American Foreign Policy in the Light of National Interest at the Mid-Century

AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN THE LIGHT OF NATIONAL INTEREST AT THE MID-CENTURY by GEORGE A. LUNDBERG By following the policy we have adhered to since the days of Washington we have prospered beyond precedent; we have done more for the cause oi liberty in the world than arms could effect; we have shown to other nations the way to greatness and happiness. . . . But it we should involve ourselves in the web oi European politics, in a war which could effect nothing, . . . where, then, would be the last hope oi the friends oi ireedom throughout the world? Far better it is . . . that, adhering to our wise pacific system, and avoiding the distant wars oi Europe, we should keep our own lamp burning brightly on this western shore, as a light to all nations, than to hazard its utter extinction amidst the ruins of fallen or tailing republics in Europe. —HENRY CLAY, 1852 We went into the fight [the Korean war] to save the Republic oi Korea, a free country established by the United Nations. . . .

Meanwhile, we must continue to strengthen the iorces oi ireedom throughout the world. . . . That means military aid, especially to those places like Indo-China which might be hardest hit by some new Communist attack. . . . In Europe we must go on helping our friends and allies to build up their military iorces. . . . —HARRY S. TRUMAN, address to Congress, 1952 George Andrew Ltindberg was born in Fairdale, North Dakota, October 3, 1895. He received his A.B. degree at the University of North Dakota in 1920, his M.A. at the University of Wisconsin in 1922, and his Ph.D. degree at the University of Minnesota in 1925. He was also a Fellow in Sociology at Columbia University and he studied at the University of London. He has taught sociology at the University of Washington, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Minnesota, Columbia University, and at Bennington College. Since 1945 he has been head of the Sociology Department at the University of Washington. He has filled a number of governmental posts, including research supervisor, F.E.R.A., and consultant of the National Resources Planning Board. He was president of the American Sociological Society in 1943 and he has also served as president of the Sociological Research Association and of the Conference on Methods in Science and Philosophy. He was in France with the American Expeditionary Force during the first World War. In 1952 he served as Research Consultant to the Air Force in Japan with the rank of colonel. He received the Distinguished Achievement Medal from the University of Minnesota in 1951.

Professor Lundberg's chief books are: Social Research (1929); Leisure: A Suburban Study (1934); Foundations of Sociology (1939); Can Science Save Us? (1947). He is nationally recognized as a leading protagonist of rigorous scientific method in social science. He has been one of the few sociologists who has, from the first, recognized the paramount importance of foreign policy for both social science and public welfare. He has applied to this subject the same unflinching scientific method that he has so ably utilized in the study of domestic social problems. He has not fled for succor or cover to our "Ministry of Truth." His insight, candor, and courage in dealing with the bearing of foreign policy on sociology and social science are reflected in his presidential address before the American Sociological Society on "Sociologists and the Peace" (American Sociological Review, February, 1944), which thoroughly aroused the traditionalists in the society; his article on "Scientists in Wartime" in the Scientific Monthly, February, 1944; Chapter VI in his book, Can Science Save Us?; his article on "Semantics in International Relations" in American Perspective, June, 1948; and his article on "Conflicting Concepts of National Interest" in American Perspective, Fall, 1950. No man living is better equipped than Professor Lundberg to examine and assess contemporary American foreign policy in terms of social and political science.

I. THE MEANING OF NATIONAL INTEREST The only realistic way of defining national interest from the standpoint of policy is in terms of (1) the values cherished by the people of a nation, or by their de facto spokesmen, in relation to (2) the costs, and (3) the resources available. If these values are security, liberty, equality, and fraternity, as defined by the people in question, the national interest is served by whatever policies conduce to these ends. If these values are expansion, domination, conquest, or the evangelization of an ideology, whether of Christianity, Communism, or Democracy, then the national interest is served by all measures that contribute to these goals. Questions of national interest begin, therefore, with an inquiry into the values of the people of a nation (or of their de facto spokesmen), always in view of the sacrifices entailed in realization. In countries where the consensus of the adult population is supposed to determine national values and policies, extensive and intensive polling is one method of determining existing values and, therefore, the definition of the national interest. For countries and populations professing or practicing no democratic doctrines, the same basic information can presumably be secured with much less trouble from the dictator, the king, or the pope currently in power.

With such a statement of the values before us, social scientists should be able reliably (1) to construct policies in accordance with these values, (2) to determine their feasibility in the light of available resources and the sacrifice-potential of the population, and (3) to measure the degree to which the policies adopted do or do not actually contribute to the national interest as defined. Informally, and perhaps to some degree unconsciously, the above is approximately the natural process by which national interests and national policies are, in fact, determined. The imperfections of inNOTE: Some parts of this essay first appeared in American Perspective, Summer, 1949, and Autumn, 1950. 557 55& PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE formal and unconscious methods in large societies, however, become very great because of the breakdown of the kind of intimate communication and communion which operates in primary groups.

Hence, formal methods of determining the existing consensus have appeared, such as elections and polling. The cultural compulsion to invoke the plebiscite, at least in form, appears to be very great throughout the Western world. The plebiscite is solemnly maintained even in times and places where everyone recognizes its completely farcical nature. In fact, elections and mass voting seem to take their place among the vast superstructure of folkways, customs, and ceremonials which survive long after the population has forgotten the original purpose of the ritual. Up to the present time the direct empirical investigation of the values of men in different cultures has somehow seemed beyond the proper province of scientific inquiry. It has been felt that this is a subject rather for religious and philosophical speculation, intuition, or for the judgment of politicians and "writers."1 Even social scientists have generally been under this misapprehension.

The development of the technique of public opinion polling within the last fifteen years, however, now definitely has made possible the reliable determination of values of all kinds among different groups. Foreign policy is usually conducted by a few persons. The wise or unwise decisions of these few, from the standpoint of their own definition of national interest, is actually what is operative in concrete situations. This state of affairs makes all the more important, from the democratic point of view, the application of new methods of more reliably determining the wider basis of national values and conceptions of national interest in the underlying population. In addition to the desirability of correctly gauging national interest according to the values of the people in one's own country, it is necessary for the administrators of national policy to have a keen appreciation of how these values and policies appear to the minds of the governing classes and masses of other countries. In the future this basic information can be determined much more reliably through the application of the technique of public-opinion polling.

The extent to which there exists in a nation any single goal or goals that are held in common to a high degree is itself a question AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 559 of fact. To the extent that the goals and ideals actually cherished by groups within a nation are different, the definition of national interest will be correspondingly obscure. Inquiry into this subject is likely to reveal that, while there is high agreement about the ends, there is sharp disagreement about means. Accordingly, the first task in the determination of policy is to determine how the values of different economic or religious classes, regions, or other classifications of men, agree or differ (1) with respect to goals and (2) with respect to permissible or desirable means of pursuing the desired ends. This essay is not concerned with the question of whether national interest is a desirable or defensible goal of policy. There are those who, like certain adolescent "world citizens," have loftily dismissed nationalism as a primitive and parochial ethnocentrism and have started for themselves to live, perhaps a bit prematurely, but with some attempt at consistency, in realms transcending national self-consciousness. They would, presumably, argue that national interest and world interest are identical or, in any event, that the national interest must be subordinate to world interest.

In this connection would doubtless arise, also, the question as to whether national interest should not be liquidated in a general pool from which all humanity should share equally. We confine ourselves here to a very much less romantic but more practical problem, namely: What is the relation of certain specific policies now under discussion to the national interest of the United States.2 II. CONTINENTALISM VERSUS THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM If we accept the proposition that a desirable definition of national interest should be based on a consensus of the values of the population as a whole, then a very much more adequate and relia560 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE ble inquiry into the nature of these values than has hitherto been undertaken would be necessary. In the absence of such data, however, it is possible to discuss the subject in frankly hypothetical and approximate terms. That is, we may accept certain current statements of the national interest and follow through with a consideration of whether and to what degree actual policies now pursued serve the proclaimed end. This essay will consider and evaluate from this point of view the two principal conceptions of the national interest which are at present before the country.

The policy of continentalism affirmed a concentration of interest on the continental domain and the development in this area of a civilization in many respects peculiar to itself and to the potentials of its own heritage. Concretely, the policy meant nonintervention in the controversies and wars of Europe and Asia and resistance to the intrusion of European or Asiatic power systems and imperial ambitions into the Western Hemisphere. At the same time the policy reserved complete freedom of action as to the concrete acts which the national interest might dictate. Washington urged, for example, all necessary preparation so that the United States could "choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel." It should be obvious that this policy, both in its origin and in its subsequent affirmation and implementation in instruments like the Monroe Doctrine, was in no sense "isolationism," as those opposed to the policy have ignorantly or fraudulently attempted to maintain.3 It was a positive program permitting the making of whatever temporary arrangement with other governments seemed desirable, for choosing war or peace as the national interest seemed to dictate without any permanent commitment to one or another European combination, either under the guise of "world government" or otherwise. The policy did, in fact, contemplate and encourage active commerce and trade with other nations and there was no hesitation to apply force anywhere in the world when the national interest seemed to justify it as, for example, in the case of the Barbary pirates. For a hundred years or more this policy was reaffirmed and applied with remarkable consistency and with the overwhelming support of the people.

The phrase "isolationism" implies a policy of nonintercourse of AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 561 any kind with other countries, a situation which probably cannot exist under modern conditions and which, in any event, has not existed in the Western world for centuries. A highly developed system of diplomatic, trade, and other relations has, of course, existed ever since the appearance of national states. No one, perhaps, is opposed to such relations, although there may be some question about particular proposals. Very few people are opposed to more adequate world organization for the same reason that very few are opposed to good weather, health, peace, prosperity, or happiness. Extremely proper and crucial questions may, however, be asked about types and methods of organization. To designate all who question a particular proposal as "isolationist" is merely using the word as an epithet. This use of the word enables its user to digress from the issues and eloquently to attack a position which nobody holds.

The isolationist-internationalist issue can, therefore, be regarded only as a device which has distracted attention from sober consideration of the real issues and problems of international organization. Some of these have to do with fundamental questions of physical and cultural regions, resources and technology, and with our knowledge of organizational techniques, rather than with questions of the survival of defunct empires, the designation of good men and bad men, the superiority of "our way of life," and the whole traditional moralistic-legalistic attitude. These are not questions of internationalism versus isolationism. In short, the whole frame of reference within which current discussion of international policy is carried on is at best based on ignorance of the real issue and at worst on intellectual fraud. The conception of national interest which departed from continentalism supported overseas expansion and the playing of a major role in world affairs. This conception took various forms, usually referred to as the policy of imperialism, "the new internationalism," or by various names given to idealistic aspirations for world government. In its original form, as expounded by Captain Alfred T. Mahan, it was frankly imperialistic and was supported only by certain business interests, a small group of intellectuals, and a well-financed, extremely articulate, and influential group of 562 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE professional "peace" agitators. Generally, the policy has been defended on the ground that it would pay rich dividends to the nations engaging in it and also because it would become the instrumentality of extending the blessings of industrial society and its culture to the "backward" peoples of the earth. As to the alleged economic profitableness of imperialism, a more adequate accounting soon revealed that, while it did pay well for certain individuals and corporations, its profitableness to the nation, after expenditures for the resulting armaments and wars were considered, was nil. By 1917 the economic argument, except for a continuing delusion about the importance of foreign trade, had been largely supplanted, at least in the propaganda, by idealistic and humanitarian appeals for Wilson's policy. Since that time this conception of national interest has been maintained chiefly in the name of world peace, notwithstanding the fact that, under it, the United States has become involved in two world wars within twentyfive years. A third war is, at this writing, in progress in the name of an international organization representing chiefly the United States and her allies.

The policy here under appraisal represents a departure, under the stress of international crises and war, from the traditional policy, with a vigorous return to the latter between the two wars. At no time has there been evidence of widespread public support of the new internationalism. Only under the impact of concentrated propaganda from the highest official sources regarding the alleged imminent peril, including invasion, of the nation has the necessary support been secured for the wars under cover of which the two ventures into the new internationalism has been achieved. Wilson became president in 1916 and Roosevelt in 1940 on the most outspoken pledges of nonparticipation in European and Asiatic wars. Wilson's departure from this policy was overwhelmingly repudiated in 1920 and his internationalist program was subsequently dropped from the Democratic platforms of 1924 and 1928. Franklin D. Roosevelt himself explicitly declared, in 1932, his opposition to our joining the League of Nations. The neutrality legislation of the 1930's represented a return to our traditional foreign police, and only as a result of the provoked attack upon Pearl Harbor was it possible again to secure a declaration of war in 1941.

AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 563 Since the country has been, in reality, on a war basis ever since (the period from 1945 to date is politely called a "cold" war), it is too soon to report on the reaction to commitments again entered into during the second World War. Also, it appears that during this period we made sufficient progress toward a one-party government (much deplored when practiced in other countries) under the name of a "bipartisan" foreign policy, so that no choice on the subject of foreign policy was afforded by the major parties in the elections of 1944 and 1948. It is true that the commitments entered into have been ratified by Congress and that vigorous official participation in the socalled United Nations is underway, although at this writing small progress is evident in the solution of the principal international impasse that has existed since the war.

As for the world government idea, the fact seems to be that there is negligible public support for the organized movement, despite tremendous publicity and agitation. While the public-opinion polls show a variety of results regarding more or less romantic questions about international relations in general and the United Nations in particular, the crucial issue is whether and to what extent people would be willing to relinquish national sovereignty in the interest of international organization. On this point there appears to be always less than a majority and usually from 17 to 20 per cent who favor the idea when the question is put to them in realistic terms.4 A poll in 1949 in Norway, and one in the state of Washington,5 showed 13.2 per cent and 12.1 per cent, respectively, returning affirmative answers to the question, "Would you favor a world government even if it meant giving up our national independence?" The fact that a country in Norway's position still values her national sovereignty so highly is a pretty good indication of the slender amount of sentiment for world government at present, except that the Norwegian figure represents perhaps the maximum. Among the active propagators of the new internationalism, the largest of the various world-government organizations has a membership of only about 40,000, and the total membership in all such organizations is perhaps considerably under 100,000. In view of this slight foundation of actual support, it is not surprising that international organizations find themselves in difficulty when564 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE ever they confront serious crises. Incidentally, Woodrow Wilson himself conceded before his death in 1924 that, in view of the lack of public support in the United States for the League of Nations, it was better that the United States abstained from entering into that commitment,6 although he had previously contended that our failure to join the League was due to a few "evil" senators.

Even among those who accept the notion of world government with a concomitant loss of national sovereignty, it could perhaps be shown that no considerable number of Americans are contemplating anything but an American world organization. To nearly all Americans who favor the program world organization means American ideals, American democracy, and American ideology benevolently foisted on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this raises the practical question of how appealing this system is to people of other nations. In the absence of comprehensive international public-opinion polls, we may cite the estimates by French and British students who have recently reported on the subject. One of them says, "For the most important and most dynamic masses all over the world, the American ideology is either repugnant or devoid of meaning. Consequently, American power is not on the side of people's hopes."7 Another says, "The American way of life, as a model and as propaganda, is meaningless to the European, with his denser population and more acute problems."8 These are the estimates of competent and responsible French and British spokesmen. Is it necessary to ask what the attitude of Asiatic peoples is?

III. SECURITY AND PROSPERITY Each of the policies outlined above is supported by its respective followers as the most effective means toward the national interest. Scientific inquiry would doubtless show numerous factors in a AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 565 nation's conception of its interest. For the sake of brevity we shall here consider only the two objectives which are most commonly advanced as goals of national policy, namely, (1) security and (2) prosperity. The term security is perhaps the most general and inclusive of the goals usually mentioned as a primary objective of national policy. Security, to any person, usually means the absence of a felt threat of deprivation of any of the conditions which he highly values. It follows that the notion of security probably includes "freedom"9 and most of the other values frequently specified as goals of national policy. Accordingly, it also often happens that he who has most to lose is oppressed with the greatest feeling of insecurity. For this and other reasons it is possible that American leaders, and through them the people of the United States, have developed definitely paranoid10 attitudes with respect to security as measured by objective standards and by the standards of other peoples.

While attitude on foreign policy is determined largely by leaders who are supposed to be in a position to judge these matters, an unwarranted tendency to hysteria on the part of the masses is evident. A nation in which millions of people can be frightened by a radio broadcast into accepting as authentic a wholly fanciful news broadcast about an invasion from Mars, betrays a state of nerves that must be considered pathological. Especially is this true if one considers that it was not principally the illiterate part of the population who were the chief victims of the panic, but rather definitely middle-class people with considerable "education."11 Or, consider the ease with which vast numbers of Americans have accepted the notion that we have, on two separate occasions in the last thirty-five years, been in imminent danger from invasion by Germany and by Japan. No logistics have ever shown that such events were within a range of probability requiring concern. Subsequent investigations have shown that such operations have, in fact, never been contemplated by the countries in question. Yet it is perhaps correct to say that a considerable public in the United States lives in more or less constant fear of such eventualities.

It is true that, when pressed, the propagators of this fear admit 566 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE that they have in mind rather a future development after our present enemies have consolidated extensive intermediate conquests. This is always on the assumption that enemy nations are motivated by insatiable desires for world conquest as an end in itself, instead of as a means to their own security. Even if such programs of conquest could be shown to have existed as enemy projects for the more or less remote future, they surely would undergo modification in the process of attainment. In any event, the only nation that has ever come into power of such proportions as actually to constitute a possible world conqueror is the United States and, even in its case, there is no reasonable probability that it could make good such a conquest. As for the alleged plans of Germany and Japan, and more recently of Russia, to conquer the world, even if such plans could be shown to have existed or to exist, there is every reason to believe that the same forces that have made nations like the United States and Britain greatly interested in promoting world peace would be likely also to overtake other nations. That is, when a nation has completed its own conquests and would be very happy if it could be guaranteed their permanent retention, it usually becomes greatly interested in promoting programs of world government to maintain the status quo, to prevent "aggression," and to establish permanent peace.

The impasse which an unreasonable or paranoid definition of national security may produce is illustrated currently in the case of the United States. According to current policy, our national security demands military bases around the world and elaborate military establishments off the shores or on the frontier of other nations. Perhaps no one will question the purely military advantage of such a program. However, its implications must be considered from the viewpoint of other nations. It is solemnly affirmed that these provisions are for defense only, and any person, party, or foreign nation that fails to take our word for this intent is roundly abused and is accused of aggressive designs upon us. Now I am personally satisfied that no considerable element in the population, and probably few important leaders in the United States, are consciously intent on aggression or the conquest of other nations. It is impossible to see, however, why foreign nations should take this AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 567 view of the matter and accept our word as an adequate assurance of our intent. The failure of some foreign nations to take our word at its face value in this respect is regarded with pained surprise.

The feeling seems to be that our pacific intentions are selfevident or that, in any event, our past record and present reputation should be sufficient guarantee of the purely defensive nature of our policies. Unfortunately, the historical record and the reputation support precisely the contrary thesis—a fact that may be regrettable but which must, nevertheless, be conceded by anyone not hopelessly in the toils of ethnocentric delusions. Professor Sibley recently summarized in briefest outline the record of the United States with respect to war and conquest, as follows: It is difficult to know just what the United Nations Charter means when it speaks of its constituent members as "peaceloving"; but if it means by the term a relative absence of war in the history and traditions of the nations involved, it is not speaking of the United States. First the long and costly American Revolution; then the undeclared war with France; then the war against Tripoli; the fatuous War of 1812; miscellaneous and costly Indian wars between 1800 and 1860, many of them arising because of treaties broken by the United States; the frankly imperialist war against Mexico; the long and bloody Civil War; an extensive series of wars against socalled "uncivilized" Indian tribes beginning shortly after the conclusion of the Civil War; the Spanish-American War; the cruel and costly suppression of the Filipino insurrection; undeclared wars in the Caribbean area during the administration of the "anti-imperialist" Woodrow Wilson; the First World War; undeclared war against Nicaragua during the twenties; and finally the enormously costly Second World War. That is the record—one year in four, conservatively estimated, a war year.12 For the same period of national existence there are perhaps few, if any, countries, except Great Britain, that could equal the record.

568 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE At the very least, foreign nations cannot help but note that twice within the last thirty-five years the United States has invaded both Europe and Asia with military expeditions that could not, except by the wildest stretch of the imagination, be termed defensive. The invasion of Russia in 1919 is not even known to many Americans. It is these objective facts, not our pious and perhaps sincere pretensions regarding them, that must weigh in the opinion of foreign countries. Nor does it help to contend that, in recent years, we have not kept, and do not intend permanently to retain, any of the territory conquered. The regimes we have protected, established, or bolstered in the invaded areas are, from the standpoint of our enemies, merely so many Quisling regimes openly supported financially and with military supplies for the purpose of strengthening our military, economic, and political position for whatever program we see fit to adopt. Possibly the point can best be summarized by asking what would be the attitude of the United States if Germany should have declared, in 1917 or in 1940, and Russia today should insist, that they need to occupy Cuba and make extensive military installations in Mexico purely as a defensive measure against the most powerful and dangerous military power the world has ever known?

At this point, in attempting to determine whether United States' policy in the two world wars and after has been in the national interest, it will be useful to consider the probable consequences of alternative policies. It is significant that doubts regarding American intervention in the two world wars tend to grow as time permits increasing perspective for the appraisal of its effects. The unwisdom of our participation in World War I and the relative tolerableness of the probable consequences of our nonparticipation are now considered everywhere as at least debatable, with a large body of expert and informed, as well as popular, opinion leaning in the direction that the whole undertaking was definitely contrary to the national interest. Even the possible domination of Europe, at least as a sphere of influence, by the Germany of 1914 is now regarded as highly tolerable compared with such developments as the Nazi regime and the second World War. As an inAMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 569 strument toward the unification of Europe, which is generally regarded as desirable, the possibility in question would seem greatly preferable to any development now in prospect. Any eventuality which would have resulted in the rationalization of the economy of Europe, avoidance of the war debts and reparations tangle, and other results which would almost certainly have softened or avoided the economic consequences of the first World War as they actually transpired, would certainly, to a great extent, have served the national interest of the United States as well as that of the world.

(See Section VIII, below.) Granting that is not possible to specify in detail all the consequences which the traditional policy of the United States would have involved, it is nevertheless significant to note the increasing consensus with the passing of time that neither the national interest of the United States nor the interest of the world was served by our policy in 1917. With respect to World War II, the Gallup poll showed the following results in 1946 and 1947: Do you think it was a mistake for the United States to enter World War II? Yes No No opinion 1946 (April) 15% 77% 8% 1947 (October) 24% 66% 10% It will be noticed that affirmative answers increased from 15 to 24 per cent in one and one-half years. For some reason the question has not, to my knowledge, been asked since 1947. There are those, of course, who contend that the people's view of these matters, under the influence of mass hysteria, are actually more sound, reliable, and in accordance with the facts than their appraisal of the same situation in periods between wars and in the perspective of years and decades of considered judgment when they have the relevant facts at hand. Thus it has been contended recently that it was the "revisionists' " appraisal of the first World War that was erroneous, that the war propaganda was true, and that in the future we must protect ourselves against revisionism.

570 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE Perhaps we are entering upon an era of permanent war during which the distortion of the facts, which we now regard with such horror in other lands, is about to become also our settled and permanent policy. In the meantime it is impossible to prevent "revisionism/' for it is merely the report and appraisal of events as seen in the light of fuller information, perspective, and undisputed consequences. Any discussion of alternate policies is, of course, faced with the difficulty that while the results of the policy adopted are known, the effects of those that were not adopted can only be surmised. This is a difficulty which all social appraisal must face, except within that limited domain where actual experimentation with different policies is possible. Still, in view of the results that have in fact ensued under the policy adopted in 1917 and in 1941, it is at least possible, within wide limits of probability, to appraise alternate policies. That is, it is possible to marshal logical evidence that will satisfy most men of the probability that an alternative policy would have been preferable, even conceding a wide margin of imponderables.

There can be no final determination of the legitimacy of a nation's definition of its own security. There is no absolute security and there is no certain method of appraising the degree of security that exists. This essay merely raises three questions which Americans need to ponder seriously in their quest for security: (1) What would be the situation if all nations should adopt our own view as to what their national security demands? (2) Has our security increased as a result of the last war and the policies of which it was the result? (3) Is our national security likely to be increased even under the most optimistic probable outcome of present policies? Next to the security argument for the new internationalism, the most important consideration urged is its alleged benefits to foreign trade. Hereby hangs one of the most amazing delusions to be found in the confused annals of economic and political discussion. The advantages of trade have been appreciated throughout all historic times and need neither explanation nor defense. A simple semantic confusion regarding the meaning of the word AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 571 trade lias, however, resulted in a delusion which is only the more mischievious and astonishing because of the extent of its diffusion among the very people who need to be, and might be expected to be, immune to it. Thus, millions of people, including economists and, of course, politicians and "statesmen," are unable to appreciate the crucially important difference between (1) exchanging commodities and services between nations and (2) the process by which one party sends commodities and services to the other and at the same time provides the purchaser with money with which to "pay for" the things received. As a result it is actually believed that "prosperity" is served by the second as well as by the first of these transactions. It is insisted that we must "get rid of seven billion dollars a year of our export surplus as "insurance against depression/' It is difficult to imagine a more colossal confusion of means and ends. "Full employment" would be just as certainly guaranteed by dumping the seven billion dollars' worth of goods into the ocean. We are not here concerned with the propriety or desirability of charity or loans from which the lender expects a return (economic or political) or which, in any case, may build up the bona fide purchasing power of the recipient. We are concerned only with the infatuation with economic processes and symbols to the point where it is actually believed that the national interest is served by exporting our national resources in return for I.O.U.'s worth only the paper on which they are written.

The self-sufficiency of different nations will obviously vary according to their location, resources, technology, etc., and these conditions are the logical ones which should, and usually do, determine the extent and type of a nation's international trade commitments. The position of the United States and her satellites in the Western Hemisphere in this respect is known to be very fortunate. The problem of strategic commodities is being increasingly met by new synthetic products or by stock-piling. In any event, a nation or an area which produces a surplus of food is always, in the present world, in a strategic position to dictate the conditions of her foreign trade. While particular business concerns may profit from the spurious 572 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE kind of "trade" mentioned above, nothing could be farther from the truth than the allegation that the nation as a whole is "dependent" on foreign markets for "full employment" and "prosperity." Our foreign trade is always less than 10 per cent of our total trade. The most we could lose would be all of it. Granting the temporary dislocations13 in the national economy from a sudden termination of this trade, even if every person who became unemployed or destitute were put on full relief to the extent of his customary income (because of the failure of the foreign market), still the taxpayer would be much less burdened than by providing the larger sums for the ''purchase" of our surplus product by foreign nations. Commodities or services sent abroad, when not repaid by other commodities or services, reduce by so much the natural resources of the nation. This injury to the national interest is multiplied manifold when the commodities in question are war materials which not only contribute nothing to building up the bona fide purchasing power of the recipients but presently fall into the hands of prospective enemy nations to be used against us, as in the case of China, for example. Our present "aid" to Europe is largely of this character. It is a policy based on thinly veiled bribery on our part (for recipient nations to stay nonCommunist), and blackmail on their part ("give us a billion or we will go Communist").

Incidentally, a curious dilemma suggests itself for those who are at once devoted to the "one-world" idea and equally convinced that no peaceful world is possible without foreign trade. Under the various "one-world" schemes there would, of course, be no foreign nations to trade with. To say that domestic trade will then fulfill the present necessities of foreign trade obviously will not do because it suggests that the United States, for example, might substitute trading between the states for its foreign trade which, as everyone is quick to note, is national autarchy and "isolationism," if not Fascism. Planetary autarchy would, I take it, be an even greater evil than national autarchy, for it must not be forgotten that the essential virtue of foreign trade seems to be that it must be foreign. Perhaps the apparent postponement of the "one world" is a blessing in disguise in that, until trade with the other planets AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 573 is developed, we might find ourselves with a perfectly good "one world" hopelessly crippled because of its lack of foreign trade. We shall return to this subject later.

So much for the contribution in theory and in practice of the new internationalism to security and economic prosperity. The true romantic internationalist, however, is more or less bored with these material details. After all, is not the whole program in the interest of freedom and the brotherhood of man, and what difference do other considerations make? There is no doubt but that the whole internationalist enthusiasm rests to a large extent on unbridled idealism of this sort, unchecked by realistic consideration of the program's actual effects. To this type of mind, the objectives are inherent in the program, and no one needs to be concerned too much with questions of the adaptation of the means to the end. Even the rude awakening which the course of events periodically thrusts on his notice fails greatly to shake the faith of the crusader in his obsession. The disastrous results are regarded not as the consequence of any fault of the policy, but merely as evidence that its application was "too little and too late." Whether the nation is physically capable of applying the policy in the required amount and at the appropriate time is one of these material details which seems irrelevant to the true believer.

IV. ECOLOGY AND FOREIGN POLICY In view of what has been suggested in the preceding sections regarding the history, theory, and characteristics of the new internationalism, the reader must be left to decide whether this policy has served or is likely to serve the national interest. It may be helpful in this connection for each person to ask himself to what extent, for example, the "Four Freedoms" have been advanced as a result of the recent war for these alleged objectives. (For a 574 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE summary, see pp. 506 ff. and 597 ff.) In the long run, the masses of people will judge. Furthermore, the considerable increments that are daily being added to the debit side of the ledger would render any account as of the time of this writing largely out of date by the time this is printed. Nor does space permit a discussion of the more fundamental reasons why the approach embodied in the new internationalism must always fail. Most briefly stated, it must fail because it ignores and violates natural laws which govern human society just as surely as the laws of physics and physiology govern their respective fields.

On this main point, there is, curiously, agreement among all factions. They all justify their policies in the name of principles and laws drawn from various sources—from the Bible, from the other Great Books, from direct revelation or "hunches," from astrology, and whatnot. The argument is over which principles should govern. Unfortunately, the social sciences have not yet advanced to a point where they are prepared to take a naturalistic view of their task. They proceed, instead, from radically different premises, namely, philosophical, theological, and legalistic lore which basically seems to assume that man's traditional systems of verbalizations about society are more fundamental guides than the actual empirical events that have transpired. In short, the reason for the miscarriage of the national and international programs discussed above is their violation of all principles of human ecology and sociology, which in fact govern the lives of nations, regions, and peoples.

This is not the place to discuss in detail what these principles are. It is conceded that the stage of development of the social sciences does not permit, at present, as definitive a statement of principles as could be desired. Nevertheless, a simple illustration may indicate the nature and the direction of these principles, as well as the reason why neglect of them must result in disaster. A prominent ecologist reports the following case: It so happened that in the Kaibab Forest in Arizona man had "altruistic regard" for the deer because he wished to do the killing of the deer himself. He therefore "saved" the deer AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 575 by eliminating the pumas. The result was that the deer increased in numbers, could not survive on the limited winter food supply, and died by the thousands. Consequently, there was a smaller population of deer than there would have been had man left the puma alone.14 Consider how one might reason about the above incident if one elected to adopt the frame of reference in which the current international situation is usually discussed. The pumas were unquestionably aggressive and immoral, and they were clearly planning for world conquest. They therefore deserved the fate visited upon them by the hunters for preying on the peaceloving deer.

The hunters of Arizona were very noble in their campaign to establish freedom from fear in the deer world. It is unnecessary further to labor the illustration. It will probably be agreed that neither the interests of the hunters nor those of the deer were served by the policy adopted. It is probable, also, that had the deer been consulted and had the consequences of the hunters' campaign on their behalf been made clear, they would have preferred to put up with the pumas, although they would have been roundly denounced as "appeasers" by their would-be saviours. It may be unfortunate, but it remains a fact, nevertheless, that there are principles of limits and balance operative in human society, based on location and distribution of resources as well as on the technological development and literacy of population, to which realistic, political, and economic programs must conform if they are to achieve their objectives. To ignore these principles, both in theory and in practice, and to launch instead on programs like the Four Freedoms "for all men everywhere in our time"

represents an ignorant or fraudulent disposition to secure under false pretenses a pathetic kind of support from the unfortunate of the earth. At present we apply a legalisticmoralistic method of analysis to these problems, which, when we act upon it, demonstrably aggravates, to an appalling degree, want, oppression, cruelty, and fear. It will promptly be asked if I am taking a fatalistic view of social events and if I am advocating the law of tooth and claw. In 576 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE answer it might be asked whether we have any more striking examples of the operation of the law of tooth and claw than those provided by the two world wars, both of them crusades carried forward in legalisticmoralistic terms, ostensibly to eliminate the law of tooth and claw. The question is what theory of human relations—local, national, and international—corresponds most nearly with the facts. Professor Emerson has said that, "When man upsets the balance of nature, it is often necessary for him to re-establish the balance,"15 and he has given illustrations of the operation of the principle in ecology. Are not the predicaments in which the United States found itself at the close of the two world wars examples of essentially this character? That is, the Young Plan, the Dawes Plan, and others were somewhat desperate and only partially successful efforts to restore a destroyed balance in a large and important ecological area, the imbalance of which, under current organization of communication and trade, also has serious repercussions on outlying areas. Indeed, the attempt on our part to establish an equilibrium continued, by various absurd means, until about 1937, by which time Germany had recovered sufficiently to seek to complete, by the traditional methods of local boundary disputes and wars, the readjustments of essentially the same imbalance that had resulted in the first World War. On both occasions we saw fit to attempt to prevent this readjustment by the traditional methods, although at the outbreak of World War II, twenty years of other methods, League of Nations and all, had failed.

In the absence of any scientific data as to what might constitute the economic and sociological balance in question, or at least in the absence of any disposition to consider such data as might exist, it was instead discovered, about 1937, that the problem was a moral rather than a scientific one. In the former framework, consisting mainly of a Messianic complex of ancient vintage, it became our duty to repeat our previous performances in World War I; this time, however, at much greater cost and with much more serious destruction of the balance which, in intervals between wars, we soberly seem to recognize as necessary and do our best to restore. The current designation of the program is called the AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 577 Marshall Plan, the Atlantic Pact, the NATO, and the various measures to be undertaken, including the rearming of Germany in order to restore the balance of a nonCommunist Europe as against a Communist Russia, which was before the war and still is, the state of affairs most favorable to our national interest. For as long as that balance existed, neither Russia nor Germany could venture far from its own frontiers in any program of expansion.

That we now recognize this fact is clearly indicated by our present frantic efforts to rearm Europe. As for the objectionable regimes in both countries, we were, in 1939, in an ideal position to encourage their mutual destruction through material support without permitting either to destroy the balance by conquering the other, which was probably out of the question anyway. Any realistic suggestion of this kind, however, causes the romantic idealists to cry out against "balance of power" as a selfevident immorality. The fact that they are at the same moment engaged in restoring precisely such a balance by every means at their disposal, including war, does not occur to this large and frequently sincere and idealistic, albeit schizoid, public. The phrase "balance of power" has become a stereotype to which they have become negatively conditioned emotionally to such a degree that they are unable to recognize that the very solutions they advocate in the direction of world organization, including the various world government schemes, are only more formally organized and controlled systems of balanced power, as are the various national governments existing today for that matter, especially in democracies. What the idealists should crusade against is not balance of power but imbalance. (See pp. 610-12, below.) And so our foreign policy, vitiated by its own internal schizoid contradictions, continues to upset the world and to defeat that stability, balance, and peacefulness which is the desire of the overwhelming majority of people everywhere. On the one hand is a small group influenced by natural scientific, rational considerations of what is possible and what the costs and the consequences will be. On the other hand is a more vocal group deriving their programs from revealed principles of justice and right received from higher authority than man's experience. Unfortunately, these 578 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE revealed principles are not considered as subject to validation by any such miserable criteria as mere practicability, relative peace, and prosperity. On the contrary, the accepted approach leads to territorial, demographic, and ecological settlements which create new nations for purely political reasons, although these new nations admittedly cannot survive without foreign subsidy.

One of the principal obsessions which a democratic people will have to get over, if they wish to make a transition to a scientifically oriented approach in human social policy, is the notion that fact and the validity of generalization about the human social order are determined by the noisiness of minorities, majority votes, and the opinion of radio commentators, journalists, preachers, lawyers, and novelists. To be quite specific, the idea will have to be faced that perhaps the views of Charles A. Beard and John Bassett Moore on the consequences of our foreign policy are worth more than the more congenial ideas of ten thousand radio commentators with the whole galaxy of Nobel Prize winners in chemistry, physics, journalism, and literature thrown in. I mention Beard and Moore because they do not even claim to be scientists, but merely sober students of the social scene who believe that under certain conditions it is possible to predict with some accuracy the social results of given foreign policies. Among illustrations might be mentioned John Maynard Keynes' work on the Economic Consequences of the Peace after the first World War.

Warren S. Thompson also showed in his book, Danger Spots in World Population published in 1929, the probable consequences of foreign imperialist policies in the Far East as these events actually transpired in the ensuing decade. More farreaching in its implications is, perhaps, the work of John Quincy Stewart and George K. Zipf on the distribution and equilibrium of population.16 I cite these instances in order to emphasize not only the need for scientific knowledge but the need to apply that knowledge in our approach to social problems. I am not here criticizing journalists and radio commentators for doing rather efficiently what they have been trained to do and what they are paid to do. I am rather commenting on a confusion in people's minds which causes them to look to such sources for guidance in public policy, and to be inAMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 579 fluenced by the labels which are applied to one or another program.

It is of no importance whether a proposed policy is labeled isolationist or internationalist. The important thing is what will be its consequences. The isolationist-internationalist dichotomy was obviously a fraud from the beginning and everyone who continues to use it in any literal sense is a party to the fraud.17 We have not been, and we are not, confronted with any such issue. The only question that has been before us for at least one hundred years is the kind and degree of international organization and participation that will be productive of certain desired results. That is a scientific question, not a question to be settled by Gallup polls, journalists, or third-rate politicians mistaking themselves for statesmen. In view of current differences of opinion, however, and in view of the present undeveloped state of the social sciences, it is more important that this essay should formulate certain questions rather sharply and not become involved in arguments about details. To all scientists, philosophers, formulators of public policy, and thoughtful people everywhere, I, therefore, suggest as a common starting point, these questions: (1) Is it not warranted to assume, in view of the known facts on which we agree, that there are discoverable demographic, ecological, and cultural principles to which successful social organization must, within limits, conform? (2) Are not these principles governing human relations fully as important as, for example, those known to govern the construction of bridges? (3) If so, had we not better make more adequate provision in the future for the reliable formulation and application of these principles on the ground that, without such knowledge and application, all the good will, exhortation, and international organization in the world will not avail?

In summary: We have taken the view that contemporary national problems may be regarded as the result of an inadequate degree of organic integration in the larger social units which today attempt to function as independent societies. That is to say, present societies are inadequately integrated and organized for the environment in which they have to live. One of the essentials for a society's successful functioning in the social world today is.an adequate 580 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE technique of delayed response, i.e., the capacity to take into consideration aspects of the environment relatively remote in time and space. The possession of such technique is precisely the difference between what is commonly regarded as ''high" and "low" forms of organic life, as well as the criterion of high and low intelligence. The organism which has no adequate mechanism of this sort and which, therefore, does not predict and take into account the relatively remote consequences of its behavior, will behave in an inconsistent, contradictory, and disastrous manner as regards its adjustment over longer periods of time. Thus we find in this country the same administration vigorously supporting neutrality legislation to avoid becoming involved in war one year, and the next year urging the repeal of such legislation in order to participate in war. Great Britain engages in a policy of noninterference with, if not actual encouragement of, German expansion into the Ruhr and elsewhere during a period of seven years, up to and including Munich, and then suddenly declares war on behalf of Poland, an action which even sober scholars who approve of the war regard as an utterly irrational, emotional outburst.18 In the short space of three or four years we change our postwar policy almost diametrically from the Morgenthau to the Marshall Plan. We destroy productive machinery in Germany at the very time that relief plans to replace such machinery are underway, and so forth. Any of these plans might have been relatively defensible if consistently pursued.

To pursue all of them simultaneously is not only frightfully costly in lives and in material wealth but such contradictory action imposes on the body politic all the strains and liabilities that afflict the schizophrenic individual. The criticism leveled in this essay at current policy rests, then, not on any opposition to international organization as such. On the contrary, it rather recognizes that an organization of people of the earth into groupings based on natural areas and principles of ecology and sociology would almost certainly call for a drastic reorganization of the nations, regions, and empires as now combined in national alliances of various sorts, and the establishment of flexible machinery for change in these relations according to AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 581 changing conditions. Sound principles of international organization would arrive at the boundaries of different units on more fundamental grounds than is the case at present. A current news item reports the present method as follows: "The 38th parallel was picked up by a tired meeting on a hot night in Potsdam/' said a State Department official last week. "It's a line that makes no political, geographical, economic, or military sense. But the Russians and Americans at the meeting simply couldn't agree on who should occupy what. Finally, a general suggested the 38th parallel. And that was that."19 The cavalier fashion in which "statesmen" revise boundaries, abolish existing nations, and establish new ones without the slightest regard for the organic conditions relevant to the situation, provides unlimited illustrative material of the same kind. The demarcations thus arrived at thereupon become sacred boundaries, the violation of which constitutes "aggression," an infringement on people's "freedom." The only sound basis for social organization of any kind is organic unity and relative self-sufficiency. In the end, a given population must in any case come to terms with the problem of living in a finite area on finite resources, whether such area embrace a region, a continent, or a planet. What is, at present, the optimum area, population, and necessary amount and variety of resources is a question for scientific determination. The answer will be determined largely by the existing state of knowledge of social and political as well as other kinds of technology. These basic considerations have never been given adequate attention under the legalisticmoralistic approach to international affairs.

They have been further obscured in recent times by the excited trumpetings of politicians, newspapermen, preachers, and ''social scientists" who have made the startling discovery that the airplane and the radio have radically reduced the time for travel and communication between distant places. This fact is supposed to prove, by some non sequitur that has never been explored, that organic relationships and groupings of the territories and peoples of the 582 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE earth have somehow been abolished. Yet this improvement in the technique of communication, important as it is, has in no way changed the fact that the boundaries of some countries adjoin each other as they always have. Some countries and areas constitute physical, cultural, economic, and religious units, the organic unity of which has been in no way modified by the increasing speed of travel. "Writers" are fascinated with the thought that New York is now no further, in time, from London than London was formerly from Paris. The implication seems to be that this change in the speed of travel has somehow abolished all pre-existing principles having to do with the importance of relative distances. The basic fact remains that the ratios of comparative time-distances between places remains exactly as they were, regardless of any increase in speed of travel.

The policy of continentalism recognized to a relatively high degree the basic principles of ecology in human affairs. The new internationalism violates these principles in the most flagrant manner by abolishing and creating new nations and political areas in the name of morality and justice, and with complete disregard for the presence or absence of natural organic foundations for such organization. Such political monstrosities can, of course, survive only as long as they are supported by outside military might and natural resources, chiefly of the United States of America. On the one hand we pretend to promote unity and larger administrative units; on the other hand we increase the fragments. By making the claims of any cultural group which happens to possess sufficient political bargaining power into socalled independent nations, we create the impression that they are, in fact, independent, whereas actually they are like so many patients in oxygen tents.

Another matter which is usually overlooked in the creation of world states on paper is the fact that, in the growth and development of social organization, certain natural processes and principles are involved just as they are in the growth of any individual organism. This suggestion has been seized upon by one anthropologist as representing a lapse into" a naive theory of evolution long since exploded. He refers to the theory that societies evolved from the hunting and fishing stage, through the pastoral and agricultural, to AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 583 the industrial stage. Having made the startling discovery that, for example, a society inhabiting an area where there are no fish or animals to hunt, needs not pass through the hunting and fishing stage, it is thereupon assumed, apparently, that there are no principles governing the evolution of social and political organization.

What needs to be shown, in order to refute theories of orderly growth and development in human society, is that nations sometimes spring into being without a prior development of clans, tribes, kinship groups, and families. In the same way, present-day internationalists seem to be under the impression that there is no reason why a world state cannot be established without regard for the prior development of its constituent parts. In short, the theory seems to be that, if we only project all the problems of human relations which we are unable to solve in a city, a state, or a nation upon a world stage, they will somehow solve themselves, or at least will be easier to solve. The current definition of the issue, therefore, in terms of internationalism versus isolation is a thoroughly erroneous and mischievous categorization designed to obscure the real problem and to prevent our coming to grips with it. It is not at all a question of nationalism versus internationalism but purely a question of the type and extent of international organization and the definition of the units to be organized. Cliches about the interdependence of nations overlook this fact. The Universal Postal Union, the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization are also forms of international organizations. Doctrinaire internationalism, on the other hand, is based on the assumption of a divinely ordained or philosophically deduced end to which the whole creation is destined to move. There is a fondness for the unwarranted projection of ''trends" which points out that since the size of political units has been growing for many centuries, therefore they must continue to grow to include at least the whole planet.

By the same reasoning, trees should reach the clouds, men should become giants, and elephants should become mountainous in size. Biologists find, on the contrary, that these matters are governed by principles of optimum limits and balance.20 Similar principles govern the life of human groups.

584 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE While much work remains to be done toward the mor^ perfect understanding of these principles, we at present ignore even the considerable knowledge on the subject that exists. Instead, we hold fondly to a theological-legalistic deduction that the ultimate destiny of mankind calls for the simple extension of the Federal system of the United States, including its Bill of Rights, business organization, and an unlimited number of irrelevant folkways to the whole world, preferably at once. The net result of the policy thus far, as John Bassett Moore once remarked, has been to insure that every boundary dispute will result in a world war. V. PRESSURES INFLUENCING POLICY If, as has been contended above, the foreign policy of the United States, pursued since 1917, has been contrary to the national interest, it is pertinent to inquire why this policy is still in force. We have already considered the economic arguments for that policy which have to do chiefly with the alleged necessity of foreign trade.

The argument for the necessity of foreign trade and the influence of business groups were reviewed in detail by Charles A. Beard in 19 34.21 His facts and his analysis of this subject have never been successfully challenged and further elaboration is therefore unnecessary. The influence of naval officers and politicians has also been reviewed at some length by Dr. Beard.22 These groups were, in turn, apparently influenced by what they considered the success of a similar policy in Great Britain. In considering other reasons for our pursuit of the present foreign policy, it must be remembered that foreign policy is notably the responsibility of a comparatively small number of people and that their background and outlook largely determine policy. In the first place these people are humanly subject to simple errors of judgment resulting in many cases from sheer idealism unchecked by AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 585 adequate knowledge of the underlying sociological processes of which politico-legal aspects are merely a superficial expression. Our political leadership and our foreign policy have always been dominated by legalistic rather than scientific viewpoints. Ethnocentric idealism, unfortunately, has been exploited frequently by seasoned diplomats and politicians at the expense of the idealist. More frequently the diplomats are themselves in the grip of chauvinism.

American public opinion on such matters appears to be especially romantic. While we have seen fit to restrain advertisers, stock salesmen, and patent medicine venders from making extravagant claims for their goods, we take a tolerant attitude toward almost any formulation of large-scale social remedies, provided they present themselves in the guise of idealism. Yet, unbridled social idealism, unbalanced by realistic criteria as to the possibilities and costs, is a social liability and, in effect, a serious type of fraud on the body politic. Quick and comprehensive programs for the abolition of fear, hunger, and the attainment of freedom of speech and freedom of worship "for all men everywhere in our time," is clearly of this order. Contemporary programs of this kind appear to have had, if not their origin, at least their principal support in the United States. Under the aura of this type of idealism it is easy to lose sight of the national interest.

The most articulate influence supporting the new internationalism in the name of idealism has been a small but extremely influential group of prominent citizens constituting the socalled "peace movement." The late Charles A. Beard characterized this movement as follows: With the opening of the twentieth century came the great flowering of projects for a peaceful world order. A second conference at The Hague in 1907, again on a call from the Tsar, though even more disappointing in results than the first, again put the idea of world peace into newspapers everywhere. Aided by powerful recruits, once neglected groups of "impractical dreamers" found themselves swept up into high places. Added force was given to the movement in 1910 when Andrew Carnegie donated $10,000,000 to establish an 586 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE institution for the promotion of international peace. With the endowment were associated some of the most impressive names in American public life: for example, Elihu Root, George W. Perkins, Joseph H. Choate, Cleveland H. Dodge, John Sharp Williams, Nicholas Murray Butler, and Andrew D. White.

Sinews of war were now available for the war against war, and high sanction was given to propaganda for the pacific settlement of international disputes. Great conferences were held annually; local societies sprang up all over the country; college presidents, clergymen, professors, teachers, club women, and community leaders by the hundreds were drawn into the sweep of the agitation. Voluntary workers were now supplemented by paid workers. The meagre treasuries of the old societies were enriched by subventions, as Mr. Carnegie's magnificent gesture encouraged other men of wealth to make substantial donations. Wide publicity was sought and won. A meeting presided over by Elihu Root was bound to receive a large spread in the press. An address by Nicholas Murray Butler could command columns in the metropolitan papers. A rub-a-dub agitation once carried on in holes-in-walls became a national sensation which the most scornful politicians, even Theodore Roosevelt, could scarcely ignore.23 At the present time this influential factor in our foreign policy is represented chiefly by the various world government organizations mentioned above (pp. 561 ff.). They have not been noticeably deterred in their agitation by the brilliant analysis of their program by N. A. Pelcovitz24 or even by the warning of Warren Austin,25 who, after pointing out the impossibilities in the proposals of the world government advocates, makes the following statement: 'The defeatist attitude of the world government advocates toward the United Nations can be as obstructive as the defeatism of the isolationists." The socalled isolationists will, I trust, be duly thankful for being thus suddenly elevated by the distinguished Mr. Austin to the company of the aristocracy of the new internationalism.

As has been pointed out above, the influence of these groups in AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 587 support of the present foreign policy is out of all proportion to their numbers (see p. 563). Their skillful manipulation of the symbols of international idealism has operated to confuse a very large public which is thoroughly and justifiably frightened at the prospect of another war, and who have been misled to believe that the program agitated by the world-government organizations represents a way of avoiding the disaster. This is a perfect example of what unbridled idealism, unchecked by facts and possibilities, can produce in the way of frustration, disappointment, and misfortune. It is interesting, also, that Ambassador Austin, who presumably will not be accused of being either isolationist or opposed to world peace, should be the one to point out to the world-government advocates that their program is incompatible with the facts as they exist. In short, the fact that a proposed program is intended to achieve certain ends is not sufficient to justify the adoption of that program. If a policy aimed to achieve world peace and the national interest can be shown to be impossible in operation, it must be repudiated on that count alone, even if it could be shown that in theory and under other conditions it might achieve the millennium. There is no argument about the desirability of world peace or of an organization to achieve that end. The argument is about practical organization in the present world and the fact that the policy in question has so far achieved precisely the opposite of its avowed end.

Finally, among the influences that have been responsible for the conspicuous departure from our traditional foreign policy since 1917, a prominent place must be accorded to the brilliant statesmanship and diplomacy of Great Britain. This is no new discovery and certainly not a startling one in circles at all informed. The influence brought to bear, and the machinations of W. H. Page to get us into the first World War, are well known. The greater part of that story, with reference to the second World War, is denied us as yet through the withholding of certain official documents. In the meantime, a few straws in the wind are indicative of the richness of the full story which awaits some future historian. As has been mentioned above, the foreign policy of a country, even under democratic government, is likely to be determined 588 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE largely by a comparatively small group of men. An analysis of the personal backgrounds, education, and general outlook of the personnel of the State Department during the past fifty years would, from this point of view, be extremely illuminating. Such an analysis of personnel during the Roosevelt administration would be especially revealing. Even Franklin D. Roosevelt, who will hardly be accused of being an Anglophobe, was apparently irritated occasionally by the fact that his subordinates were already so imbued by the spirit of the "one world" that they forgot for whom they were supposed to be working.

Elliot Roosevelt reports as follows on the second Cairo conference : "You know/' Father was saying, "any number of times the men in the State Department have tried to conceal messages to me, delay them, hold them up somehow, just because some of those career diplomats aren't in accord with what they know I think. They should be working for Winston. As a matter of fact, a lot of the time, they are. Stop to think of 'em: any number of 'em are convinced that the way for America to conduct its foreign policy is to find out what the British are doing and then copy that. It isn't a question of whether they're Democrats or Republicans. . . ." "I was told," Father said, "six years ago, to clean out that State Department. It's like the British Foreign Office. They have a man there, his title is Permanent Under-Secretary. He's Permanent Under-Secretary if the Government is Tory, or if it's Labor, or if it's Liberal. Makes no difference. There he is: Permanent. That's our State Department."26 It must be emphasized that this is not a report from the Chicago Tribune. It is Franklin D. Roosevelt speaking, as reported by his son. It is regrettable that Mr. Roosevelt's perspicacity on this subject did not extend to the recognition of the fact that, at the very time he was speaking, his State Department was harboring Russian spies, and that he had one of them with him in the capacity of a trusted adviser. Also, he did nothing to remedy the situation of AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 589 which he complained. His negotiations with Churchill, the LendLease program, the base-destroyer deal, convoying military supplies, etc., were of a character that might well confuse his subordinates as to whom they—and their chief—were working for. Nor is the confusion confined to our State Department, according to the following news item: ''In London, the Colonial Office launched a 'know the Empire' campaign, explained that 3 % of Britons believe that the United States is still a British colony."27 In view of the events of the last thirty years, the error is understandable. The fact that the figure is only 3 per cent is further evidence of British genius for fine technical and academic distinctions in matters political. The per cent of the population in the United States who are under the same impression must be much larger. It was quite common before and during the second World War for high government officials to declare that our national existence was dependent on the survival of Britain in its traditional position —an amazing claim in view of the actual facts. A continuance of this delusion, also, in view of the impending fate of the British Empire, could have highly disastrous consequences to our national interest. For it appears that our present foreign policy contemplates nothing less than underwriting the bankrupt and tottering remains of that empire.

Professor Beard's attempt to trace the origin of the LendLease policy constitutes another revealing detail. Congress itself was unable to unravel this mystery until Henry Morgenthau finally published, in Colliers (October 18, 1947), an extract from a letter from Churchill to Roosevelt dated December 7, 1940, which contained the original proposal.28 Under the circumstances it is not surprising if quite a few citizens, both in the British Empire and in the United States, are in doubt as to the boundaries of the empire. In the meantime, the Oxford Union Debating Society passes a resolution lamenting "United States domination of the democratic world."29 The report continues: "The members cheered and stamped when philosopher C. E. M. Joad said that 'Britain is tied to the wheels of the American chariot—a chariot leading to Hell/ " The indignant professor's appraisal of the situation is, perhaps, 590 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE correct, chiefly as regards the destination of the chariot. He is a bit confused as to the position of his country in the picture. A realistic examination of the facts would reveal, I think, that far from being tied to the chariot's wheel, Britain is comfortably on board with both feet and, while not actually holding the reins, at least advises the driver with such compelling skill as to determine the main course. That course is designed primarily to keep the remnants of a defunct empire alive by artificial respiration. Whatever else may be said for the project, the national interest of the United States is definitely not the main consequence. In short, if we accept the learned professor's figure of speech, I should suggest that those who are allegedly tied to the chariot wheels are, paradoxically, very definitely taking the ostensible drivers of the chariot for a ride.

The natives of southeast Asia, it appears, also do not agree with Professor Joad's view, as seen from the cloisters of Oxford. The following exchange between War Minister Bo Ne Win of Burma and a British "observer" is revealing: "We don't want a mechanized army," said Bo Ne Win. "What Burma needs is plenty of soldiers with a gun and a handful of rice, who can walk anywhere." "That's all very well for tracking down dacoits (bandits) and to keep internal order," said the Briton. "But how would that kind of army stand up to invasion?" "You mean from China?" said Bo Ne Win without prompting. "We couldn't hold out long against the Chinese Communists. But if they invaded, you British would be right back to fight for us." "Not so fast," said the Briton. "We aren't prepared to come." "Well then," said Bo Ne Win, "you're still clever enough to make the Americans come."30 That the faith of the Burmese in Britain's ability to enlist our services on behalf of the British Empire is not without foundation is indicated by the following description of a recent British diploAMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 591 matic demarche in Washington. Again, it should be noted that the account is not from the Chicago Tribune but from a long and laudatory article in Time, which is not, I believe, suspected of Anglophobia: This is how he [the Ambassador] goes about it. Not long ago in his paneled office at the British Embassy on Washington's broad Massachusetts Avenue, Sir Oliver scanned the top-priority, top-secret cable. Hurriedly typed on the familiar "Incoming" pink sheet, it had just been rushed to his desk from the code machines in the cipher room above. It was an urgent call from the London Foreign Office to speed a new Anglo-U.S. attack on Britain's desperate dollar shortage.

Sir Oliver summoned his key aides: his Minister, his Treasury expert, his second-and third-level liaison officers with ECA and all U.S. fiscal agencies concerned. In less than 60 minutes, the task force had mapped its program: the Ambassador had phoned Dean Acheson's office for the earliest possible appointment, each aide had scheduled his meeting with his opposite U.S. number and knew precisely what he was going to tell him. Early next morning, the Embassy swung into action with the gusto and "blanket coverage" of a tabloid covering the hottest gangland killing. Through the Embassy gates streamed the line of official cars, led by the Ambassador's gleaming Rolls-Royce, each carrying a British diplomat to charge a key citadel of U.S. officialdom. By noontime, every U.S. official from Acheson down who had any concern with the problem had been fully briefed. U.S. decisions could be taken before dinnertime. A third-level State Department official reflected admiringly: "When I was called into Secretary Acheson's office to consult on the matter, I had already had an hour to look over the documents. I was ready with some answers. Naturally, I lean over backwards to do something for an Embassy like that."

The Embassy is doing things like that every day. Its twelve code clerks this year have handled 13,100 cable messages; six 592 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE switchboard operators daily handle more than 2,600 calls; it takes 700 typewriters to keep letters and dispatches rolling (last year they chewed up more than five million sheets of paper); three photostat machines grind out more than 10,000 pages of documents a month; the Embassy's 90-odd cars, buses, trucks, and station wagons fill a four-story garage; there are 72 messengers alone on the staff of 1,012 making up Washington's biggest diplomatic delegation.31 To these statistics must be added a network of consuls general, consuls, vice-consuls and "information" services throughout the United States, plus the hordes of lecturers, Rhodes Scholars, and professors amiably assuring us that as long as Britain endures we have nothing to fear. Here, truly, is a fifth column (perfectly legal and considerate of the amenities, unlike the crude and subversive methods of Russia, for example) which in elaborateness, efficiency, and results has never before been equaled.

This analysis of the situation implies, of course, no criticism of British policy. It is rather an expression of admiration and envy for skill and singleness of purpose in policy devoted to the national interest. In an era of nationalism any other course would, in fact, be indefensible. At the same time, any consideration of national interest and the pressures that determine foreign policy which neglected to take into consideration the influences of the type that have been reviewed above, would surely be incomplete. The full story can be recounted only by some future historian to whom at least the official records will be available. The personal relations and understandings among statesmen can, of course, never be fully revealed.

AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 593 VI. DEEDS AND CONSEQUENCES We turn in conclusion to a brief appraisal of the actual course of events of the past decade that represents the fruits of current foreign policy in operation. It was not before 1924 that a reasonably complete review of the conditions leading to our participation in World War I became generally available. The "revised" view of Germany's guilt, of Allied secret treaties and many other matters, caused considerable shock and disillusionment to those who had swallowed the war propaganda without salt. One learned Harvard professor of history, in fact, declared that while he could find nothing wrong with the facts as assembled by various scholars to the effect that Germany was not alone responsible for the war, the subject was too complex "to make any review of printed testimony a safe basis for changing an opinion forged by the fires of war."

Many others are taking the same cavalier attitude toward the meticulous and devastating analysis which Charles A. Beard assembled in his last book.32 For the Roosevelt myth, cultivated and inculcated by subsidized propaganda over a period of fifteen years, seems to many people to be a higher reality than the cold record of historical fact. Fortunately, a review of the facts can no longer be dismissed as merely a personal attack because all the leading personalities concerned, with one exception, are already physically or politically dead. The significance of the era, however, from the standpoint of immediate and future foreign policy, and, indeed, from the point of view of the whole future of constitutional government, makes Beard's book the most important study that has yet appeared about the political aspects of our participation in the war. The volume under consideration is a sequel to the same author's American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932-1940. Together, the two books 594 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE constitute a monumental work that every American citizen needs to ponder. Both books will receive increasing attention as the debacle of our foreign policy continues to unfold.

Many of the facts and documents here assembled by the expert hand of Dr. Beard are already more or less familiar, in fragmentary form at least. Publishers and editors of scholarly as well as of literary journals have managed hitherto to suppress or ignore critical examination of the subject on the ground of the dubious qualifications of the authors in historiography and on account of the polemic and ex parte character of the presentation.33 They will not be able to ignore Dr. Beard's work on these grounds, as his demonstrated competence for his task will probably be admitted even by his worst enemies. The journalists, poets, and playwrights, not to mention the bandwagon professors and politicians, who have in the last decade enjoyed a field day of rhetoric and malfeasance in statecraft, are now called to account in a manner that can no longer be ignored. To be sure, the record is not yet complete, as Dr. Beard points out. He quotes his correspondence with both the State Department and with the Director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park regarding the "unavailability" of the President's papers, including both the official minutes of his press conferences and his correspondence with Churchill before the latter became Prime Minister. It seems quite certain that the documents at present withheld, both from Dr. Beard and from the Pearl Harbor investigating committees, will not improve the picture of deception and folly already available.

The subtitle, "A Study in Appearances and Realities," gives a general idea of the plan of Dr. Beard's book. Part I deals with Appearances. Parts II and III deal, in careful detail, and with copious citations of the source for every fact, with the Realities as garnered from a variety of sources, but mainly from the various official reports on the Pearl Harbor disaster. Dr. Beard begins with the ironclad commitments of the Democratic party in the campaign of 1940 against foreign wars, except in case of attack, and especially with Roosevelt's most emphatic declarations on that subject. The italicized words turned out to be the joker in the case, for when the time came, since America's frontier was declared to be the Rhine, AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 595 Europe was, of course, no longer "foreign," and, as the record clearly shows, most of 1941 was devoted to provoking, in the most flagrant manner, the "attack" which, with Jesuitic casuistry, was considered by Roosevelt as an abrogation of his pledges. For sheer deceit, I know of nothing in our history comparable to the maneuvers of the administration up to December 7, 1941, to produce an attack while protesting solemnly to the public regarding the efforts to maintain peace. It would be interesting to see how this record would fare even before the Nuremberg tribunal, not to mention an impartial court. The reluctance, for obvious reasons, of both Germany and Japan to attack us even under the most extreme provocation became, in fact, a major problem for the administration. As the Secretary of War soberly reports in his diary covering the meeting of the President and his "War Cabinet" on November 25, 1941: "The question was how we should maneuver them [Japan] into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves. It was a difficult proposition.;T The State Department's belligerent note of November 26 to Japan was correctly calculated to achieve the desired end. Japan replied on December 7, 1941, with a final note and the Pearl Harbor attack.34 Space forbids even the briefest summary of the overwhelming and amazing details incidental to the result mentioned. Whether one approves or disapproves of the facts set forth, perhaps no one will fail to admire Dr. Beard's scholarly competence in his craft in assembling and sifting the relevant data. Chapter III recounts the amazing details of our undertaking to patrol the Atlantic sea lanes and finally to convoy war material for the British in flagrant violation of what at least used to be international law. Here, also (Chapters IV and XV) are recounted the commitments of the Atlantic Conference. Other "Secret War Decisions and Plans'" are reviewed in Chapter XIV and, finally, the mysterious commitment to go to War under certain conditions on behalf of the British and Dutch interests in Asia is described in Chapter XVII. Many other interesting facts and details of American foreign policy during the years when peace was declared to be our great objective are here recounted. It is sober and highly relevant reading for any American citizen.

596 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE As a source book regarding our entry into World War II, Beard's volume is doubtless destined to become a standard reference. The real climax of the work comes in the final chapter, the Epilogue, in which Dr. Beard devotes himself to the various interpretations that are possible of the essentially indisputable facts he has assembled. For, after all, what attitude one takes toward the facts reviewed depends on one's taste in such matters. To those who have a low opinion of constitutional government and common morality in public affairs, the record as reviewed is, of course, in no way derogatory but, on the contrary, a record of strong and enlightened leadership. Accordingly, Dr. Beard here considers the case of those defenders of the Roosevelt administration who, while admitting the essential facts as reviewed, contend that the action in question was a noble and foresighted program in the national interest. This argument runs approximately as follows: . . . The great end which President Roosevelt discerned and chose justified the means which he employed. As a farsighted statesman he early discovered that unless the United States entered the war raging in Europe, Hitler would be victorious; and the United States, facing alone this monstrous totalitarian power, would become a victim of its merciless ideology and its despotic militarism. According to this interpretation, it was a question of democracy, the Four Freedoms, the noble principles of the Atlantic Charter, and world security on the one side; of totalitarianism, consummate despotism, and military subjugation on the other side. Since the American people were so smug in their conceit, so ignorant of foreign affairs, and so isolationist in sentiment that they could not themselves see the reality of this terrible threat to their own safety and a necessity to meet it by a resort to war, President Roosevelt had to dissemble in order to be reflected in 1940 as against Wendell Willkie, then the antiwar candidate of the Republicans on an antiwar platform. Furthermore, as members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, continued throughout the year, until December 7, their vigorous opposition to involvement in war, President RooseAMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 597 velt, in conducting foreign affairs, had to maintain the appearance of a defensive policy until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. But the means which President Roosevelt actually employed in the conduct of foreign affairs were justified by the great end which he, with peculiar clairvoyance, had early discerned and chosen for himself and his country.35 Accepting provisionally the doctrine that the end justifies the means, and Sumner Welles' dictum that "the wisdom of any foreign policy can generally be determined only by its results," Dr.

Beard proceeds with devastating thoroughness to appraise the Roosevelt foreign policy by the criteria proposed by the supporters of that policy: When did the end that justified the means actually come? With the surrender of Italy, Germany, and Japan? If not, when did it come or is it to come—in what span of time, short or long? By whom and according to what criteria is the question of time to be answered beyond all reasonable doubt? If the time for the achievement of the end be postponed to some point in the indefinite future, the confirmation of the thesis must likewise be postponed indefinitely. In that case an effort to confirm it now becomes a matter of calculating probabilities, ponderable and imponderable. If, however, the results of the war—foreign and domestic—thus far known be taken into the reckoning, a question both logical and historical may be asked: Does it now appear probable that President Roosevelt did in fact so clearly discern the end—the consequences to flow from his actions in 1941—that he was in truth justified in his choice of means?

With regard to consequences in foreign affairs, the noble principles of the Four Freedoms and the Atlantic Charter were, for practical purposes, discarded in the settlements which accompanied the progress, and followed the conclusion, of the war. To the validity of this statement the treatment of peoples in Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Rumania, Yugoslavia, China, Indo-China, Indonesia, Italy, Germany, 598 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE and other places of the earth bears witness. More significant still for the fortunes of the American Republic, out of the war came the triumph of another totalitarian regime no less despotic and ruthless than Hitler's system, namely, Russia, possessing more than twice the population of prewar Germany, endowed with immense natural resources, astride Europe and Asia, employing bands of Quislings as terroristic in methods as any Hitler ever assembled, and insistently effectuating a political and economic ideology equally inimical to the democracy, liberties, and institutions of the United States —Russia, one of the most ruthless Leviathans in the long history of military empires.

Since, as a consequence of the war called "necessary" to overthrow Hitler's despotism, another despotism was raised to a higher pitch of power, how can it be argued conclusively with reference to inescapable facts that the "end" justified the means employed to involve the United States in that war? If the very idea of neutrality with regard to Hitler was shameful in 1941, what is to be said of commitments made in the name of peace and international amity at Teheran and Yalta, where the avowed and endorsed principles of the Atlantic Charter for world affairs were shattered—in commitments which were subsequently misrepresented by President Roosevelt, publicly and privately?36 This was the "result" in the spring of 1947. The reader can supply his own amplification of the picture since that time, for the details are on the front page of every newspaper. Among the items that may be pondered in this connection are the following: (1) More than 135,000 casualties in the Korean war to date (June, 1953). (2) Federal expenditures at the annual rate of about $70,000,000,000. From April, 1945, to January, 1953, President Truman spent approximately twice as much as all the other Presidents of the United States combined down to 1940. (3) The administrations of all Presidents from George Washington through Franklin D. Roosevelt, including two World Wars, the Civil War, the War of 1812, collected $248,000,000,000 of taxes. President Truman's AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 599 administration in a few years has levied $12,000,000,000 more, the fantastic total of $260,000,000,000. (4) For the fiscal year beginning July, 1953, Truman's budget estimate was $78,600,000,000, of which 73 per cent, or over $57,000,000,000 was for "national security." The defense expenditure proposed would amount to $380 for every man, woman, and child in the United States versus only $8.00 in 1938. These are indeed some of the results by which our foreign policy should be measured.

Finally, Dr. Beard interprets his data in terms of their significance to the American constitutional system. In twelve brief paragraphs (pp. 582-84) are set forth the consequences to our constitutional system "if the precedent[s] set by President Roosevelt in conducting foreign affairs ... are to stand unimpeached and be accepted henceforth as valid in law and morals" (p. 582). These twelve points deserve the attention of every American. If he approves of them he is, of course, at liberty to abandon the system under which he has been governed hitherto and to relinquish to the executive most of the powers of the legislature. Before he makes this choice, however, he should soberly face the issue as set forth by Beard so that whatever is done may be done deliberately instead oi, by subterfuge under some declared emergency or other emotional guise. As a brief summary of the conclusions that are warranted from this thorough study by a man of undisputed qualifications, the twelve points should be quoted in full. If the record as it stands is to govern in the future, then: The President of the United States in a campaign for reelection may publicly promise the people to keep the country out of war and, after victory at the polls, may set out secretly on a course designed or practically certain to bring war upon the country.

He may, to secure legislation in furtherance of his secret designs, misrepresent to Congress and the people both its purport and the policy he intends to pursue under its terms if and when such legislation is enacted. He may, by employing legal casuists, secretly frame and, using the powers and patronage of his office, obtain from 600 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE Congress a law conferring upon him in elusive language authority which Congress has no constitutional power to delegate to him. He may, after securing such legislation, publicly announce that he will pursue, as previously professed, a policy contrary to war and yet at the same time secretly prepare plans for waging an undeclared "shooting war" that are in flat contradiction to his public professions. He may hold secret conferences with the Premier of a foreign government and publicly declare that no new commitments have been made when, in fact, he has committed the United States to occupying, by the use of American armed forces, the territory of a third country and joining the Premier in parallel threats to another government.

He may make a secret agreement with a foreign power far more fateful in consequences to the United States than any alliance ever incorporated in a treaty to be submitted to the Senate for approval. He may demand, and Congress may pliantly confer upon him, the power to designate at his discretion foreign governments as enemies of the United States and to commit hostile acts against them, at his pleasure, in violation of national statutes and the principles of international law hitherto accepted and insisted upon by the United States. He may publicly represent to Congress and the people that acts of war have been committed against the United States, when in reality the said acts were secretly invited and even initiated by the armed forces of the United States under his secret direction. He may, on the mere ground that Congress has made provisions for national defense, secretly determine any form of military and naval strategy and order the armed forces to engage in any acts of war which he deems appropriate to achieve the ends which he personally chooses.

He may, by employing his own subordinates as broadcasters and entering into secret relations with private agencies of propaganda, stir up a popular demand for some drastic AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 6oi action on his part which is not authorized by law, and then take that action, thus substituting the sanction of an unofficial plebiscite for the sanction of the Constitution and the laws enacted under it. He may, after publicly announcing one foreign policy, secretly pursue the opposite and so conduct foreign and military affairs as to maneuver a designated foreign power into firing the first shot in an attack upon the United States and thus avoid the necessity of calling upon Congress in advance to exercise its constitutional power to deliberate upon a declaration of war. He may, as a crowning act in the arrogation of authority to himself, without the consent of the Senate, make a commitment to the head of a foreign government which binds the United States to "police the world," at least for a given time, that is, in the eyes of other governments and peoples policed, to dominate the world; and the American people are thereby in honor boun/ l:o provide the military, naval, and economic forces necessary to pursue with no assurance of success, this exacting business.37 Let the citizen read and ponder this analysis of our departure during the last fifteen years from the policies that made us a great nation. Let him then survey the consequences thus far, both on our own national interest and that of the rest of the world, of these departures. He will then be in a position to decide whether he wishes to continue in foreign affairs the kind of policies reviewed in Beard's book, or return, as far as possible, to the tested methods of constitutional government.

The citizen also needs to decide whether he believes men like Charles Beard are more competent analysts and advisers on foreign policy than are the whole ghastly roster of newspaper columnists, radio commentators, and politicians who have guided it during the past decade. That the Executive will play an increasingly prominent role in public administration, is perhaps inevitable. But is there any reason why competent specialists should not be called upon to lay before Congress and the people the different possible 602 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE alternate courses of action, with an estimate of the probable cost and the consequences of each? Let each candidate for office publicly declare how he stands on each of Dr. Beard's twelve points relating to the powers and privileges of the Executive. The issue may then safely be left to the decision of the people. In bringing thus to the attention of the American people the crossroads at which they stand, Dr. Beard rendered one more outstanding service in his long, distinguished, and courageous career. It is refreshing, in an age of sycophancy and subservience, of fawning and fear among scholars, to find one who ruthlessly hews to the line, heedless of the periodic calumny of lesser men, and who is also indisposed to veer his course for the cheap applause of the multitude. A man of lesser mould would, perhaps, long ago have wearied of the apparently thankless task and said, with Milton, I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs By the known rules of ancient liberty, When straight a barbarous noise entfJans me Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs; But this is got by casting pearl to hogs, That bawl for freedom m their senseless mood, And still revolt when truth would set them free.

VII. WHITEWASHING THE WRECKAGE Beard's book, together with George Morgenstern's PearJ Harbor, deserves a place with Machiavelli's The Prince as concrete case studies of the principles developed in that classic. Morgenstern's book does in a detailed manner for the Pearl Harbor incident what Beard's volume does for the broader series of events leading up to AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 603 the war. As examples of the complete misapprehension of the facts which it is possible to foist upon the public by officials who care to do so, these books are notable contributions. They establish beyond question the falseness of the notions current in this country regarding the events leading up to the second World War. Here is set forth, in meticulously documented and incontrovertible detail, the process by which a small group of politicians circumvented all legal and constitutional provisions in bringing a great nation into a war to participation in which the people and the Congress were admittedly overwhelmingly opposed. Here, also, are brought together the full details of how the President, in recognition of the state of public opinion, loudly declared his own opposition to war at the very time that he was actively engaged in secret participation in the war and in arranging for formal and public participation in it.88 For bland fraudulence on the part of high public officials there is perhaps nothing comparable to it in our history.

The Morgenstem volume, which appeared first, was for the most part ignored by the press and the agencies of mass communication; at most it was grudgingly and unfavorably reviewed. A single illustration will suffice. A Princeton professor, reviewing Morgenstern's book in the American Political Science Review (October, 1947), said, 'This may be true, but most of us will want something more substantial than Mr. Morgenstern's blind anger before believing it." Yet the author of this remark had earlier quite soberly pointed out that 80 per cent of Morgenstern's text consists of quotations from official documents, and the reviewer admits that Morgenstem has "adhered closely" to this evidence in drawing his conclusions. There may be differences of opinion as to what is the proper emotion that the facts under review should evoke. But that hardly alters the facts themselves. It usually takes some time after a war for even students of public affairs to revise their judgment, which has been influenced by war hysteria and propaganda. This recovery period is likely to be long and difficult in proportion as the exposure to the propaganda has been long and vigorous. Since the Roosevelt regime lasted longer than any other single administration in our history and hence exerted an unprecedented influence upon the media of mass com604 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE munication, it was to be expected that Revisionism following the second World War would encounter more persistent and serious resistance than was the case following the first World War.89 Even in the latter case, however, it must be remembered that it was not until 1924, or six years after the Armistice, that serious challenges to the official war explanations began to appear in any number.

It was to be expected that the apologists for the Roosevelt regime would feel especially compelled to challenge, in some way, the devastating indictment of Beard's book. In view of the facts and the reputation of the author, the refutation of his indictment was naturally not an easy assignment and one which most historians of repute would hesitate to undertake. For one thing, most of them were on record at one time or another with expressions of high regard and respect for Dr. Beard's scholarship. Also, his work had been received over a long period of time with almost universal respect and acclaim. In the second place, most scholars had their own reservations about the Roosevelt administration and especially regarding the foreign policy since 1937. Accordingly, the task of attempting to whitewash the record, as exhibited and analyzed by Beard and Morgenstern, fell to a comparatively unknown young New Dealer, Basil Rauch,40 who had been brought up in the days of the Roosevelt bureaucracy and who made up in enthusiasm for the task what he lacked as qualifications in other ways.

The best brief characterization of Rauch's book, both as regards the undertaking and the alleged results, is perhaps contained in one of the publisher's claims on the jacket: "Here is a spellbinding narrative on two levels: First, an expose of the distortions of the Root and Beard faction; second, a survey of the Roosevelt record which restores F.D.R. as a middleof-the-road president—neither radical nor reactionary—and an unparalleled architect oi world peace" [italics mine]. In view of the events of the past ten years, down to and including the present, Rauch must be congratulated at the outset on being able to discern among the rubble and the strife of Europe and Asia notable architecture of world peace. Even more remarkable is his capacity to see such architecture in Roosevelt's moves from Munich to Pearl Harbor. Since the chief challenge to this view is to be found in Beard's volume, which we have reviewed AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 605 above, Rauch undertakes the modest task of refuting Beard's position and, incidentally, of teaching that distinguished scholar the elements of historical research. It is not surprising that he falls rather pathetically short in his undertaking.

Rauch concedes that "Beard has Roosevelt's advocacy of collective security and United States participation in the second World War as his chief facts in evidence that the isolationists were right. It is the thesis of this book that his fallacy is the ancient one, post hoc, ergo propter hoc, and that he has maintained it by distorting and excising the record."41 Now, if the fine phrase "advocacy of collective security" means anything, it must mean the concrete actions, indisputably performed during the period in question, including speeches, directives, and diplomatic correspondence. Yet Rauch declares it to be his intention to show that there was no important connection between these actions and our entry into the war. How this is to be reconciled with another major contention of Roosevelt's admirers, namely, that he saved civilization by means of our participation in the war, is one of these logical difficulties to which our author is not sensitive. In any event, he promptly forgets his announced thesis and devotes himself for some five hundred pages to a very different subject, namely, that Roosevelt did not intend his actions to have the consequences which they did, in fact, have.

As a further example of the general flavor of this "dispassionate" analysis (the estimate is by Professor Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.), a single instance from the first chapter must suffice. We there learn that the actual policy and propaganda of "isolationists" (of the type of Charles Beard and the group organized under General Wood) was "America First and Last—Other Nations and Peoples Nowhere."42 Rauch is indignant that this group should have adopted the name America First, thus implying that the Roosevelt brand of "internationalists" do not place their own country first. He makes no note of the parallel fact that these same "internationalists," by branding all opponents as "isolationists," fraudulently implied that the latter did not believe in any relations whatever with other countries, a state of affairs which, of course, has neither existed nor been advocated by any informed group in 606 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE modern times. The author admits the absurdity of the term "isolationist" and correctly refers43 to the elaborate international, economic, cultural, and political relations that have existed throughout this country's history. Beard was, of course, thoroughly familiar with these facts and approved of them long before Rauch was born.

Rauch also admits in various places throughout his book that representatives of the America First Committee merely advocated different international measures from those of the Roosevelt administration. It is obviously this latter offense which is unpardonable and equivalent to "Other Nations and Peoples Nowhere." With the ground thus cleared, the author proceeds with his task. The now familiar sources are resurveyed and the "right" interpretation is supplied. The record is, of course, far from complete as yet, thus leaving historians of diverse viewpoints the opportunity to speculate and surmise according to their prejudices, an opportunity of which Rauch takes full advantage. He simply does not feel, for example, that Stimson's statement about "how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot" means what it says. After the author's display of logic in his first chapter, one is not surprised at what follows throughout the book. To give only one example, Rauch apparently feels that he has scored a tremendous refutation of Beard's interpretation of Hull's note to the Japanese, dated November 26, as of "pertinence" in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Rauch appears to be under the impression that the fact that the Japanese expedition to Pearl Harbor had been planned and set in motion before the date of Hull's note destroys the significance of the latter as a consideration influencing the Japanese action. It would appear to require no great logistic sophistication to appreciate the obvious fact that a military expedition of such proportions is not organized and set in motion to reach a destination thousands of miles away in the short time between November 26 and December 7. Yet Rauch feels he has made an important discovery from the archives of what most men would know from common sense. "It is now possible," says Rauch ostentatiously, "to state certain facts of the situation which were not available to Beard."44 The fact is that the full story of Japanese purposes and plans, including the orders to Japanese commanders, was carried in AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 6oj Associated Press dispatches from Tokyo in October, 1945, and was published in full by Morgenstern in 1947.45 We know that Beard was familiar with Morgenstern's manuscript and, most likely, with the original press notices. What Rauch neglects to stress, and this happens to be the only relevant point, is that the Japanese commander of the Pearl Harbor expedition had specific instructions that if the Japanese-American negotiations then underway (of which Hull's note was certainly an important part) should reach an amicable settlement prior to December 7, all the forces of the combined fleet were to return to their bases. What is more, this order was further confirmed as late as December 2. In short, Beard's reference to the Hull note as one of "pertinence" to the Pearl Harbor attack is surely a conservative statement and is in no way refuted by Rauch's "discovery" that Japan, like other nations, prepares military expeditions in the event that pending disputes are not settled by other means. Indeed, Rauch's own report from his newly discovered Japanese archives makes it quite clear that the attack was to be carried out only in the event that negotiations failed. That the note of November 26 was a vital part in these negotiations is simply an indisputable fact, and Beard's position on the matter has been in no way shaken. Yet Rauch is evidently under the impression that the Japanese preparation of the expedition before the receipt of the note proves that the contents of the note were of no significance in explaining the action which followed, which is obviously false in view of the instructions admittedly in the hands of the Japanese commanders. All of these facts were known to Rauch. He simply fails to grasp their significance and uses them, instead, in an absurd and illogical attempt to refute Beard.

In view of the elementary confusions of this kind which characterize the book, it is hardly warranted to devote further space to the enumeration of additional individual cases. Yet, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., finds the book "entirely devastating in its exposure of the omissions and distortions of the Charles A. Beard school of historical revisionism." If the work of Rauch and Schlesinger on the subject is a fair sample, Beard and his "school" would appear to have very little to fear. Some of Schlesinger's own tributes to his hero are, in fact, among 608 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE the most damaging statements that have been made. In an article ostensibly defending Mr. Roosevelt, Schlesinger says: "Roosevelt was always a pragmatist, playing by ear, as he liked to say, his improvisations controlled, not by logical analysis nor by an explicit moral code so much as by a consistency of emotion and instinct/'46 The characterization is, unfortunately, probably correct. This is, in my opinion, a more devastating criticism than any of those which Schlesinger seeks to refute. For the responsible leader of a great country to fail to be guided in his policies and decisions by the most expert judgment and logical analysis available, as well as by an explicit moral code and the experience and insight of people incomparably better qualified than himself in international politics, constitutes the most serious criticism possible.

Entirely aside from personalities, a President who elects to "play it by ear" is somewhat in the position of an airplane pilot with a hundred and fifty million people on board who prefers to ignore weather charts and instrument board and to rely on his emotions and instincts. It can hardly be contended that there are in international affairs no lessons of experience or guides of a logical character. Professor Schlesinger seems to reach a high point as a "detractor" when he explained that Roosevelt was actually under the impression that unconditional surrender meant "magnanimity to a helpless enemy." Was he also under the impression that the Morgenthau Plan was magnanimous? I suspect Mr. Roosevelt would be greatly disturbed by the type of defense that is being offered on his behalf by Messrs. Schlesinger and Rauch. There are a great many questions having to do with our entry into World War II which historians will doubtless continue to argue about for some centuries. The records will be further squeezed to show the "motives," the "intentions," the "ideals"

that animated the actors. Very frequently the most that can result from these debates is a change in one's estimate of the probability that a historical character was merely a fool rather than a scoundrel. It may well be that a merciful posterity will be inclined, on the whole, to take the former rather than the latter view regarding the principals in events from Munich to Pearl Harbor, and regarding the conditions of the peace.

AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 609 Aside from all these arguments about the meaning of words and records, the fact will remain that some certain action indubitably was taken which can be shown to have been importantly related to the events that ensued. The desirability of these results will be the primary concern and the basis on which men will judge the characters of history—whether the actions taken were, in fact, in the national or world interest or not. As the years pass, the consequences will continue to multiply. In the larger perspective of history it will be these consequences, not the alleged motives, malice, or idealism of historical characters, which will determine men's estimate of the wisdom of the course pursued. In view of the impossibility of reconciling the policy followed since 1937 with the national interest, the Roosevelt apologists are more and more inclined to retreat to that ancient refuge in such cases, namely, a transcendent international morality which supersedes the national interest and established constitutional methods.

Thus Rauch grudgingly admits that the war with Japan could have been avoided47 but finds that it would have been "immoral" to do so and that "the great majority of the American people long since had given up indifference to immorality in international relations."48 He does not tell us by what authority he projects his own moral judgment of the events in question on the American people, about 80 per cent of whom indicated at the time that they were opposed to the war, however immoral that appears to Mr. Rauch. We can do no better in conclusion than to repeat the remarks of Hans Morgenthau on the relative defensibility in foreign policy of moral principles, as proclaimed by self-appointed spokesmen, versus national interest for both ourselves and other nations, as understood by the people and verified by the course of events: Lacking in that intellectual discipline and political selfrestraint which are the beneficial by-products of the power calculations of a foreign policy based upon national interest, the policy of moral principles chooses the whole world as its object to transform in the image of its own conception of morality. The fanaticism of the moral crusader enters into unholy wedlock with these potentially unlimited power 6lO PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE drives which are latent in all men. Inevitably, then, a foreign policy which starts out as a crusade for universal liberty and democracy will end in a war to conquer the world. If it succeeds, it will build a world empire upon the radioactive ruins of civilization, among which liberty and democracy may survive, at best, as words. If it fails, it will carry to destruction not only the moral values for the sake of which it had been undertaken, but also the nation pursuing such a course.49 VIII. CONCLUSION To the reader who is weary of details and personalities and who lacks time, equipment, and interest to evaluate what may appear to be largely partisan and academic controversy, it may be of interest to conclude with the considered judgment of a person who presumably has himself been one of the architects of the policy in question and who appears to be singularly free from rancor toward the personalities and the regime under criticism. George F. Kennan was, until 1950, counselor of the State Department and director of its Policy Planning Staff. He served the State Department as a career diplomat in various capacities for almost twentyfive years, "the most learned of our officials, the most experienced of our scholars/' On the basis of this background, and in a spirit truly with malice toward none and with charity for all, what is Mr. Kennan's conclusion on the subject of American foreign policy and the national interest? We shall limit ourselves to three quotations: I would like first [says Mr. Kennan] to say a word about the total result of these two world wars in Europe. These wars were fought at the price of some tens of millions of lives, of untold physical destruction, of the destruction of the balance of forces on the Continent—at the price of rendering AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 6ll western Europe dangerously, perhaps fatefully, vulnerable to Soviet power. Both wars were fought, really, with a view to changing Germany: to correcting her behavior, to making the Germans something different from what they were. Yet, today, if one were offered the chance of having back again the Germany of 1913—a Germany run by conservative but relatively moderate people, no Nazis and no Communists, a vigorous Germany, united and unoccupied, full of energy and confidence, able to play a part again in the balancing-off of Russian power in Europe—well, there would be objections to it from many quarters, and it wouldn't make everybody happy; but in many ways it wouldn't sound so bad, in comparison with our problems of today. Now, think what this means. When you tally up the total score of two wars, in terms oi their ostensible objective, you End that if there has

been any gain at all, it is pretty hard to discern [Italics mine]. Does this not mean something is terribly wrong here? Can it really be that all this bloodshed and sacrifice was just the price of sheer survival for the Western democracies in the 20th Century? If we were to accept that conclusion, things would look pretty black; for we would have to ask ourselves: Where does all this end? If this was the price of survival in the first half of the 20th Century, what is survival going to cost us in the second half? But plainly this immense output of effort and sacrifice should have brought us something more than just survival. And then, we can only assume, some great miscalculations must have been made somewhere? But where? Were they ours? Were they our Allies?50 Perhaps all will agree that both the world wars, as world wars, would have been impossible without the participation of the United States. That is, the wars that began in 1914 and in 1939 would have been, without our participation, European (and perhaps Asiatic) wars of essentially the balance-of-power kind that have occurred periodically throughout the centuries. American interests and American opinion have been greatly concerned for at 6l2 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE least a century with these traditional wars. Provocation and temptation to participate have been present in each case. But until approximately the turn of the last century, American policy has been to abstain from participation on the realistic ground that, much as we should desire to see one outcome rather than another, our participation would jeopardize the national and the world's interest, as well as fail to achieve our objective, tar more than could possibly result from our nonparticipation.

The validity of this judgment, all personal questions and motives aside, has been the principal subject of the present essay. Our conclusion is the same as that of Mr. Kennan, quoted above. Nor is there any doubt as to what has been the attitude of the American people on this question throughout our history. Both the polls and the public protestations of the candidates for the Presidency in 1940 indicate an overwhelming sentiment against our participation. Wilson's election in 1916 under the slogan "He kept us out of war/' as well as all other evidence, indicates a similar public opinion at the time of World War I. In both cases the foreign policy resulting in our participation was conducted with flagrant disregard of public sentiment and opinion. Speaking of the need for some parliamentary system "in which there is opportunity to consult the people on the great issues and at the crucial moments and to adjust governmental responsibilities in accordance with the people's decision," Mr. Kennan says: I must say that if I had any doubts before as to whether it is this that our country requires, those doubts have been pretty well resolved in my mind by the events of the past weeks and months. I find it hard to see how we can live up to our responsibilities as a great power unless we are able to resolve in a manner better than we have done recently, the great challenges to the soundness of government policy and to the claim of an administration to speak for the mass of people in foreign affairs [italics mine] .51 Such reform may be achieved by constitutional changes, by requiring consultation of Congress by the Executive in the manner AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 613 intended by the Constitution, or by official institutionalization of the technique of scientific public-opinion polling. More sensitive machinery than that in use at present for permitting public opinion to assert its influence in the formulation and execution of foreign policy is clearly indicated, unless we are prepared to abandon our pretenses at democratic government. The people of the United States are not yet prepared, I think, to embrace the "Fiihrer principle" and to concede that, in foreign affairs at least, "the Fiihrer knows best/' although the doctrine has been vigorously propagated during the last two decades by the very factions ostensibly engaged in fighting it elsewhere. Indeed, the alacrity with which the states ratified the constitutional amendment limiting the President's tenure to two terms is not without significance as an indication that the American people do not believe themselves dependent upon the special insights of charismatic leaders for the conduct of their affairs, and that, in retrospect, they gladly would have been protected against Roosevelt's third and fourth terms.

Nor can it be contended that the conclusions here set forth are the results merely of the hindsight, in the light of which all men's errors can be made to appear ludicrous or culpable. It cannot be emphasized too strongly that the disastrous consequences of the foreign policy reviewed in this chapter were clearly foretold by our most mature and most competent scholars as well as by statesmen, diplomats, and military men of highest repute. Many of them have been cited in the course of this essay and the full roster may easily be compiled from the public records of the years immediately preceding each of the World Wars. They and their views were simply shouted down by a rabble of poets, playwrights, journalists, social workers, preachers, professors, and political adventurers who, whatever their qualifications in their respective fields, were certainly not entitled to influence in high councils of foreign policy. Mr. Kennan has paid his respects to them in the following words: . . . But I also suspect that what purports to be public opinion in most countries that consider themselves to have popular government is often not really the consensus of the feel614 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE ings of the mass of the people at all but rather the expression of the interests of special highly vocal minorities—politicians, commentators, and publicity-seekers of all sorts; people who live by their ability to draw attention to themselves and die, like fish out of water, if they are compelled to remain silent.

These people take refuge in the pat and chauvinistic slogans because they are incapable of understanding any others, because these slogans are safer from the standpoint of shortterm gain, because the truth is sometimes a poor competitor in the market place of ideas—complicated, unsatisfying, full of dilemmas, always vulnerable to misinterpretation and abuse. . . . And so the chauvinists of all times and places go their appointed way: plucking the easy fruits, reaping the little triumphs of the day at the expense of someone else tomorrow, deluging in noise and filth anyone who gets in their way, dancing their reckless dance on the prospects for human progress, drawing the shadow of a great doubt over the validity of democratic institutions.52 Finally, there will be those who will contend that while nonparticipation in the two world wars was the only defensible attitude from the standpoint of the national interest, the interests of humanity, for which they are the self-appointed spokesmen, demand a contrary policy, namely, that decided upon by the small group of officials and agitators who chose the policy adopted in 1917 and in 1941. Let them reconsider their alleged concern for the interests of humanity as against the national interest, in the light of the two world wars as reviewed by Mr. Kennan above. Let them further consider, against the background of a devastated Europe and a bleeding and starving Asia, the competent and considered further judgment of Mr. Kennan: If we are to get away from it [the basic faults in our approach to international affairs] ... it will mean we will have the modesty to admit that our national interest is all that we are really capable of knowing and understanding— and the courage to recognize that if our own purposes and AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 615 undertakings here at home are decent ones, unsullied by arrogance or hostility toward other people or delusions of superiority, then the pursuit of our national interest can never fail to be conducive to a better world. This concept is less ambitious and less inviting in its immediate prospects than those to which we have so often inclined, and less pleasing to our image of ourselves. To many it may seem to smack of cynicism and reaction. I can not share these doubts. Whatever is realistic in concept, and founded in an endeavor to see both ourselves and others as we really are, cannot be illiberal.53 EXHIBIT I The following memorandum is submitted to reveal the almost incredible extent of our military commitments throughout the world. It will stagger even most of those who are already alarmed at the trend.

THE MILITARY COMMITMENTS OF THE TRUMAN ADMINISTRATION Within four years the Truman Administration directly committed the United States to the defense of fortyone countries. With a total population of 155 million people, the United States is bound by treaty or by military occupation to defend a foreign population of over 560 millions. American armed forces must not only plan for the defense of the United States and its territorial possessions, but also for the defense of more than 45 per cent of the inhabited area of the world outside of the United States. The United States has also been involved indirectly, through military missions, military bases or the extension of military aid in the defense of nine additional countries with 6l6 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE a population of over 170 million. Military technicians are scattered throughout the world in twenty-four countries including five nations not as yet included in formal treaty arrangements: Iran, Indonesia, Indochina, Thailand, and Liberia.

Outside of NATO and Pacific treaty states, nine nations, including one Communist nation, Yugoslavia, are receiving military supplies from the United States. Over a hundred American air bases are scattered throughout the world in ten different sovereign nations or their colonies including two nations not otherwise covered, Saudi Arabia and Libya. In total, some fifty nations or 730 million people, almost one-third of the world's total population, look to the United States for their military defense. No nation in the history of the world, not even Britain at the height of its empire, ever entered upon such farreaching commitments. As a result, the 1952 disposition of the U.S. armed forces involved twothirds or more of the combat division strength of the U. S. Army in overseas combat or occupation. Military garrisons were also stationed in ten additional nations in connection with air base operations.

U.S. MILITARY COMMITMENTS AND DISPERSAL OF FORCES, 1952 TREATY COMMITMENTS 20 nations Rio Pact, signed September 2, 1947. Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, El Salvador, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 617 11 nations N.A.T.O., signed April 4, 1949. Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, and Portugal. 2 nations Greek-Turkey Protocol, signed October 1, 1951. 4 nations Pacific Area Security Pacts, signed August, September, and October, 1951. Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Philippines. OCCUPATION AND NAVAL PATROL 4 nations Austria, Formosa, Germany, and Korea. MILITARY MISSIONS 30 nations Latin America: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, El Salvador, and Venezuela. Europe: Africa: Near East: Far East: AIR BASES Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, and Portugal. Liberia. Iran and Turkey. Formosa, Indonesia, Indochina, Korea, and Thailand. 10 nations Azores (Portugal), Greenland (Denmark), Iceland, Great Britain, France, Germany, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Philippines, and Japan.

6l8 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE MILITARY ASSISTANCE (Outside NATO) 8 nations Burma, Formosa, Indochina, Iran, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, and Yugoslavia. EXHIBIT II INITIAL FINANCIAL COSTS OF INTERVENTIONIST TACTICS TO THE UNITED STATES Below are two groups of figures. One gives the amount spent by each of our thirty-two presidents from George Washington to the end of Franklin D. Roosevelt's second administration. The other gives the amount spent by President Truman in peacetime, from his inauguration to September 30, 1949. SPENT BY 32 PRESIDENTS FROM WASHINGTON TO ROOSEVELT'S SECOND TERM, INCLUSIVE Washington $ 34,088,486 Adams 34,262,668 Jefferson 72,424,289 Madison 176,473,964 Monroe 147,237,899 Adams 65,427,017 Jackson 152,969,968 Van Buren 122,325,242 Harrison & Tyler 108,904,678 Polk 173,477,220 Taylor & Fillmore 179,631,529 Pierce 255,154,244 Buchanan 272,933,490 Lincoln 3,252,380,410 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 619 Johnson Grant Hayes Garfield & Arthur . . .

Cleveland Harrison Cleveland McKinley T. Roosevelt .... Taft Wilson Harding Coolidge Hoover Roosevelt (8 years) . 1,578,557,645 . . 2,253,386,743 . . 1,032,268,037 . . 1,027,742,757 . . 1,077,629,089 . . 1,412,315,899 • • M41>674>174 . . 2,093,918,514 • • 4>655>45°>5°5 . . 2,799,211,854 . . 46,938,260,143 • • 6,667,235,429 18,585,549,115 . . 15,490,476,636 . . 67,518,746,001 $179,620,113,645 SPENT BY PRESIDENT TRUMAN FROM FISCAL YEAR 1946 TO SEPTEMBER 30, 1949 Truman $191,081,394,191 32 presidents in 156 years spent . $179,620,113,645" 1 president in less than five years spent . . $191,081,394,191 In order to get any true picture of the relative cost of our interventionist foreign policy since 1940, one would have to set down the approximately $350,000,000,000 that Roosevelt spent on the second World War, and then add what Truman spent from September, 1949, to January, 1953. If this were done, it would be evident that Roosevelt and Truman each spent twice as much as all the previous presidential administrations combined, which operated for 150 years according to the principles of continentalism and neutrality. The figures would be even more impressive if one eliminated from the pre-1940 expenditures the approximately $47,000,000,000 spent by the first interventionist President, Woodrow Wilson.

620 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE FOOTNOTES-CHAPTER 1. For an elaboration of this subject see my paper, "Human Values—A Research Program," Research Studies of the State College of Washington (Pullman, Wash., September, 1950). 2. For a comprehensive discussion of the subject, see two volumes by C. A. Beard, undertaken on a grant of the Carnegie Corporation through the Social Science Research Council: The Idea of National Interest; and The Open Dooi at Home. (Both volumes published by The Macmillan Company, 1934). For a briefer summary by the same author, see A Foreign Policy for America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940). See also G. F. Kennan, American Diplomacy, 19001950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951). 3. See, for example, the radio address of Franklin D. Roosevelt on December 9, 1941, in which he refers to "the illusion that we can ever again isolate ourselves from the rest of humanity" [italics supplied].

For a detailed review of the events leading up to the collapse of the New Deal in 1937 and its effect on our foreign policy, see F. R. San born, Design for War; A Study of Secret Power Politics, 19371941 (New York: DevinAdair Company, 1951), Chap. III. 4. According to the Fortune polls of March, 1947, and February, 1948. 5. K. Svalastoga, "Observations, Measurements, and Correlations Relative to Internationalism" (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Washington Library, 1950). 6. According to a statement given to the press in May, 1945, by his daughter, Mrs. Eleanor Wilson McAdoo (New York World-Telegram, May 8, 1945). "It was right that the United States did not join the League of Nations. . . . I've been thinking about this for a long time. If we had joined the League when I asked for it, it would have been a great personal victory. But it would not have worked, because deep down in their hearts the American people didn't really believe in it." Cited in C. A. Beard, American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932-1940 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1946), p. 19.

7. Jean-Marie Domenach, American Perspective, Winter, 1950, p. 21. 8. George Catlin, ibid., p.25. 9. Freedom usually means any state of affairs which least contravenes the habits of the speaker. That is, we are free when we feel free. We feel free when our habitual inclinations are not interfered with. It follows, of course, that people can be free under a large variety of conditions AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 621 depending on their habits and thek culture. This is usually overlooked in crusades to export our particular kind of freedom to peoples who would prefer their own way of life. 10. For example, it is reported that the late Secretary Forrestal suffered from delusions that Russia had already invaded the United States (A. D. Mebane, "The Strategy of World War III/' American Perspective, Summer, 1950, p. 268). Consider also the case of General J. L. DeWitt, in command on the Pacific Coast in 1942, who recommended the incarceration in concentration camps of all persons "of Japanese descent" because, up to that time, there had been no evidence of sabotage by persons of Japanese descent either in Hawaii or on the West Coast. This absence of sabotage was cited by General DeWitt as a "disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken." Final Report: Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1942 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1943).

11. Hadley Cantril, Hazel Gaudet, and Herta Hertzog, The Invasion from Mars; a Study in the Psychology of Panic; with the complete script of the Orson Welles broadcast (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1940). 12. Mulford Q. Sibley, American Perspective, Winter, 1950, p. 12. 13. Only temporary dislocations of highly doubtful severity need be granted. For a full review of the subject see C. A. Beard, The Open Door at Home (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1934). 14. A. E. Emerson, "The Biological Basis of Social Cooperation," Illinois Academy oi Science Transactions, XXXIX (1946), pp. 9-18. 15. Ibid., p. 13. 16. John Quincy Stewart, "Empirical Mathematical Rules Concerning the Distribution and Equilibrium of Population," The Geographical Review, XXXII (1947), 461-85; George K. Zipf, Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort (Cambridge, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Press, 1949).

17. See G. A. Lundberg, "Some Views on Semantics in International Relations," American Perspective, June, 1948, pp. 127-32. 18. See N. J. Spykman, America's Strategy in World Politics (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc., 1942), p. 115. See also Kennan, op. cit., pp. 62, 65. 19. Time, July 3, 1950, p. 15. Courtesy of Time; copyright Time, Inc., 1950. See also Kennan, op. cit., pp. 51-52, 98-99, 140-41. 20. For elaboration of this subject, see my paper, "Human Social Problems as a Type of Disequilibrium in a Biological Integration," American Sociological Review, December, 1948. 21. Charles A. Beard, The Open Door at Home. For the benefit of the Marxians, it may be noted that the Wall Street Journal is bitterly opposed to the current foreign policy. 22. A Foreign Policy for America, pp. 68-74. 23. Ibid., pp. 90-92. 24. N. A. Pelcovitz, "World Government Now?" Harper's Magazine, November, 1946, pp. 396-403.

25. Warren Austin, "A Warning on World Government," Harper's 622 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE Magazine, May, 1949, pp. 93-97. See also Kennan, op. dr., pp. 95103; and Section VIII of this chapter. 26. Elliott Roosevelt, As He Saw It (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, Inc., 1946), pp. 204-5. 27. Time, December 13, 1948. 28. C. A. Beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1948), pp. 24-30. 29. "Personal and Otherwise," Harper's Magazine, August, 1950, p. 6. 30. Time, November 7, 1949. Courtesy of Time; copyright Time, Inc., 1949. 31. Jbid., September 26, 1949. Courtesy of Time; copyright Time, Inc., 1949. 32. President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941. Parts of this review appeared in The Progressive, May, 1948. See also C. C. Tansill, Back Door to War (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952); and Kennan, op. cit. 33. This was the treatment accorded the able analysis by George Morgenstern in his Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War (New York: DevinAdair Company, 1947). See above, Chap. I.

34. See below (pp. 606-7) f°r an attempt to explain away this part of the record by an apologist for the Roosevelt administration. 35. President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941, p. 574. 36. Ibid., pp. 575-77. Ibid., pp. 582-84. Four months berore the Pearl Harbor attack, Roosevelt told Churchill, "I may never declare war; I may make war. If I were to ask Congress to declare war they might argue about it for three months." Winston Churchill, The Grand Alliance (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1950), p. 593. Cf. Basil Rauch's contemptuous reference to "the ancient Constitutional arrangements by which Congress and the Executive are encouraged to quarrel their way to a policy, Roosevelt from Munich to Pearl Harbor, (New York: Creative Age Press, 1950), p. 225. Winston Churchill is more reserved in his comments upon these matters. "I do not intend in these pages to pronounce judgment upon this tremendous episode in American history," The Grand Alliance, p. 602.

39. For a full account of the attempt to suppress Revisionism regarding the second World War, see Harry Elmer Barnes's The Struggle Against the Historical Blackout, Ninth edition, 1952. Pamphlet available from the author. See also above, Chap. 1. 40. Roosevelt from Munich to Pearl Harbor. See p. 45. Subsequently, there has appeared the more elegant defense by W. L. Langer and S. E Gleason, The Challenge of Isolation, 1937-1940 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952), which has been considered in Chapter 1 of the present volume. For more detail on the Langer-Gleason book, see H. E. Barnes, The Court Historians versus Revisionism (second edi tion; privately printed, 1952). 41. Ibid., p. 12. 42. Ibid., p. 7. 3 37. 38.

AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN NATIONAL INTEREST 623 43. Ibid., p. 10. 44. Ibid., p. 468. 45. Ibid., pp. 19-20. 46. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., "Roosevelt and His Detractors/' Harper's Magazine, June, 1950, pp. 62-68. 47. Roosevelt from Munich to Pearl Harbor, p. 453. 48. Ibid., p. 454. 49. Hans J. Morgenthau, "National Interest and Moral Principles in Foreign Policy," The American Scholar, Spring, 1949, p. 212. Cf. Kennan, op. cit., p. 95: ". . . I see the most serious fault of our past policy formulation to lie in something that I might call the legalisticmoralistic approach to international problems." ". . . . There might be [!] a state, or perhaps more than one state, which all the rest of the world community together could not successfully coerce into following a line of action to which it was violently averse. And if this is true, where are we? It seems to me that we are right back in the realm of the forgotten art of diplomacy from which we have spent 50 years trying to escape" (p. 100. The exclamation point is mine).

50. American Diplomacy, 19001950, pp. 55-56. 51. Ibid., pp. 94-95; see also Sanborn, op. cit., pp. 546-47. 52. Kennan, op. cit., pp. 61-62. 53. Ibid., pp. 102-3.

NH»At p - M••-: p HAW AH TON ISIANO ?:; vy • .© World ••••• mR* «A.ii (A '*($' JK PUtRTO WCO 1 NICA|r S K '5> " VENHUttA"; *$ URUCUAYin ,: • *•• tHfl1 I ii ABAI8A IO SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS by HARRY EMVII.R BARNES I charge that the articulate publicists of our country, by their semihysterical woids in print and speech in which they champion extremes of diplomatic and military policy, are driving us rapidly into a war of unlimited and unattainable objectives which will bring on a gigantic catastrophe of ruin and revolution at home and abroad. . . . By articulate publicists I mean those speakers and writers ranging horn editors, novelists, magazine writers, columnists, dramatists, radio writers, lecturers, college professors, and educators, to senators and other elected officials, cabinet members, political leaders and presidents. When what they write and talk about becomes a united theme of agreement, action follows as certainly as butter follows the churning of sour cream. . . .