Feb. 11.
The United States Administration has no need to consult Congress upon any diploma~ tic offensive it may undertake. To lend or lease armaments or money, there is the necessity for public debate and the airing of 8 great number of beliefs by minority leaders which, though interesting insofar as. they reflect a certain section of public opinion in the United States, have an only limited in= fluence on the actions of the Legislature, which, after all, bases its decisions upon the facts, not the opinions, put before it. The: procedure for the discussion of such a bill as the "lend or lease bill" lends itself, therefore, to plenty of use by Nazi propagandists, They can cite every gloomy prediction as to the chances of Great Britain and her Allies as proof that the Empire is on its last legs. They ced not bother their heads over the quallfications of the predictors, which may be no better than Colonel Lindbergh's; but they can and do make the utmost capital out of statements such as that Britain cannot win even with United States assistance, in spite of the fact that such statements are usually quallfied by the acknowledgement that the speale= er does not see how, say, an invasion of the Continent can be successfully launched. There is absolutely no reason to suppose that an invasion of the Continent is impossible, because a retired colonel in the American National Guard cannot see how it is to be done.
There are more kinds of offensives than one, as was clearly pointed out in the article published in this paper yesterday and writ~ ten by Everett R. Holles of the United Press, who was the only news agency correspondent to accompany Mr. Sumner Welles, the Assistant Secretary of State of the United States, in his tour of Europe. Mr. Sumner Welles, there can be no doubt, behaved during his tour of the Axis countries with all diploma~ tic propriety and. engaged in no activities which might be interpreted by the governments of the countries "he visited as sub-ver sive. The references Mr. Holles makes to an organized American campaign to do} everything possible to plague Hitler through diplomatic channels can, therefore, have no direct reference to that official tour. But there can equally be no doubt that Mr, Holles, being attached to so important a mission, had access to sources of information that the average person could never approach. When he says that the-United States is engaged in an underground campaign to baffle the Axis plans for a "new order" he can be believed. His statement accounts for a number of unexplained facts, such as the missions of Mr. Wendell Willkie and Mr. Harry Hopkins to Britain, and the European journey Colonel Donovan. He shows. that the American Administration understands the perils which the United States are facing, even if the greatly vocal isolationists do not.
It is a sad commentary on conditions in Europe that such missions should be needed, The blame for this rests, however, upon Hiller and his gangster following, who have made a religion of power and force. The rights of small nations exist only 0 Jong as those rights are supported by arms which are strong enough to defend them, And it is regrettable that most of the small nations—and until recently, most of the greater Powers—were not strong enough to stand up for what they valued most. The American diplomatic offensive, therefore, apears to have taken the form of assuring the small nations that the enormous resources of the United States, in arms and food, will be at their disposal should they decide to resist Nazi pressure, These small nations are being given a guarantee that, even though they might be temporarily overrun by the Nazi war machine, they will in the end be restored to freedom, if possible on a firmer foundation than anything that has existed in the ast. It is up to the small nations to decide whether they prefer enslavement by the Nazis or the horrors of war, with the cortainty of ultimate victory, in spite of the slaughter and suffering which will occur before victory is hailed.
Mr, Holles has been remarkably frank in his admitting the part being played by the United States. He makes no bones about the fact that President Roosevelt is doing, his utmost to put a spoke in the wheel of Hit-lot's schemes, He describes a form of activ. ity which can be every bit as effective in the long run as the free supply of arms to those nations which are resisting aggression. There are others besides retired American colonels who cannot see through a. brick wall—who cannot believe that 9 British invasion of the European continent will be any easier than a German invasion of the British Isles. But the sapping of confidence from within, the steady undermining of national moral in the case of the Axis coun-~ tries, and the steady building up of this invaluable and. incalculable factor in those countries which still remain free from the Nazi tyranny, is something the best military expert cannot estimate, And there appears to be nothing in the law of warfare which males those who undertake it any less neutral than they were before,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.