The Omaha guide., 1941-06-21

~ SAANAA OHc" 49,
er in the German troops for the occr-
patton Of Gibraltar and SPANS bases
on the Mediterranean and the Atlantic
this American diplomat and his humid
red counterparts in the musty offices
Of the State Department will be shock
ed as they were shocked the other day
by Vichy's capitulation-and when
they have recovered, it may be too late
to keep the Nazis out of the Azores
and the Canary Isands.
It all goes together, because it IS
a state of mind. You placate Hitler
and Mussolini and Franco and the Jap
anese. You prefer soft words to hard
ones, and words to acts. You try to
buy what you dare not command. You
refuse to recognize facts when they
are uncomfortable; and you always
prefer diplomatic maneuvers to sturdy
resistance.
Now it is v The gentlemen of
Vichy, whose robes of office have won
such unctuous admiration, are finally
admitted to be stark naked even by the
bemused officials in Washington.
Nothing is left for us but the necessity
to act, and to plan our actions in the
light of n cold, shining fact. In Eur
Ope We have only Hitler to deal with.
There are Frenchmen left, and no
doubt 80 percent of them hate Hitler
with an intensity we cannot ever inn
agine. But there is no France. There
are Spaniards, but no Spain. These
and the other lands that have been con-
quered and occupied are no longer ma
tons; they are raw materials and fac
tories and above all bases; and they be-
long to Adolph Hitler.
Our job is immeasurably difficult
and absolutely unacceptable. We can
no longer dodge and prepare ourselves
to act at some remove in the future.
Our job to combine today with Great
Britain-and with every existing anti
Nazi element in every country-to de-
feat Hitler by all the forces at our
joint disposal. If this means sending
an army to England or Africa we must
do it. Certainly it does not mean that
now. We have no army ready to send.
and if we had, the sending of it would
interfere with tasks that need doing
Immediately and at top speed. But it
may mean supplying warships and
planes, both to protect the goods we
ship to Britain and to prevent the MAJ
is from Selling new strategic points of
attacks. Specifically it may mean col
laborating with the British fleet and
the forces Of General de Gaulle to oc-
cupy the Portuguese and French islands
and the French African ports before
the Germans get there.
It means, too, producing goods
for the war faster than we have done
or thought We could possibly do. It
surely means using American ships to
carry those goods to the fighting
fronts; and this in turn makes it nee
essary to wipe out the last legalistic
p~retense of neutrality" that stands in
the way of our full aid. 1t means
freezing the credits of the Axis powers
and ruthlessly preventing goods from
reaching them, by whatever round a.
bout routes. It means breaking off
diplomatic relations, which no longer
serve ven as a useful source of inform
alton, and throwing out the agents Of
our acknowledged enemies. Perhaps
more than all, it means carrying on an
imaginative political war, in which we
make use of every anti-fascist group
and individual still free in any country
on earth; giving them encouragement
and suppOrt-a and arms, where possible
1t means, in short, an acceptance of the
total meaning of total war and +b;c IT