ted

thin; when I finished people were slowly accustoming themselves to a new questio

ere were those who wanted the war won without aid from liberals and those who would rather the war were lost than have labor contribute to victory; and those who seemed more interested in preventing profit than in creating munitions; it was a great chance "to put something over"-possibly the radicals could be destroyed, possibly the rich; possibly the President or his wife could be trapped into an error, possibly a sales tax would prevent a new levy on corporations, possibly labor could maneuvre itself into dominance; the requirements of war could be a good excuse for post

were not fighting for England, for the Jews, for the munition makers. But did we know what we were fighting for? The President had said that we did not intend to be constantly at the mercy of aggressors; and the Atlantic Charter provided a rough sketch of th

ate purposes; by putting aside whatever the war did not require and omitting nothing necessary for victory; by making war itself the great social experiment, using war to de

ces and people; we are a capitalist country divided between the rich and the poor; we break into political parties; we

merica needs only to be put under the s

the Nazis have no conception of unity; their purpose is totality, which is not the same thing at all. A picture or a motor has unity when all the different parts are arranged and combined to

didn't we, after we were attacked, embrace one another in mutual forgiveness, high devotion to our country, and complete harmony of purpose? Months of disaster in the Pacific and the grinding process of reorganizing for production at home left us unaware of the sacrifices we had still to make, and at the

ction. All the parts of the motor car have to do their work, or the car will not run well; that is their unity; and our unity will bring every one of us jobs to do for which we have to prepare. We can remember Pearl Ha

ground o

r the unity we had always assumed was ever a real thing, not a politician's device, for use on national holidays only. And, when the disunion of the people's leaders began to be apparent, and the people began to be ill-at-ease-then they were told to remember Pearl Harbor, or that we were all united really, but were helping our country best by constructive criticism

that when hardships fall on us we feel alone, and victimized. We do not know what "all being in the same boat" really signifies;

we have to go where it already exists, we have to uncover a great mother-lode of the true metal, where it has always been; we have to remind ourselves of what we have been and are, so that our un

ied our history and corrupted our character; the men now in training camps grew up between the Treaty of Versailles and the crash of 1929; they lived in the atmosphere of normal

a Gen

create an effective national unity; what we find there

e impulsive almost boyish Square Deal of Theodore Roosevelt, the studious reformism of Woodrow Wilson, all form a continuity of political idealism; from 1856 to 1920 a party, usually out of office, was bringing the fervor and passion of moral righteousness into

d it to millions of children; intellectuals have neglected politics because the corruption of local battles has left little to choose between the Vare machine in Philadelphia, the Kelly in Chicago, the Long in Louisiana. For many years, in the general rise of our national wealth, p

k, in 1920, becomes an event of extreme significance-a symptom to be watched, analysed and co

and his untimely illness, doomed the Democratic Party to impotence and the Republicans to reaction, which is often worse. So there could be no effective, respectable party agitating for reform, for a saner distribution of the pleasures and burdens of citizenship; in the years that followed, certain social gains were kept, so

e echo clings to it still. The New Deal hardly ever used the word; and the reformers of the New Deal were called revolution

Harding and Coolidge and, in opposition, the wholly un-American radicalism of the Marxists; the Republicans gave us our first touch of tr

mewhat balanced if not checked by the grant of free land; the Interstate Commerce Commission regulated rates and reduced the power of the railroads; the Sherman Act, relatively ineffective, was directed against trusts; changes in tariff laws occasionally gave relief to the victims of "infant industries". Under Theodore Roosevelt the railroads and the coal mine owners were held back and a begin

and Ph

nd administrators, through cabinet members and those closest to the White House, normalcy first declared that no moral standard, no patriotism, no respect for the dead, should stand i

the mania for speculation was drawing the strength of the country away from its functions. Money was being made-and he respected money; money in large enough quantities could do no harm. Even after the crash, he could not believe that money had erred. When he was asked to write a daily paragraph of comment on the state of the nation, he was embarrassed; he had been the President of prosperity and he did not want to face a long depression; he asked his friends at Morgan and Company to advise hi

romised two cars in every American garage. At last plutocracy was to pay off in comfort-but it was too late. Not enough Americans ha

ore

use it began in corruption, but because it ended with indifference; normalcy destroyed idealism, particularly the simple faith

merican policy of Harding and Coolidge we lost the great opportunity of resuming communication with Europe; a generation grew up not only hostile to the nations of Europe ("quarrelsome defaulters" who "hired the money") but suspicious of

Dev

radicalism functioning in the world: Moscow. Not all American liberals tied themselves to the party line; but few found any other attachment. The Progressive Party of LaFollette vanished; the liberal intellectuals were unable to work into the Democrati

g Bolshevism cried aloud that Moscow gold had bought out the American intellectuals, which was a silly lie; but why was Moscow gold more potent than American gold, of which much mo

ng destroyed and in Russia a new world was being created with all the harshness and elation of a revolutionary action. The direction in America was

were drawn out of their natural orbit by the attraction of the new economic planet. Most of them remained suspended

e Progressives were violent, opinionated, cross-grained and their "lunatic fringe" was dangerous, but none of them despised America; they despised only the betrayers of America: the railroads, the bankers, the oil monopolies, the speculators in Wall Street, the corrupt men in City Hall, the bribed men in Congress. It was not the time for nice judgments,

on's day, but they did not want to give up the cotton gin and the machine loom and the reaper and the railroads which were transferring power to the city and the factory. The radical seem

cial quality of freedom and prosperity to more and more men; whereas the radical-critic of the 1920's wept because America was too American and wanted her to become a

th Sides o

g the nation's past and denying its future. The politicians supported committees to make lists of heretics, and tried to deny civil rights to citizens in minority parties; and the intellectuals pretended that the Ku Klux Klan was the true spirit of America; the plutocrats and the politicians murdered Sacco and Vanzetti and the radicals

t it now, I find a conspicuous error-I failed to bracket the politician with the debunker, the plutocrat with the radical. I was for the average man a

t industrialists and the benign, tacit assent of Calvin Coolidge-considering all these, the miracle is that eight out of ten capable citizens did not speculate. The chance to make money was part of the American tradition-for which millions of Europeans had come to America; but it did not fulfill all the requirements of a purpose in life. It wasn't good enough by any

rt; the great traditions of hardship and experiment and progressive liberalism and the mingling of races and the creation of free communities-all these were still in our blood. But when the plutocrat and politician tried to destroy them by neglect or persecution, t

n the F

al was basically internationalist; the true believer in Lenin was also revolutionist. Sheer isolationism didn't work; we were constantly on the side lines of the League of Nations; we stepped in to save Germany and presumably to help all Europe; we trooped to the death

"democracies". By 1932 economics had destroyed isolation and Hitler began to destroy internationalism. The American people had for twelve years shrunk from both, now found that it had no shell to shrink into-America had repudiated all duty to the world; it had tried to make the League of Nations

weakness of the Hoover regime, the resignation to defeat, were overcome. The direct beneficiaries of the New Deal were comparatively few; the indirect were the middle and upper income classes. They saw President Roosevelt save them from a dizzy drop into r

Blue Eagle was killed by the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court was saved by resignations, the average American c

is was violent; but labor and radicals and people were not violent. We were appr

ack vs.

this policy was based on the President's dislike of tyranny and his love for the Navy, a fortunate combination for the people of the United States, for it allied us with the Atlantic democracies and compeled us to face the prospect of war in the Pac

he notes to Germany, scorned at the time, were an education in international law for the American people; by 1917 the people were aware of the war and beginning to discover a part in it for themselves. Mr. Roosevelt's methods were more spectacular, but not as patient, so that he sometimes alienated people, and he faced a wilier enemy at home; Wilso

ad no unified body of opinion behind him. The Republican Party might easily have nominated an isolationist as a matter of politics if not of principle; and it was a stroke of luck that politics (not international principles) gave the opportunity to Wendell Willkie. Yet the boldest move made by Mr. Roo

ation of self-interest in others, went together. There were faithful pacifists who disliked armaments and disliked the sale of armaments even more; but there were also those who wanted the profit of selling without the risk; there were the alarming fellow travele

ensed changes ahead; but it had one great redeeming quality, it was in our tradi

had not united us; but in the first days we dared not admi