FORCE--AND REASON

When President Roosevelt presents Congress with the special message on national defense, asking a mammoth air force of 12,000 planes, increased in army munitions, and more new battleships--not to mention the important and dramatic details--he will be asking for the means of implementing his revitalized foreign policy of resistance to dictatorships. "Implementation" is often merely a convenient euphemism referring to war. And yet, though the fundamental purpose of the new rearmament may be diplomatic and not defensive, it does not follow, as some pacifists and isolationists would have us believe, that the President is leading the country straight to war.

The problem is not as simple as that; only extremists and superficial thinkers categorically associates permament or international cooperation with war. On the other hand, thousands of airplanes and scores of battleships do not guarantee peace; they merely stimulates mad, competitive rearmament in a vicious circle that benefits no one and creates an atmosphere in which the peaceful adjustment of fundamental problems becomes increasingly difficult.

It is not impossible to resolve this dilemma. First of all, the fundamental fact must be recognized that since 1931 when the League of Nations system first began to totter, a race for strategic advantage has been under way, with Italy, Germany, and Japan in the van, and the democracies, including the United States, in full and ignominious retreat. Munich was merely the climax. In such a world as has resulted, force is the nominating factor, and it is important that the superior force be in the right hands.

But it is the hope of every national person that a showdown between these opposing forces can be avoided that appeasement, granted by the democracies to the totalitarian states with the demand of a quid pro quo, can reestablish international order. The weapons for this accomplishment are economic. "There are many methods short of war, but stronger and more effective than words, of bringing home to aggressor governments the aggregate sentiments of our own people," the President significantly said Wednesday.

The President went on to suggest, specifically, revision of the neutrality laws. he might also have cited the loan of $25,000,000 to China, which is stimulating Britain and France to grant similar loans; he might have cited the shipment of 600,000 barrels of American wheat to Spain" on the basis of need"--where need is principally Loyalist--and which has enabled that army to avoid surrender this winter. Peaceful methods such as these keep military force in the background, make it, literally and theoretically, a last resort.

It is, then, perfectly possible for the United States to cooperate actively and effectively with Britain and France in opposing the march of their three opponents, without involving herself in certain or even probable war. behind these peaceful methods will remain that without which they might successfully be challenged: the certainly to superior force. persons who would do nothing, or who would bend every effort in an attempt to isolate the United States, are combating the laws of economics, mob-psychology, science, and reason, for on any one of these scores their attempt is utterly futile. To do so is, moreover, to deny the United States its only constructive defense--cooperation in the interests of reestablished international sanity--and thus to bring nearer a "second world war."