Evening star., 1941-01-23

Sible to place him in the current
dogfight over the lease lend bill.
Our former Ambassador to the Court
of st. Air-Raids is defeat-appease-
all-aider- -isolationist with overtones
of intervention and extreme paci-
fism, slightly complicated by Irish
irideScence. If only there were a
Mayo Clinic in politics, what field
day the doctors would have.
However, our eX-Ambassador's
mental convolutions show that, on
balance, the effect of his position
is to delay, modify and confuse the
issue of the aid-to-E England bill. Mr..
Kennedy is very astute man and
he can scarcely be believed to have
been ignorant of the effect Of his
speech and his testimony on public
consideration of the lease-lend plan.
1t is a harsh rule of war, as Of
any other crisis, that we Judge our
trees by their fruits rather than
their foliage, our politicians by their
deeds rather than their verbisge.
Even men Of transparency good in
tentions fall under that rule. We
ask OF our generals victory and OF
our leaders action.
Has Contributed to Neither.
Mr.. Kennedy has contributed to
neither victory nor action-quite
the contrary. In fact, he seemed
to go out of his way to advise the
Germans to bomb the western ports
of England if they want to win, vet
he did not suggest that the British
should seize the Irish ports if they
want TO combat the U-boats which
are also part of the Nazi blockade
OF Great Britain. Mr.. Kennedy also
advised us not to try, by naval con-
voyS, to make sure that we MAIN
tain the bridge of boats to England.
On the practical side, he recon-
mended nothing which could help
effective aid to England to balance
his tip to Goering to Coventryize
Liverpool
On the purely domestic front,
Mr.. Kennedy opposed the lease-lend
program as granting too much and
too soon in our fight for freedom
everywhere in the world. He is
still welded to the theory that too
little and too late is the only dig
nif1ed way to defend democracy.
His line of argument recalls the
long list Of generals who were beaten
by Napoleon, because they insisted
on fighting their battles in the cor
rect style of the 18th century. Ma
poleon didn't fight that way and he
won until his enemies developed
a new and unorthodox system of
political strategy and military tao
tics-the so-called Wellingtonian
position by which the French were
induced to ambush themselves on
the field of battle.
Meeting the Total With the Partial.
Coming out of the mist of adiec-
tives and epithets, if Joseph Patrick
Kennedy's words mean anything,
they mean that he still believes
that 1t is possible to limit your La
blllties in an age of total war, total
politics and total defense. He thinks
1t Is possible to make neat, con-
crete calculations-as in a bear.
raid on the stock market-for deal
ing with the incalculable, to make
accurate predictions for assessing
the unpredictable, and to meet the
total with the partial.
This was the attitude of the
French, who thought they had
solved the defense problem by in
vesting money in the Maginot Line
even though they refused the
funds to carry the line from Sedan
to the channel This was the atti.
tude OF Chamberlain, the city ap-
peaSers and the Cliveden set, who
thought they could win the war on
the cheap, within a balanced bud.
get, with business land unemploy-
menO as usual-and that perhaps
1t would be possible to make a deal
with Hitler to call the whole thing
on. This, too. was the attitude of
the Wall Street appeasers who feel
no shame at discussing plans for
paying tribute to Hitler as part of
a scheme to pay him to stop fight
ing for while.
The sooner Mr.. Kennedy and his
friends realize that war-war for
world domination; war for total
conquest of the life of the planet
by a set of "master-races"-c
be handled as margin transac-
ton. the safer we shall all be. And
the sooner we recognize that we
must Judge men by the effect of
their words and deeds, rather than
by the purity of their intentions,
the sooner we shall realize that it
Is right to brand as an appeaser
or defeatist anyone whose conduct
helps Hitler in the battle of Britain.
(Released by Consolidated News Features