratroop attack on Ireland, followed by a quick jump onto the less-defended west coast of England and Wales and an unprecedented and horrifying air assault on London. At a glance, that doesn’t seem to be a likely possibility -- but neither did the assault on Norway, the quick seizure of Eben-Emael, the breakthrough on the Meuse, etc.
BRITAIN “APPEASES” THE JAPANESE. I’ve got strongly mixed feelings about the new Anglo-Japanese agreement to partially close traffic on the Burma Road to China. On the one hand, it smacks of Munich-style appeasement, and both the Chicago Tribune and New York Times use the dreaded word to headline their stories on the tentative pact. According to Kimpei Sheba’s story in the Tribune, the agreement proscribes further road shipment of “arms, ammunition, trucks and gasoline” to China, and allows Japanese consular officials at Rangoon to check on supplies moved over the Road.
On the other hand, it’s a relief to hear that the escalating crisis in Britain’s relations with Japan will probably be put back on the shelf, at least for now – the British can’t fight successfully throughout the Pacific while struggling for their survival against an anticipated German invasion at home. And the United States could more easily be drawn into a Pacific war than a European one. Moreover, Robert Post’s account in the Times differs in some details from the Tribune’s account and suggests that the practical effects of the closure might not be great. Mr. Post writes that Britain is only agreeing to partially close Road traffic to China “for the next two or three months,” which would practically make it a symbolic gesture, since “this is the rainy season and the Burma Road would be closed or virtually closed for the next two month by floods.”
On the other other hand, if a Pacific war crisis is merely being postponed for “two or three months,” then it could rear up at the height of the U.S. presidential campaign -- when the nation would be most divided in the face of a new threat. That’s not a pleasant thought, either.
WILL HE OR WON’T HE? (II). The New York Herald Tribune isn’t so sure, but the New York Times is now taking it as a given that President Roosevelt will run for a third term. The Herald Tribune’s Saturday story, by Geoffrey Parsons Jr., says the Democratic Convention opening Monday in Chicago is unprecedented – “Delegates...still don’t know if whether they are convening to renominate President Roosevelt or to participate in a hot and probably lengthy contest among a dozen candidates who are ready to enter the fray a the first intimation that the President does not choose to run.” But James A. Hagerty writes in the Times that the arrival Friday in Chicago of Senator Byrnes of South Carolina and Secretary of Commerce Harry Hopkins, leaders in the draft-Roosevelt movement, “dispell[s] any remnant of doubt that the President would run again.” The President himself says he won’t attend the convention, but is being his usual coy self about whether he would accept a third-term nomination, or whether he’ll address the convention in some manner.
The Chicago Tribune goes a bit farther than the Times, predicting Saturday that “if the President has his way about it the Democratic ticket will be: ROOSEVELT AND HULL.” The story, by Arthur Sears Henning, says that the so-called “Roosevelt draft” has actually been shaped by New Dealers sitting in White House conferences, under the direction of the President’s men. Mr. Henning writes that although Secretary Hull has declined the nomination, F.D.R. isn’t inclined to accept the refusal as final. And the isolationist Tribune also trumpets an exclusive report, somewhat hopefully, that six Democratic Senators, among them Byrd of Virginia and Tydings of Maryland, will symbolically vote against the third term at the convention, to the point of opposing any move to make Roosevelt’s nomination unanimous.
Who would run, if not Roosevelt? Vice President Garner insists he’s having his name placed in nomination, no matter what. Postmaster General Farley says “unenthusiastically” he will offer himself as a candidate, according to the Herald Tribune, and Montana’s isolationist Senator Wheeler plans to do so as well, if the President doesn’t run. But the Chicago Tribune is right this time -- it’ll be Roosevelt and Hull.
A DELAY IN THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN? Barnet Nover writes in Friday’s Washington Post that the current skirmishing between the British and Italian navies in the Mediterranean might indirectly delay the Battle of Britain --
“The Italian fleet appears to be smaller in size and fire power than the naval strength which the British appear to have assembled between Gibraltar and Suez. But it is by all accounts a first-rate fighting force and has the support of a considerable number of planes. Yet the conduct of Italian land, sea, and air operations from the moment Italy entered the war suggests that Italy is determined to proceed cautiously, in full realization of her own weakness....In part this attitude of caution may be the result of a sheer lack of fighting power, though this is by no means certain. But it may also be the result of psychological forces. Throughout their history the Italians have had a very healthy respect for sea power, and because of that for Great Britain...That is why Hitler may decide to defer the invasion of Britain, certain to prove a costly venture at best, until the British position in the Mediterranean has been made untenable. German-occupied territory now reaches to the borders of Spain. An attack on Gibraltar plus a simultaneous thrust in the direction of Portugal, so as to keep the British navy away from that country’s coast, is not outside the realm of immediate possibility.”
But William Shirer said last night in his C.B.S. broadcast from Berlin that the early editions of Monday’s German newspapers don't mention German bombing of objectives inside Britain, as they have in the past several days. Instead, they’re emphasizing the air battles over the English Channel, and reporting stories of “great distress and even panic” in Britain -- sabotage, strikes, hopelessness. Mr. Shirer says the Nazi papers call the relative quiet of late “a pause in the battles”, and that the average German thinks the his country’s armies will attack England in a “mere few weeks.”
THE INVASION MIGHT BE NEAR. Weeks? I’d guess maybe days. Some months ago Barnet Nover of the Washington Post described Hitler as “a man in a hurry,” before it became apparent just how much in a hurry the Fuehrer actually is. And, before it became apparent how much the Germans continually defy expectations. I wouldn’t doubt that we might wake up some morning before the end of this month to startling news on par with the biggest headlines of this spring. Say, a German paratroop attack on Ireland, followed by a quick jump onto the less-defended west coast of England and Wales and an unprecedented and horrifying air assault on London. At a glance, that doesn’t seem to be a likely possibility -- but neither did the assault on Norway, the quick seizure of Eben-Emael, the breakthrough on the Meuse, etc.
BRITAIN “APPEASES” THE JAPANESE. I’ve got strongly mixed feelings about the new Anglo-Japanese agreement to partially close traffic on the Burma Road to China. On the one hand, it smacks of Munich-style appeasement, and both the Chicago Tribune and New York Times use the dreaded word to headline their stories on the tentative pact. According to Kimpei Sheba’s story in the Tribune, the agreement proscribes further road shipment of “arms, ammunition, trucks and gasoline” to China, and allows Japanese consular officials at Rangoon to check on supplies moved over the Road.
On the other hand, it’s a relief to hear that the escalating crisis in Britain’s relations with Japan will probably be put back on the shelf, at least for now – the British can’t fight successfully throughout the Pacific while struggling for their survival against an anticipated German invasion at home. And the United States could more easily be drawn into a Pacific war than a European one. Moreover, Robert Post’s account in the Times differs in some details from the Tribune’s account and suggests that the practical effects of the closure might not be great. Mr. Post writes that Britain is only agreeing to partially close Road traffic to China “for the next two or three months,” which would practically make it a symbolic gesture, since “this is the rainy season and the Burma Road would be closed or virtually closed for the next two month by floods.”
On the other other hand, if a Pacific war crisis is merely being postponed for “two or three months,” then it could rear up at the height of the U.S. presidential campaign -- when the nation would be most divided in the face of a new threat. That’s not a pleasant thought, either.
WILL HE OR WON’T HE? (II). The New York Herald Tribune isn’t so sure, but the New York Times is now taking it as a given that President Roosevelt will run for a third term. The Herald Tribune’s Saturday story, by Geoffrey Parsons Jr., says the Democratic Convention opening Monday in Chicago is unprecedented – “Delegates...still don’t know if whether they are convening to renominate President Roosevelt or to participate in a hot and probably lengthy contest among a dozen candidates who are ready to enter the fray a the first intimation that the President does not choose to run.” But James A. Hagerty writes in the Times that the arrival Friday in Chicago of Senator Byrnes of South Carolina and Secretary of Commerce Harry Hopkins, leaders in the draft-Roosevelt movement, “dispell[s] any remnant of doubt that the President would run again.” The President himself says he won’t attend the convention, but is being his usual coy self about whether he would accept a third-term nomination, or whether he’ll address the convention in some manner.
The Chicago Tribune goes a bit farther than the Times, predicting Saturday that “if the President has his way about it the Democratic ticket will be: ROOSEVELT AND HULL.” The story, by Arthur Sears Henning, says that the so-called “Roosevelt draft” has actually been shaped by New Dealers sitting in White House conferences, under the direction of the President’s men. Mr. Henning writes that although Secretary Hull has declined the nomination, F.D.R. isn’t inclined to accept the refusal as final. And the isolationist Tribune also trumpets an exclusive report, somewhat hopefully, that six Democratic Senators, among them Byrd of Virginia and Tydings of Maryland, will symbolically vote against the third term at the convention, to the point of opposing any move to make Roosevelt’s nomination unanimous.
Who would run, if not Roosevelt? Vice President Garner insists he’s having his name placed in nomination, no matter what. Postmaster General Farley says “unenthusiastically” he will offer himself as a candidate, according to the Herald Tribune, and Montana’s isolationist Senator Wheeler plans to do so as well, if the President doesn’t run. But the Chicago Tribune is right this time -- it’ll be Roosevelt and Hull.
A DELAY IN THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN? Barnet Nover writes in Friday’s Washington Post that the current skirmishing between the British and Italian navies in the Mediterranean might indirectly delay the Battle of Britain --
“The Italian fleet appears to be smaller in size and fire power than the naval strength which the British appear to have assembled between Gibraltar and Suez. But it is by all accounts a first-rate fighting force and has the support of a considerable number of planes. Yet the conduct of Italian land, sea, and air operations from the moment Italy entered the war suggests that Italy is determined to proceed cautiously, in full realization of her own weakness....In part this attitude of caution may be the result of a sheer lack of fighting power, though this is by no means certain. But it may also be the result of psychological forces. Throughout their history the Italians have had a very healthy respect for sea power, and because of that for Great Britain...That is why Hitler may decide to defer the invasion of Britain, certain to prove a costly venture at best, until the British position in the Mediterranean has been made untenable. German-occupied territory now reaches to the borders of Spain. An attack on Gibraltar plus a simultaneous thrust in the direction of Portugal, so as to keep the British navy away from that country’s coast, is not outside the realm of immediate possibility.”
Monday, July 11, 2016
Thursday, July 11, 1940
FRANCE BECOMES A DICTATORSHIP... As Britain continues its slow progress on seizing or eliminating the vessels of the French navy (the latest being the merchant vessel Ile de France and the 35,000-ton battleship Richelieu), the Petain government is hard at work eliminating French democracy. According to a United Press report on Wednesday, both the French Senate and the Chamber of Deputies have voted themselves out of existence “in favor of a totalitarian dictatorship.” For the record, the votes were 395-3 in the Chamber of Deputies and 229-1 in the Senate. Sometime today the National Assembly, made up of both houses meeting in joint session, will formally kill France’s Third Republic. Then, says the U.P., the new dictatorship will get to work on pressing business -- such as trying France’s last two premiers, Daladier and Reynaud, for unspecified “crimes.”
The toughly-worded U.P. dispatch says that the French legislators, meeting in the new capital of Vichy, “rushed, through, without debate, rubber-stamp formalities setting up a dictatorship patterned closely after that of Fascist Italy, after hearing a warning that any wavering would mean the forfeiture of an ‘honorable peace’ with Germany and Italy.” The man who issued that warning is Vice Premier Pierre Laval, one of the triumvirate of men now permitted by the Nazis to rule unoccupied France. He also said, presumably with a straight face, that destroying democracy was the only way “to maintain our free institutions.” One of those institutions, the Parliament, will be only advisory from now on, with a new upper chamber chosen by the government and a lower chamber set up along the lines of Italy’s Chamber of Fasces and Corporations.
Marshal Petain’s emerging fascist regime has broken off relations with Britain, but is eager to continue “friendly” ties with the United States. They still occupy the French embassy in Washington. Yet why should we have any desire to keep up the diplomatic fiction that the satraps now running France constitute anything resembling an independent government?
...BUT THE NAZIS SAY IT’S “TOO LATE.” In any event, the French government’s attempts to curry favor with Hitler are apparently being spit back in their faces. William Shirer’s C.B.S. talk from Berlin last night quoted a number of German press comments which says the Petain regime’s “new look” will have no effect on the kind of peace Berlin and Rome dictate to France. One German news service says Nazi officials have greeted the French developments with “cool reserve,” and a prominent newspaper snorts, “This experiment comes too late for the new order in Europe.”
In Wednesday’s Chicago Tribune, Sigrid Schultz quotes another paper, the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, as ridiculing Petain’s government as “the same old French democrats who now want to create an authoritarian government....This new Europe will be the creation of the victor for whom Naziism and Fascism are not mere emergency creations but the expressions of revolutionary dynamics.”
JAPAN MAKES WARLIKE NOISES. Britain could be on the verge of becoming embroiled in an Asian war as well. Japan has been demanding with increasing urgency that the British close the “Burma Road,” Nationalist China’s last land-link with the outside world, and thus a critical source of supplies for anti-Japanese forces. The British have refused, and an Associated Press story Tuesday says that “It is quite possible that the continued refusal of Britain...may result in armed Japanese action against the British Crown Colony of Hongkong.” Britain has pulled her non-military personnel out of Hongkong, just in case. The A.P. dispatch ominously cites “neutral diplomatic quarters” as expressing the belief “that Japan was not bluffing, the Burma road affair being regarded as a test case for Japan’s entire program to assume control of European-owned territories in Eastern Asia.” That program includes demands for concessions in the Dutch East Indies and French Indo-China, which Japan is getting from those conquered governments without any trouble. In fact, says the A.P., “the British refusal contrasted so strongly with the French and Dutch attitudes, which offered no resistance to Japan, that the shock to the Japanese was even greater than it might have been otherwise.”
Meanwhile, another A.P. story on Wednesday says the Japanese are going on an anti-American bender as well -- handbills reading “Down with America” were posted Tuesday in occupied Shanghai, while the Japanese military has demanded that the Roosevelt Administration apologize for the arrest of Japanese gendarmes by U.S. Marines last Sunday in Shanghai.
It could be that Japan is secretly coordinating her actions with Germany, and will declare war on Britain at just the time Hitler deems most damaging to British chances of keeping up the war in Europe. And if that happens, what do we do? Certainly we should keep the U.S. fleet in the Pacific, as the Administration says it will do. But the fight in Europe is distant from U.S. outposts and possessions, while a Japanese-British war would be fought in the same general neighborhood as several U.S.-occupied islands, such as the Philippines and Guam. And would it even be possible, in practice, to profess neutrality in such a war, when the Japanese have declared both America and Britain to be enemies? I wonder if Japan -- and not Europe -- might turn out to be the major issue in the presidential campaign.
RUMORS OF PEACE. The current issue of Time magazine has a round-up of the recent spate of peace gossip, which has since been shot down by Prime Minister Churchill’s government --
“In Washington there was talk of a negotiated peace by President Roosevelt, in New Yorka report that Germany was offering Great Britain peace with 95% of the Empire left intact. Most credible story was broadcast by Radio Commentator Wythe Williams, who seems to have excellent Nazi contacts. Crediting ‘a channel that has never failed me,’ Commentator Williams announced, ‘Sir Samuel Hoare, Ambassador of Great Britain to Spain, had a conference with General Franco...and asked the General whether in his opinion a basis could be found on which to initiate preliminary peace negotiations’....the Chicago Daily News’s Hungarian-born Correspondent M. W. Fodor wrote a sensational story of which the two main points were: 1) Germany wants to put the Duke [of Windsor] back on throne as its puppet (which has been journalists’ gossip for months); Edward’s little Duchess was once the good friend of Joachim von Ribbentrop (which has been common knowledge for years.).”
Coincidentally or not, Robert Post reports in Wednesday’s New York Times that the British Colonial Office is packing off the Duke and Duchess to the Bahamas, where the Duke will serve as Royal Governor. The Times story adds that the position is “what has been a very minor job in the British Empire.”
THE VICE PRESIDENTIAL FIELD. In Wednesday’s Washington Post, Ernest K. Lindley takes it for granted that President Roosevelt will accept nomination for a third term at the Democratic Convention next week. Therefore, whoever the President might pick for his running mate would be a more critical question than usual, “partly because the second man may have to do most of the active campaigning and partly because Roosevelt, even if elected, might resign if the present world crisis passes before the end of the third term.” So, who are the possibilities? (Vice President Garner is presumably out, since he is vying for the presidential nomination himself, and has stirred up much antagonism within the Administration by doing so). Here are Mr. Lindley’s picks --
“Possibility No. 1 is Cordell Hull. He was the President’s first choice for for the Presidential nomination during the spring months....Willkie has spoken highly of him....Possibility No. 2 is Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. He is the New Dealers’ first choice and he also has some friends among the practical politicians...Possibility No. 3 is Senator James F. Byrnes, of South Carolina. He is less well known than Hull, but he is younger and quicker on his feet and with his tongue. He is smart and popular alike with the Southern Democrats and the New Dealers...Possibility No. 4 is Scott Lucas, of Illinois, an able speaker who has differed from the President enough on both domestic and foreign policy to provide ‘balance’ for the ticket....Possibility No. 5 is Gov. Stark of Missouri, a successful businessman with a pleasing personality and a gleaming clean-government record...Possibility No. 6 is Sam Rayburn, majority leader of the House, one of the stoutest links between the New Dealers and the regular Democrats.”
Other possibilities named by Mr. Lindley -- Paul V. McNutt, Senator Burton K. Wheeler, Speaker Bankhead, Secretary Wallace, and Assistant Secretary of War Louis Johnson. My own guess – Secretary Hull, since he was F.D.R.’s own pick for the top job. He’d also be the best at reassuring voters that the Presidency would be in able, experienced hands if President Roosevelt did in fact resign during a third term. The foreign policy experience of Roosevelt-Hull would contrast impressively with the Willkie-McNary ticket's lack of it, in a campaign that is sure to be dominated by the war issue.
The toughly-worded U.P. dispatch says that the French legislators, meeting in the new capital of Vichy, “rushed, through, without debate, rubber-stamp formalities setting up a dictatorship patterned closely after that of Fascist Italy, after hearing a warning that any wavering would mean the forfeiture of an ‘honorable peace’ with Germany and Italy.” The man who issued that warning is Vice Premier Pierre Laval, one of the triumvirate of men now permitted by the Nazis to rule unoccupied France. He also said, presumably with a straight face, that destroying democracy was the only way “to maintain our free institutions.” One of those institutions, the Parliament, will be only advisory from now on, with a new upper chamber chosen by the government and a lower chamber set up along the lines of Italy’s Chamber of Fasces and Corporations.
Marshal Petain’s emerging fascist regime has broken off relations with Britain, but is eager to continue “friendly” ties with the United States. They still occupy the French embassy in Washington. Yet why should we have any desire to keep up the diplomatic fiction that the satraps now running France constitute anything resembling an independent government?
...BUT THE NAZIS SAY IT’S “TOO LATE.” In any event, the French government’s attempts to curry favor with Hitler are apparently being spit back in their faces. William Shirer’s C.B.S. talk from Berlin last night quoted a number of German press comments which says the Petain regime’s “new look” will have no effect on the kind of peace Berlin and Rome dictate to France. One German news service says Nazi officials have greeted the French developments with “cool reserve,” and a prominent newspaper snorts, “This experiment comes too late for the new order in Europe.”
In Wednesday’s Chicago Tribune, Sigrid Schultz quotes another paper, the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, as ridiculing Petain’s government as “the same old French democrats who now want to create an authoritarian government....This new Europe will be the creation of the victor for whom Naziism and Fascism are not mere emergency creations but the expressions of revolutionary dynamics.”
JAPAN MAKES WARLIKE NOISES. Britain could be on the verge of becoming embroiled in an Asian war as well. Japan has been demanding with increasing urgency that the British close the “Burma Road,” Nationalist China’s last land-link with the outside world, and thus a critical source of supplies for anti-Japanese forces. The British have refused, and an Associated Press story Tuesday says that “It is quite possible that the continued refusal of Britain...may result in armed Japanese action against the British Crown Colony of Hongkong.” Britain has pulled her non-military personnel out of Hongkong, just in case. The A.P. dispatch ominously cites “neutral diplomatic quarters” as expressing the belief “that Japan was not bluffing, the Burma road affair being regarded as a test case for Japan’s entire program to assume control of European-owned territories in Eastern Asia.” That program includes demands for concessions in the Dutch East Indies and French Indo-China, which Japan is getting from those conquered governments without any trouble. In fact, says the A.P., “the British refusal contrasted so strongly with the French and Dutch attitudes, which offered no resistance to Japan, that the shock to the Japanese was even greater than it might have been otherwise.”
Meanwhile, another A.P. story on Wednesday says the Japanese are going on an anti-American bender as well -- handbills reading “Down with America” were posted Tuesday in occupied Shanghai, while the Japanese military has demanded that the Roosevelt Administration apologize for the arrest of Japanese gendarmes by U.S. Marines last Sunday in Shanghai.
It could be that Japan is secretly coordinating her actions with Germany, and will declare war on Britain at just the time Hitler deems most damaging to British chances of keeping up the war in Europe. And if that happens, what do we do? Certainly we should keep the U.S. fleet in the Pacific, as the Administration says it will do. But the fight in Europe is distant from U.S. outposts and possessions, while a Japanese-British war would be fought in the same general neighborhood as several U.S.-occupied islands, such as the Philippines and Guam. And would it even be possible, in practice, to profess neutrality in such a war, when the Japanese have declared both America and Britain to be enemies? I wonder if Japan -- and not Europe -- might turn out to be the major issue in the presidential campaign.
RUMORS OF PEACE. The current issue of Time magazine has a round-up of the recent spate of peace gossip, which has since been shot down by Prime Minister Churchill’s government --
“In Washington there was talk of a negotiated peace by President Roosevelt, in New Yorka report that Germany was offering Great Britain peace with 95% of the Empire left intact. Most credible story was broadcast by Radio Commentator Wythe Williams, who seems to have excellent Nazi contacts. Crediting ‘a channel that has never failed me,’ Commentator Williams announced, ‘Sir Samuel Hoare, Ambassador of Great Britain to Spain, had a conference with General Franco...and asked the General whether in his opinion a basis could be found on which to initiate preliminary peace negotiations’....the Chicago Daily News’s Hungarian-born Correspondent M. W. Fodor wrote a sensational story of which the two main points were: 1) Germany wants to put the Duke [of Windsor] back on throne as its puppet (which has been journalists’ gossip for months); Edward’s little Duchess was once the good friend of Joachim von Ribbentrop (which has been common knowledge for years.).”
Coincidentally or not, Robert Post reports in Wednesday’s New York Times that the British Colonial Office is packing off the Duke and Duchess to the Bahamas, where the Duke will serve as Royal Governor. The Times story adds that the position is “what has been a very minor job in the British Empire.”
THE VICE PRESIDENTIAL FIELD. In Wednesday’s Washington Post, Ernest K. Lindley takes it for granted that President Roosevelt will accept nomination for a third term at the Democratic Convention next week. Therefore, whoever the President might pick for his running mate would be a more critical question than usual, “partly because the second man may have to do most of the active campaigning and partly because Roosevelt, even if elected, might resign if the present world crisis passes before the end of the third term.” So, who are the possibilities? (Vice President Garner is presumably out, since he is vying for the presidential nomination himself, and has stirred up much antagonism within the Administration by doing so). Here are Mr. Lindley’s picks --
“Possibility No. 1 is Cordell Hull. He was the President’s first choice for for the Presidential nomination during the spring months....Willkie has spoken highly of him....Possibility No. 2 is Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. He is the New Dealers’ first choice and he also has some friends among the practical politicians...Possibility No. 3 is Senator James F. Byrnes, of South Carolina. He is less well known than Hull, but he is younger and quicker on his feet and with his tongue. He is smart and popular alike with the Southern Democrats and the New Dealers...Possibility No. 4 is Scott Lucas, of Illinois, an able speaker who has differed from the President enough on both domestic and foreign policy to provide ‘balance’ for the ticket....Possibility No. 5 is Gov. Stark of Missouri, a successful businessman with a pleasing personality and a gleaming clean-government record...Possibility No. 6 is Sam Rayburn, majority leader of the House, one of the stoutest links between the New Dealers and the regular Democrats.”
Other possibilities named by Mr. Lindley -- Paul V. McNutt, Senator Burton K. Wheeler, Speaker Bankhead, Secretary Wallace, and Assistant Secretary of War Louis Johnson. My own guess – Secretary Hull, since he was F.D.R.’s own pick for the top job. He’d also be the best at reassuring voters that the Presidency would be in able, experienced hands if President Roosevelt did in fact resign during a third term. The foreign policy experience of Roosevelt-Hull would contrast impressively with the Willkie-McNary ticket's lack of it, in a campaign that is sure to be dominated by the war issue.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)