The Making of Yesterday: The Diary of Raoul De Roussy De Sales
JUNE 20, 1940. — There are only two possibilities for America: to accept the Nazi domination of Europe, with all its possible consequences here, or to light. But if this country wants to fight, it will have to revise its notions completely, including those of the advocates of “anything short of war.” Everybody talks of opposing totalitarian aggression, but the experiment has been tried: the defensive, from a military, psychological, and economic point of view, is inferior to the offensive.
So long as the democracies (or what remains of them) continue to believe that they should confine themselves to resisting if they are attacked, they will be crushed or subjugated. Alone England cannot counterattack. She has not the means, since she has been deprived of the French army. She is too weak. Churchill’s ideas about the ultimate success of the blockade are wrong. They date from 1914-1918. In order to win, we must go on to the offensive. England cannot do it without America.
Unfortunately there is no sign of the existence of more than a handful of Americans who think this way. Public opinion would retreat in horror from such a program. Everybody here is isolationist: it is merely a question of degree and variations on a single theme. But the issue is that of giving up all finer shades and adopting a program of counterattack, with all the risks that this implies.
There is no possibility of that.
June 25.— Stories are coming out in the American press, analyzing the causes of the material and moral defeat of France. They generally agree on the following points: lack of courage on the part of the politicians, corrupt morally or otherwise; lack of intelligence on the part of the generals of the old school; lack of confidence in victory from the start — as soon as it was realized that the Maginot Line could be turned and that it would be really necessary to fight, the troops lacked guts in many places and began to believe in defeat; a fairly general desire to be humiliated, on the pretext that, democratic institutions being outworn, they deserved to be destroyed.
Rallying around Petain and Company, on the pretext Chat such is the way to achieve the regeneration of France, implies a singular confidence in Hitler’s solicitude. Everything proceeds as if Hitler were going to snatch us from the claws of the AngloSaxons, the true cause of our disaster. Naïvete? Stupidity? Treachery? Cowardice? A little of each. The conquered become stupid.
June 29.— Last night Leroy-Beaulicu brought André de Saint Phalle to see us. He arrived by Clipper, having left France some eight days ago.
The flat story of Saint Phalle was impressive. Following the German break through our lines at Sedan it was evident that there was no further chance of doing anything. Saint Phalle attributes their crushing victory to the following causes: superiority in materials, especially tanks; synchronization of the means of action, including the fifth column; the fanaticism of their troops. For example, in order to cross the Meuse they drove tanks into the water, drowning the crews but allowing the tanks following to pass over them. Troops of German infantry attacked shoulder to shoulder under the very noses of the machine guns.
Saint Phalle spoke of towns being totally destroyed fifty or sixty kilometers behind the front — Valenciennes, Arras, Abbeville — for the purpose of spreading panic, of forcing the inhabitants to flee, thus paralyzing the means of communication. The refugees, he said, were so numerous that they became a major, if not a decisive, factor in the defeat. “A national sentiment is being reborn. It had been dead since 1914. Now, signs of it can be seen everywhere.” Yet Saint-Exupéry himself is at a loss. He has no idea of what to do next. He is not certain that France will ever pull herself out of the rut. On the other hand, he believes the completeness of the defeat is a guarantee that something will be reborn. A semi-defeat, he says, would have prolonged the decadence for several more years. And in ten years there would have been nothing left to be saved. Today, since the bottom was reached all at once in a single plunge, a recovery is within the realms of possibility. In what sense of the word? In what shape? He cannot say. “The future is unpredictable,” he says. Luncheon yesterday with Herbert Agar and Ulric Bell. At least those two have taken a clear stand. They are for war right away without any beating about the bush. They seem pessimistic about F.D.R.’s chances of success against an opposition that is becoming more powerful. And the fault, I believe, lies with F.D.R. himself, who, as always, appears very firm and infallible in official speeches but undoes everything by being either too clever or too weak in his press conferences. Professor Hall told us he had never been so happy and peaceful as he has since this war started. The men in his generation (about thirty-five or forty) now have a purpose in life: they are creating a new world. According to him, the last war was meaningless, whereas this one — ! He put forth some queer theories: the Germans will be obliged to advance and advance all the time in order to obtain what they need, and each German advance will be a sign of their real weakness, of the ultimate failure of the whole enterprise. One can always tell what they are going to do, he says, when one knows what they need. Thus, their advance toward Mosul proves that they need oil. And so Professor Hall is content with the German victories, which, to him, are signs of their distress. The papers are doing their best to explain why Americans must learn to love the Russians, even if they hate them. Editorials and columnists are making noble efforts to prove that the war comes ahead of anything else, that one does not choose one’s allies, and that the Russian campaign is in fact an advantage for the British and Americans, who now have a breathing spell in which to rearm. But now that the two bandits have come to blows, a new approach must be worked out. Saint Democracy, who wants no ties with either of them, is embarrassed. The ideal, naïvely expressed by certain isolationists, would be for the two monsters to destroy each other. That, unfortunately, is a dangerous risk to take. Hoover claims that he is not an isolationist. His program consists of aiding England and waiting for Hitler’s collapse. After which America will be strong and fresh — to practice what she preaches.
July 4. Evening. — A tragic day, more tragic in a sense, and more weighted with consequences, than those we have been living through for two months. For the first time in a hundred and twenty-five years the English and French fleets have fought each other. Churchill announced the news to the House of Commons. A fairly large number of French ships at Oran received an ultimatum from the English to choose between the following solutions: to surrender, return to British ports, scuttle themselves, or take refuge in America and be interned. The French admiral refused. The British fired and sank several French ships, killing a considerable number of men. One of the vessels, the Dunkerque or the Strasbourg, took flight in the direction of Toulon.
The news of this encounter was given out by the Germans, who naturally accused the English of “stabbing the French in the back.” The Pétain government has protested, but I have not the text of this protest.
Saint-Quentin telephoned me. I said that the incident was tragic, but that I could not see exactly what else the English could have done. This exasperated him. He obstinately denied that the English could have any reason to doubt our pledge (that we would disarm the vessels) —words which are worth no more than the words of Hitler.
I confess I am incapable of following such reasoning. The English are waging the war alone and in impossible circumstances. I cannot agree that they would have decided to sink our ships if there had been any other means of neutralizing them for certain.
August 5. — Another speech from Lindbergh yesterday. This time he advocates American mediation to stop the war in Europe. He also declares that, if Germany wins the war, it will be the duty of America to come to terms with her. It matters little who dominates Europe is his thesis, provided the United States remains at peace and comes to an understanding with the conqueror.
August 10. Tyringham. — Last night we were invited by the Rudds, our neighbors and landlords, to a dance. The Rudds and their families, about fifteen people, live in what are called here the “Shaker houses” — buildings in Puritan style, half barns, half dwelling houses. Some thirty young people from the neighborhood, between fifteen and twenty, danced dances which seem to be coming back into fashion: quadrilles, farandoles, and round dances. The dancers as well as the onlookers enjoyed this reconstitution of the past, which was, as a matter of fact, quite unaffected. America is the only country which can be traditional without posing. This country, which believes itself to be so modern, is extraordinarily close to its past and immerses itself in it with vigor and a curious pleasure.
Not a word about the war or politics. As I am French, it is possible that out of shyness these people avoided that kind of subject. But I do not believe it. In this valley of Tyringham one cannot think of such things and, if I mention this evening, unimportant in itself, it is only to emphasize how World War II, the Nazi revolution, and so on, are local matters—until the moment comes when the Rudds, the Shaker houses, and the quadrilles will be swept away in their turn. Actually the horizon of every human being is astonishingly limited. The people we saw last night are intelligent and educated. They know very well what is happening. But what touches them directly does not go beyond the top of the hills surrounding them.
August 19. — The desire to avoid responsibilities is general. Even Dorothy Thompson herself is occasionally a magnificent example. She asked me if I thought England could conquer Germany. I said no — not if she is alone. Dorothy sees only one way of beating Hitler: revolution, which means nothing definite, but allows one to avoid adopting a stand immediately. Revolution is a convenient way out. The English want planes and destroyers. Dorothy suggests a revolution to them.
January 4, 1941.—The new year began in the same atmosphere of doubt and uncertainty that marked the old. Any kind of prediction would be absurd. Anything may happen; nothing can be left out of reckoning.
Saw Saint-Exupery, who arrived from France three days ago. He looks healthy enough, for a man who has just been fighting — more like a bird than ever, but a caged bird with a tendency to hide his head under his wing. He seems beaten down by the war. I find it difficult to sum up what he told me. He said among other things: —
“The Germans have been encumbered by their victory. They are like a man with a locomotive in his garden.”
He admits that the key to the problem lies in the United States, but it is clear that the Vichy people minimize the possibility of American aid. They think in terms of production: seven hundred American airplanes a month in January compared with two or three thousand German. Right, but if Vichy is basing its attitude on American impotence, it is playing a dangerous game.
Speaking of the war, Saint-Exupéry said: “We did not go on fighting because the whole army instinctively believed that nothing would be gained thereby.”
Great contrast between that conversation and the attitude of Léger, who dined here last night and developed the following argument: “French thought has always held the moral factor to be predominant over material forces. For the first time it has imitated the German system, which consists in measuring exactly the material forces at hand and ignoring the moral factor. Today it is the English who are proving the validity of the French system. Logically, they should have given up the fight at the same time we did. Because of Churchill, they kept on against all common sense. The result is that they are still fighting.”
My own opinion is uncertain. There is reason in both arguments. The rational defeatism that ended in the armistice is a humiliation that is hard to swallow. It will take forever to wipe out that stain. The whole Pétain argument — Pétain mysticism, and so on — is basically rotten because of one indisputable fact: France deserted England at the height of the battle.
January 14. — Saw Saint-Exupéry yesterday, ex-asperated and discontented. “I’ve had enough,” he said, “of strolling through the streets of Marseille or New York. I want to do some bombing. What a beautiful sight an airplane with eight machine guns is! But what would be the use of fighting for a negotiated peace? How would that help France?” He wants to fight, to risk his life, but he also wants a more or less reasonable guarantee that it won’t be for nothing.
Even when he spoke about the Battle of France, he put forth the following argument: “Franco realized that nothing could be gained by going on with the fight — that there would just be two million more deaths and nothing else.” Such are the ravages of “realism” even on a man as generous and adventurous as Saint-Exupéry.
Pétain, Weygand, and the others mathematically figured out that the war had been irretrievably lost and that England would not hold out two weeks after the surrender of France. They were wrong, and all France, including Saint-Exupéry, is eating her heart out, conscious of the fact, without admitting it, that war is not a question of arithmetic and that if we are conquered and prisoners today, the fault lies in a mathematical mind and in our having forgotten that true “realism ” comprises everything, even imprudence.
January 23. — Dined last night with some conservative journalists. In spite of their undeniable anglophilia, they show many signs of unconsciously turning toward something that may become the opposite. The reasons are as follows: it is impossible for them to admit that they are working toward the same end as F.D.R.; and they fear that England will turn “socialist.” Their attachment to England is class attachment. If England should really become democratized, these people would no longer feel any necessity for helping her.
I get the impression that the Times, as well as the Herald, is evolving in that direction, and for the same reasons. As the Nazi danger becomes more real, more perceptible, the conservatives here are tending — willy-nilly, through a sort of illusory fatalism — to develop the same failings as those of Europe. The real danger to them is not Hitler but the people, the working class, what they naïvely persist in calling socialism. The example of their predecessors in Europe seems to mean nothing.
I know that over here all this is not so organized, not so conscious, as in France for instance. Neither Mrs. Reid nor J. P. Morgan would dream of repudiating democracy, but the parallelogram of forces is the same. These people are heading straight for suicide in the belief that they are saving themselves.
For instance, the day before yesterday he told newsmen that “he had never given any thought to the question of convoying ships.” Which is (1) hardly literally true; (2) a tactical error, for the opposition can now demand an amendment to the Lend-Lease bill forbidding convoys. And this matter of convoys may become critical for the Allies almost at once. Why, then, does F.D.R., entirely on his own, make such a concession, which involves the risk of turning the Lend-Lease bill into a sort of codicil of the Neutrality Act?
I don’t agree altogether with Agar’s pessimistic point of view. In theory he’s right, but he overdoes it. What is really wrong with F.D.R., and prevents him from being truly great, is a lack of frankness, an undeniable taste for gambit openings and brilliant maneuvers, even when they are useless, an almost feminine sense of humor, — the “old cocotte” side that I observed a long time ago, — and an exaggerated confidence in his own attraction — the attraction of his smile, his wit, and especially his splendid voice. On the other hand he has a practically infallible instinct, almost as magical as that of Lincoln, for reflecting truly popular aspirations.
January 26. — Lord Halifax, the new Ambassador, arrived yesterday on the battleship George V, which dropped anchor in Chesapeake Bay. Roosevelt went on board to welcome him — something unprecedented. A great deal has been made of this manifestation of sympathy, although I suspect F.D.R. of having wanted to see this new warship and taken advantage of an unlooked-for opportunity. It is strange that the British could find no one to succeed a repentant appeaser (Lothian) but another repentant appeaser (Halifax).
March 30. — In France the bust of The Republic has been replaced by that ot Pétain, bareheaded and in the uniform of a Marshal. An example of the shift from abstract to concrete. When ideas die, they are reincarnated in the person of an individual.
April 5. — Yesterday Dorothy Thompson and Raymond Clapper, this morning Walter Lippmann and General Drum, complained about the unhealthy morale of the country. A coincidence, but symptomatic. Strikes in munitions plants have become serious. Discussions for and against entry into the war, convoying, are still going on. F.D.R.’s popularity has never been so high, on paper. His program is approved in principle, but public opinion follows slowly and with reluctance. There is no unity, no real awareness of danger. People are quite willing to help England but not if they have to make the least sacrifice. They particularly do not want to be killed.
This state of mind resembles the one that existed in France in ‘39. People reason things out. They want to escape from harsh necessities. By doing so they deny their existence. People want to know why the British are fighting. They know they are fighting for their lives, but that is not sufficient. They want American aims, ideals, and so on. The war must be idealized, sugar-coated. The idea of making war without any hope of material or spiritual advantage, but merely in order to survive and destroy the enemy, is repugnant.
April 24. — Lindbergh made his opening speech yesterday as head of the America First Committee. A big crowd and lots ol excitement. His argument is simple: Every interventionist country, beginning with France and England, has met with failure. Poland as well as Greece is a victim of this doomed policy. England being lost, the United States, by trying to help her, can only go down to defeat herself. The interventionists are the real defeatists since their policy leads to defeat. Q. E. D.
April 25. — The last Gallup poll gives the coefficient of fatalism (inevitable entry of the United States into the war) as 82 per cent. That’s the highest figure yet. In December it was only 59 per cent.
However, the desire for war (Would you vote for war?) is still negative: 81 per cent “No.”
In other words, an almost equal number of people are certain both that they will be in the war and that they do not want to go in.
Lindbergh and the isolationists take into account only the desire factor. Since 81 per cent are against war, there must be no war.
May 22. — Had dinner last night with the Ogden Reids. About twenty people, including Professor Hall from the Ministry of Economic Warfare (London), Dorothy Thompson, Wendell Willkie, Walter Millis, Geoffrey Parsons, Mrs. Dwight Morrow, and so on. After the dinner we remained at table to indulge in the game of stating opinions.
But the general topic of conversation was: What is F.D.R. doing? What’s he waiting for?
May 31. — F.D.R.’s speech [of May 28] has not basically altered public opinion, at least on the surface. The isolationists are still carrying on their campaign. Lindbergh again attacked the President two days after the speech, without showing the least sign of having heard the appeal for national unity, and so on. The papers have said that the speech marked the beginning of a new phase and established a pre-war condition. Perhaps, but nothing seems really altered.
The same routine existence goes on. If the Germans are clever they won’t take up F.D.R.’s challenge. They will go on fighting toward the East, and people will go to sleep here. The same state of mind will exist as in France during the “phony war.”
This astonishing apathy on the part of public opinion in every country never fails to startle one, no matter how accustomed one is to these monotonous manifestations. Things have reached such a point that even if Hitler had no intention of dominating the world, he would be pushed to it.
The vast spaces opening up before him everywhere cannot fail to draw him on. This lack of resistance is like a magnet whose attraction he cannot escape. He is accomplishing the conquest of the world by default.
June 22. — In general, there is satisfaction over here that Hitler has attacked Russia. Hitler is seen to be embarked on a dangerous journey which, even if successful, will tire him. A short view, perhaps, but true for the moment.
What does Hitler want? Undoubtedly oil. He must need it very badly. He has created the second front that he had so successfully removed in August, 1939. He is undoing his own war.
June 25. Tyringham. — Arrived here by car yesterday. Extremely tired and extremely annoyed at being tired so easily.
Nevertheless, I am pleased to be here. I see that finally, after ten years in America, I am becoming conscious of the American countryside for its own sake. By that I mean entirely apart from French countrysides. Up till now I did not react. Neither the trees, nor the skies, nor the sun in America made any impression on me because — unconsciously — all those things that mean summer were associated in my mind with memories of childhood, and consequently of France.
Now France has receded far enough for me to establish a direct contact with the country here. I’m still aware that the French country is more lovely than this, the light more pleasing, the warmth a kinder warmth, and so on; that everything in nature spells more to me in French than in any other language. But I’m beginning to look at American trees without thinking of French trees. At dawn this morning, however, listening to the birds, I heard a blackbird singing, but without that arrogance and melancholy peculiar to French blackbirds when they are heard singing in the gardens of Paris at the same hour.
I’m reading William Shirer’s Berlin Diary, which makes me think of this diary I’ve been keeping since March, 1938. The similarity of outlook among reporters is curious. There is not much difference between what Shirer wrote in Berlin, Rome, or Paris and what I have written here during the same period. Everything was so easy to see. Why couldn’t the statesmen have seen, too? Or is it because reporters, who have no other responsibility but that of seeing things clearly, are not bothered by the thousand and one considerations that cloud the vision of politicians? What would a government run by press correspondents be like?
The German High Command, according to its custom, is giving out no news on the war in Russia. Which doesn’t mean that things aren’t going well for Hitler. The High Command likes to wait until it can announce victories that are decisive enough to stupefy the world. The Russians give the impression that they’re putting up some resistance, but how effective? Nobody knows. Hitler is at the eastern front directing operations. Very Napoleonic. Aptly,
I find that Napoleon crossed the Niemen on June 24. Hitler opened his Russian campaign on the twentysecond.
Roosevelt said that Russia would be given help, but failed to make himself very clear. He admitted: (1) that all available materiel had been ordered by the British; (2) that the Russians had not yet asked for anything.
All very well, but I have a feeling that the public is not receptive. An anti-Russian spirit is abroad. After all, America is a bourgeoisie and therefore violently anti-communist. This country is not accustomed to thinking in terms of “powers” — which, at least in wartime, is the only way to think. The isolationists are saying two things: (1) let the dictators kill each other off; (2) this proves once again that European affairs are a filthy mess, that there is nothing to choose between them, and so on. These arguments carry a great deal of weight.
The practical consequences will be as follows. The government will continue to support England with materials and to arm over here, but American participation in the war will be put off indefinitely. A few days ago, it was being admitted that participation was imminent — a matter of only a few weeks or months. Now it is out of the question.
The anti-war feeling that dominates every event and every country will gain nourishment from the new sustenance provided: the refusal to help the Communists, even if they are fighting against the common enemy. To be in the same boat with Stalin is a very disagreeable thought. It is an all rent, to the pride and the puritanical decency of this nation.
The result is that I don’t know what to hope for. If the Russians hold fast, America will draw back into her shell. If the Russians are beaten, Hitler will gain tremendously in strength. My personal opinion is that a crushed Soviet Russia will be better in the long run. Militarily, this is an absurd wish, but psychological factors play too important a part in this business to be forgotten. To lose America would be to lose everything. To lose Russia would be less dangerous in the final reckoning.
June 28. — Finished Berlin Diary by William Shirer, who is one of the very few Americans who do not believe that the Germans are angels, unhappily led astray from the right path by the diabolical Adolf. On the contrary, Shirer believes that Hitler is the product of something specifically German, an expression of the Germanic soul in one of its most authentic and most eternal forms.
Shirer says the German has a dual personality. “As an individual, he will give his rationed bread to the squirrels in the Tiergarten on a Sunday morning, he can be a kind and considerate person. But as a unit in the Germanic mass he can persecute Jews, torture and murder his fellow men in concentration camps, massacre women and children by bombing.” Shirer also thinks the Germans are cruel, sanguinary, sadistic, and absolutely incapable of understanding that there can be other relations between men than that of master and slave. The idea of equality and justice is foreign to them.
There is nothing new about this. The only interesting point is that an American is saying it.
Moreover, this complicates and will always complicate the question of war for the United States. In a little book about Wilson (by Charles Seymour) which I found in this house, I read that Wilson thought the United States was a country apart which could never fight for an immoral cause. It needed a crusade, and in declaring war on Germany, Wilson thought in all sincerity that he was acting unselfishly. He was saving humanity. He, too, had an unshakable belief that the Germans were kindly people who had been led astray by the Kaiser.
There is nothing very different about the present situation unless it is the fact that the Americans are not so easy to convince of the holiness of the war. But quite obviously the moral element is still their chief worry, although a strong and healthy campaign is under way to convince them that it’s also a question of saving their skins.
One may ask why the United States believes she has been entrusted with this moralizing mission, this role apart. What has she accomplished in her history to justify such a pretension? Nothing in particular, but she thinks she’s done a lot. She considers herself better, more just, more peaceful, and more enlightened than other nations, and nothing can shake her in this belief. It is, I confess, an aspect of nationalism that I detest most heartily — one of the most irritating, especially when expressed so generally and so candidly. Quite apart from Wilson, who loved this catechistic point of view, traces of the same state of mind can be found even in F.D.R. He, too, preaches and speaks of America as a nation, “apart,” a nation with a mission and chosen by God.
This attitude is especially awkward in the present war. One thing is obvious and has never been so obvious before: every nation is now fighting for itself. Ideologies have been smashed to bits. The Russo-German rupture succeeded in completely upsetting ideas over here. As long as the two bandits were hand in hand, there was nothing to worry about. Saint Democracy had only to destroy the two-headed monster, and all would be well again.
July 26. — All Japanese funds here were frozen yesterday. England and the Dutch East Indies will take similar steps. This marks the end of the policy of appeasing Japan, pursued here during the last two years. F.D.R. 1ms explained that this policy had been followed with the aim of preventing the outbreak of war in the Pacific. It has gone on for two years—two years gained, according to F.D.R.
The point is how the Japs will react and how much the freezing order, together with other economic sanctions, will impede them. Apparently, it’s not considered likely that they’ll resort to war. But it must, not be forgotten that a real rupture between the United States and Japan has always been more plausible than one between the United States and a European country. Japan is still the traditional enemy.
September 11. — The other day, while I was sick, the nurse who was taking care of me, having heard Reine tell me about the attempt on Laval, asked, “Who is Laval?”
I gave her the necessary information.
“You see,” she went on, “I didn’t follow what happened at the beginning of the war. So now I can’t catch up. I never read about it in the paper because I can’t understand it. It’s too complicated.”
I don’t see why the isolationists don’t make use of the following simple and very true argument: America is facing two hazards. The first consists in declaring an all-out war right away, which would involve obvious sacrifices. This is a certain hazard. The second consists in having to face Hitler without any allies some day. That is an uncertain hazard. The fact that theoretically it is more dangerous than the other does not alter the matter. Any number of things may happen in the meantime. Hitler may be defeated by the Russians. There may be a revolution in Germany. Hitler may die. The world may stop revolving about the sun.
Whoever has postponed a necessary visit to the dentist is familiar with the brand of reasoning he uses to convince himself that there is no hurry. (“It will pass. Maybe a taxi will run over me.”) It’s no use saying that this isn’t prudent. Reality scorns prudence, especially under such conditions as these. It would really be surprising if the United States were to declare war under the present circumstances, since it is not a matter of physical necessity.
September 12. — The most decisive step toward war has been taken.
In a world-wide broadcast F.D.R. announced last night that he had given orders to the American Navy to fire at sight on German or Italian warships found in what he called “waters of self-defense.”
F.D.R.’s address was clothed in plain and energetic speech. No ambiguity, no tricks. F.D.R. declared that he was not seeking war. “We have sought no shooting war with Hitler. We do not seek it now. But neither do we want peace so much that we are willing to pay for it by permitting him to attack our naval and merchant ships while they are on legitimate business.”
This last phrase is extremely important, if not the most important in the speech. There will be a great deal of discussion about the term “legitimate business.” The Germans will say that it is not legitimate business for a neutral country to carry arms to England. The isolationists will certainly be of the same opinion. But the Lend-Lease bill sanctions this legitimate business.
September 17. — Hoover has just made a speech which seems important to me because he proposed the “dentist” solution. Hoover starts with the premise that Hitler cannot win the war. Not only is England capable of holding out indefinitely, but the nations subjugated by Hitler are beginning to rebel. Besides, Hitler and Stalin are wearing each other out. Therefore, the best thing to do is to let events take their course. America must content herself with sending England material aid. The “ boys ” must not be sacrificed at any cost.
The last war, Hoover says, proved that America cannot resolve Europe’s problems. F.D.R.’s idea of imposing the Four Freedoms on the world is ridiculous. To go to war in order to impose them is the surest way of losing them. “The ideas and ideals of the West can grow and spread abroad by their demonstration in our own country. They will die in the world if the freedoms become weakened or die in America.
Today, in support of his theories, Hoover is obliged to say that England is unconquerable and that Hitler is sure to meet his ruin without other American aid than that now existing. This argument is certainly false, if only because since June, 1940, one of the main pillars of world stability — France—no longer has existed. England stands alone. Russia is still a doubtful factor (from the standpoint of American security). She has no fleet and no major interest in protecting the United States. In other words, Hoover simply fails to see what’s going on. His drawing a comparison between 1812 and 1941 is terrible proof of his blindness.
It is interesting to note the curious contradictions in the isolationist arguments. Lindbergh preaches isolationism on the grounds that England is done for and that Hitler’s victory is inevitable. Hoover preaches the same thing from a completely opposite starting point. They really ought to get together.
But the question is to decide whether the tooth is to be pulled or not. Both Hoover and Lindbergh, for different reasons, agree that the patient can wait. One says that the tooth (Hitler) is decayed and will fall out by itself. The other says it is just a violent toothache that will pass and that it must not be touched. Both agree that nothing should be done. F.D.R. wants to pull the tooth out.
November 8. — Yesterday the Senate, by a vote of 60 to 37, passed two amendments in effect abolishing the Neutrality Act. The clause forbidding the arming of merchant vessels is repealed. The war zones are eliminated. The country is returning to the freedom of the seas. American ships will go wherever they want, into British harbors or elsewhere.
And so ends a six-year experiment, as typically American as the “noble experiment ” of prohibition was. The country wanted to legislate against war just as it had legislated against liquor, as some day someone may legislate against earthquakes or hail.
The principle is always the same, it consists in trying to eliminate the bad things of the world, large or small, by placing them on the plane of morality and making laws against them. War thus becomes a sin which must be avoided, as liquor is a temptation.
The Neutrality Act was a kind of Maginot Line, even more futile and ineffective because it was merely a series of abstract prohibitions. The necessities and realities of the war have upset that structure.
December 7. Sunday. — I shake off my sloth and negligence toward this diary to note that today the Japs attacked the United States.
The last “Sunday surprise” was back on June 22, the invasion of Russia. The Japs make good pupils.
Spent the whole day listening to the radio, which had practically nothing but broadcasts of football games. No realization of war as yet. But this time it’s the real thing.
There will be national unity, or nearly so, on this war, especially if the Japs attacked in the way it seems they did.
Why didn’t they choose the convenient roundabout method: the attack on Thailand that people were expecting? Why the direct provocation to the United States? At Hitler’s orders, people say. But that does not seem sufficient. Because they’re feeling strong? Perhaps.
Obviously the United States will have to take some losses in the beginning. Her strategic position is bad, but it doesn’t seem possible that the Japs won’t come out badly in the end.
December 21. — The papers are putting on a big bluff, now subdued, now noisy — which, however, fails to conceal what looks like uneasiness. Nothing is yet known about what happened at Pearl Harbor on the seventh, but the fact is that since then there has been no mention of the American Navy. That doesn’t mean it was destroyed, but damaged or inconvenienced to the extent that it cannot be exposed to the risk of any major undertakings. The British are being left to fight it out alone in Malaya, where the Japs continue to advance.
Here, the resistance in the Philippines is being emphasized, although it doesn’t seem very remarkable. The Japs have landed at several points and have not yet been thrown into the sea. It’s not a victory.
Hard to tell what the public is thinking. One thing is clear — that the Japanese danger has made people forget Hitler and that their eyes are turned toward the Pacific rather than toward Europe. The Russian victories are satisfying but don’t compensate for the reverses over here. I believe the Americans are humiliated at having been taken so completely by surprise, but there is also something worse. The Japs are a great deal stronger than had been foreseen. People are a little afraid. Apparently, they don’t doubt that everything will come out all right in the end, but they don’t quite know how and when.
At a dinner party at Littell’s last night, I told Dick Myers that the war would last six years. He practically hit the roof. “People here will never stand for it. They’ll want action and victories long before that.” Reflecting the popular and persistent idea that the United States can have victories more or less on demand.
(To be continued)