America First

Brave New World, Inc. paid two dividends last week, but there were ominous signs of crises yet to be withstood. Dividend No. 1 was the visit to Washington of Mr. Anthony Eden, Britain's Foreign Secretary, who was prepared to consult with American officials on the political and economic problems of post-war cooperation. Long an internationalist, often touted as the next Prime Minister, Eden was a happy choice to initiate British-American conferences. A second encouraging sign lay in the announced intention of a bi-partisan group of U. S. Senators to offer a Senate resolution tomorrow, calling for American sponsorship of a United Nations' conference on peace planning. But peace planning was not yet merely a matter of marmalade-and-muffins conferences or polite conversations, beyond military victory, there lay still the task of crushing the ugly, bloated toad of isolationist imperialism.

Madame Luce's--"globaloney" speech, together with Representative Joseph Martin's remarks that "America must rule the air," had created great consternation in Britain. Similarly isolationist forces abroad warned of America's intentions and bitterly attacked her policy of global supremacy as a 1943 version of "manifest destiny"; Lord Londonderry among others urged strong counter-measures. Secretary Knox's plea for American naval bases all over the world was equally unfortunate. Alarm in the New Zealand House of Representatives over such bases forced Prime Minister Fraser to declare formally that he believed President Roosevelt "incapable of a mean action." And German propagandists utilized Knox's statement to such good effect that Summer Welles was required to reassure anxious Latin Americans that the United States did not purpose to infringe their territory or sovereignty. The proponents of the American-Eagle-On-High were playing right into Herr Hitler's hands.

It is highly incongruous that those same individuals who are so greatly alarmed over the "Red Menace" and Soviet imperialism are themselves the loudest supporters of the American Destiny. But the United States must know that World War III will be inevitable if this nation does not realize that isolationism and imperialism are one in then desire to pursue a selfish national immorality, to raise a Chinese Wall in a twentieth century world. If we are willing to alienate ourselves from the rest of the world, if we are willing to bear the double burden of the world's enmity and an enormous armament program--such a policy might purchase us a brief period of a precarious armed neutrality. Inexorably, however, World War III would come--and this time the United States would be alone against those very forces that such a policy of selfish nationalism would foster. Callously self-seeking, such a "realistic" policy would fall far short of reality. We are part of the world; we are one with our world in all its miseries and despairs, its aspirations and triumphs, its pettiness and glory. A new era is aborning, but it may only be our century if it is the world's.