The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

ON THE WOULD TODAY

THE glittering generalities of our peace aims are being translated into concrete policies. The task got under way with the Eden mission to Washington. It is now in full swing in the conference of the United Nations on economic rehabilitation.

The first job facing Mr. Eden was to iron out political strategy while we are en route to Berlin. Too little attention had been paid to that strategy when Anglo-American forces established a bridgehead in North Africa. Military necessity came first. Any political prop was regarded as good enough if it promised and ensured a military foothold in North Africa. As the President put it to his callers, quoting a Rumanian proverb: “It is permissible to walk with the devil till after the bridge is crossed.”

Mr. Churchill agreed, but not Anthony Eden and large numbers of Britons and Americans. Governor Stassen of Minnesota countered the Rumanian proverb by saying that in walking with the devil the trouble would be to shake him off. It was felt that there was a political necessity not to compromise with past or present friends of our enemies. In the long run this would be the wisest military strategy. At the time of the invasion a divergence of views arose between the Edenites, British and American, and official America. It became marked when we put in Admiral Darlan and then Marcel Peyrouton. It was said in London that American policy was suffering from “peritonitis.”

Eye to eye

In Washington Mr. Eden heard more than one grumble that the British government had not “educated” our people about the military necessity under which our administration would have to labor in North Africa. He, in turn, gave his forthright views. What he said to the policy makers in the Capital was what he had already said to Mr. Churchill. Fortunately, when these exchanges occurred, we were getting over our “peritonitis.”

During the Eden visit Algiers reported almost daily the expulsion of Vichyites, the repeal of Vichy laws, and the ending of Vichy influence. One event gave Mr. Eden particular pleasure. When he was told of the dismissal of Jean Rigaud, the notoriously pro-Fascist chief of police in Algiers, he said he was glad we intended no longer to tolerate “that nasty policeman.” Such happenings hastened the way to an understanding on political strategy. Mr. Eden was assured that there would be no more indulgence of quislings in the march to Berlin.

Guardians of law and order

One of these days the graduates of our various military schools of foreign administration will have to proceed to Europe. More than a little mystery has been attached to them. Secretary Ickes at a Cabinet meeting dubbed them indignantly “schools of imperialists.” He demanded of Secretary Stimson that if the United States intended to go imperialistic, at least the President should pass on the plan. It was the first time the President had heard the details of the innovation.

There is nothing sinister in the idea of such missions. It grew out of our experience after the last war when we found ourselves in the Rhineland without a clause in Army regulations to guide our officers in looking after civilian populations. Now that we have set our face against quislings, it is imperative that we have trained men to act as guardians of law and order while Europe is getting back on its feet.

The political problems of peace were not clear enough when Eden arrived to permit more than the determination continuously to take counsel together prior to making decisions.

This may seem vague. In reality it is very important. Now we feel absolute confidence that in this war there will be no secret agreements concluded by the British out of fear that America is too indeterminate. We feel that the British will make no commitments without American concurrence. Anthony Eden helped to wash out any lingering suspicion of exclusive dickering between the British and the Russians.

The Ball resolution

How far are we prepared to go with the British? As to this, Mr. Eden had the heartening spectacle of the resolutions in the hopper of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, notably the Ball resolution. This latter would commit the Executive to discuss, among other things, the formation of a world police force. It might seem as if all these resolutions have been shelved as a result of Presidential coldness. Far from it.

In the case of the Ball resolution, the Minnesotan and his fellows asked the President to keep hands off. They wanted no suggestion of Executive aid or sponsorship. Accordingly, the President was tepid when questioned in press conference about the Ball resolution. Dorothy Thompson, among other commentators, jumped to the wrong conclusion in criticizing Mr. Roosevelt as a President who wished to monopolize foreign relations.

Where the President is criticizable is in his lack of encouragement of machinery linking the Senate and the Executive in foreign relations. The founding fathers intended the Senate to advise as well as consent on our affairs abroad. The aloofness between the two branches has been as disastrous as the existence of the two-thirds rule for the ratification of treaties. As Senator Wiley of Wisconsin says, before there can be any effective agreements between the United States and other countries to keep the peace of the world, there must be peace between the American peace-making authorities. One of the half dozen resolutions in the Foreign Relations Committee would set up this machinery at once. A word from the White House would facilitate approval.

Zones of defense

It seems to be taken for granted that Russia will ask for a defense corridor outside her pre-war frontiers, stretching all the way from the Baltic to the Aegean. Pravdct advanced the claim. It was of a piece with the kind of empire building in which we in America have been indulging. Secretary Knox has been staking out a bigger America in the Pacific. Somebody added Russia’s Wrange! Island. Senator Tydings has been calling for a cession of the bases in the Atlantic we have leased from the British in return for the fifty destroyers.

Such designs, of course, have to be reconciled with the Atlantic Charter, which, while envisaging territorial changes, implies that any remapping shall be done under the aegis of a world organization. Since the imperialistic talk started, the little nations have been bombarding the State Department and the newspapers for a declaration of intentions.

The disposition in Washington is to head off the formulation of any territorial demands from Russia. (By the same token our officials wish that Knox, Tydings, et al. would keep quiet.) We are not so resigned to Russian claims as the British seem to be. We were irritated over the London Times editorial heralding the Eden trip, which seemed to urge acceptance both ot Russia ’s dominance in Eastern Europe and of Britain ’s role as broker between Washington and the Kremlin. One safeguard against a new imperialism is to throw our influence into the establishment of new machinery of collective security. Another is to hasten the establishment of invasion bridgeheads in Europe.

The word seems to have been passed through the Administration that Russophobia will not be tolerated. That, at any rate, is the implication of a significant speech by Adolf A. Berle, Jr., Assistant Secretary of State, on April 4. Mr. Berle evidently was put up to quash rumors that a deal was under way with the Vatican to set up a cordon sanitaire of buffer states around Russia. He quashed the rumors convincingly.

In this and other ways any uneasiness in the Kremlin is being allayed preparatory to gearing the Allies together in finishing off the war and “leading the present with friendly hand to the future.”The Berle speech is the best proof of the success of Mr. Eden’s visit. It substantiates the President’s statement that the Allies are in 95 per cent agreement.

Food — more food

The first opportunity of showing that the United States is a champion of the rights of mankind is occurring in the present conferences of the United Nations. Food is the subject of the first parley. The discussion is timely, though it is unfortunate that the United States is now in the throes of a domestic crisis in food.

At bottom the food crisis is nothing more than a crisis in administration. In a total war a National Service Act is just as necessary as a Selective Service Act. Men must be in the right place at the right time. But, in the absence of National Service, about which the Administration has blown hot and cold, the armed services have been drawing on key farm workers, while others doing farm work have themselves drifted into war factories. The hemorrhage has lately increased under the “work or fight ” impetus.

War has taken the materials as well as the men, food, machinery, and so on. The American Institute of Food Distribution says that the armed forces are hoarding food unduly. To be sure, stockpiles are necessary, in view of prospective invasions. Whether or not there has been overbuying must be left to a Congressional committee to determine. Substance is lent to that charge by the lack of any centralized buying pool for the government. The armed services bid against one another. The materials lack is shocking. Our farm machinery output has been cut 75 per cent, though the Germans give such machinery priority even over war weapons.

Of course, a situation in which the home front is as neglected as much as it was coddled in 1941 had to be corrected. The pity is, as Bernard Baruch says, that we have to wait till the patient needs the oxygen tent before we bring the doctor. That is the situation on food. The President used to say to those who viewed it with alarm that the problem was remediable by what he called community coöperation. He always added his usual illustration. In this case it was to tell how the community in California had gathered in the prunes or the children in Moscow the firewood. He has been forced to attempt something more systematic and thoroughgoing.

Davis instead of Wickard as food czar is a good move. Rationing of meats and fats will help. Most helpful will be the move to give the Office of Civilian Supply more prestige. At present our wants are the responsibility of one of the thirty-five divisions of the War Production Board. A bill now before Congress would give the OCS equal status with the WPB — though the establishment of yet another independent agency, with its invitation to jurisdictional disputes, causes alarm to most onlookers.

One thing only is clear; in the interests of the war, the OCS will be treated like a stepchild no longer. Specifically, if the farmers cannot have the men, they will get more labor-saving machinery. But they will get back some of the lost men, too. Of course, the whole manpower administration needs overhauling, National Service Act or not. Such a reshuffle has been recommended by the President’s misnamed War Cabinet (Byrnes, Baruch, Hopkins, Leahy, and Rosenman). But Mr. Roosevelt chose to sit on the report. Indeed, he called it “the alleged report” in answer to a query from a newspaperman.

THE MOOD OF THE CAPITAL

No administrative reorganization beyond patchwork is in sight, and the chances of a National Service Act have become slim. The mood of the capital is that, with war prospects brighter, our administrative shortcomings are not critical. And not all of these can be put at the Executive’s door.

The same old buck-passing is going on in Congress. In trying to overcome misgovernment by directive, Congress is itself fiddling with its responsibilities. Look, for example, at the seven-point anti-inflation program of national economic policy announced on April 27, 1942, and you will find that Congress has done little about it. The President has had to take the initiative. The comfort is, to quote a typical remark: if we have all this administrative trouble, what must it be like in Berlin?