Evening star., 1941-04-02
Argues for League Of Nations
To Prevent Repetition of Present War.

To Prevent hepctitiOh OIL TTcsche "ai'
To the Editor Of The Star:
Free men and free nations, Winston
Churchill reminds us, share the respon-
sibility and burden of enforcing the rights
and laws upon which healthy and ad-
vancing civilization alone can be erected.
This responsibility the American people
sadly shirked when, after the last war.
they elected to retreat into their refuge
between two oceans and have no part in
the reconstruction Of Europe.
Those old enough will recall that the
United States emerged from the first
World War the most powerful nation.
It's President, Woodrow Wilson, was the
worlds undisputed political leader. BY
sheer weight of prestige he imposed his
creation, the League OF Nations, upon
skeptical Allied statesmen.
Then the world witnessed a strange
spectacle. The 1918 congressional cleo
tions gave the first inkling that the
prophet, 80 revered abroad, was without
honor in his own country. Confirmation
came when the Senate, riding wave OF
anti-Wilson sentiment that exhibited the
characteristics Of lynching party, re-
fused to ratify the peace treaty that pro-
vided for the League Of Nations.
1t is smart these days to smile in
diligently when some one mentions the
League, and perhaps the impotence of
the League justifies smile. But that
smile should not appear on an American
face. For what chance OF success had
the League without the adherence of the
worlds greatest Nation? How could 1t
speak authoritatively after the people,
represented by the statesman who con-
ceived it, repudiated him? The League
faced doom from the moment the United
States declared it would remain outside.
The quixotic Nation that had poured
wealth and the life blood OF its sons into
the task of Kidding the world Of military
autocracy ran out on the task OF 1nsur-
ing the world against the return OF mill
tary autocracy. Before us lie the grue-
some consequences.
The League might have failed even If
the United States had entered. That we
never shall know. But probability favors
the opinion that the League, bolstered
by the material might and the immense
moral prestige of the United States,
effectively might have policed the post
war world. 1t might have forestalled the
occupation of Manchuria and the con-
quest of Ethiopia. 1t might have pre-
vented the rise of Hitler Let Americans
face the fact that the present world
plight might never have come to pass
had their country, after the first World
War, continued willing to recognize the
same responsibility for universal human
freedom that it acknowledged when 1t
entered that conflict.
And to those who warn that Great
Britain is hoodwinking us into paying
the cost of the present war, some Of us
might reply that, since the present world
plight is largely of our own making, 1t
is but just that we pay a large part OF
the cost of setting it right.
But the past Is past. Let us turn to
It only for guidance. To Americans the
past teaches that the United States no
longer can live to itself. North America
has q major role in the universal drama.
Only the isolationists now fail to concede
that threat to democracy anywhere on
the planet is threat to the American
way of life. blow struck by any one,
anywhere. at any time, In defense Of Q
democratic people Il . blow for the