The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1945-01-01
TODAY and TOMORROW
By WALTER LIPPMANN

superior in all the elements of mill
tary power to ourselves.
To say that this power could not
have done in Brazil, in Alaska, in
Canada what Eisenhower did in
Normandy is just not so. The APP
proaches to the United States in
this hemisphere are much more
vulnerable, much harder to defend
France. Moreover, let us not for
an instant forget that when Eisen-
hover landed in France, he sailed
forth from the island fortress of
great Britain. and that two-thirds
of the German Army was held in
a death grapple by the Red Army.
But it is not only Senator Nye
who has not understood or has for
gotten what this war is about, and
that it is the vital security Of the
United States against invasion and
domination that we are fighting to
preserve. Many of Senator Nye's
opponents have also lost sight of
all this, and are talking wildly and
lirresponsibly as if Americans were
fighting and bleeding at Duren and
Bastogne, on Leyte and Mindoro,
in order to have a plebiscite in
eastern Galicia or to return Hong
Kong to Chang Kai-shek. There
is still time,' said one anguiShed
commentator just the other day,
''to save something (sic) from the
wreck of our hopes Save some
thing indeed! Is it nothing to have
saved, even now, America and all
the American republics, Great Bri-
tain and Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, France and indeed all
the lands, ancient and new, of our
western civilization from the wreck
of conquest and slavery?
l have seen men brought in from
the battlefield who were dying,
and men who were mutilated. I
hope I am not letting my feelings
get the better of my reason. But
l must say that it is hard to bear
talk here at home which presumes
to measure the meaning of their
deeds and the value of their sac
rifice by whether some common
tator, who has never seriously
studied these vexed territory dis
putes, thinks that the solution pro-
posed conforms with some abstract
principle from the Atlantic Charter
which he could not, if his life de-
pended On it, define concretely.
The discussion of war aims and
of postwar plans is rapidly be-
coming the main obstacle to the
realization of our true aims. For
the discussion has become unhing-
ed from the great facts of the war,
of why we had to fight and there
fore, from what we are fighting
for. Of course, the country will
again revert to some kind of isola-
tionism if those who profess to
have been graduated from isola-
zionist use as their criterion in for
eign affairs, not the vital interests
of the United States, but collec-
ton of generalized rules as to how
they think all nations everywhere
ought to behave.
But what they call their ideal
ism is lack of ina gination -
failure to realize the impact upon
the course of history of what the
American people are actually do
ing. Thus it may be difficult to
achieve quickly free elections in
devastated country like Greece.
and there is much to criticize
in the treatment of Greece during
the past few weeks. But to YAM
mer that this means the defeat of
democracy is to fail to imagine
one of the greatest moral con-
sequences of what the American
people have done: that thew have
proved on the battlefield, and for
the first time in the history of man