UNBLEACHED WHITE

As Walter Millis described it, America's trip down the road to World War I was something like a blind deaf-mute's stumbling down a dark country lane on a foggy night. So far, our policy in the present European war has been just as dim and uncertain. There have been a few specific actions on the part of the Roosevelt Administration, but no one knows just what basic policy is behind them. If the 1940 campaign doesn't throw light on the situation, it will be just about impossible to vote intelligently.

A recent journalistic "inside-dope" analysis of our foreign policy, "American White Paper," has argued that Roosevelt is determined to help the Allies with every measure short of war. It claims that the President, being in touch with confidential State Department cables, sees enough danger in the possibility of a Nazi victory to go ahead full blast with economic aid to the Allies. Thus he has repealed the arms embargo, denounced the dictatorships, and interned Finnish, Norwegian, and Danish credit to keep it away from Germany. We can see what the President has done, but he won't tell us why he has done it. He has never stated exactly what stake, political and economic, this country has in an Allied victory. He has not said yes or no to the question of whether we should advance credit to the Allies. The country has to depend on "inside" newspaper stories to find out. The Government says a well-informed public opinion is necessary to an intelligent foreign policy, but does nothing to inform it.

The inescapable conclusion is that the President is backing an interventionist policy that is too hot for public opinion to swallow right now. Reading his confidential cables, he must see dangers to America that place him so squarely in the Allied camp that he is afraid to speak out. Most Americans don't want to go to war, and can think of a lot of measures short of war that they don't want to adopt, either. If the President told them what he knows, maybe they would change their minds. Maybe.

At any rate, the country should be told the real issues and stakes in the foreign situation. As things stand now, the Republicans have nothing to sink their teeth into, not that they would sink them even if they had anything. The problem is certainly important enough to deserve something more than evasions in the election this fall. The people are anxious to vote on our foreign policy, and indeed they must, if our road through World War II is to be anything better than the dark, rutted side-road of 1914-17.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of objections to the President's policies on other grounds. Sumner Welles and Myron Taylor have gone to Europe. Hopes have been raised for American cooperation with the Pope for peace, cooperation that would involve more than enough moral prestige to stop the belligerents, if properly applied. But nothing is done. Before we entered the last World War, says Professor Schlesinger, "through the President's (peace) efforts, the United States was rapidly attaining the moral leadership of the world." Has the President tied us so firmly to the Allies that Wilsonian idealism is beaten before it gets a chance? If he has, the people have a right to know why.