POUND/ 14 Marzo

AMERICAN IMPERIALIST

An

American Imperialist

writes us :

I feel more or less challenged by
the question : Have I anything MORE to say NOW ?

I still have what appears to me the SAME things to say.

If you had asked me : have I anything MORE to say now ?

I should have had to say : NO !, I have nothing more to say, in the sense that I have nothing NEW to say, and nothing to ADD to former statements.

But as none of my compatriots seem to have meditated those statements very effectively I am quite ready to reap them.

I still prefer the HEDGE-HOG idea of empire,
to that of the octopus, weak in the tentacles, with
a bad heart, lungs and whatever other central organs
an octopus may be expected to use or need for his
ordely and healthy existence.

I think that Roosevelt is a national calamity.
I see little to praise in his works. Mr Lippmann in a
now well known passage of his unspeakable paper, told
us long ago, that Franklin D.R. was a mere shop front,
controlled from behind the scenes.

I should like to have the " behind the scenes lit up
with hundred watt lights and calcium flores.

Round/ Imperialist

A man worthy of the name, or with average human intelligence could, had he been responsible for his action, quite well have refrained from bumptuous threats to a great power like Japan, whose internal discipline is more than two thousand years old, and whose military traditions have recently been dem demonstrated yet again.

The knowledge of Japanese military capacity was known NOT ERELY to archaeologists, and// the Russo-Japanese war occurred during the life time of numerous people still living.

Instead of making an ass of himself; of the American Navy AND the American people by insisting on having a war in the orient, Mr Roosevelt and his ineffable collection of incompetent secretaries, let us say in particular Mr Frankfurter's friend Mr Stimpson, the very loud-mouthing Knox, might have been attending to the bases nearer home. There was little foreign competition in the seas south and south west of Florida.

An ample defensive system COULD have been constructed there HAD the aim of the American government been intelligent.

I say intelligent, might say DEFENSIVE. I do not, however, say EXCLUSIVELY defensive.

The English bases in those quarters were an

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the Dutch and French could have been acquired by purchase;
let us even say pressure might have been brought to ensure
purchase.

AN HONEST price paid would have assured that
possession

WITHOUT have placed in jeopardy all our far eastern
possessions. WITHOUT losing us either temporarily, or as
many people now think, losing in perpetuity our easy
access to the vast far eastern supplies of necessary,
useful or even pleasant commodities. It runs from rubber to
tea, and potted ginger to tungsten.

The loss of all of which, and much else,
including a very expensive lot of naval equipment, can be
set down to Franklin Roosevelt, Frankfurter, Knox, Stimpson
and COMPANY.

I see no reason to rejoice in my
country's calamities. I see no reason to ascribe
ascribe either intelligence or even HONEST motive to
the men responsible for these losses.

I see continuing STILL, and in SPITE of
all the blows received by the American people, I
see, I still SEE the same idiotic policy going ON.

A group of WRECKERS started this war, and have

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not, for one single day, desisted from their attempts to
EXTEND the conflict. They have done this BLINDLY. They have shown
to foresight whatever. That is unless it be foreisight to
desire the worse ruin of both England and the United States.

O American policy in South America is as
insensate, is as STUPID as was Eden's when dealing with
Italy, and when STARTING England down hill.

The threat of sanctions roused the whole latin
peninsula. You do NOT build empire by boostins.

You do NOT build empire by threats which you
can not fulfill.

The mere purchase of a corruptable
Brazilian ambassador, the mere penetration of Uruguay by
jewish loan agents is NOT EMPIRE BUILDING.

Even Cecil Rhodes, as unscrupulous a brigand as
our times have produced, I repeat, even Rhodes would
have known better than that.

There is and has been, NO attempt to draw
South America into honest collaboration in a pan-american
system.

And I do not suppose there is ANY pressure politics
now function in the U.S.A. which has such collaboration
as even PART of its aim.

POUND/ Imperialist

5

Rencours due to a century of corruption in South America, are still latent in the southern half of the hemisphere. Rancours due to bought revolutions, the dishonest loans, to vast bribes to south American governments are all latent in South America. Nothing but the illiteracy of the south American indians, and mankind's widely diffused ignorance of high finance keeps the lid on, to even the extent that it can still be regarded as "on".

If empire is to be regarded as a mere central CANCER for the distortion of all normal trading, then Frankfurter and his imported staff are building a Frankfurter empire. If empire be regarded as an ORGANISM designed to last at least one man's life-time, then it appears to me that the Morgenthau system at home, and Knoxism abroad make a very poor showing.

A few more countries (such as Brazil) discouraged from sending their highly vulnerable cargoes across perilous sea-routes, and pan-american trade will cease to perfrom that important function which empire trade is supposed to perform.

It will not even dump cargoes into a central market in order that unscrupulous broker can make double commissions on buying and selling, and undec

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Pound/ Imperialist

and unbridled shipping firms can collect excess rates
on elongated routes of transport.

There is and was nothing NEW in these games,
but they may in our time become progressively LESS and less
pracitale, or practicable.

An empire, as I conceive it, should be slow, measured
growth from a centre. Sane empire has nothing to do with
starvation of the rest of the earth. Sane empire DOES

NOT lose its fuuunEEEHH distant possessions in an
attempt to ruin the home country's own population.

It is on this ground that I consider the
British insane, and their american successor equally
unsound in their policy.

I would have welcomes a reasonable expansion in the
Carribean, a solid defence of the Panama Canal,
I am not sure that the occupation of the north coast of South
America would have been necessary, and I am not in the least
inclined to speculate in improbable futures. A really
friendly South America, would I think, have been a better
bulwark of an American empire than a South America undermined
by corruption. Canada must speak for herself.