NOT SO FAST, PERFESSER

In a letter on this page, Professor William Yandell Elliott of the Government Department refers to his personal views on American neutrality as "extreme" and "incompatible with political responsibility." He is hardly exaggerating. In a recently published article, Elliott answers with a grim negative the question, "Can America Risk Isolation?" His arguments for a more vigorous defense of Uncle Sam's selfish international interests are at once the most compelling and the most treacherous which the American people must resist in their fight to stay out of World War II.

Professor Elliott's mouth is not mealy with the idealistic mush which can be refuted by a scornful guffaw and reference to the debacle that was the last U. S. attempt to reform European power politics. Because he wants to go to war with a hard-headed conviction that it is to our own materialistic interest to do so -- not starry-eyed and reciting poetry -- Professor Elliott's case for intervention is extremely dangerous. We are making the mistake made by the British at Munich, he says, and if we allow the force to disorder a victory in Europe, we will soon be driven to resist that force in Brazil or somewhere in what was left of the British Empire." The English navy is essential to the maintenance of peace in the Far East.

No one is making the bald-faced assertion that materialistic considerations just don't count in international relations. Professor Elliott's "common-sense" argument may still be phony. If so, it is to be answered on its own ground. What has happened to the proposition that nobody wins a war -- economically or otherwise?

But straight-thinking must reject this calculus of America's selfish interests on another count. Because it utterly neglects moral considerations it can never tell the whole story. Economically, in the Pacific, America may not perhaps be able to risk isolation. But at home, can she risk the destruction of public character, the militarization and regimentation which war will always mean?