Evening star., 1940-05-21

Charles G. Ross. military estab-
lishment was assailed as a lingo.
He was heading this country
straight for war. He had been
taken in by the insidious propa-
ganda of the admirals and generals.
He was playing the game of the
munitions makers, the merchants
Of death" He was proposing to
take bread out of the mouths Of
babies on relief to swell the profits
of the Du Points. The money spent
for one useless battleship would
build so many hundred miles Of
roads, endow so many libraries, put
up so many schools.
Along with this went the talk that
1t wasn't Germany's assaults on
American rights that put us into
the last war, but British propaganda
and the Vaccinations of the in
ternational bankers Woodrow Will
son was dreamy idealist-or worse
who was gulled by these evil in.
fluences. We were Nation of sapS.
What we had thought was high.
minded adventure was rotten at the
core. We never had been in any
danger and We never should be.
The Atlantic Ocean took care Of
that Let Europe stew in its own
juice. We were done with it. Eng
land and France were as bad as
Germany. Anyway, we were safe.
All we needed was the skeleton Of
an Army and little Navy for coast
defense.
Nye's Thesis Accepted.
Senator Nye Of North Dakota had
looked into the sordid matter of the
last war. He knew why we had
got into it. Nye was the man to
60 by, not Wilson or Newton D.
Baker. Nye was the man to listen
to now, not the -mongering
Roosevelt who wanted to take us
into the war on the side of the
allies.
The war, in any case, was a phony
war. Didn't Senator Borah say so?
The sentiment represented by this
general line of talk was widespread
and influential. When the National
Industrial Recovery Act was passed
in 1888, carrying So, 300 900 900 for a
great pump-priming effort, and
Roosevelt allocated part of this fund
to the Navy, there were howls of
disapproval. The President was ac-
cused then, as he has frequently
been accused, of favoring the Navy
because Of his personal fondness for
ships and the sea. The criticism took
no account of the fact that he was
simply repairing, in some small part,
the arrears in naval strength which
had been accumulating since 1921.
How great are these arrears-how
dangerous in the light of what is
happening abroad-may be gath
cred from the fact that next month
we shall launch our first battleship
since 1921.
The opposition to the Presidents
direct action in behalf of the Navy
was kept from being more effective
by the fact of Mr.. Roosevelt's great
popularity and the desperate emer-
gency into which the country had
been plunged by the depression.
Those were the tense days in which
almost any act or proposal of the
Executive was approved.
Different Tune Now.
The point is that a very great
part OF public opinion has been run
ming strongly against military or
naval preparedness. The services
have been on short rations. Military
and naval men have had to talk
low. The whole public attitude
toward national defense has been
colored by the preachings of the
Gerald Nyes.
It's a different tune we are hear
Ing now and hearing not only from
the longtime advocates of pre-
paredness, but from many who only
little while ago were flguratively
showing the soldier of the sidewalk.
How did Kipling put it.:
Its Tommy this an Tommy that
an chuck i'm out, the brute
But it's saviour of is country
when the guns begin to shoot"
All OF which, to repeat, is family
amusing, or would be if it were not
Tor the seriousness of the need to
make ourselves strong against eny
event.
Blame Shared by All.
II is being said now in some quar-.
ters that the Roosevelt administra.
ton is blameworthy for having let
the military services get into their
doWn-at-heel condition. To say this
is to overlook a number of important
iacts-the arrearage that it in
nerited, the pacific disposition of the
American people, the proper pre-
occupation of the Government with
urgent domestic problems, the
mounting national debt, the newness
OF the threat with which we are
faced. How far would Roosevelt
have got If he had proposed another
billion for national defense a year
ago, or even month ago? II there
Is blame for the situation in which
we f1nd ourselves, where we have
got to build up our armament at a
furious pace, the blame Is on all of
us.
But the present, surely, is no time
TO try to assess blame. The only
thing that matters is what we have
got to do from now on. And that
is task that requires sacrifice and
the utmost we can give of co-opera-
tion-co-operation between Demo-
Gratis and Republicans, capital and
labor, industry and the Government,
BY pulling together we can lick this
problem, we can make ourselves Sc
cure, and we can lick it without any
departure from our democratic proc
esses.
But we have got to pull together!