Damon Runyon

El Paso Herald/December 20, 1912

NEW YORK. N. Y., Dec 20. During Harry Wolverton’s leadership of the Yankees, Frank Karrell never interfered with the luckless manager in any way; that policy obtained during the time George Stallings was at the head of the club, according to Stallings himself, and Hal Chase was also permitted a free hand on the managerial end.

Frank Chance will have the same full control when he takes charge at the Hilltop, and responsibility for the showing of the club will therefore rest with Chance alone. It has been a popular impression in some quarters that the Yank ownership handicapped every manager by interfering in the playing end of the club, and the declaration of Stallings is especially interesting, in view of the fact that it is wholly gratuitous. “Farrell. or no one else connected with the business office, ever interfered with me in the slightest degree,” said the man who now heads the Boston Pilgrims. “I never had any complaint then or now on that score.” Chance would probably never stand for interference anyhow; but the experience of his predecessors in that respect, at least, should be reassuring to him.

You’ve got to hand it to Charley Ebbets. He spends more money accidentally than any of those other magnates do intentionally. “Manager McGraw will have full control over the players and the playing end,” confides the new management of the Giants. Or else it might have added, there won’t be any manager McGraw.

On the face of the returns, Garry Herrmann has shaded Murphy in the deal which takes Joe Tinker to Cincinnati as manager of the Reds, and brings Frank Chance to the New York Americans. Mike Mitchell is the best ballplayer Murphy gets out of the batch traded to him by Herrmann, and Mike has reached a stage where he will not improve. Phelan, a third baseman, is a promising youngster, but Murphy did not need a third sacker. He may be able to use Phelan in the field. Kinsely would have been turned back to the minor club whence he came by Herrmann, as he was not regarded as worth the amount still due on him. Bert Humphreys, who was formerly with Philadelphia, has never displayed any remarkable form. As for Herrman’s end, he gets a shortstop who, regardless of his ability as a manager, should have at least another year of more baseball value in him than any one of the bunch Garry traded.

Corridon’s worth is problematical, but he never impressed many local fans as worth the fuss made over him. Chapman, the Topeka catcher, who goes to the Reds, is said to be an unusually promising youngster, while Grover Loudermilk, the elongated pitcher, may now be ready for big league service. Grover was with Bresnahan at St. Louis for some time, but Roger couldn’t get much out of him. He did well at Louisville, however. Only time can tell which club really benefited by the deal, of course, but at first glance it would seem that the Reds have the best of it.

It is manifestly one of the by-laws of the Baseball Players’ Fraternity that no member shall think in sums of less than five figures during the winter. Speaking of the erstwhile Duke of St. Loo, he will very likely be working for Pittsburg as a private in the ranks, if he works for anybody next season. It is said that Barney Dreyfuss has offered Bresnahan a salary of $10,000, and, if it isn’t the same kind of money that Dreyfuss paid for O’Toole, this is a better offer than any other club in the league could make in comparing himself to George Cohan and Louie Mann, the Marquis of Marquard seriously affronts two old friends, De Wolf Hopper and Willie Collier, both hard working baseball fans who cannot understand why their names were not mentioned by the great south hander. On and after February 29, 1913, yon may address Richard W. Marquard, ballplayer, in care of the Arlington Hotel, Marlin, Tex.

Ambrose Bierce

San Francisco Examiner/March 13, 1904

IT is not desirable that our Japanophile sympathies blind us to the fact that “the little brown men” are somewhat addicted to the practice of playing the game of war “pretty low down.” They were under no obligation to “declare war” before beginning it; modern nations do rot run to chivalry in these matters and declarations of war are not for belligerents but for neutrals, apprising them of a state of things already existing. Nor is it altogether clear that their use of Russian signals to entrap Russian ships is illegitimate; the worst one can say of it is that it is customary—and that is bad enough to say of almost anything. But in that Chemulpo affair Russia is altogether right in her protestation that it was a distinct violation of what we are pleased to call “the law of nations,” that is to say, the few decent “rules of the game”—which the greater powers have found it expedient to observe when playing against one another. The Japanese Admiral of a powerful fleet outside a neutral port, where nobody knew that war was on, sent in a demand for surrender of two feeble Russian vessels inside, threatening to attack in the harbor if they refused—a harbor crowded with friendly ships! Like a gentleman commanding gentlemen, the Russian captain, rather than imperil all these neutral ships and lives, steamed gallantly out to a hopeless fight to destruction. That was the finest thing that we know to have been done in this war, so far. The next finest was the cheering by which the crews of the neutrals signified their sympathy and admiration, as he passed them with his doomed vessels, flags flying and bands playing. In occasional incidents like that lies much of whatever value war may have. They fire the imagination; they warm the heart; they illuminate life and character with something of the light that fell upon the paths of the Israelites following their pillar of fire. Without war we should have only “the humble heroism of everyday life”—and who really cares for that? We try to care for it, it touches those who happen to witness it; but it is a wine that needs a bush. The heroisms of war carry their own glory, utter their own mandate, dominate us with an imperious authority and make us better men and women. Thank you, Admiral Uriu, for your cowardly breach of international law.

THIS Japanese sailor man, by the way, was educated in his profession at our Annapolis academy. One wonders if it was there that he learned his battle manners. If not, it is to be regretted that international etiquette does not permit the present head of that institution civilly to remind him that he has disgraced his alma mater. It would be well, too (and that is practicable), for the Secretary of the Navy to have a word with the commander of our one warship in the harbor of Chemulpo at the time. That gentleman refused to join with the other commanders of neutral vessels in protesting against the Japanese Admiral’s infraction of law and custom. Possibly he feared to involve us in a controversy with Japan; but fear, I take it, is not what is required of the commander of an American warship—certainly not the fear to do right. I should think with conspicuous advantage to the service this person might come home and till the soil. Barring his aggressive inaction, the Chemulpo affair lacks but little of artistic and moral perfection. Both the belligerent commanders should have met death; the Russian because he merited it, the Japanese because he deserved it.

“THE educational system of this, the greatest State in the Union,” says Professor William Kent of Syracuse University, “is in a condition of chaos. The school system of thirty years ago was better than that of the present day.” That is true, in greater or less degree, of all the older States. Their school systems are worse than those of the newer. The standard of efficiency for both teachers and students is lower; their courses of study are less sane and wholesome. The reason is not far to seek. The older any human institution is the farther it has drifted away from its original purpose and intent, to serve purposes and intents of other kinds, ambitions of a meaner sort. The school systems of the newer States had the incomparable advantage of a definite design. They did not grow up; they were planned. They could start, and in a general sense, did start, unhampered and unburdened with traditions, social, religious, political and other, imposed by conditions that no longer obtain anywhere. Their founders had the whole world from which to choose the best, and as a rule they chose it. Moreover, that headless horseman, the unspeakable “faddist,” has not had time enough allowed him to stable his hobbies in the Western schools, at least, not many of them. Later he will enter, astride his mount, and caracole as bravely there- as here, but at present he is witching the world with noble footmanship outside. After a while, too, the standard of Western universities and colleges will have been so lowered that a graduate of an Eastern high school will have what he has not now—a chance of admittance to some of the least exacting. So matters are not so bad as they look; our educational systems are shooting Niagara, but hope on joyous pinions flies before, and, looking backward, points out the junior systems following after.

TWO highly interesting bits of news have come sputtering along the cables from the Far East. First, it is rumored that the American squadron is going to make a demonstration (of our President’s pugnacity, probably) at the mouth of the Yalu. Second, that General Slammakoff is moving his troops toward Pin Chee. It is difficult to estimate accurately the relative importance of these tidings from the seat of war; probably one is as important as the other, or even more so; but both are indubitably beaten out of the field of public attention by the statement that Manchuria was invaded last Tuesday by the Japanese army, which a week before was at Seoul, three hundred miles away, beyond a mountainous country with no roads.

A CERTAIN man of uncertain mind

   Sat conning a war-map o’er

“I’m looking, ah, looking, in vain to find,

   On this Orient sea or the shore,

   A spot called ‘the Open Door.’

“They say it is somewhere here or here”—

   And his forefinger voyaged free,

With his ever-vigilant eye to steer,

   Down the coast of that Orient sea

   To the southern point of Coree.

“Why seek you the Open Door, good man?

   What have you so to win?”

“I’m told there’s fighting inside—my plan

   Is, by hook or crook or the skin

   Of my teeth, to butt right in!”

“Why, yes, Mr. President, there’s a war,

   And the fight is free, no doubt;

But that is not what you are hired for,

   And it’s easier thereabout

   To get in than it is to get out.”

But that finger continues to explore,

   Despite our prayer or scoff,

That Orient sea for the Open Door.

   I hope it won’t Slammakoff

   And Pin Chee the darned thing off.

THE members of the Royal United Service Institution of London town are loud in their wail because they have been fooled with a silver statuette of Nelson, purchased at a price of magnitude and cherished with pride. They thought, poor souls, it was made in the lifetime of the “great Admiral,” and had once belonged to a King, whereas it turns out to be the work of an obscure art student, and is only two years old. It is not denied that it looks a good deal as Nelson might have looked if he had been silver and little and not authentic, but that is not enough by much. A work of art which is not so old as it looks, which purports to have been owned by a King, even such a King as George III, and was not owned by a King, is unworthy of the fine Italian eye of the connoisseur. That is why the United Service Institution is now audible. The statuette is doubtless worth something, even if it has to go to the melting pot to augment the volume of the country’s coinage, but a larger proportion of the investment may be saved. Let it be presented to King Edward, with the understanding that he give it back when it shall have become sufficiently sanctified by infection and absorption of the royal aura. Then sell it to an American.

REPRESENTATIVE BURTON of Ohio is a patriot, a Republican and an excellent man. That he is not a logician is obvious; he knows it himself. Mr. Burton, living on land, is opposed to maintenance of a powerful navy. He says we do not need a great navy unless there is, or is to be, a combination of all the European powers against us, which is unlikely. Well, now, here, Mr. Burton: suppose there were a combination of only two of them, having a great navy each. Why would we not then need a great navy ourselves? Upon what could we rely to prevent them from capturing or destroying the navy that we have? Rhetoric is fairly effective where conditions favor, but European battleships are mostly steel-clad and have no ears. They do not surrender to the men behind the tongues.

THE United States Supreme Court, having decided that a railway company is not liable for injuries to a passenger traveling on a free pass if he has accepted it with that understanding, it might not be an unprofitable notion to load up a train now and then with free-passers and smash them. The cost of the train would be considerable, but in the long run it might be certain that any number of deaths would be deterrent; the passion for dead-heading may be stronger than love of life; it certainly is stronger than self-respect. Perhaps the railway companies may be willing to do something of the kind, even at a loss, to promote the general good.

KING EDWARD of England, the seventh of the name, is said to be ambitious of distinction. He thinks it can possibly be won by dispelling that ancient evil, the London smog, a mechanical mixture of smoke and fog. The latest smog is estimated to have cost London two hundred thousand pound sterling, much of which went for gas and electric light, much for extra wages to signalmen on the railways, some to surgeons, and so forth. Possibly the gas companies, the electric light concerns, the signalmen, the surgeons and other purveyors of comfort and safety would estimate the loss at a smaller sum. Still, if King Edward can chase the smog out of his brumous environment he may reasonably hope that these humble subjects will remember to curse him as long as he lives.

A FEW weeks ago, in these columns, I signified my dissent from the generally accepted explanation of the oceanic tide-wave on the side of the earth opposite the moon. Among the considerable number of letters that have come to me concerning the matter is one from Mr. John R. Waters. It seems to me interesting enough to justify quotation of the passage stating the writer’s view of the matter: “The air surrounds the earth continuously and completely. If the moon pulls up the water on the side of the earth next to her, because water is fluid and easily obeys the pull, how much more fully and completely responsive to this pull must the air be. Does not the consequent atmospheric high tide next to the moon draw away much of the air from the farther side of the earth, and does not the water on that far side, being to this extent relieved of weight, therefore rise and exhibit a flood tide?”

That is admirably clear. Whether it is or is not a true explanation of the phenomenon in question, my small knowledge of the matter does not enable me to say. That the moon’s direct stress makes an atmospheric tide there can be no doubt, but I do not know if the thinner layer of air on the opposite side of the earth exerts a sufficiently less pressure to let the earth’s centrifugal “throw” affect the level of the water. That “throw,” I take it, is all that would make the water lift, even if there were no atmospheric pressure at all. But caeteris paribus, would the barometer show a difference in weight between the air on the side of the earth opposite the moon and the deeper air on the side toward her? Her pull on the former is downward toward the water; on the latter, upward away from the water. On the one side she assists the earth’s pull; on the other, resists it. Perhaps some reader of scientific attainments and compassionate heart, observing us poor infant laymen

crying for the light,

and with no language but a cry,

will have the goodness to beacon our darkness and still our inarticulate clamor.

ASSEMBLYMAN WALLACE, who introduced in the New York Legislature-the bill depriving street railway passengers of all redress for exaction of double fare, is said to be “serving his first term in the Legislature.” It would be easy to name the place where he ought to serve his second.

I BELIEVE Senator Warren of Wyoming has made the statement, certainly he has supplied the proof, that General Leonard Wood has no legal right to the medal of honor that his person adorns. Senator Warren is said to have arrived at this conclusion “by close study of the Acts of Congress.” There was a shorter route to the same conclusion: study of the acts of General Leonard Wood.

CONSUL SKINNER, who recently made a kind of royal progress to the capital of Abyssinia to receive an elephant’s tooth and a brace of young lions for President Roosevelt, and, incidentally, make a market for American goods, gives us an altogether fascinating picture of King Menelik’s army, “arrayed in gorgeous silks and satins, with lion and leopard skin mantles, carrying gold and silver-plated bucklers and lances from which floated the national colors, and mounted on spirited horses.” Now does not that blow the cooling coals of military ardor in every old soldier’s breast? Does it not make him glow with a patriot’s desire to fight Abyssinia, extend the area of American conquest and strip the slain? On to Abyssinia! Liberty or death!

Westbrook Pegler

Richmond Times-Dispatch/January 4, 1937

FOR a long time your correspondent has been vaguely worried about Mr. Al Wiggin, the great New York banker of the Era of Beautiful Nonsense, and wondering whether anything had happened to him, because if anything should happen to Mr. Wiggin your correspondent would be deeply distressed not to hear all about it.

Now comes an acquaintance from Charleston, S.C., however, who reports that nothing has happened to Mr. Wiggin which would justify a national holiday or even mild individual rejoicing by persons whose savings were invested in the stock of his bank at the time that Mr. Wiggin himself was selling short about 60,000 shares for a profit of four and a half million dollars.

Mr. Wiggin has built a home for himself in a colony of economic royalists near Charleston known as the Yeamans Hall Club and, not to put a fair face on the news of him, he looks all right and seems to be his old self. He has plenty of money left from his short sales of the stock of his bank and the unloading of his B.M.T. when his position gave him to know that the subway was going to pass its dividend, and he has had no major vexations except the time the builder proposed to build a wall around his property according to the local custom. Mr, Wiggin objected to the wall, saying the place would look like a jail and, of course, anyone will understand his feeling about that. Who wants to live in a place that looks like a jail?

Not Even Tooth Trouble

“Do you mean to say Mr. Wiggin is well and happy?” your correspondent asked.

“Just fine,” said the gentleman from Charleston. “He doesn’t seem to have a thing on his conscience.”

“His what?”

“Conscience,” said the gentleman. “You know, the thing that tells you that you have done a dirty trick and makes you feel like a heel. He doesn’t seem to think he ever played the heel in all his life.”

“Hasn’t he even had trouble with his teeth?”

“No” said the gentleman from Charleston. “You want the truth and I am giving it to you. Al Wiggin looks just dandy and he doesn’t seem to have a worry in the world. If you can’t take it why do you bring up the subject?”

“What about friends?”

“Oh, I don’t know whether they are friends or not,” said the gentleman. “But people speak to him just the same as to anybody else. You can’t really tell who is a friend in this world. A lot of people thought Mr. Wiggin was their friend when he was selling short while bolstering the price of the stock with the bank’s own money in those pools as Ferd. Pecora showed that time in Washington. But friends or not, people speak to him and he can get a game of golf just like anybody else. After all, you must remember that Mr. Wiggin is a very rich man who never did anything unlawful. Whether he did anything wrong is another question, but he wasn’t even indicted much less convicted and the only comfort I can give you is to refer you to the record of the Senate investigation, where you can refresh your memory and decide for yourself whether he ever did anything wrong. And you can recall that they grabbed back the bank pension of $100,000 a year that he awarded himself, if that is any pleasure.”

“What about the people of Charleston? Aren’t they supposed to be very aloof, socially?”

“Well,” said the gentleman, “there isn’t much money around there these days and these economic royalists in their little colony are big spenders. One day they ordered the caterer to get several dozen lobsters for dinner the next night and he telephoned Bar Harbor and had them flown down in a special plane. All along the coast economic royalists are settling down in mansions and clubs on ground so poor that even the poorest people finally were starved out. That kind of money makes for tolerance.”

“Is this an exclusive club, this Yeamans Hall?”

“Well what would you say?” said the gentleman from South Carolina. “Al Wiggln belongs.”

Westbrook Pegler

Richmond Times-Dispatch/January 5, 1937

WITHIN the last week there have been three spectacular demonstrations along the coast of a kind likely to arouse dangerous unrest among the lower classes and promote the spirit of Communism.

It is improbable that the authors of these occasions are in secret sympathy with Moscow yet the situation is one which seems to invite the patriotic intervention of the American Legion, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the churches.

In Philadelphia Mr. and Mrs. Peter A. B. Widener 2nd gave a debut for Mrs. Widener’s daughter Joan Peabody—cost $50,000. In New York, for the second time this year, Miss Barbara Field, the daughter of Marshall Field, was introduced to society with 1,000 guests on hand—cost $50,000.

Miss Field was first introduced to society by her father at a $50,000 party but either she or society didn’t catch the name, so the presentation was repeated at the Ritz under the auspices of her mother, who gets alimony of $1,000,000 a year from Mr. Field, who gets it from the department store in Chicago.

It is to be hoped that Miss Field and society both listen carefully this time so that they will recognize one another hereafter.

Run Into Important Money

Not only do these introductions run into money but more important, they tend to irritate the lower classes who do not have the intelligence to reason things out calmly and perceive the nobility of such spending, but only mutter “$50,000 for one party! Why, the louses.”

There is no use arguing that this spending gives employment to waiters and florists and the peasant girls of France who tread the grapes, because the lower classes can see only contrasts and these make them sore.

The third party was given on New Year’s eve by Mrs. Evelyn Walsh McLean—cost $50,000.

To be sure these are all very rich people and their money is theirs to spend as they please after they have met the inquisition of the income tax department. Yet there are other ways of arousing the ignorant annoyance of the unemployed and the underpaid than by howling at them from a soap box or stepladder in a foreign accent redolent of garlic and this is one.

Indeed these three hosts, sturdy Americans of honest American background, by their garish extravagance widely publicized in the papers, reached a far greater audience than all the soap-box and stepladder agitators in the Communist Party and in much more realistic fashion.

Cries Up for Americanism

The case is one which cries for the robust Americanism of the chiefs of police of Terre Haute Ind; Atlanta, Ga.; and Tampa, Fla., who know how to deal with Communist disturbers coming into their midst to stir up unrest and strife by exhorting the lower classes to strike for something called their rights.

Comrade Earl Brower of Kansas, who ran for President on the Communist ticket, was resolutely suppressed during the late campaign although he could not possibly have dramatized the proposition as effectively as it was presented in these three demonstrations within the last week.

Perhaps it would involve a slight invasion of the constitutional rights of the hosts in such cases if the local chief of police, the Legion, and the DAR should intervene each according to established custom.

The chief could turn out the strong-arm squad to rip down the decorations, beat up the musicians and the guests, and confiscate the champagne.

The Legion might picket the premises and the DAR, of course, would pass resolutions denouncing the festivities as provocative of social unrest and a boost for Communism.

A Case for a Good Dictator

I AM inclined to measures a little more robust, feeling that anything which breeds discontent among the lower classes prepares the way for Communism with its godlessness and intolerance for sacred things. My way would be to call on Mussolini and Hitler for bombing planes to blast these $50,000 parties without mercy in the name of God instead of waiting until the lower classes are driven to vulgar extremes as in Spain and then bombing the people themselves.

Of course I may miscalculate the feeling of the poor on reading that Miss Field, for example, has been introduced again at a further cost of $50,000 to a lot of boys and girls whom she has known all her life and to a lot of others whom she will never see again if her luck is with her.

Possibly they are pleased in their simple way to hear about this and the mother’s annual alimony of $1,000,000 from the father who gets it from the store.

But there are almost certain to be some employees who will entertain a selfish wish that the money had been spread around in wages for the clerks.

Dorothy Thompson

Great Falls Tribune/February 2, 1937

Is it not curious that the president, while rebuking Mr. Sloan for refusing to bargain collectively with representatives of the automobile union, and while his secretary of labor seeks increased government powers to enforce a conference, should himself arbitrarily assault the principle of collective bargaining in another field?

I am referring, of course, to the power fight. There is a curious parallel between the attitude of the president and the attitude of Mr. Sloan. Mr. Sloan says he won’t confer as long as the strikers are illegally occupying company territory. The president interrupted negotiations with the utility companies because the utility companies affected in the TVA area will not withdraw injunction suits, although these same suits have been pending since last May, and, although the president called his power conference last September in the full consciousness that the suits were pending and the full knowledge that they would be withdrawn only if the government, on its part, suspended further building of transmission lines until an agreement was reached.

In the one case General Motors refuses to negotiate. In the other, the government refuses.

There is an issue involved of profound importance for the American people. It is, in the estimation of this column, the issue. We are, like all the rest of the world, going through a period of profound social readjustment. And the question is not only what readjustments must be made but it is also: In what spirit and by what method shall we approach a solution of our problems? Are we to seek solution by fundamental democratic methods of investigation, reasonability and knowledge, seeking everywhere the greatest possible measure of consent, or are we to engage in naked contests of power, with the decisions determined by force and maintained by coercion?

The whole philosophical basis of democracy rests on a belief in human reason and the possibility of obtaining collaboration for specific ends between divergent groups. If that basis is abandoned, democracy is lost.

The president’s Portland speech, one of the finest of his campaign, indicated that he intended to approach the power question in the spirit of liberalism and democracy, concentrating on the attainment of objective ends. Those ends were “assurance of good service and low rates to the population” . . . the establishment of “the undeniable right” of any community “to set up its own governmentally owned and operated service”; the conservation of private utility operation and investment wherever fair rates are charged and only reasonable profits made.

“When state-owned or federal-owned power sites are so developed private capital should be given the first opportunity to transmit and distribute power on the basis of the best service and the lowest rates to give reasonable profit only.”

The calling of the power conference to discuss a pool; the appointment of a power policy committee to work out a solution between private and public interests, were all along the line of a liberal approach.

The power policy committee contained representatives of the interested parties—TVA and the private utilities in the field—Mr. Ickes, representatives of the federal power commission, Mr. Cooke of rural electrification, two representatives from the SEC and some of the most enlightened industrialists and technical advisers on finance of this country: Russell Leffingwell, one of the few men amongst bankers or bankers’ advisers who have defended the major parts of the president’s financial program; Alexander Sachs, who has spent years studying the power question and co-ordinations which have been made elsewhere in the world; and Louis Brandeis Wehle, a nephew of the Supreme Court justice, as another independent adviser.

It was a sympathetic committee, and if any group of men in the country was capable of working out a program along the lines of the Portland speech and bringing to it the prestige of knowledge, this group was.

It was charged on Oct. 1 to work out plans for realizing an administration program, outlined on broad lines, and it was approaching a reasonable compromise when it was wrecked by the extremists of the TVA and the senate. The wreckage was accompanied by extremely misleading public statements and the sort of headlines Mr. Roosevelt deplored, when, in another case, they were used by John Lewis.

Senator Norris, on Jan. 14, stated that the utilities have not in good faith lived up to their agreement at the White House conference; that at that conference there was an agreement to extend until February the contract between the TVA and the Commonwealth & Southern Corp., and that in violation of the terms of that extension and as soon as the extension was made, the utilities got out an injunction hamstringing the TVA in everything.

Wendell Willkie was able to produce evidence in the form of a correspondence with the president that Senator Norris’ statement was not in harmony with the facts and in this he was publicly supported by Mr. Wehle. And the true state of mind back of the extremists was expressed in Senator Norris’s other statement that “public and private power can no more mix than oil and water.”

That is a statement of opinion, rather than fact, and the opinion has little to support it. In all the democratic countries, public and private enterprise in the utility field is very happily mixed—in Great Britain and in Sweden, for instance, and obviously it was to find a way of mixing them that the president called a conference in the first place.

The reaction of a large part of the liberal press indicates that it has forgotten the essence of liberalism and prefers to join the fanatics, who are accustomed to redouble their efforts when they lose sight of their aim. Jay Franklin, for instance, joined the ranks of the demonologists when he attacked Dr. Arthur Morgan’s public statement on TVA policy. For Mr. Franklin’s whole attack on Dr. Morgan was centered around the argument that Dr. Morgan agreed with Mr. Willkie.

“For a concededly honest man.” he said, “Dr. Morgan could have done little more for the private utilities had he been on the payroll of the Commonwealth & Southern.” It seems utterly out of the question to Mr. Franklin that Dr. Morgan and Mr. Willkie actually might come to agreement honestly at any point. For Mr. Franklin, and for Senator Norris, and Mr. Lillenthal this is plainly not a question of finding the best method for giving the people cheap power and protecting their interests but is a fight between the forces of good and the forces of evil. Such a fight, being completely subjective, is never compromisable.

One might answer the devil chasers in Washington with another statement of Dr. Morgan’s, which has nothing to do with the power issue but is a statement of faith. I quote from the notes of Antioch College:

“The foundation of civilized society is reliance on intelligent and sympathetic fairness and reasonableness rather than on arbitrary power. Only to the extent that men have confidence that issues will be decided by efforts to reach the most reasonable conclusions can men disarm, physically, economically and socially.”

That is a liberal statement and whether the liberal spirit will prevail in the next four years will determine whether we are to move forward into new social and economic forms with a maximum of unity and consent or settle down to bitter warfare. And war—the liberals have always said—never really settles anything but merely sows the seeds for new wars.

Dorothy Thompson

Decatur Daily Review/February 5, 1937

In Which Dorothy Thompson Looks At Chancellor Hitler’s Recent Address

“I strongly advise you against reading the papers this morning,” said the grouse. “They are full of conditions and situations, of floods, menaces, tax programs, strikes, and, I regret, of your perpetual King Charles’ head.”

“My King Charles’ head? Whoever are you talking about?”

“Wilhelm the Third, King and Emperor. And prophet. Christened Adolph. Surname Hitler. He hath spoken. Occasion is four years of his rule, and the beginning of four years more.”

“Oh, give me the papers. What did he say?”

“Confine yourself to the grapefruit. I dislike women reading newspapers at breakfast. No woman can read a paper like a gentleman. Folded perpendicularly and elegantly held in one hand. Like all women, you get it into the coffee.”

“Well, then, what did he say?”

“He said he was for him. He said Heil, Hitler. He said he had known need and sorrow and now was bent with care and asked for four more years of it. The Reichstag stood up. The Reichstag sat down. The Reichstag cheered. The Reichstag left. Germany regenerated. Bloodless revolution. Four more years ‘Mein Volk! Heil!’”

“Why do you call him Wilhelm III? He would prefer to be likened to Bismarck.”

“There are differences between the Kaiser and the prophet. For instance, the moustache. Both, you observe, wear them, and in both the moustache is the center of attention in the countenance. But the Kaiser’s moustache is aggressive. The incumbent’s is cuddled under the nose like a wee, sweet mousy.

“The Kaiser looks like somebody about to do something. Hitler looks as if he had just been caught doing something. Also, I believe, the Kaiser was accustomed to commune with God, whereas the prophet comes down from the mountains having communed with himself.

“Oh, yes, there are great differences. But there are greater similarities. The Kaiser broke with Russia, while deploring the danger of the Yellow Peril from Japan. The prophet breaks with Russia while glad-eyeing the Japs whom he has discovered to be Aryans along with the Arabic Moors.

“Have you been able to figure out why an African soldier on the Rhine is a pollution of the Nordic race, and is its savior in Spain? Both found themselves encircled by enemies; both admired England while deploring the English. Mr. Hitler, for instance, finds that the so-English Mr. Eden is doing his country a grave wrong by being so very un-English as to think like an Englishman. Like the Kaiser. Mr. Hitler thinks the English should think like Germans. A grave error, made once before in history.

“But the greatest similarity is in the cosmic mysticism of their dreams. And that is why they are alike, and neither of them in the least like Bismarck. Bismarck believed in blood and iron and German unity. But Bismarck knew precisely what he wanted. He also knew how to get it.

“He knew that he could not have both Russia and Britain as enemies. He made one his ally and he kept the other neutral. And when he got what he wanted, he stopped, and thereafter behaved like a good European. Bismarck will go down in history as the German statesman who knew when to stop.”

“Your historical remarks are interesting, but how about the speech?”

“In addition to congratulating the German people upon four years of himself, he was expected, you remember, to answer a speech by M. Blum. He did not, of course, do so, since the Germans have no dealings at present with sub-humans, to which category M. Blum, by reason of his racial extraction, belongs by German definition.

“M. Blum was so sub-human as recently to suggest that now that Germany has equality, but lacks raw materials, foreign trade, international currency, and colonies, it might be well to amicably consider ways and means of getting them for Germany.

“He also was so sub-human as to suggest that the normal interchange of goods in the world is greatly facilitated by a peaceful atmosphere: that an international armaments race, in which every country spends the bulk of its national income on guns, is not the best accompaniment for a restoration of prosperity. M. Blum suggested that since all wars eventually end in peace conferences, it might spare a lot of wear and tear to have the peace conference first.”

“Well—and?”

“You can readily see that such an idea is the product of a degenerate mind, of a people gone soft, and could only occur to a Blum or an Anthony Eden or a Cordell Hull. It has the supreme dismerit in this period of history of being reasonable. Mr. Hitler proudly ignored it.

“He said he had offered a disarmament pact three times; it has been refused, and now that there was a man in power in France who might accept it, he would be hanged if he would offer it a fourth time. Or words to that effect.

“Besides. Mr. Hitler along with Japan is engaged in a crusade. He will not be able to rest until he has saved all of us.”

“From what?”

“From regimentation. Planned economy, rigged trials, state control over the productive machinery, concentration camps, enforced exile, five-year plans, party dictatorship, suppression of religion, mass demonstrations, drilled youth, labor camps, a sub-servient press and education, mass propaganda, and the obsequious worship of one man.”

“Saved us, from those?”

“I am telling you about the speech. Lest you become confused Mr. Hitler wishes to save us all from communism. There is, apparently, a great issue in the world. It is whether you and I shall eventually say ‘Heil, Hitler!’ or whether we shall say ‘Heil, Stalin!’”

“But suppose we won’t say either?”’

“Your naive remark is democratic liberal idiocy. France says she won’t say either, but she is buying cannon. Britain says she won’t say either, but she is equipping every man, woman and child with gas masks, and plugging the chimneys so they won’t suck in gas while letting out smoke. Spain said she wouldn’t say either, but look at her now.”

“Oh, what a nice, comfortable, cozy thing a flood is!”

Dorothy Thompson

Escanaba Daily Press/February 19, 1937

“There is one certain remedy for a headache,” said the Grouse crankily. “It is cheap, instantaneous, and guaranteed. That remedy is decapitation.”

“I fail, as usual, to follow you.”

“I refer to the President’s way with that bothersome old lady, the Supreme Court. He says the Supreme Court has, and is, a headache. He proposes to cure it. But he is a busy man. It’s a long way upstairs to get the aspirin, and the doctors disagree anyhow as to just what’s wrong with Auntie. So he has jumped into the kitchen for a cleaver, and the sure and lasting cure. Nice fellow, the President. Can’t bear the sight of long drawn out pain.”

“Your metaphor is fantastic.”

“I mean it to be. This is a fantastic world. Social ministrations with the hatchet, real or figurative, are becoming an international habit. In Moscow political inconveniences are sometimes bumped off, but oftener retired on full pay. Or put under protective arrest. The President proposes to put the nine old men under protective arrest, watched by six young huskies, unless they will retire on full pay. All the same methods. Hatchet. Decapitation. Humane or otherwise.”

“I take it that you object.”

“I am positively startled by the vigor of my objections. Hence the attempt to express myself fantastically. For along about now the American people, who are seldom interested in anything for more than two weeks, will begin to say, ‘Oh, let the President do what he likes. He’s a good guy.’

“Also, they really feel that the Supreme Court is a nuisance. Why, they think, should they bother to nurse her along?”

“Well, and why should they? You tell me.”

“Government by decapitation becomes a habit. The removal of obstacles by crying ‘Off with their heads!’ was employed by the Queen in Alice’s crazy dream. It has now become entirely too general for my taste. Besides, there is another cure for Auntie’s headache. It has been used eighteen times before. The only objection to it is that it takes time and patient treatment.”

“But they say that a constitutional amendment would take years to pass.”

“They also say that the people overwhelmingly want the things which a constitutional amendment might give them, don’t they? You can’t have it both ways. The Prohibition amendment, which a majority of the people never wanted, passed in a few months. If the New Deal hasn’t as competent a machine as the Anti-Saloon League, I am astonished. If all the farmers, all the working men, and all the unemployed, really want what we are told they do want, nothing could stop such an amendment.”

“Wouldn’t an amendment really amount to the same thing as the President’s proposal?”

“It would not. The method of legitimate constitutional government is to say: “If you don’t like the law, change it. If you don’t like the powers of the Supreme Court, limit them. If the meaning of the law is doubtful, clarify it.’ That is exactly the opposite of saying, ‘The law means what I and the current majority in Congress say it does, and we shall fix it so that the judges and we see eye to eye.’ That method can only have one result—after a while there isn’t any law. The main difference between democracy and dictatorship is that in a democracy the judicial system is there to protect the citizen and in a dictatorship it is there to protect the state.

“But, if I were you I would not talk too much about dictatorship. For we have always had in this country the dictatorship of one oligarchy or another. And that lies in the nature of the State, which few since Thomas Jefferson have realized is by its nature a predatory instrument. The State is a means by which one set of fellows legally despoil the others. For a long time business controlled this instrument, and with it despoiled those who were not business men, and the Supreme Court still represents their mentality.

“Now, the Congress and the Administration represent the groups from the bottom who have got on to the fact that the State is a means by which they can get something for nothing. And the Supreme Court, since it still represents the other, just ousted bandits, stands in their way. This is just another fight, and this time a fight for control of the means of oppression, which the State is. The chief objection to everything that has happened in the last four years is that the State, which, by and large, is no earthly good to any hard working, honest and decent human being, and only interests those who want something for nothing, is getting so strong that soon we shall all give up the struggle and let it run everything. And when it does all history shows that it will run everything into the ground. For the State never consists of people who write memoranda about doing things. And when it gets strong enough it finally represents only one predatory group—that of its own members. It takes about a third of the national income now, and before everything is finished it will probably take all of it. Anything which retards this inevitable process is highly desirable.

“Also, and apropos of dictatorship: No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument for expressing the incorporated National Will. When Americans think of dictators they always think of some foreign model. If anyone turned up here in a fur hat, boots, and a grim look he would be recognized and shunned. Likewise anyone resembling six Roman Emperors, or someone you must greet with a stiff arm and a Heil. But when our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. Since the great American tradition is freedom and democracy you can bet that our dictator, God help us! will be a great democrat, through whose leadership alone democracy can be realized. And nobody will ever say ‘Heil’ to him or ‘Ave Caesar,’ nor will they call him ‘Fuehrer’ or ‘Duce.’ But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike blat of ‘O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!”

Dorothy Thompson

Chattanooga News/February 26, 1937

Dorothy Thompson Bemoans Isolationism While the World Prepares for the Greatest of Great Wars –Once Before America Cast the Deciding Vote, and Cast It Too Late, After the Catastrophe Had Arrived

The announcement that England is about to spend $7,500,000,000 for rearmament purposes, hardly less, according to Neville Chamberlain, and possibly more; the estimate of “The London Banker” that Germany’s military expenditures in the past four years have been 31,000,000,000 marks—$12,000,000,000; the course of steel, copper, lead, zinc, and other such stocks on the American stock market; the revelation that our government is concerned with whether it can get steel from our own industries under the Walsh-Healey Act—all these are only straws indicating the outstanding and most important fact in the world today, namely that an armaments race is on which has no parallel in history, and, very importantly, that the whole process of industrial recovery is bound up in this race.

Two facts: First, the nations indulging in this orgy of armaments have not yet paid for the last war; second, the effort comes at a time when the nations are slowly recovering from the most violent depression of modern times, and when there is enormous pressure upon them for large expenditures for social services.

Modern armies are the most expensive in history. They are mechanized. This means huge capital outlays for trucks, tractors and tanks. The air arm is all important. Airplanes have an especially high rate of obsolesence, because of hard use, crack-ups, and changes in design. Not only must there be tremendous numbers of planes on hand, but also factories capable of turning out thousands of machines during war. Military experts agree that the first line air personnel and machines are likely to be annihilated at the very outset of hostilities.

Modern expenditure for war has taken a new turn in that all the nations are storing gigantic reserves of food and essential raw materials. In so doing, some of the countries, such as England, are vitally influenced by America’s neutrality policy. They fear that in war-time they could not buy from us. Other countries, such as Germany, remembering the experience of the Great War, when the blockade cut off their overseas supplies, are taking no chances, and also laying in huge supplies. Vast amounts of capital and goods, therefore, are being frozen.

In London recently as a direct result of England’s vast rearmament program government bonds have fallen sharply in price, and armament shares have risen proportionately. Holders of bonds have sold them in order to buy shares in companies that will benefit from the arms program. Because of the pressure on the money market, arising from governmental needs, private industry will have to pay higher rates of interest, and higher rates for raw materials. This will tend to handicap the export industries of England and thereby retard all recovery based on normal business activities. Moreover, London is the money market of the world. Borrowers find it increasingly difficult to obtain money there, because the money will be needed at home. They cannot obtain it in New York because the Johnson Act prohibits our lending to nations in default to us, and that includes most of the Great Powers.

The point that I am trying to make is that the armaments race is disrupting all normal business activities, and concentrating an enormous proportion of the entire wealth of the world into a single channel. Our naval policy is to build up to England, and the British have just announced that they will spend $3,000,000,000 on their navy, build twenty-five new battleships and put a squadron into the Pacific. The Japanese in turn have announced that they will try, at least, to build up to each of us. Under these conditions, it is impossible to see how one can bring about a balanced economy in any country, with or without complete dictatorial control over it. Furthermore, this kind of race is impossible to stop once it gets well under way. So vast a number of workmen, such prodigious amounts of basic materials and industries will eventually be involved in it, that its sudden liquidation, even in universal disarmament, would bring about a general economic collapse.

It is at such a moment that the United States, in its foreign policy, is carrying water on both shoulders. The policy of Mr. Cordell Hull, backed by the President and the Congress, is economic internationalism. The policy of a large body in Congress is political isolationism. The two are incompatible. The translation of political isolationism into economic isolationism would mean economic dictatorship. If the people of America want that, they ought to get it perfectly clear in their minds that that is what they are heading for. The translation of economic internationalism into political internationalism would mean that we would have to take a stand in the world. For if the present situation drifts, war or world economic collapse are the only two alternatives, and we shall certainly share in the latter, whether or not we share in the former.

The armaments race was started by Germany, Italy and Japan. Japan has seized China, and threatens the English, Dutch and French possessions in the Pacific; Italy has seized Ethiopia and has forced British rearmament by her policy in the Mediterranean. Hitler has put all of Germany upon a war basis, with the avowed intention of expansion, exactly where and exactly how not being indicated, England and France have repeatedly offered Germany and Italy to negotiate economic readjustments in return for a halt in armaments, and the offers have been ignored or refused. The rearmament of the democratic countries follows because of those refusals, and because it has become quite clear that negotiations will only be possible at all if the democratic countries stand with swords in their hands. These are the unhappy international realities. If within the next few months the nations prepare to seek their aims by negotiation, with the inexorable realization that the alternative will be war, catastrophe may be averted. That is the only hope. And that hope is forlorn as long as the United States, the greatest single power in the world, clings to a totally unreal theory of isolationism.

Once before in history we cast the deciding vote. And cast it too late, after the catastrophe was upon us.

Dorothy Thompson

Great Falls Tribune/February 21, 1937

Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana has introduced into the Senate a version of the Madison amendment, so named because something like it was once sponsored by James Madison, said to be the actual author of the Constitution. The issue which Senator Wheeler’s amendment raises was warmly debated in Congress in 1802, when exactly the same objections to the Supreme Court’s final control over legislation were raised that have been made during the last four years, and the same defense was urged.

Senator Wheeler’s amendment has much merit, and the provision that a congressional election must ensue with the invalidated congressional law as a popular issue, before Congress can override the measure by a two-thirds vote, is evidence of the senator’s scrupulous belief in the will of the people.

The objection which will be raised against it by possibly a majority in the present Congress will be that it is too slow and will repeatedly slow up legislative action. This column has no great objection to slowness, being convinced, in the first place, that the possibilities of legislation as a real aid to the economic well-being of the people are very limited indeed, and that one arrangement, voluntarily arrived at by negotiation between workers and employers in a given industry, is worth a pile of laws. That, however, is a personal opinion.

Politically speaking, anything which will accelerate speed will alleviate tension, and the alleviation of tension is desirable. It will be the sheerest and most criminal blindness on the part of the opposition to the president’s program to refuse to admit any constitutional crisis at all. This nation is unquestionably moving toward national consolidation, and the very forces which have been most violently opposing national political consolidation have been those which have contributed most to its necessity, namely the great industrial and banking interests.

There is justice in the charge that they champion states’ rights only because the application of that doctrine puts them outside the operations of regulatory law. That was demonstrated with startling clarity when the New York state minimum wage law for women was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court.

This column regrets the whole tendency toward the control and regulation of economic life by the state, but is clearly aware that working men and women are taking refuge in the state only because they prefer control by an instrument in which, at least, they have votes to complete economic disfranchisement in the activities most important to their lives—namely their work.

“If the question is finally posed as to whether a man prefers to be dictated to by a government which he elects or dictated to by an industrial or financial oligarchy in which he has nothing whatever to say, there is no question what—in this period of history—his answer will be. He will choose the government.”

That statement was made in a private gathering last week, not by a new dealer but by an extremely important Republican. The statement is true, and anyone who bases his rebellion against what has happened in Washington upon a defense of the status quo is standing upon extremely dangerous ground, if at the same time he professes to believe in democracy.

The people want to have something to say about the economic conditions under which they live; that, we think, was proved by the last election. A believer in democracy must work to see that the means of constitutional legislation are given them, always bearing in mind that democracy is not only threatened by the extension of executive powers but is also threatened when a dynamic social movement confronts a stone wall of unyielding legal dicta. Either there must be channels open into which the public will can flow or public feeling will burst the banks and, despairing of legal means, resort to direct, illegal and violent ones.

What form of alleviation of the crisis is most desirable is a question for the most careful thought. Mr. Lippmann has presented, in the last days, arguments against allowing Congress under any circumstances to override judicial decisions. He thus presented, in advance, the arguments against Senator Wheeler s proposed way out. One argument for Senator Wheeler’s proposal rests in the theory—which is, indeed, Mr. Lippmann’s own—that it will be almost impossible to frame a constitutional amendment which will cover the case.

But I believe a satisfactory amendment could be framed. Certainly it is defeatism to admit that anything of the kind is beyond the capacity of human intelligence and good will, if the objective is kept clearly in mind.

I, certainly, should like to hear expert opinions on the merits or demerits of the proposals advanced by Dean Clark, the liberal dean of the Yale Law School. Dean Clark thinks that the dilemma could be solved by a group of three amendments. One which would define commerce to include the manufacture, production and distribution of articles designed for interstate commerce; one to define the due process of law clause to mean what it certainly originally was intended to mean, restriction to matters of procedure and fair trial. And, finally, a very necessary amendment to extend to the states the prohibition of restrictions on freedom of speech and religion—the provisions of the First Amendment—which our more careless liberals constantly forget have been enforced on the states by the Supreme Court under this same due process clause they so despise.

As to the theory that it will take years and years to get through any amendment—with the child labor amendment repeatedly cited as proof—that will depend on the awareness of the people of necessity and the willingness of all patriots to forget party alignments, evidences of which are already gratifyingly showing themselves. The child labor amendment is not analagous to this situation. But that is another column.

Dorothy Thompson

Chattanooga News/February 27, 1937

It is expected that the Pittman resolution soon will be favorably reported out of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Senate. Under its terms war-time commerce is rigged in favor of the great monopolies and international banking houses, as against the smaller manufacturer, who keeps his capital and employs his labor at home. The bill also will extend to the President the very great power of deciding what, anywhere in the world, constitutes a state of war, whether international or civil, thereupon giving him enormous controls over our entire foreign trade.

The bill, furthermore, definitely favors, in war time, that country or those countries which can control the seas, extending to it or to them special privileges which other belligerents cannot enjoy. It also extends special privileges to those nations or their nationals who hold credits in this country, or operate industries or exploit natural resources here.

The bill is called a Neutrality law and is designed to keep us out of war. This column submits that its measures have nothing to do with neutrality, and that it is extremely likely to serve exactly the opposite purpose from that for which it is designed.

The bill contains four major provisions: (1) In case the President decides that a state of war, international or civil exists anywhere, he may forbid the shipment of arms or implements of war from this country, and prevent loans of money to either belligerent; (2) He may extend the embargo to any other articles or materials considered essential to the conduct of war, such as cotton, steel, copper, or, presumably, even food, except as they are paid for in this country and all right and interest in them transferred from an American to other nationals. This is the so-called “cash and carry” clause; (3) Anything which the President may define as contraband can be banned from American ships, during war; and finally, (4) American nationals cannot depend upon the protection of the United States government if they travel in danger zones.

Now, what does this bill actually mean in practice? First of all, it means that we are flagrantly reversing the attitude expressed in the Kellogg Pact, which denounces aggression. We, the greatest, strongest single nation on earth, announce by inference, that there is no such thing as “right” or “wrong” and no such thing as international morality.

In advance of all possible hostilities, we perform the greatest Pontius Pilate act in history. We say by inference that morally speaking, it is a matter of complete indifference to this country whether a large and strong nation deliberately overruns a weak one; the attacked is a belligerent as well as the attacker, and we shall furnish arms to neither of them, and possibly no food or basic raw materials either.

But then we qualify that stand of dubious morality. We say that we will sell goods to anybody who can come and get them. That will mean in practice that we will sell goods to anybody who can control the high seas. That means, in the field of realistic politics that as matters stand today, we will sell goods to Great Britain. Tomorrow, perhaps, Germany and Russia will make a great combination, build tremendous navies, and set out to conquer the world; anything at all is possible. And in that case, it will mean that we will sell goods to them. Or it may mean that two warring countries, let us say, Great Britain and Germany, are contending for the control of the high seas, and both buying goods in our ports. That will mean that they may be blowing up each other’s ships just outside our harbors—or inside them!

The President may forbid American nationals to engage in almost any form of trade from this country, but the bill exempts non-Americans doing business in this country. This means that although we may embargo oil to any belligerent, British companies who own oil fields here or cotton plantations can sell oil or cotton to anyone they choose. It will also, in all probability, mean that Germans, French, and others will set about purchasing oil fields here, as well as other sources of necessary raw materials.

The possible complications arising from this baffle the imagination. Great Britain can have here a Rio Tinto as she has in Spain, or Germany a Mannesmann works, as she has in Morocco, and in time of war both of them can be furnishing their own countries from our soil. And if we confiscate their holdings, what then? Will that help to make everything hotsy totsy?

The President can forbid any American national to lend money to any belligerent Government or person, but he cannot prevent foreign nationals with money in this country from spending it here to help their own side. And there are billions of foreign money here at this moment.

Under this bill the President can prevent John Smith, who has a single oil well in Texas, from selling oil to Spain, or Russia, or Great Britain, or any other country which happens to be engaged at any moment in war, but he cannot prevent the great American oil companies, with fields and refineries all over the world—in Persia, Mexico, Venezuela, the Dutch East Indies or Romania—from selling oil to anyone they please, and making tremendous profits, with which to come home from the wars and force the little fellows, whom the war has impoverished, into bankruptcy.

Under this bill International Nickel, which is incorporated in Canada, but has a huge majority of American capital, can do all the business it likes. So, for instance, can Anaconda Copper. General Motors, which owns a majority of the stock in the German Opel works, can go on manufacturing trucks for the German Army, as it is doing at this moment, not in Detroit, but in Germany.

The bill is an invitation to American capital to distribute itself around the world. If one grants the thesis that our entrance into the last war was exclusively caused by American financial interests—a thesis which is a great deal too simple except for the simpleminded—how is this bill going to prevent American capital from having an interest in the next war as well?

The bill is in direct contradiction to the policy of Mr. Cordell Hull, who is doing everything in his power to foster normal international trade, and is opposing the self-sufficiency program of Germany, on the ground that economic self-sufficiency encourages war! But if other countries adopted bills similar to this, what would be left for countries poor in raw materials and foreign exchange except to copy and extend the German program!

We can tie up our hands all we please in an attempt to predicate the next war on the history of the last, a history, incidentally, which recently interpretations have both clarified and befuddled. But whatever we do will generate counter-policies in other countries. They are not altogether stupid; they are also motivated by self-interest. I have suggested what some of their counter-policies may be. And there will be others, such as the storage of vast amounts of food and materials, with resultant economic dislocations, and the opening up of new sources of raw materials, which will militate against our interests.

The bill is badly named. It should be called: An act to encourage autarchy, declare our alliance with whomever at the moment has the biggest navy, and foster international finance capitalism at the cost of the small fellows at home.