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Show O GENERAL HUGH S. IJJOHNSON w! Jour: tj L'mitd Falun jf VW Sn Washington, D. C. AIR BASES FOR U. S. Getting air and naval bases, from Iceland to the South American "bulge" should have the unified support of this country. It is a move in the direction we must go which is to make our defense independent inde-pendent of the strength of any nation na-tion but our own. The only criticism criti-cism of it is the inexcusable delay and lack of foresight in not having done it long ago. But what we are giving for them is something else again. It has not been revealed. Neither have the details de-tails of our defensive deal with Canada. Can-ada. Canada is a nation at war. She has gone across the sea to at- tack a European power. It puts us in a position of saying to Europe: "American nations can attack you but if you counterattack them we will fight you." Perhaps in view of our geographic and strategic problem, that cartH be helped. But do our Canadian and British secret understandings go further? There was some implication im-plication in Mr. Churchill's recent peroration that they do British and American "co-operation" in war I rolling along the Old Man River, which is a symbol for fateful inevitabilitythe in-evitabilitythe "flotillas of 1941," which sounded like a promise of American naval intervention. Mr. Roosevelt is reported to have scouted the idea that there is anything any-thing in the deal for bases about our detaching a part of our insufficient insuf-ficient navy 50 destroyers to fight on the side of Britain. But things that Mr. Roosevelt scouts, like his third term ambition, have a curious and tortuous way of promptly coming com-ing true. No matter how it may be disguised dis-guised or how warlike lawyers now split hairs, the detachment of those destroyers is so clearly direct participation par-ticipation in this war that two years ago, examining the question coldly, there is not an international lawyer on earth who would not have regarded re-garded a contrary view as preposterous. prepos-terous. t From his Chicago "quarantine' speech to the present moment, there has not been an act of the President Presi-dent inconsistent with an inference of his willingness, if not. his intention, inten-tion, to mix this country up in the wars of both Europe and Asia. On the contrary, with increasing tempo and intensity, every act has been completely consistent with precisely -that aim. Mr. Ickes, Mr. Wallace and others have emphasized Mr. Willkie's "endorsement" "en-dorsement" of "our foreign policy." Mr. Ickes has suggested that this is like the God-awful 1936 campaign where there were no issues except "The New Deal is good but I can deal it better." The New Deal boys, had better look that thought over carefully. Some of Mr. Willkie's Republican and Democratic supporters in New York are also minded to involve us in foreign war. But most of this country isn't. Especially that great stretch of America from the Alle-ghenies Alle-ghenies west isn't and, as I read his utterances, Mr. Willkie isn't. WHAT DO WE DEFEND? Step by step in the rapidly expand- ing policy of intervention everywhere, every-where, our general staff has been confronted with new and lightninglike lightning-like changes in policy. There is this difference between the harnessing of Nazi foreign policy with Nazi military mili-tary preparation that Hitler planned nothing on foreign policy that his general staff hadn't been told to prepare in military strength and wasn't given time to prepare. In our case, the whole surprising brainstorm shift in a constantly increasing in-creasing foreign policy of threat and aggression has proceeded with no regard whatever to our military preparation to make it good and with no sufficient allowance of time and money to do so. General Marshall's talk about an army of 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 men was wholly based on a new diplomatic diplo-matic theory that we are to police every American country from the North Pole to Cape Horn. That theory the-ory is utterly fantastic and impossible. impos-sible. We can't afford it, couldn't do it and have no business indulging indulg-ing in any such popular deceits and ludicrous international posturing. It is about time that this government govern-ment settled down and decided exactly ex-actly what its foreign policy is going go-ing to be and, more precisely, as controlling that, exactly what policy pol-icy it can enforce, without absurdity and possible disaster, within the realistic and reasonable limits of its present and immediately potential strength of arms and men on land, sea and in the air. In that connection, the immediate rnntrolling nubbin is naval and po- litical policy in the Pacific. As between be-tween our necessary defensive policy pol-icy of remaining dominant on both American coasts as far as Natal in Brazil and in addition to that of maintaining a threatening attitude in Asia, Indo-China and the East Indies, there is a difference of un-estimated un-estimated billions of dollars of expense ex-pense and of comparative safety as contrasted with sprawling all over the map and constantly risking not only our prestige but our peace and even our existence. |