The American Century [Reprint 2014 ed.] 9780674189348

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T H E AMERICAN

T H E A T

G O D K I N H A R V A R D •

CENTURY

L E C T U R E S U N I V E R S I T Y

1949

·

THE AMERICAN CENTURY RALPH E. FLANDERS UNITED STATES SENATE

HARVARD

UNIVERSITY

PRESS

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

•

1950

·

COPYRIGHT

I95O

B Y T H E PRESIDENT AND F E L L O W S OF HARVARD COLLEGE

DISTRIBUTED

IN

GREAT

BRITAIN

BY

GEOFFREY C U M B E R L E G E OXFORD

UNIVERSITY

PRESS

LONDON

PRINTED IN T H E UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN 1831-1902 Edwin Lawrence Godkin, editor of The Nation and the New York Evening Post, was born in Ireland of English stock, and took his degree at Queen's College, Belfast, in 1851. He published a History of Hungary and was associated with the London Daily News and the Belfast Northern Whig before coming to America in 1856. Here his letters to the Daily News on American public affairs attracted attention and prepared him for the task he assumed in 1865 as first editor of The Nation, to which he gave a scholarly quality, a breadth of view, and a moral tone that brought it recognition as one of the best weeklies in the English-speaking world. In 1881 The Nation became the weekly edition of the New York Evening Post of which Godkin was made editor in chief in 1883. From that time until his retirement in 1900 he exercised an influence on public opinion out of all proportion to the circulation of his paper. Editors throughout the country, whether in sympathy with his views or not, watched for his editorials on all important issues. He was exceptionally well read in economics, history, and political theory, believed wholeheartedly in democracy, owed allegiance to no person or party, and was vigorous and fearless in expression. In 1903, by a gift to Harvard University, his friends established "The Godkin Lectures on the Essentials of Free Government and the Duties of the Citizen" in appreciation of his long and disinterested service to the country of his adoption and in the hope of stimulating that spirit of independent thought and devotion to the public service which characterized his career.

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION INTERNAL

STRENGTH

EXTERNAL

POLICY

PAX

AMERICANA

THE AMERICAN

CENTURY

INTRODUCTION The scope of these lectures is, it must be confessed, rather pretentious. There is involved, first, the realization that the wheel of destiny has turned. In the long succession of principalities and powers, the blooming and withering of cultures in our Western world, Greece succeeded the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates; Rome succeeded Greece and Western Europe succeeded Rome. In Western Europe, France succeeded Spain and England succeeded France. Now the revolving wheel has come to a momentary pause, and the destinies of the world, fortunately or unfortunately, are placed in our surprised, reluctant, and untrained hands. That the course of history has come to this station in its progress we may regret but we cannot deny. Let us give some thought to this astonishing

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historical event. Let us see if we can view our present problems and those of the immediate future in the light of this section of eternity which has been assigned to us. Because we have usually viewed our problems as a series of single crises arising from local and temporary situations and to be solved by short-range measures, it seems worth while for someone, even your present speaker, to attempt looking at our situation as a whole, both in the light of our immediate difficulties and in the light of the unsought major responsibilities which have fallen upon us. This requires that we look upon our economic and political problems together and that we consider them both in their domestic relations and also in their effect on our foreign relations. With a purpose as broad as this, it is quite evident that we will touch so many points that no particular subject can be fully treated. There may be paragraphs which deserve chapters, groups of paragraphs which deserve books, for a careful analysis. It is perhaps a shallow and superficial understanding which tempts me to travel over this great territory at so high a speed.

INTRODUCTION

3

Yet I cannot escape the conviction that there is value in this rapid, extensive traverse, just as I believe that at least once in his life every citizen of this country should see its whole broad expanse, its fertility, its deserts, its prairies, its mountains, in the course of one daylight journey by air from Boston to San Francisco.

• 1 ·

INTERNAL STRENGTH We shall start this wide-ranging discussion at its broad base — the economic and spiritual condition of the people of this country. We shall examine our present state and the means both dubious and hopeful which have been proposed for improving it; then we will try to set up objectives of practical policy which it should be possible to realize. To bring the material part of the program down to its bedrock definition, we will concern ourselves with increasing and steadying our production of the material goods of life and endeavoring to give them a wider distribution. This is the material aim. But there is also involved a spiritual ideal which we will hold unfalteringly before us. That ideal is that the

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material ends must be effected with the maximum degree of freedom of action and thought for the people who are in receipt of the material blessings. In this discussion we will conceive of freedom as both an end and a means. As an end it is a requirement for that worth and dignity of the individual which is assumed both by the Christian religion and by our historic political institutions. In the past freedom has been worth more to us than life itself. We must not falter in our devotion to it, or compromise in giving it up in any essential way for the sake of material advantage. We would be foolish indeed to do so for the sake of momentary material advantage, because there is little evidence in the whole sweep of the world's history that, under conditions of peace, the maximum of diffused material good has been attained by conditions other than those of human freedom. In current history we see how the loss of freedom is reducing the material benefits of peoples and races and nations as they submit to arbitrary political and economic control. Freedom has value as a means.

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As compared with any other people at any other time in the world's history, or for that matter any other people at the present time in the world's history, we are enjoying in this country more abundant material benefits than has been or can be found elsewhere at any time. Not everyone is fully provided with the necessities of food, clothing, and shelter. Not everyone has employment. But taking the country as a whole and taking the rest of the world as a whole, the percentage of Americans who are suffering real deprivation is small indeed as compared with other peoples, and the percentage of those who are living in comfort, who enjoy the possession of such luxuries as automobiles and radios, is far, far beyond that ever seen or heard of elsewhere. We are doing well, but we feel, and rightly feel, that we are not doing well enough. We have, for instance, gone through depressions from time to time and one of them deserves the name of the "Great Depression." For nearly ten years many millions of people were out of work and lived in fear of approaching destitution. Millions were spent by a sympa-

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thetic government in the endeavor to end this unemployment. About fifteen billions were spent in all, and this was at that time a sum only comparable to our military expenditures in World War I. But in spite of these expenditures we went into our preparations for World War II with ten million people still unemployed. The answer had not been found. The undertaking was unsuccessful. Only war ended unemployment and that is not the right way to end it. We went into this depression, as a matter of fact, with completely new ideas concerning depressions in general. I can without difficulty remember the depression of 1893.1 was enough interested to read editorials, listen to the comment of people at work and out of work, and to conclude in retrospect that that depression was viewed more or less as a natural phenomenon like flood and drought. People rode it out with much personal inconvenience and even suffering, but without feeling that it was easily avoidable, that criminal mistakes had been made, and that the government could easily end it. It was, of course, seized on to a limited

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extent as a political issue. Bryan and the sixteen-to-one silver theory got into politics. But the idea that a depression is a human institution, which could be remedied easily and quickly by human action, was not accepted by the people as an obvious fact. The Great Depression was taken in a very different way. We all believed that serious errors had been made. In retrospect some of those errors appear clear and plain. Also in retrospect we can see the delayed results of the First World War appearing in our later economic disaster. We have accepted the idea, new in human history, that society in general, and government in particular, has a responsibility for seeing that production and employment are maintained. That conclusion finds its legislative expression in the President's Economic Council and the Joint Committee of Congress on the Economic Report. However feeble, however equivocal the practical results to date of this legislative recommendation may be, the conviction and purpose remain. Our government is charged with responsibility for steady-

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ing and improving the economic situation of its citizens. In trying to do this heretofore, we have of course been tremendously handicapped by wars. They bring about a specious and temporary prosperity, based on inflation; but they show in the long run the ill results of inflation and the depletion of resources of people, business, and government during the long years in which our energies are given over to the carrying on of total conflict. We can't have more wars and have material well being. The Great Depression introduced us to the idea that government has a responsibility for the welfare of the citizen when he is in trouble through illness, unemployment, or old age. Unemployment compensation, old age pensions, and various forms of relief have become firmly established as responsibilities of the state and national government. In paying for the heavy burdens of wars, depressions, and welfare services, our taxes have been raised so high that they are constituting in themselves an influence that leads away from freedom and toward socialism. They restrict the

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ability of the citizen to spend as he pleases. Instead they channel a considerable part of his earnings into social consumption which he may or may not desire individually. Worse than this in the long run is the deadening hand of taxes on new enterprises and undertakings and also the comparative strength they give to old established businesses. Freedom to start something new with some chance of success is diminishing year by year. Year by year the big companies are consolidated in their competitive positions. No laws can change this situation so long as the amount and kind of our taxation makes it inevitable. For similar reasons this heavy taxation is slowing up the rate of that improvement in product, processes, and equipment on which alone depends a rise in the standard of living for the whole people. We are slowing up our material progress. This is a gloomy analysis, but as we said earlier, we have to reckon with the fact that our material well-being exceeds that of any other people, at any other time, whether in the past or in the present. The fact of material well-

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being is evidently not enough. From the Great Depression and from the war there have been derived fears that will not be quieted by welfare provisions, and the piling up of armaments and forming of military alliances only feeds these fears. On top of all this the satisfactions of the productive life seem now to be denied the worker in trade and industry. In the old, simple days of my boyhood a man could take pride in what he was doing. His work comprised an appreciable and important part of the product of the shop by which he was employed. H e knew what was being made. H e saw it completed and shipped, and he could recognize his own handicraft and his own responsibility therein. That is no longer obvious. A worker in Muncie, Indiana, performs a single operation on a single part day after day, week after week, month after month, and perhaps year after year. That part comes he knows not whence and goes he knows not whither. H e knows that somewhere — perhaps in Los Angeles or Framingham — it is assembled into a finished automobile, but there is nothing whatever personal about his con-

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tribution to that automobile which he never sees. A residual fear from the Great Depression has entered the life of the wage earner. Old satisfactions have gone out. Our improvements in production and distribution have not brought contentment. Let us now look at some of the remedies which have been proposed for curing that distribution of production which leaves considerable numbers of our population with inadequate food, clothing, and shelter and which also subjects us from time to time with depressions during which these inadequacies are broadly spread. There is a conservative approach to this problem which has a certain validity. That validity will become more clear when we examine the sentimental liberal approach. The conservative point of view heavily emphasizes the well-being of the people of the nation as expressed statistically. It tends to overlook the wide discrepancies which go to make up the satisfactory achievements; and when it does look at them in detail, it tends to refer these inequities to

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laziness or moral delinquency of some sort, thus permitting one to view distress with a warm, moral glow instead of suffering from an induced uneasiness. The conservative point of view, furthermore, tends to emphasize measures and programs which were in full operation up to and including the months which generated the Great Depression. This point of view, finally, either does not recognize, or considers as unimportant, that enormous change in the relations of the workman to his work which mass production of modern industry has brought about. Conservatism has a real solid, negative value. It can offer reasoned objections to foolish proposals. Every proposal for improving society should pass through the fire of conservative criticism. Were there no conservatives available for this process, we would have to invent them somehow or other. The role of the conservative is particularly important when we consider his opposite number, the emotional liberal. The liberal of this sort is one whose emotions are stirred when he reads a tag. If the tag says "pro-union," he votes

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for whatever is in the package, whether it helps members of unions or not. If the tag reads "procoöperative," he votes for the measure, whether or not it really strengthens a sound cooperative movement in the country, comparable, for instance, to that of Sweden. If the tag reads "antirailroad," again he is for it, no matter what its effect on the price of goods for the people or on their investment in life insurance policies. He votes for anything tagged "anti-utility" in the same way. "Anti-banking" stirs him to the same emotion and the same action. So does "anti-monopoly," no matter to what the tag may be attached. All this is pretty usual and pretty bad. In the first place, it deals with comparatively unimportant matters. The packages to which these tags are attached ordinarily contain little relating to the deep, difficult, and fundamental problems which face us. They are concerned with phenomena easily visible, with regard to which passions are easily aroused. They are the favorite resource of the politician who is such in the narrow and shallow sense of the word. Liberalism of this sort is a danger to a country

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having a concern for the well-being of its citizens. It has seemed at times as though this false liberalism believes that it has, in the concept of universal welfare, a universal remedy for all our ills. This universal welfare we see in operation in Great Britain. We also see, or think we see, that in the scale and extent of its benefits it is so expensive that the nation will find itself unable to afford it without increases in production and reforms in business administration which its citizens show as yet few signs of being willing to undertake. In this country we see welfare carried to the point of absurdity in the Brannan Plan, which seeks by taxation to maintain the income of the farmer. If the farmer's income is to be maintained, there is no reason why the wage earner should not be protected in his income by taxation. If this is to be done for the wage earner, why not for the professional man? If for the professional man, why not for the stockholders in a business ? It is fortunate that we have had this idea of welfare presented so soon in its most extreme form because it then becomes

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quite evident that the universal maintenance of income by universal taxation is an absurdity. Yet we have lived to see it proposed. Another current remedy for our economic ills is the redistribution of production, whether by taxation or by labor negotiation. Our income taxes are definitely based on the redistribution of production. We usually call it "redistribution of wealth," which is a more ambiguous word, since we think of wealth in terms of dollars, and somehow get the idea that dollars are limitless in volume. It is true that they are limitless in amount under our present monetary system, but they are not limitless in value. The value is given them by the amount of things produced and distributed, and unless these things are produced and distributed, they cannot be redistributed. Taxes and increased wages are a means of redistributing our current limited production. Unfortunately, when carried to extremes, taxes tend to limit production at the same time that they redistribute it. This is true in the comparatively unimportant sense that the money taken away in taxes is not available for consumption for the man who is taxed, and for

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him at least it decreases the effective demand for production. To the extent, however, that these funds go into the hands of others who can and wish to spend them, they remain as effective stimulants for production. Unfortunately, a good share of our taxes does not go into the hands of producing consumers but is siphoned through government employees and military establishments whose personnel is withdrawn from production, with a resulting decrease in the volume of goods to be distributed. There is one existing type of taxation which is especially bad, since it bears proportionately more heavily on the low income groups than on any other. Most of the excise taxes are weighted against the lower income groups and definitely decrease their purchasing power. As will be mentioned later, the labor unions have a vital function to perform in giving significance to the life of the wage earner. They also perform for him an economic function in the redistribution of production. The union tries to get as much money as possible for its members from the enterprise. Often it has done so without considering whether the operation of

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the enterprise could afford meeting the demands made upon it. This has not always been the case, but it has happened often enough to establish the tendency of willingness to demand and get redistribution of a static production — a tendency which can only result in such an increase in costs as will, for the country as a whole, negate the improvement temporarily received by the individual union and its members. All of these shallow and emotional solutions head up into the current political structure in which the strongest influences in our political life support and are supported by these policies, which have in them nothing of enduring value to the citizen whose support is asked and given for perpetuating them. In this current situation we see democracy undergoing its critical trial. Unless it can operate to the substantial well-being of its citizens instead of feeding skillfully aroused emotions, our great experiment will end in chaos or totalitarianism. In order that it may not so end, we must next consider whether there are useful and effective remedies for the ills we have just described.

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There definitely are ills in our American life that can and should be corrected. We must not rest content in showing the ineffectiveness and danger in current plans for avoiding depression, for extending welfare, for imposing heavier taxes, for subsidizing the incomes of producing groups, and for solving all problems by a redistribution of wealth to which as the master plan these proposals all contribute. T o base our whole economic, social, and political future on the proposition that all ills can be cured and progress made for the individual citizen by readjusting the share which each receives of the national production is to found the structure of American life on a fallacy, and to promise to the carelessly thinking citizen benefits which he can never receive and which will, in fact, be grievously diminished. Our problem is to replace emotional liberalism and clever politics with solid achievement. First, let us seek for a definition of liberalism which can give us a clue to humanly desirable ends and effective and honest means. Such a definition can be found in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in the article

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entitled "Liberal Party" written by Ramsay Muir, an English historian. Mr. Muir defines liberalism as follows: Liberalism is a belief in the value of human personality, and a conviction that the source of all progress lies in the free exercise of individual energy; it produces an eagerness to emancipate all individuals or groups so that they may freely exercise their powers, so far as this can be done without injury to others; and it therefore involves a readiness to use the power of the State for the purposes of creating the conditions within which individual energy can thrive, of preventing all abuses of power, of affording to every citizen the means of acquiring mastery of his own capacities, and of establishing a real equality of opportunity for all. These aims are compatible with a very active policy of social reorganization, involving a great enlargement of the functions of the State. They are not compatible with Socialism, which, strictly interpreted, would banish free individual initiative and responsibility from the economic sphere. I do not know of a better definition than this. It asserts that the purpose of legislation is the welfare of the people, not of institutions, gov-

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ernments, nations, or races. It further asserts that it is the purpose of liberalism to preserve freedom in thought and action; it seeks opportunity for each to develop and use his native capacities; it expresses the faith that man's economic advancement may be achieved under conditions of freedom; and finally, it asserts that government may assist this endeavor. Our emotional liberals need to test their proposals by these standards. Our conservatives need to question whether they are thinking about people or institutions. Both liberals and conservatives may well add one further area of judgment in their analysis and planning, and that is: Will the proposals actually work? This last, while not expressed in the definition, is a most important standard. It is one which the citizens should insist on having spelled out for them. It is one which should lead them to turn thumbs down on many attractive political proposals. Let us now proceed to the consideration of policies which assume and preserve a high degree of individual freedom, which have as their objective maintaining the interests of the people

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rather than of institutions, and which give some promise of being practically effective. First we are faced with the problem of avoiding, mitigating, or shortening depressions. It is a sad fact that we find new ways of making fools of ourselves in every new depression. We had a short, sharp money panic in 1907 with a comparatively slow recovery. This was remedied by the establishment of the Federal Reserve System, which should obviate a recurrence of this sort of a business upset. Indeed our dangers lie in the opposite direction, since deficit financing is geared into our present Federal Reserve System in such a way as to make a superfluity of money rather than a shortage of it a more likely cause of trouble. The Great Depression of the thirties was based on certain underlying sore spots in our economy of which the most serious was unmanageable indebtedness in agriculture and a too great greediness for profits in business. That greediness should have been ended by heavy taxation and debt reduction, but this was not done to a sufficient degree or soon enough. Greed

expressed itself

most

strongly in a fantastic speculation in securities

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wherein market operators, businessmen, professional people, and even elevator boys sought to realize, in the present, profits which could only be achieved in the distant future. The market crash shook our banking system to its roots, led to the recalling of loans on which business depends for its activity, and induced liquidation which preyed upon itself. The problem of restoring production and employment was not solved. There is little to be learned from the long years of the thirties except some indications of what not to do. Those who ruled our destinies desired the fruits of business confidence without knowing how to inspire it or being willing to maintain it. Whenever it showed its head, it was promptly spanked down. The ignorance and political ineptitude of that time became a national calamity. But we can draw from that period valuable lessons. One of them is that it should be easier to avoid a depression than to cure it. Continuous watching and suitable remedial action is possible and lies within the province of the President's Economic Council and the Joint Committee of Congress. It remains to be

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seen whether these bodies will act on the basis of short-sighted, political expediency or will address themselves to the serious task assigned to them. It seems to me that a sense of the nature of the problems and of our responsibilities for them is more deeply concerning the Joint Committee as time goes on. Welfare in its most extreme forms is proposed both as a good in itself and as one of the means of mitigating a depression. It can mitigate a depression for individuals benefited, but it does not necessarily have much effect on ending it. That takes place when that queer thing called "business confidence" revives and businessmen stop trembling and begin to have some confidence in expanding their operations. Perhaps some of you may remember going to a haberdasher's shop during the depths of the depression. You could not get a shirt in the desired color, size, and sleeve length if you searched the city through. You took what you could get. Your individual purchasing power was available, but the merchant dared not keep goods in his stock. Purchasing power exceeded business enterprise and did little to revive it.

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Given a federal government sympathetic to business, it is probable the welfare payments would have had the stimulating effect on recovery which was expected. That sympathy and understanding was lacking and the "leverage" was lost. Welfare, then, mitigates depression for individuals and may under favoring conditions contribute to recovery. As a continuing policy it should make certain minimum provisions for equality of opportunity, which is the great aim of a democratic society. Welfare must work toward the elimination of squalid slums, the raising of the general standard of health of the nation, and the provision of certain minimum educational facilities for all. Just what is to be done and how it shall be carried out is a matter of judgment. But our national objective of equality of opportunity depends on attention to these three elements of housing, health, and education. Beyond that, welfare provisions should be made for ameliorating serious misfortune such as unemployment and unsupported old age. It is perfectly proper to consider the liberalizing of unemployment compensa-

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tion, particularly its extension to excluded groups such as those employed by nonprofit institutions. Also it is perfectly proper to so organize its benefits that they do not apply to the voluntarily unemployed. As already stated, the outrageous feature of the current Brannan Plan is that it sets up a new standard of welfare and couples with it a new destruction of freedom, since the protection offered is of necessity coupled with strict control. The new standard is the maintenance of a high level of income for agriculture. Once this idea is accepted, there is no reason why the maintenance of high level income should not likewise be applied to wage earners, or to professional men, or to stockholders. These extremes follow logically from the original idea and, in following logically, demonstrate a fundamental fallacy which is that the population of the United States can successfully tax itself for universal subsidy. Obviously those subsidies will be eaten up in taxes. What the farmer is entitled to is some protection from serious market conditions. We must never again witness the spectacle of the

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Kansas farmer who, in the depths of the depression, came to the market with a load of wheat but could get for it only a price so low as scarcely to pay the cost of his gasoline in bringing the wheat to market. In indignant protest and in desperation he raised the tailboard of his truck and let his load scatter on the streets of Kansas City. It should be possible to give the farmer the equivalent of assistance given the workman out of work. While it can be done in various ways, perhaps that equivalent might be arranged somewhat as follows: Let 80 per cent of parity be set as the basic point. Then, whenever the crop is sold at less than 80 per cent, let the government make up to the farmer one-half of the difference between the parity base and the price at which he actually sells his product. Our Kansas farmer, who would have to give away his wheat, would at least get 40 per cent from the government. If the free market price was 50 per cent of parity, the government would provide 15 per cent, netting him 65 per cent. This would preserve the one good feature of the Brannan Plan, which is the free market.

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It gives the consumer a break. It moves the crop. It does away completely with governmental purchasing, storing, planning, and control of the farmer. He can plant what he pleases, as much as he pleases, and sell it at any time he pleases for any price. He again becomes a free man. The farmer thus remains an American citizen instead of becoming absorbed into a totalitarian segment of a decaying society. At the same time he is protected from extremes of world market glut. He will not have to raise the tailboard of his truck and drop his product on the streets of Kansas City or any other metropolis. He will have the same protection that is afforded the wage earner, for the same reasons, and to about the same degree. More than this the free American farmer will not ask so long as he remains an American. To return to the question of welfare, the Administration has proposed the extension of welfare on the full cradle-to-grave basis which the British government has provided for its people. The British are finding themselves unable to produce enough to pay for this. Their

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program is bogging down. We are perhaps in a better position to pay, since our production is far higher, but it can only be paid for by carrying the taxes down into the lower level incomes as is done in Great Britain. There is not income enough in the higher brackets to make a beginning in paying for these all-inclusive services. The fact is that we have reached the limits of redistribution of production so far as such redistribution is of any benefit whatsoever to the ordinary man. Taxes are already too high. For the benefit of the standard of living of the ordinary citizen we must find some way of reducing them or of giving tax advantages to those who are in a position to contribute to raising the standard of living of our people. On January 14,1896,1 began to serve my time as an apprentice in a machine shop. I worked sixty hours a week. As an apprentice I got only four cents an hour. The journeyman and, particularly, the skilled toolmaker got considerably more than that, twenty to forty cents. But they did not get a fraction of what the workman in our metalworking industries gets today. They

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got the bare necessities of food, clothing, and shelter, but none of these were as good as are presently available to the wage earner and his family. They could not have paid for automobiles. Most of them lived in houses without inside plumbing except cold water in the kitchen sink. Radios, electric refrigerators, television could not have been paid for even if they had been available. A large proportion of the wage earners of the country now enjoy these material possessions. Furthermore, for the lower level of living which they could afford, they worked sixty hours a week instead of thirty-five or forty. Still more, they worked much harder than wage earners work today, particularly in view of the fact that they had to handle heavy pieces of work without the assistance of cranes and conveyers and had to manipulate by hand heavy machinery which is now operated by power. If the wage earner of my childhood worked harder and longer and enjoyed less than the wage earner today, what has made the difference? The advantages which the present-day workman enjoys do not come from harder

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work or longer hours. They come from new methods of manufacture, new productive machinery, new materials, and new products. They come by these means because billions upon billions of dollars were put into industrial plants by investors. That is the way and the only way in which the standard of living of our people has been raised or can be raised. At this moment our tax system threatens to bring this investment process to a grinding halt. The prospects for further improvement in the standard of living are not too good. They will not be improved unless and until our taxes are designed to encourage rather than to discourage the investment of new billions. This is the thing in which the wage earner has the strongest possible interest. This is the thing which the politician conceals from him and from which he tries to divert his attention. To put it baldly, there is no political appeal in educating the worker to measures which will improve his lot, as compared with arousing his emotions to support political candidates. I suggested earlier that something valuable had gone out of the life of the American work-

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man in our era of mass production. His personal contact with his product has disappeared. It can perhaps be brought back by various artificial means, but the connection is no longer a natural one. Into this vacuum of personal interest and personal responsibility the trade union has moved. It has given the workman a new sphere of interest and action and a tool by which he may have some effect in controlling his destiny. The existence and the expansion of labor organization is so natural and inevitable under modern conditions that we must and should accept it. Its faults, however, are political. It suffers all of the possibilities of abuse that lie in the democratic political system, whereby appeal is made to the emotional rather than the reasoning qualities of the membership. Even with this defect we must learn to live, for men are moved emotionally far more easily and far more strongly than they are moved rationally. In the labor union as well as in the nation, we must learn to appeal to a higher level of emotion — to a higher level of self-interest. Here and there are to be found evidences in the labor move-

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ment of this higher appeal, even as here and there there have been evidences of it in the political field. But it is all too rare in either sphere of activity. In order to progress, to have funds to raise the standard of living of our people, we will have to lower taxes and, possibly in addition, to readjust in some respects their incidence. The necessity for taxes arises from appropriations. Appropriations must be cut. There has been too much pressure put on small items, too little on some of the large items, particularly on national defense, with regard to which later I will make some suggestions. There is, furthermore, the disheartening experience of having each one of us in the two houses of Congress anxious to cut appropriations for everything except our own particular region, our own particular constituents, and our own particular interests. W e will have to move on a higher plane than in the past if we are to serve the interests of those whom we represent. The present taxes cannot continue at the present level of national production without putting brakes on improvement in the standard of living and on

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the enjoyment of free institutions by the citizens of our country. Let us face the difficulties in our situation. We have to persuade people — whether as members of political parties, trade unions, farm organizations, or business groups — that they should look at the long-range interests of all the people rather than to the short-range interests of their own group. We have to do this in spite of the fact that those who undertake it may thereby lose the positions in government, labor, or industry which give strength and carrying power to their words. I have long wondered what the answer to this might be. It is quite evident that anyone who has spent the active years of his life in the business-management class is tremendously handicapped in discussing these things with wage earners. His immediate interests are bound to overshadow in their minds the long-range interests of the group whom he is addressing. Perhaps there is needed a new vow of poverty, a preaching brotherhood among the management class, who, by living austere lives and devoting their incomes almost completely to pub-

INTERNAL STRENGTH

35

lie uses, may hope to put themselves into the position where their pleas may be considered, without the suspicion that they are speaking from personal interest. But it is not sure that even this would work. Another suggestion would be that the message be carried by the institutions of learning, not merely universities and colleges, but by the teachers in the secondary schools as well. Such evangelists, particularly in the secondary schools, would be free of the suspicion of personal gain, for their work for the most part is more poorly rewarded than is that of the average run of organized wage earners. But here we would run into the political problem. The secondary school teachers are the employees of state and local governments. There might develop as loud a clamor against them as we set up today when we discover that the teachers of our young have been spreading communist ideas. The problem is a difficult one. There is no quick answer. I leave it here as one of the unsolved problems which will best be resolved by the thinking and experience of numbers of

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serious people rather than by the unsupported thinking of any one man. We may conclude, I believe, that we can be stronger than we are. There is hope that we can avoid the extremes of inflation and deflation, of boom and bust. We have established new and hopeful measures for avoiding these extremes in the setting up of the House and Senate Joint Committee on the Economic Report. We have learned from the 1930's that no progress can be made in pulling out of a severe depression unless the revival of business confidence is encouraged. We see the necessity for proceeding by moderate stages with the establishment of welfare undertakings,

being

primarily

concerned

with those which relate to that democratic objective — equality of opportunity. We reject the first step in universal welfare — the Brannan Plan for maintaining farm income — and seek other means that will give the farmer the equivalent of unemployment

compensation,

leaving him a free man and providing a return to the free market for agricultural products with corresponding benefit for the consumer's

INTERNAL STRENGTH

37

pocketbook as well as for the taxpayer's burden. Observing that our progress in raising the standard of living in this country and our high productivity encourage the diversion of a larger part of our money and production for governmental work, we became concerned with excessive diversion and the supporting excessive taxation as a hindrance to the investment of the billions which will have to be made to continue our historic progress. It is not enough to observe that billions are currently being invested even under discouragement. There is quality of investment to be considered as well as quantity. One of the difficulties with our present quality is that tax laws favor the reinvestment of profits by large corporations on terms which are more difficult for the new and small company to effect. Present investment, therefore, tends to feed the growth of the big corporations, and activities in support of small business fail of their effect. Another doubt arises in our minds as to the quality of investment when we consider whether it is simple expansion to meet an expanded population or whether there is under consideration the radically new equipment,

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processes, and development which produces more per labor hour and thus furnishes the only means by which our standard of living is raised. We must keep the volume of our taxation down as compared with the volume of our production and see to it that taxes are so devised and administered that they favor new investment of high quality, as distinguished from mere quantity of investment through existing channels. None of this seems particularly exciting — perhaps not even interesting. It is, nevertheless, very important.

2 EXTERNAL POLICY Now let us look directly at the connecting link between economic strength and our policy with regard to world affairs. There is an interesting discussion of this matter in a new book by one of the world's great engineers and scientists. The book is entitled Modern Arms and Free Men, and the author is Vannevar Bush, known to Boston and Cambridge people for many years as Dean of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As you know, he went from there to head the Carnegie Institution and later, during the war, went to the Office of Scientific Research and Development, where he headed, guided, and inspired that immense and decisive contribution of the scientists and engineers of the country to the

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successful conclusion of the war. Here is a quotation from that book: In many ways it is unfortunate to be forced into such an armament race, but is it really disastrous? Mind that the most effective progress in the race will not come from throwing all of the country's resources directly into the making of weapons of war. In fact, that would be a sure way of losing in the long run. To win the race we must have a healthy people. We must raise our standard of living so that more of our population may perform well. We must learn to make our industrial machine operate smoothly and avoid the interruptions because of quarrels over the division of the product. We must learn to avoid inflation and depression. We must somehow produce governmental machinery that will operate efficiently for its intended purposes, so that the selfish interests of groups or sections cannot drain away our energies. We must establish justice and good will among our people and among the races that make up our population, so that our progress will not be halted by internal friction. We may not accomplish all these things, but we should accomplish most of them if all our citizens realize with full clarity that the alternative is someday to enter an atomic war on the losing side.

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This is a statement of the connection between the subjects of internal strength and external policy, expressed in its broadest and most significant terms. We may add to it a crude statement of a part of Dr. Bush's meaning by saying that if this country runs into a depression and has difficulty in getting out of it, we will not have money enough to do what needs to be done with regard to our foreign policy. I recently returned from a rapid trip abroad, investigating a rather narrow technical subject, the financing of housing cooperatives. Very naturally other subjects of conversation came up in talk with government officials and private citizens. From these conversations one got the impression that the greatest worry of the people of northern Europe was that the United States might go into a depression. There was far more concern about this than about any immediate threat of armed conflict with Russia. This concern was not based on narrow selfinterest. For instance, it was not related to the drying up of Marshall Plan funds or other types of financial support. It was based on the broader conviction that if we went into a depression,

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Europe would inevitably suffer from it; and conditions would be generated there, as well as here, in which the Communist

doctrine

could take firmer root and be assured a more luxuriant growth. In fact, if there is any successful result in the European mind of the years of Communist propaganda, it is to be found in this idea that the capitalist countries generally, and America in particular, cannot avoid great

depressions

depressions

Communism

and that finds

its

in

those golden

opportunity. Here again we see how essential is the internal strength of the United States for peace, progress, and prosperity of the world about us, in which we have such a serious interest and by which we in turn are, and will be, so profoundly affected. Before we begin to employ our internal strength in external affairs, it will be wise to make clear to ourselves just what it is that we are trying to accomplish. What is the objective of our foreign policy ? W e will ask this question as facing the future rather than the past — as determining what we should be doing from

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43

now on rather than as questioning whether we did the right thing last month or last year. Someone reported to Thomas Carlyle that Margaret Fuller had said, "I accept the universe." Carlyle replied, "By gad, she'd better!" As for our own present, "by gad," we'd better accept past history and go forward from here. There are various objectives which governments set for themselves in their foreign relations. One of them is an expansion of territory and that seems to be the driving objective behind the Russian government today, as it has been for generations. That objective has not changed. There has only been a change in the means by which territorial expansion is accomplished. Conquest is now more subtle. Our Russian friends have added to their military strength the powerful aid of ideological warfare. But there is the same old insatiable appetite for territorial expansion. This has been revealed to the world in the quarrel between Tito and the Politburo. Russia will be satisfied with nothing less than complete and unquestioned sovereignty over new satellites and conquests. We may be clear in our own minds that we are

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not affected with territorial ambitions. We went through a brief period of that at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War with its easy conquest of the Spanish empire. We were urged by Rudyard Kipling to "take up the white man's burden" and for a time the idea seemed rather attractive to us. But we have properly gone out of that phase of adolescence. Willingly we gave Cuba her freedom, but accepted certain economic responsibilities for her which we carry out from time to time with varying degrees of conscientiousness. The Philippines were long ago promised independence and have now received it. The teeming populations of Puerto Rico pose a difficult problem for our administration, and it is safe to say that there are few people indeed in this country who would like to add further problems of this sort. The concept of the white man bearing the burden of the backward nations on his shoulders, doing good to them at the expense of his own resources and peace of mind, is a picture which was never very true to the facts and would not be attractive to us now if it were true. Territorial expansion is not an objective of our foreign policy.

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But there may be less crude ways in which we can expand. Perhaps we can set up spheres of influence here and there which give us some of the results of power without all the responsibilities of ownership and government. This objective, however, is not much more attractive than the physical seizure of territory. Every sphere of influence is a political powder keg. Setting up and developing them requires the establishment of vested commercial interests which we have to protect by force of arms if necessary. We have had some experience in doing this, but it has not been satisfactory in the long run, either to the government or to the commercial interests themselves. The tendency in these later years has been to minimize the influence of our government and to maximize the mutual benefits of private trade. Mutual benefits are involved between buyer and seller in any sound business operation. Such business connections form the strongest links between large and small nations which it is possible to form outside the sphere of military protection and military alliance. Maybe we ought just to look for power of

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any sort in any place. Perhaps there is a satisfaction in simply having weight and throwing it about. There have been times in the world's history when this idea seems to have been elevated to the stature of a national objective. It is not natural to our history or to our thinking. As a whole we are a nation of home bodies. T h e slippers, pipe, and knitting needles appeal to us strongly. In spite of this we haven't been able to sit around the fire for any great length of time or with any great degree of comfort for many years past. W e have been mixed up with foreign matters to the full extent of our capacities and to the depths of our resources. If we cannot dodge foreign responsibilities, we had better set our objective in meeting them. W h a t is it? Our objective should be the material prosperity of the American citizen and the preservation of his freedom. Domestic prosperity looks pretty narrow and selfish as an objective of foreign policy. But the United States can do little in depression. A United States whose citizens have been deprived of their freedom can do little. Our own pros-

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perity and freedom are the basic elements of our foreign policy even as they are of our domestic policy. It is true that we can go further than this if we keep this in mind. We can address ourselves to various desirable undertakings, even those of the highly ideal sort. But we cannot take a step into the periphery of our foreign activities if the central stronghold has not been made secure. We will therefore consider our foreign policy as being directed toward the same ends as those sought in the domestic policies we have been discussing. It will only be at a later point that we will consider the most idealistic objectives of American policy unless, as may turn out to be true, those idealistic policies themselves serve the basic objectives of domestic prosperity and freedom. Starting from this central purpose, we will discuss in turn how it is served in the foreign sphere by our trade, political, and defense policies. The subject of trade policies brings us immediately to a consideration of the reciprocal trade agreements whereby our Department of State negotiates reductions in our import tariffs

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for corresponding benefits from the nations with whom we trade. To establish this policy was the lifelong purpose of Cordell Hull, whether as Congressman, Senator, or Secretary of State. He supported it on broad, general principles, which were essentially based on a thoroughgoing free-trade doctrine. The reciprocal trade treaties have had, in consequence, a background of doctrinaire support and administration. It has been in the minds of the responsible government officials that free trade results in a more efficient world and that our country will profit from that greater efficiency. Any person, economically literate, will have to subscribe to this idea as being basic, but will have to make many and serious reservations about its application in time and space. Let us turn therefore from these reciprocal trade agreements as a principle to consider their application in the here and now. First, we properly ask ourselves what benefits in the way of prosperity and freedom do they offer the people of this country ? For one thing, they address themselves to correcting one of our national imbecilities. If

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49

our balance of trade shows more exports than imports, we have been accustomed in years past to call it a "favorable" balance. It is obviously an imbecility to attach the word "favorable" to a situation in which the outgo exceeds the income. No man would call that situation favorable in his private business or his personal accounts. It is unfavorable. It was unfavorable, but unavoidable, in the years when we were a debtor nation and had to ship out in servicing our debt more than we received. We are now a creditor nation and continue that practice. Anything which expands our imports and/or diminishes our exports tends to mitigate our silly practice of shipping abroad stuff that can't be paid for. However, the moment that we talk about increasing imports or reducing exports we get disturbed, and with some reason. We see unsettlement of the prosperity of our manufacturers and workmen resulting from both processes. Our concern with this is less in times of high production and employment, and most grave in periods of depression. It is natural and wise to look on the immediate effects of foreign

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trade policies. To the extent, however, that the objections are themselves doctrinaire and based on the idea that our own business cannot succeed unless we have a large export business, that such an export business is essential to prevent "overproduction," and that it is better to ship it abroad even if it never gets paid for — all this is strict Marxist doctrine, and all this just isn't so. We can and must make such adjustments in our domestic, economic, and social conditions as will open up to our own citizens normal markets for what we have in the past called "overproduction." The market for that is here, not on the other side of foreign boundaries. We are now holding hearings in Washington to learn more about the low-income groups. We want to find out how they may become better producers and consumers, both for their own advancement and to furnish new domestic markets for so-called "surplus"

production.

Our most hopeful new markets are right here at home. We need a domestic "Point 4" even more than we need one for other countries. We have

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51

undeveloped natural resources at home in the unemployed and misemployed labor among our migrants, our submerged city populations, and the millions who live in the regions of poverty-stricken agriculture. This is "Point i," not "Point 4," in domestic priority. All this is not saying that there are no advantages in foreign trade. There are, and they are great. Those advantages come in exchanging the things which we do best for goods or services which are best made and performed in other countries. It is to help raise the standard of living of the American people rather than to give away a surplus overproduction that we look forward to an expanding foreign trade. The difficulties in the way of such an expanding foreign trade are serious indeed and, as indicated, are more serious in times of depression than in times of high production and employment. T o proceed too rapidly with them would invite serious distress. We do not have to look to foreign trade itself to see what the difficulties are. The whole world points to the free trade between the states of our own country as evidence of the advantages which come from

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free trade across borders. But our own history brings evidence on the other side of difficulties and distress arising from free trade. One needs only to consider the decay of the textile industry in New England and its expansion in the South to realize what free trade can do. We are willing to undergo the penalties for the sake of a larger advantage to the United States as a whole. Will we be willing, or should we be willing, to suffer large readjustments and difficulties in the United States for the sake of advantages on an international scale? The answer to this seems obvious. Movement toward a freer interchange between the nations of the world involves great difficulties for segments of agriculture and industry within a given country, particularly within the United States. Even though those changes will be to the advantage of the citizens of our country in the long run, they must be made cautiously, wisely, and slowly, and must be concentrated for the most part in periods of high production and employment. It was with this in mind that the so-called "peril point" provision was inserted in the re-

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53

ciprocal trade legislation of the Eightieth Congress. That provision was amended at my suggestion to make sure that it would not be used to protect marginal industry, which could not be expected to survive domestic competition in a recession, let alone foreign competition. It was not wise to eliminate the "peril point" from the law that was passed by the Eighty-first Congress. To sum up this matter, the material interests of our people suffer from what used to be called the favorable balance of trade whereby a considerable portion of their work, effort, and money went into the production of goods that were given away to foreign countries. Our people should be paid for what they do. Furthermore, there is an advantage in the increase in the standard of living in gradually moving toward a condition under which we do what we can do best and exchange it for other things which another people in their turn can do best. But finally, these two advantages must be gained by actions which are moderate enough and so timed as to permit our business structure to readjust itself toward new production and new

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directions of commerce, so that business losses and unemployment are not generated thereby. Besides these economic policies, we have to consider what kind of international political policies will best advance the material prosperity and preserve the freedom of the citizens of the United States. There are then, it is clear, perplexities and differences of opinion with regard to trade policies. These perplexities and differences multiply when we get into the field of political policy. One thing that should be clear to us is that the objectives we have set are not directly served by endeavoring to alter the political institutions in other countries and among other peoples. We have a strong belief, based on reason, experience, and faith, in the superiority of democratic institutions. We have, in past generations, been an effective factor in persuading other people to set up governments which are likewise democratic, though in forms varying from our own. The influence we have had did not depend to any large extent on precept. Where successful, it depended not at all on our interference or our control. It came as a freely chosen

EXTERNAL POLICY

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decision on the part of those nations which moved toward democracy. In the case of the German government between the two wars — and perhaps to some extent in the case of the Western German government now beginning its regime — pressures have been applied to give those governments a democratic mold. It was indeed very difficult to avoid doing so in the case of a conquered country whose immediately preceding political institutions were so bad as to wreck the peace of the world. Nevertheless, our experience in the 1920's and 1930's should lead us to the conclusion that it is a matter of extreme difficulty to compel, or even strongly guide, peoples in their choice of government. Those governments are strong which are supported by tradition, experience, and slowly growing concepts of freedom. There are many small countries which it would be unwise to force into democracy. There are other large countries in which reaction has proved stronger than progress, when the years of growth of public opinion did not support the change. Of these latter cases Russia is the outstanding

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example. So far as the machinery of government is concerned, there is far less difference between the Russia of today and the Russia of the Tsars than there is between either of them and the democratic, parliamentary government which Kerensky sought to establish. New forms of government have to grow out of the people if they are to be free governments. Only the arbitrary and tyrannical governments can be imposed. The simple purposes of prosperity and freedom in our country will not be served by our going on a crusade for democratizing the world. That will come with time if we continue our successful demonstration of it in this country — not otherwise. When we consider the attempts of other countries to force their systems on us, we meet another condition entirely. The endeavor to establish Communism here is something we resist, particularly since the means of establishing it in every case elsewhere has not been by choice through a free ballot but through insurrection and the threat of an alien army. The question becomes more difficult when we consider whether we should assist other

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nations in warding off the aggressive endeavors of Russia to bring them under tyrannical control. Our sympathies and emotions are for the most part predisposed to such assistance quite aside from the objectives we have set up. Let us see, however, whether our objectives of domestic prosperity and freedom are really involved. Even more than was the case with Hitler, it is the evident and expressed intention of the Russian government to dominate the world. The policy of its rulers is to erect as impenetrable barriers as possible about those regions which they bring under domination. This has been so clearly stated by Russian leaders that there is no room for argument about it. What then can we expect the world to be like as they bring more and more peoples and territories within their jurisdiction? When and as this takes place, we will find ourselves confined to smaller and smaller areas of the world so far as trading freely and communicating freely is concerned. We will be visiting or trading with foreign countries only by the permission of a stronger power. Eventually we will sail the seas themselves only by

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permission of a stronger power. We will have to ask permission to live in the world or else confine ourselves within our own borders. Now it is possible for us to stay within the boundaries of the United States and have a fairly high standard of living. No other country except Russia can do anywhere near as well as we can do living a life of isolation. But electing to do this looks contrary to what was agreed upon as the basis of our foreign policy — namely, that it must assist in keeping the people of America prosperous and free. While we could have a degree of prosperity and a high standard of living as compared with some other people, this confinement would lower our standards of production and consumption. The people of the United States would not live as well. Furthermore, we would have lost our freedom in the world, even as those countries behind the Iron Curtain have now lost their freedom. Worse than all this, we would be laying ourselves open to internal attack, since with the lowering of the standard of living and the strong pleas made to us to join the rest of the

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world, conditions would be far more attractive than they are now to those who keep nourishing in their bosoms the vague feeling that there might be something in Communism after all. No, we cannot afford to let Russia, as an aggressive power, and Communism, as a disintegrating social force, range this earth unconfined and unopposed. Our own prosperity and freedom are involved. We will best serve our own purposes by assisting in the restraint of Russian imperialism and its tool, Russian Communism. All this leads us to the conclusion that within the limits of our resources and abilities, we will oppose the expansion of Communism in the world, will be on the aggressive instead of on the defensive, and will cooperate with other nations that have the same ends to protect — the material prosperity and the freedom of their citizens. The next important question is how shall we defend ourselves and other nations associated with us from the inroads of Russian propaganda and Russian conquest. As to propaganda, we have found that the best bulwark against Communism is an improvement in the material

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condition of the people against whom the Communist drive is directed. Notably in France and in Italy our economic assistance has turned the tide, at least for the time being. In our own country, too, we may feel assured that Communism will wither at the root so long as our people are prosperous. Its chance comes in a condition like the Great Depression, which furnished fertile soil for the growth of radical and revolutionary ideas and institutions. We can be sure that it will be exceedingly difficult to keep these influences under control should we again undergo a great depression. We can be sure that our European friends are right when they fear this more than any overt act of war against them by the Russian government. We may be sure that the maintenance of prosperity will be far more effective in restraining Communists than anything we can do in the way of hunting them out, branding them, imprisoning them when laws have been broken, or expelling them when they are unlawfully here from alien shores. Communism and a high level of prosperity cannot exist together. Here prosperity has the upper hand with Com-

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munism in eclipse. In Russia, Communism has the upper hand with the prosperity and wellbeing of the people in eclipse. It is clear that such things as the Marshall Plan have been extremely useful in carrying out our political policy of stopping the growth of Communism; but it is likewise clear that we must prepare more definite military defenses, as well as political ones, if we are to maintain ourselves as a prosperous democracy. We are convinced of this when we see what an important part the very existence of the Russian Army has played in the seizure of the governments of Czechoslovakia and Hungary, not to mention the complete control of Poland and the destruction of Latvia, Esthonia, and Lithuania as independent nations. The strength of the Russian Army since its first inglorious attack on Finland has increased to a point where it cannot be discounted. Its historic success in defending Russia against Hitler fills one of the stirring pages of history. It was a tremendous effort of the Russian people. Anything into which they put their heart and soul may well give pause to the rest of the world.

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We have to make sure that the world is armed against Russian military aggression which has been prepared in the background behind its program of insurrection and propaganda; we must also make sure to the extent of our ability that the Russian aggression does not have behind it the tremendous strength of the patriotism of the Russian people themselves. These are the two objectives of our defense against a world domination which threatens our prosperity and our freedom. Of these two requirements we have the technical knowledge and world experience to provide one in large measure, whether for ourselves or for our allies across the water. The only doubt in our minds with regard to it is how much we can afford to provide in arms, armament, and standing armies, navies, and air forces for using the arms. The problem is very largely a fiscal one. As to the other — separating the Russian people themselves from the aggressive plans of their rulers — what we lack is imagination, courage, and perseverance. The cost is so little as compared with armament that it need not enter into our consideration at

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all. Let us therefore give some thought to cutting the costs of the first without reduction in protection, and in the second case to engaging our imagination and intelligence on a task whose money cost should be inconsiderable as compared with the opportunity for decisive results. First, then, let us look at this defense program as a fiscal problem. Everyone having experience with the armed forces comes to the same conclusion regarding a certain wastefulness in their operations. They come naturally by this tendency. Anyone brought up in private business with the necessity for getting orders with which to meet payrolls, bills for material, and other expenses, and for enough left over in the way of profit to escape bankruptcy and make a living, looks at things very differently from the military officer. The military man's peacetime experience has been focused largely on the question of how great appropriations could be obtained from Congress. His wartime experience has taught him that while cost is a consideration, it is often a minor consideration in the problem of getting the largest and swiftest flow of matériel and the

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largest numbers of trained men at the scene of action in the shortest possible time. But even here there is an immediate tactical importance to cost which is not necessarily obvious to those having only military experience. Costs represent time and effort, and matériel and operations requiring too much cost take too much time and divert too much effort. Our Secretary of Defense, the Honorable Louis Johnson, has this question of efficiency of operation clearly in mind as is evidenced by his unswerving pursuit of lower costs and of more direct and effective action. It was confidently expected that unification of the armed services would make an immediate contribution to decrease in costs. This did not work out as hoped. In fact, the first effect seemed to be that in setting up the Air Force as a separate branch we added two new complete organizations to the two already existing — namely, a complete purchasing, research, and other staffs for the new division, and on top of that, corresponding groups for coordinating the three branches. This multiplication

of

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agencies is now being ironed out, though with a great deal of difficulty. I need not at this time go into the details of the problem which has slowed up an organic unification. It is, in fact, not clear in our minds whether a complete unification is desirable. One cannot throw experience, traditions, loyalties into a melting pot and have all that went in come out. Ingredients of very great value evaporate in that melting pot. Unification cannot be a mechanical bringing together of the valuable elements of the separate organizations. It must be accomplished by means that will encourage each organization to make its contribution with its self-respect unimpaired and its contribution recognized by the others. If we study the problems facing our armed forces, we get a rough picture of the area of operations with which each will be concerned, and we should thereby be enabled to make a better determination of the sums which should be provided them in carrying out the immediate tasks assigned. It is the task of the Navy to keep the seas open. At the moment this would involve only

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a small measure of combat on the surface of the sea. The real dangers are to be found in attack from the air above and from the water below the surface. The Navy must be able to drive off aerial attack aimed at itself and at our shipping. It must, in particular, be thoroughly equipped for dealing with the modern submarine, which is a very different and more dangerous menace to ocean shipping than was anything met with in World War II; and it will be remembered that there was a time when the submarine was operating off our coasts, sinking tankers within sight of the Florida beaches and bringing our operations dangerously close to a standstill. The Navy has a serious and difficult task assigned to it. Incorporated with the Navy is the Marine Corps. To this branch of the service is assigned the task of maintaining and, more importantly, developing amphibious warfare. While the necessity for this does not appear to be great in the first months of any future conflict, we cannot afford to lose the art or fail to develop it vigorously. It may come into use earlier than we think, since the seizure of air bases may

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turn out to be one of the most important elements in ultimate victory. If we are to think of the coming conflict as one in which we furnish massive land forces, then there are no limits to the military budget. We might as well resign ourselves to becoming a garrison state in which peacetime activities are carried out for the purpose of supporting armies and navies and air forces to their maximum extent. We do not need massive land forces for service at home. Unless we can minimize the necessity for large-scale infantry operations abroad, and unless in minimizing them we can expect a fair share of the burden of providing them to be taken up by the peoples and nations which are being protected — unless we can do all this, the fiscal burden of defense will be intolerable for peacetime prosperity and freedom. We must work on lines of diplomacy and military policy which assign to us the duties which we are best fitted to undertake. Working with others, we must be active in the development of the latest forms of arms and military equipment of all sorts. Without arrogating to

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ourselves the whole of this important function, we must assume a large measure of responsibility for producing this material, whatever the source of its development may be. In the last war, America contributed many millions of men and women to its combat forces. But it made a contribution which no other nation could have made in the way in which we mobilized scientists, engineers, and productive resources in furnishing an enormous flow of new and decisive material for the conduct and winning of the war. That is the thing we do best. That is the thing which our location between the two oceans permits us to do. That is the task to which we must primarily address ourselves and in which we must not fail. In carrying out this task, we will not need the millions of men; we will not need a large standing army; we will need a highly trained technical force, capable not only of using this material to the best advantage but also of teaching its use to others. The Air Force has its task, and the evidence as it appears to the general public is that it has misconceived it. While it had not neglected

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the production of planes of all varieties, its real interest was concentrated on the big bomber and its real weapon was the atomic bomb. It must still keep these factors in mind, but to win a war by atomic bombing is militarily doubtful and politically disastrous. No peace will be won in Europe by atomic bombing no matter what the immediate military result may be. The possibility of military victory through the destruction of civilian populations is not hopeful. Wars are properly fought, if the adverb is appropriate in any sense, in order to bring about in some measure a just and durable peace. Concentration on the destruction of civilians, whether by atomic bombing or other methods, makes the attainment of such a peace exceedingly difficult. We know, or think we know, that Russia has the atomic bomb at her disposal. We do not know how many bombs she has. If we view the situation with sanity, we have no reason to feel that everything depends on our knowing how far Russia has advanced in her program. We do want to make sure that we can retaliate instantly and overwhelmingly. If we are pre-

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pared to do this, if Russia knows that we are prepared, and if we erase from our minds the outrageous idea of installing the atomic bomb as a standard element in our military tactics and strategy, then we may feel reasonably assured that this weapon will be stored alongside gas and biological warfare as a constant threat but too dangerous to use except in retaliation. What the Air Force must be prepared to do is to drive from the air the mass of enemy strength. That will be a tremendous undertaking but one for which we must be prepared. Should the misfortune of active warfare overtake us and as we begin to make progress in that undertaking, we must attack the centers of production and, particularly, the means of transportation of the enemy. Transportation has long been the weakest link in the chain of military effectiveness of the Russian people. It is a stronger link than it used to be, since through her satellites Russia has gained a position inside the Western European network of transportation. We must be prepared to render her Siberian and Eastern Russian industrial

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strength powerless and seriously to handicap that in the West. Again speaking from the fiscal standpoint, it is highly important that we do not attempt immediately to equip the Air Force for that task. It would impose an intolerable peacetime load of debt and taxes. Worse than that, from the military standpoint, we would have equipped our Air Force with planes and instruments which would have become obsolete within a year or two so that we would have had to do the thing all over again in an impossibly short time. Fiscal limitations go hand in hand with the highest pitch of technical perfection and the maximum of industrial preparedness in requiring that there be a constant flow of constantly improving planes and equipment coming through pilot lines. These orders should be pretty well distributed through the whole of our most efficient sources of supply in the airplane industry, so that we have a production industry in being, even though turning over at low speed. Speaking of the planes and engines themselves as an example, these must come through on a

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given design in large enough lots to assure the necessary production experience, should it be required to go into mass production. This will at the same time have the advantage of reducing the cost of the product. We cannot attain either of these necessary results by continuously improving the design on successive orders for single planes and engines or for small numbers of them. We must learn to accumulate our improvements so that they go through the design and production line in orderly batches rather than in a continuously disordered flow. Fiscal necessity and maximum of preparedness dictate this policy. It is not extravagant to hope that as much as three billions of dollars decrease can be made in next year's appropriation for the armed services by following some such line of policy as that just described. It should be possible in so doing to strengthen, not weaken, our defense, and at the same time have our industry on a "minute-man" basis, better prepared for any emergency. Earlier, reference was made to the neglected possibilities of psychological warfare or, rather,

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of psychological preparedness. This field of action was not neglected during the course of the war but we have only diffidently scratched the surface of its peacetime possibilities for avoiding warfare and establishing a just peace. In our final chapter we shall endeavor to set into the framework of contemporary history both the possibilities of persuading the minds and hearts of men and also the military defense to which we have committed ourselves on so large a scale. We shall try to weave into a consistent pattern all the separate threads we have been spinning. If that pattern is found to be broad enough and basically attractive enough, we may find ourselves with a renewed mission in the world in which our own objectives of prosperity and freedom are best attained by wise cooperative effort with the other peoples of the globe.

• 3 ·

PAX A M E R I C A N A W e have been outlining some of the responsibilities that face our nation. W e have appraised them in the light of our self-interest in maintaining domestic prosperity and freedom. W e have concluded that what may be done in carrying out idealistic enterprises is limited by fiscal considerations and that both prosperity and freedom will be jeopardized by going too far, too fast. W e must then preserve a careful balance if we are to make a maximum effective effort. It is hoped that we can go further in this final discussion and show that such a carefully balanced maximum effort also serves purposes that are generally classed as ideal. In fact, we may end with the suspicion that selfish purposes, as seen in the light of long-range self-

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interest, are difficult to distinguish from unselfish idealism and are more effective than undertakings approached by way of ideal considerations alone. Everything we have been saying until now about our military strength has related to maximum effort of a defensive sort. We will have to admit that so far as concerns these preparations, there is nothing in them that tends to avert war but only to postpone it. Our preparations quite obviously build up countermeasures on the part of our prospective enemy, and we will be well advised to remember that that prospective enemy has enormous material resources and an inexhaustible reservoir of man power which can be marshaled and trained for warlike purposes, particularly if its units can be persuaded that such action is necessary for the safety of their country. Finally, it is clear that we must not underrate their technical ability, in view of what appears to be the fact that they have achieved an atomic explosion several years earlier than had been thought possible. The contest in preparedness would conceiv-

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ably be more severe in limiting the standard of living of Russia than it would with us, since our productive margin is so much higher. On the other hand, we have to remember that the breaking point of what the people of a country will stand comes much sooner with us than it does with them. All this adds up to something that we must get pretty clearly stated and pretty firmly fixed in our minds. We must remember that an armament race accelerates itself and has never yet brought peace. It is a costly and destructive defensive operation without positive values for achieving peace. Its justification is that a line of defense may be held until means of achieving peace have been devised. Our objective here is to see if anything positive can be done toward achieving peace. We are, then, looking for a role in contemporary history which is something different from that of the wearied and plodding Titan oppressed with the burdens of humanity. We must be something other than a modern Atlas sustaining the weight of the world on his shoulders. We must find some field of action

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which does not involve strained effort in an ultimately hopeless cause. What can we devise in the way of constructive contribution to our own welfare and that of other peoples? We may well start with the proposition that there is no important or powerful people on earth which enjoys war or believes that i* pursued, however unenjoyable, it will bring them prosperity. There have been such races in the past; there have been periods when most of the civilized world looked upon war as the supremely great activity of man, but this idea was for the most part confined to an upperclass group of warriors and never got down to the peasant and yeoman who bore the unromantic burdens of the conflict. There were occasions for patriotic pride; there were occasions for deep satisfaction in bravery exhibited and victory achieved. But it is doubtful if the common people ever anywhere outside of savage tribes enjoyed war for its own sake. The only modern instance is that of fascism under Hitler and Mussolini, when for a time a large part of the populations of Germany and Italy was seduced by easy victory and blinded

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by martial glory. It is safe to say that nothing of that remains among civilized people today. What we have to do is to recognize this universal desire for peace among people as distinguished from their governments. We have to find some way to make this desire an effective force in maintaining peace. Our billions upon billions of expenditures on defense are wasted and meaningless if they are considered as the ultimate solution. They can only hold the line while we search for, find, and apply the solution of organizing the desire for peace among the peoples of the earth into an effective political instrument. That we should run wild in the one course and only feebly and incidentally apply ourselves to the other is incomprehensible. There are two groups of people with whom we must establish contact. One comprises the populations of the satellite countries, most of whom have had the new totalitarianism forced on them without the choice of the ballot box but under the shadow of the armed forces of Russia poised in the background. The other group is composed of the people of Russia itself, whom it will be difficult to reach and,

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when reached, more difficult to establish communication with on lines of mutual comprehension. Means must be found. The satellite countries play the decisive role in Russia's program of conquest. So long as she was confined to the territorial boundaries established at the end of the First World War, she was as always unconquerably strong in defense, weak in offense. Even with great natural resources, unlimited man power, and high technical skill, the problems of transportation in that great country were the limiting factors in any military considerations. They worked for that country in defense; they worked against it in offense. In offense transportation was the Achilles' heel of the warrior nation. Beginning with the invasion of Finland, an inglorious but partially successful undertaking, Russia started on a career of conquest. By agreement with Hitler, she took half of Poland and has since taken all. She conquered and destroyed the governments of Esthonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. She overran the Balkans. Against the desire of their people she took over Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Never has Russia dared to

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submit her conquest to the test of the free ballot. We now have overt evidence of what we knew before: that there is no independence in these conquered countries. They are conquered vassals. This has been made clear for the world to know in the attempts made by Moscow to discipline Tito and Yugoslavia. The fiction of independence for the satellites has evaporated. Their right to representation in the United Nations does not exist. It has been destroyed in the self-revelation by Russia of their real status. They are conquered territories under totalitarian control of a government responsible to no one except to its ruling clique. Russia has gained extraordinary advantages from her conquest. She has gained great natural resources. More than that, she has gained productive plants and technical skill and organization. Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Silesia are priceless jewels in a conqueror's crown. Her effective war production, applicable to marching armies, has been doubled and doubled again. Note that it is the "effective" production which has been thus multiplied. So long as

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Russia's war potential was scattered over her vast territory, with its thin, long, and poor lines of communication, so long was her industrial potential strangled by the limitations of transportation. Now, strongly seated within the transportation network of Western Europe, the great potential of these satellites becomes immediately available. Should this potential threat be directed into an active application of military power, it will be a serious thing for the Western world to face. It will also be a tragic thing for the peoples of these enslaved satellite nations to endure. That must be made clear to them. We must make clear to these peoples the situation in which the world finds itself. We must make clear that the destructive tide of conquest which has rolled over them must be stopped and rolled back should the attempt be made to advance further. We must make clear to them just what dangers and hardships they will have to undergo and what means we will take to make those hardships as light as possible. One of the things we must tell them is that the atomic bomb is incredibly destructive, but

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that we are holding it in reserve for retaliation only. Even in retaliation we will not use it against conquered and enslaved populations. They must, however, be ready for bombing which destroys their war industries and destroys their transportation. Understanding what we have to do and plan to do, there will be no such surge of devoted and self-sacrificing patriotism as fired the English and the Germans to repair damage and continue production under impossible circumstances of daily and nightly attack, material destruction, and imminent death. We can make clear to these people that we will not be fighting against them; we will be fighting for them. For the Russian people themselves — less informed, habitually enslaved for as long as their memories and traditions stretch back into the past — we have a somewhat different message. We can, by suitable means, unsettle their confidence in the ability of their masters ever to provide them with the material advantages and comforts which they have been promised, but which have been postponed so often and so long. We can give them some comprehension of the

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way in which the Western world lives. We can give them the conviction that they might live better were not such an enormous part of their effort devoted to war and the preparation for war. We must convince them that the Russian people have no enemies, that the people of the Western world have no desire to conquer their territories or take from them anything that is theirs. It is the Russian government, not the Russian people, that is the enemy of the Western world. They and we have a common interest in reviving the activities of peace so that they, the Russian people, may have a higher prosperity than they have ever known and so that we, the Western people, like them may not be burdened with the expenses of preparing for a war that no people wants. This propaganda, if propaganda it is to be called, has the powerful advantage of being the truth. We do not have to deceive. We do not have to persuade against better judgment. We have to state as simply and as directly as possible the truth as it is, and we will find it meeting with a response deep in the hearts of those to whom it is addressed.

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We must not rely on stirring up insurrection. The enormous power and widespread activities of the secret police will make that difficult. It is a more subtle and more pervasive thing we can surely do. We seek to have the truth as to the rulers of their country, their relations with the rest of the world, and the harm they are doing the Russian people so presented that it shall sink deeply into their consciousness. Resting there, it will slowly, persistently, and finally disintegrate the foundations of the structure of which the Politburo is the crowning pinnacle. Its foundations will sink in the quicksands. The structure will topple of its own weight, if understanding of its pervasive rottenness becomes clear to the burdened people who support it. But someone will say this is all moonshine. What about the Iron Curtain? Well, as we know, the Iron Curtain is there to prevent just such undertakings as we have described, which, if successfully carried out, would destroy this predatory totalitarian power that has been let loose in the world. More than the necessity for quadrupling the terrific effects of the atomic

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bomb, more than the necessity for multiplying the effectiveness of military offense and defense, more than the necessity for spending uncounted billions in military budgets, is the necessity for finding means for piercing the Iron Curtain. It is incredible that we have been so prodigal in the merely defensive matters of armament and have been so hesitating, so backward, so unenterprising, so unimaginative, in this matter of piercing the Iron Curtain. It is true that we have done something and what we have done has been immensely valuable. After inexplicable faltering and misunderstanding, our Congress has finally accepted the potential usefulness of the Voice of America. It has its few millions of dollars in support. So far as we can learn, its programs have become more effective, more direct; and the evidence is that they have become more dangerous to the little knot of rulers who determine the destinies of Russia. That evidence lies in their frantic efforts to drown out the Voice. But this is only one of the ways of getting through the curtain. Another is the seemingly ridiculous device of the free balloon, dropping

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pictures and simple reading matter at intervals as it floats over the enormous area of European Russia. Let us not minimize the possibilities of this means of getting information over the curtain. During the war the Japanese sent large numbers of incendiary balloons clear across the greatest of the world's oceans into the Pacific Northwest. Out of thousands sent across, scores found their mark. Was this impractical ? It was for us a dangerous nuisance. Skeptics point to the ineffectiveness of similar attempts to reach the hearts of the German people before and during the Second World War. The answer to this is clear. The mass of the Germans were riding on the crest of the world wave. Success after success crowned Hitler's arrogant aggression. He had his nation hypnotized. Then, when doubt and fear began to enter the minds of the people, that doubt and fear were hardened into desperate resistance by the announcement from Casablanca that nothing short of unconditional surrender would be accepted. The situation was hopeless at that time. It is hopeful now.

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Our Department of State does not look with favor on balloons and other unconventional means of getting in touch with people on the other side of the barrier. They have the idea that it will be construed as an invasion of sovereignty by the Russian government. Through some queer quirk of diplomatic reasoning, it is no invasion to shoot our words across on electromagnetic waves in the ether, but it is not quite cricket to send printed material across. That is a little too unconventional. In some way it is rather raw. It is not in accordance with the niceties of diplomatic practice. Well, let us set a precedent. A nation like ours which resigned itself to and practiced the mass murder of civilians by aerial bombing in the last years of the war need not be fussily hesitant to try something new in the interests of peace. The nation which devised and dropped on the citizens of Japan the devastating atomic bomb makes itself ridiculous when it hesitates at any means of assuring the peoples under the yoke of our potential enemies that we have no quarrel with them. Let's get at this and get at it soon. Technically the means are at hand.

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The apparatus is simple; the cost is low; and God has directed the winds in our favor. There are thousands of displaced patriots in Germany, biting their finger nails and eating their hearts out. They will undergo hardships; they will undergo the dangers of death if only they might make some contribution to relieving their own peoples from the crushing burden of totalitarian tyranny. Men will pierce the Iron Curtain. They will carry messages. They will carry courage. They will carry instructions, provided we have messages, courage, and instructions to give. They will not go on useless errands. A fraction of the enterprise and ingenuity which went into our strategic services during the war applied at this point and now in carrying the messages, truth, and courage will pay dividends which can be measured in billions of dollars, but whose real value lies in spiritual strength for sustaining the souls of men. There is another possibility which assumes our consent but does not require our action. For hundreds of miles the Iron Curtain is drawn between the Germans of the East and

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the Germans of the West. On both sides is an intense desire to be reunited. All that prevents is the determination of Russia that the reunion shall not be made on any terms which do not leave her in control of the war potential of Silesia. As already noted, this is one of the keys to Russia's new military strength, now for the first time in her history available for offensive use owing to the inclusion of military production within the transportation network of Western Europe. The Western world has a major concern in the reunion of sundered Germany under Western auspices. Western Germany is urging that she be allowed to establish a national army as a counterbalance to Russia's military power. Were there no alternative we might regretfully assent to this dangerous request. That request, however, assumes that in the future as in the past the fate of nations will be determined by warfare. In these discussions we are taking a new view. We are placing major emphasis on psychological and spiritual measures as being the most powerful and the most constructive weapons lying at our hands. These weapons are

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ready for instant use by the German people for carrying out their desire for reuniting their severed halves. For hundreds of miles the barrier stretches from the North to the South. In only a small part is it a natural boundary, and rivers unite as much as they divide. It is impossible to police this lengthy border so effectively that contact between the two halves is cut off. The stage is wonderfully set for subversive action which the Nazis pursued so effectively and which the Russians have carried to a far higher pitch of efficiency. We still have clear in our memories the way in which Gandhi's campaign of passive resistance made Great Britain's position in India untenable. Passive resistance is not adaptable to the German character, but more active subsurface resistance is. Russia's tenure of Eastern Germany and of East Prussia can be made so uncomfortable as to become impossible. This can only be done by Germans, for Germans. They are losing valuable time in idly sighing for an army. Let them get to work now on

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"peaceful" means and they will not need an army. Returning to a consideration of the powerful intangibles, a recent visitor made a suggestion which seems to me to be exceedingly valuable. I hope it will be followed up. It is the idea that the American people should get in touch with the people behind the Iron Curtain and that the contact should not be left entirely to governmental endeavor which, as we know, is faint hearted and unimaginative when it comes to anything except the piling up of armament on armament. The proposal is that a widespread contribution of small amounts of money by millions of Americans should be made to support the undertaking of ringing the satellite nations with a wall of good will, expressed in the most persuasive terms of modern advertising. Advertising is most effective when it is based on truth. The really good product has a tremendous advantage over the mediocre one when it comes to presenting its virtues to the people in a persuasive way. Here is the truest product that an advertising campaign ever had to sell.

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It is the most valuable product. It is the product of 150,000,000 people, offered freely to four hundred millions of their fellowmen. Our good will, our desire for peace, is something we have. It is something they want. Who will say that advertising is not an appropriate means for bringing together the givers and receivers ? We can pile up this advertising material behind the Iron Curtain. More significantly than that, we can plant the ideas and ideals deep in the hearts of the people on our side of the curtain. But how will the paper, how will the ideals get through? To some extent an act of faith is required. But it is a reasoned faith. Ideas on which the hopes of the world depend will be very difficult to confine, very difficult to hold in check. Specific means in the way of radio, in the way of free balloons, in the way of secret methods will do their work. But the pressure of ideas will find its own way of crossing the barrier. It will find its own means of spreading itself behind the defenses of tyranny. We had one great example of people speaking to people in the "Friendship Trains" which

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the ingenious Drew Pearson conceived and organized. A message got across from the people of America to the people of France and Italy. People can speak to people. The stakes are so great in this same situation on a tremendously larger scale that people again must speak to people in the penetrating voice of the lightning and in the overpowering voice of the thunder. These by no means exhaust the possible methods of getting through the Iron Curtain. They are the obvious ones. To explore this subject completely in a public address would be most unwise. Much of what can be done depends on secrecy for its successful accomplishment. Enterprise, imagination, originality carry a high premium in the undertaking to which we must address ourselves. The subject of this chapter is "Pax Americana." We have been talking around it but haven't yet quite reached it. We must do so before we conclude. In the last two thousand years there have been two periods in which the peoples of the known world have enjoyed the blessings of peace. It is true that at no time has peace been

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universal or continuous. But there have been periods in which destructive wars and longdrawn-out, debilitating conflicts have been at a minimum. The first peace of this sort has taken the name of the "Pax Romana." The second period, extending roughly over the onehundred years between Waterloo and the First World War has been referred to as the "Pax Britannica." What about a "Pax Americana?" The period of peace under the world empire of Rome was supported by tribute and maintained by land armies. We get some idea of the blessings of that peace, founded though it was on war and supported though it was by tribute, when we read St. Paul's story in the New Testament. It was a matter of great pride to him that he was a Roman citizen. It was more than a matter of pride. It was a matter of vital privilege, for at a critical period in his life, he availed himself of his right to appeal his case from the local magistrate and bring it before the bar of Caesar himself at Rome. No learned examination of the methods by which the Roman Empire was established and its economy supported, no analysis of its effect un the

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conditions of the world, can be more revealing and convincing than this simple passage in the life of St. Paul. The peace of Rome was a blessing to the ancient world. The "Pax Britannica" has had less attention directed to it, probably because we have not yet seen it in historical perspective. Yet for a century the world's wars were small wars; widespread destruction of armies and oppression of populations were kept to a minimum. From the greatest of these disturbances, the Franco-Prussian War, France recovered in a surprisingly short time. During this period English influence was exercised primarily through the device of the balance of power, but that she could direct her influence with any effectiveness was due to the fact that she was economically strong and militarily prepared. Her economic strength lay in her empire abroad and in her development of the industrial revolution at home. Not tribute but trade was the source of her wealth. Not armies but the world's greatest navy was the source of her military strength. She ruled the seas and kept the peace of the seas. On land

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she skillfully manipulated the balance of power. There is a progression here which we do well to consider. We have Rome, England, the United States. We have tribute, trade, and internal productivity as the sources of strength. We have the army, the navy, and air force as the background of military power. We have force, the balance of power, and, shall we say, some form of international cooperation, like the United Nations, as the appropriate instrument for the American Century. Previously it was suggested that the primary responsibility of our nation in a military way lay in providing ourselves with so large a quantity and with such well devised and well balanced equipment of air power as to furnish an air cover for any military operation in Europe, and to provide the means of strategic bombing which should destroy the productive resources and particularly the lines of transportation of any potential enemy abroad. Supported by the constructive contact with the peoples of the world, and only if so supported, this air force becomes a means to peace. Military success will have been obtained by

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destroying the enemy's sources of supply and the means by which he receives them. It is entirely possible to imagine the Iron Curtain being raised so that great ungainly armies may erupt into Western Europe. It is entirely possible to imagine them cut off from their bases. It is possible to see this vast force cut to pieces by attack from smaller but well-armed, wellsupplied armies in much the same way that the great Spanish Armada was defeated by the venturesome and valiant sailors of Britain. Invasion of Russia is out of the question. The destruction of an invasion from Russia lies within the destinies of the Western world ; and if the minds of the satellite people, if the minds of the Russian people, have been prepared as to the regrettable necessity for our action and of the criminal needlessness for armed invasion of the West, then we have the background prepared for winning a peace as well as winning a war. And that is something which we have not achieved from either one of the two world wars behind us. But even then we must not give up the Air Force. It must be strong. It must be ready. It

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must be in plain sight of any who again endeavor to conquer other peoples and destroy the peace of the world. It will not be a hairtrigger Air Force. It will not go into instant action on the threat of trouble, any more than was the case with the British Navy. Its strength lies in its existence. It is not too fantastic to think of it as an air cover under whose protection the United Nations proceeds with its difficult processes of organizing the machinery of intergovernmental cooperation and peace. This, not the balance of power, is our program of action. Under that aerial cover international cooperation can work more confidently, with less stress and strain, with the threat of destruction removed. The nations can think calmly, plan wisely, and work effectively. Our own prosperity and peace, the prosperity and peace of the world, will be served by this "Pax Americana." The program thus laid out for us is constructive and hopeful. It is not easily accomplished, particularly with respect to that initial balance between welfare and responsibility, taxation and investment, wealth production

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and distribution, defense as against prosperity and freedom, on which alone these great enterprises can be founded. This balance is the prime essential for further progress toward greater and deeper satisfactions for our people. It is the obvious basis for higher and more broadly spread material prosperity; and in this long dissertation we have worked toward the conclusion that the same policies which lead to self-serving prosperity and peace here at home in the United States, if vigorously and intelligently pursued, lead also toward prosperity and peace for the world at large. There is no really selfish policy by which we may be advantaged. Many years ago I read a little book entitled, as I remember, The Foundations of Ethics. It is long out of print. It has long since disappeared from the public library in which I found it. The book was written by a young protégé of William James, and the philosopher contributed an appreciative introduction to the work. The author died at an early age and never lived to fulfill the promise of his youth. His thesis was that self-interest, if pursued with a sufficiently long-range view, becomes identical with virtue.

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The proposition was logically, effectively, and convincingly developed. As I thought over the matter in later years, it occurred to me that the approach can be made from the opposite direction of Christian ethics. We are all brothers. God has made of one blood all the nations of the earth. What really hurts us hurts all others. What really hurts them hurts us. Enlightened self-interest (with which we started) and virtue (exemplified in our endeavor to persuade and help the subjects of hostile powers toward peace and prosperity) are one. This alignment of logic and high emotion is fortunate. The emotion furnishes the driving power; the logic gives it useful direction. We have spread before ourselves a vast canvas. In the background is depicted the possible course of mankind. The foreground depicts our own course toward our own prosperity and freedom. It is full of obstacles to achievement set up by short-sighted self-interests, placed there by every class and every group in our society. It is the fate of our twentieth century world that unless our nation overcomes our

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own short-sightedness in solving our own problems, we lose the hope of any progress toward solving the problems of the world. Can we paint this picture so that our people will see it as a guide to their own brighter future ? Behind this foreground, can we portray the world destiny of which our national foreground gives promise, and which destiny, by starting at home, we may hope to achieve?