Evening Post. FRIDAY, JUNE 21, 1940. U.S.A. AND THE POWERS OF DARKNESS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 146, 21 June 1940, Page 6

Evening Post. FRIDAY, JUNE 21, 1940.

U.S.A. AND THE POWERS OF DARKNESS

With bolder and bolder gestures, [ President Roosevelt and his Secretary ; of State, Mr. Cordell Hull, challenge i American isolationists to remove the scales from their eyes and look around. What they will see is a dark cloud rolling rapidly over Western Europe, extending out over the British Channel, and preparing to overleap the Atlantic Ocean. This cloud flames at its advancing edges, but the cloud itself grows black behind them and settles on the overrun countries in a pall that can be compared only with the darkness of the Middle Ages. Viewing from Washington the dark eclipse—the eclipse of freedom —Mr. Cordell Hull records: Nation after nation is being crushed, overrun, and enslaved by brute force combined with fraud and guile. As the dismal darkness descends on more and more of. the earth's surface—as the menacing shadow grows blacker and blacker athwart our. American continent—the instinct of self-preserva-tion bids us beware. Too many nations have responded to that instinct too slowly. The essence of the contract is time. Deceived by "the Miracle of the Marne," the Allies did not provide sufficiently against the .loss of France. Shall America—following a well-known line of democratic weakness —repeat the blunder by providing insufficiently against the contingency of losing both France and England? That America—even America —cannot calmly regard thef. prospect of standing alone will come home to Americans, if they will accept the Roosevelt invitation to open their eyes and look around. In the nineteenth century it Avas commonly said that "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance"—vigilance against foes within. But, during long periods of peace, democracy forgot how to be vigilant against foes outside. In Germany, the price of liberty has always been conscription. Britain, in peacetime, refused to pay that price, having a navy; but no navy can save a country like France from a disastrous land-war. When at last the avalanche impended, Britain adopted conscription, at first by instalments; and now, in crisis, is applying conscription all round—but the inexorable time-factor intervenes, and will not be appeased. With all their vigilance, the Allies were not vigilant enough—not as rapid in preparation and in action as was the enemy. And now, without the slightest camouflage, and with all the stark realism of the European fire leaping forward with the Nazi darkness in its wake, the same alternative presents itself to the Americans. Are they prepared to pay the price of liberty—which is vigilance—and is their vigilance equal to the practical necessity of taking sufficient action while there is yet time? A consciousness of the immediate presence of a world crisis lies behind the President's action reported today, and behind Mr Cordell Hull's speech. Once again democracy is under test at its weakest point, which is its slowness and its consequent handicaps in a race with a people to whom guns are more important than butter and to whom aggression is more dear than liberty. Will "the instinct of self-preservation" be so tardy as to repeat the commonest of all democratic blunders? With all its shortcomings, democracy, as represented by France and Britain, would not have stinted its preparations for war had it envisaged, at any time fro*m 1934 onwards, that in June of 1940—and almost on the date of the Battle of Waterloo—the French Army would be broken into separate parts, Paris would be in German hands, and Field-Marshal Petain would be asking Hitler what are his terms. Such a vision of the future, so different from the recollection of the Marne in 1914^ would have driven European democracy grimly to its job. But American democracy is now no longer under the disadvantage of being deceived by recollections of a generation ago. American democracy has the facts of Europe, in June, 1940, staring it in the face, and is hearing the implications of those facts preached in clear tones by the President and the Secretary of State. Freedom-loving nations, says Mr. Cordell Hull, were never in more desperate need to "gather into an unconquerable defensive force every element of their spiritual and material resources and of their moral and physical strength." Can the further statement —that "there is no more dangerous folly than to think that America's achievements can be preserved by isolation"—possibly fall on deaf ears?

So much for words. What, now,* about deeds? President Roosevelt is not lacking in action, for he has asked the Senate to approve of the appointment of two Republicans, the veteran

Henry L. Stimson and Colonel Frank Knox, as Secretary of War and Secretary for the Navy respectively. The response of the Senate and of the Republican Party, which is the United States Opposition, to this unifying move will be a test of the pace at which America is moving towards a full realisation of all that as said and of all that is implied in Mr. Cordell Hull's stirring appeal. The members of a United States Cabinet are not necessarily members of Congress, and a United" States Coalition Cabinet therefore has not the same meaning as attaches to the National Cabinet in Britain, where the acknowledged party leaders of an elective House of Commons face the House itself as a united Cabinet; but nevertheless the Coalition Cabinet proposed.' by President Roosevelt would be a big step s towards unity, if the Republican Party is 'wise enough to wholeheartedly support the innovation. Mr. Stimson's presence in the Cabinet would especially hearten all those who study the democratic hour-glass, and who wish to see the formula "all American help for the Allies short of war" amended by omission of the three final words.