Toward World Unity

If it is the business of democratic governments to rally men to the cause of democracy, the biggest democracies of the United Nations have not yet got down to business. Last week two extraordinary statements--one by a prominent American, the other by one of Britain's most respected papers--showed by contrast how poor a job the United Nations had yet done of stating what democrats fight for.

One of last week's statements of long-term democratic logic came from WTendell Willkie who had the advantage of being free from the close contacts of U.S. politics. Said he from Chungking:

They All Doubt. "I have traveled through 13 countries. I have seen kingdoms, Soviets, republics, mandated areas, colonies and dependencies. ... I have found four things common to all the countries that I have visited and to all the ordinary people in those countries with whom I have talked. First, they all want the United Nations to win the war. Second, they want the United Nations to get on the offensive now. Third, they all want a chance at the end of the war to live in liberty and independence. Fourth, they all doubt in varying degrees the readiness of the leading democracies of the world to stand up and be counted upon for the freedom of others after the war is over. This doubt kills their enthusiastic participation on our side.

"Now, without the real support of these common people, the winning of the war will be enormously difficult. The winning of the peace will be nearly impossible. This war is not simply a technical problem for task forces. It is also a war for men's minds. We must organize on our side not simply the sympathies but also the active, aggressive, offensive spirit of nearly three-fourths of the people of the world who live in South America, Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia. We have not done this and, at present, we are not doing this...."

Men Need Enthusiasm. "China and Russia have each contributed to the defeat of the Axis aggressors some 5,000,000 of their finest men in casualties. ... It is both just and wise for us to see to it that they secure an equitable share of our arms production. However, men need more than arms to fight and win this kind of war. They need enthusiasm for the future and a conviction that the flags they fight under are in bright, clean colors. The truth is that we as a nation have not made up our minds as to what kind of a world we want to speak for when victory comes....

"Some of [our common aims] are already clear, I deeply believe, to most Americans: We believe this war must mean an end to the empire of nations over other nations. . . . We believe it is the world's job to find some system for helping colonial peoples who join the United Nations' cause to become free and independent nations. We must set up firm timetables under which they can work out and train Governments of their own choosing, and we must establish ironclad guarantees, administered by all the United Nations jointly, that they shall not slip back into colonial status.

"Some say these subjects should be hushed until victory is won. Exactly the reverse is true. Sincere efforts to find progressive solutions now will bring strength to our cause. Remember that opponents of social change always urge delay because of some present crisis."

Last week's announcement by the U.S. and Britain that they intended to do away with extraterritorial rights in China (see P-35) was a beginning in the directions Willkie urged. But it was only a beginning.

Guardian in Manchester. Last week's second remarkable statement on war aims was an editorial exhibiting the full candor and power of one of the world's great journals, the Manchester Guardian, which can truly claim to speak for many more British millions than can Britain's held-over, lightweight, Tory-loaded, wartime Parliament. Said the Guardian:

"The American conviction that British talk of post-war cooperation means that Americans are to underwrite a British old regime which is patently obsolete is not the least serious of the barriers to be overthrown. The British Empire of the past with its mixture of paternalism and repression has plainly had its day. What, Americans ask, do we intend to do?

"Do we accept Mr. Wallace's vision of 'the century of the common man' in even so modest a degree as is implied in the establishment of complete equality, of educational opportunity, of the career open to talent, of easy promotion in all walks of life from the ranks to positions of command? Victory depends on our offering the martyred nations of Europe a' cause for which to fight and die. Are we still too besotted by our terror of revolution to speak plainly the words that would convince the peoples and not merely the Governments that our struggle is theirs? Such questions are pressed with increasing insistence in the U.S., not by our critics but by our friends. We ought to welcome with eagerness the opportunity of answering them now, and of answering them not by more oratory but by action."

These two statements were at least unofficial answers to cynical civilians or fighting heroes who doubted whether the United Nations were fighting for anything except the old order and spoils of war.

When the echoes of U.S. criticisms (that Willkie had no right to make such moral commitments for the U.S.) reached Chungking, Willkie snorted, "I speak for myself alone and I say what I damn please." When the subject was put up to Mr. Roosevelt in press conference, he did not disown Willkie. Said the President instead: he thought Wendell Willkie had well performed the jobs assigned to him.

Columnist Samuel Grafton of the New York Post cheered the Willkie trip as the best news in a long time, even as "a turning point in the war." Wrote he eloquently:

"Wendell Willkie has made himself a world figure in three weeks. . . . He has done this by saying a number of simple ordinary things, things which are said at thousands of dinner tables, things which are thought by thousands of minds. Only he has broken with peddlers of cant and dispensers of mushmouth talk to say these things out loud.

"His is a curious position. History may call him the first United Nations statesman; a man without power in any country, who has suddenly developed enormous power in all free countries.

"Somewhere on the road, he has met the democratic upsurge, and he has recognized it. You cannot invent this stuff. You have to feel it. Willkie has merely read the faces of plain people from Los Angeles to London to China, and has thus been moved to ask for a second front, a worldwide offensive, a free China, a political offensive to win the common man, and a timetable for the end of colonialism in the Pacific. He has become suddenly powerful, not because he is a charming man, but because he has read it right, and said it straight.

"It is interesting that ultra-isolationist newspapers in America have, instinctively, become the first to sense this development ; they have leaped upon Willkie with extraordinary hatred. . . . They know that the thing he might bring back with him is world unity. . . .

"The man who opposes him now opposes the great forces to which he has suddenly given expression, and will inevitably find himself pushed toward the wrong path in consequence. This is one war you cannot toy with. It is bigger than anybody."

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