Is Tomorrow Hitler's? 200 Questions on the Battle of MankindKnickerbocker, H. R. (Hubert Renfro)
History
Is Tomorrow Hitler's? 200 Questions on the Battle of Mankind
Knickerbocker, H. R. (Hubert Renfro)
Europe -- Politics and government -- 1918-1945; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945 -- United States
A. In order to be fully represented at the peace. There is no
substitute for an army at a Peace Conference, and we may be sure that,
no matter what arrangements may be made between Mr. Churchill and Mr.
Roosevelt, if we are not in the war we will not be in the peace. There
were many jokes about the famous eight-point meeting to the effect
that we were trying to get in the peace before we got in the war. I do
not agree that that was the purpose of Mr. Roosevelt in meeting Mr.
Churchill, but if it were, it is unlikely to succeed. We will have the
influence we wish to have at the peace conference only if we have done
our full share in making peace possible by beating Hitler. We ought
not to deceive ourselves. We are unpopular enough as it is now. If we
stay out of the war, and by a miracle not now foreseeable, Hitler were
after all to be defeated, what do you think the victors would think of
us? Do you think they would invite us to come in and tell them how to
rearrange the world?
Yet if we do not look forward to establishing a peace which will
postpone for a long time, if not forever, a repetition of this war,
many Americans would feel too discouraged to act. We would be foolish
not to fight the Germans now even if we were mathematically certain
that we were going to have to go on fighting them once every twenty
years for the rest of time. Nevertheless we do not want to face such a
prospect; we want to rule out war for as long a time as possible, and
we can do it only by repairing at this Peace Conference the errors made
after the last one.
These errors were not what they have been represented to be, faults
in the Versailles treaty. The mistake we made was that we dodged our
responsibility for the peace after we had helped finish the war. First
we invested our blood and treasure, and then after the victory, when
we were about to gather the dividends of international security and
prosperity in the League of Nations, suddenly, because everything in
the peace did not completely please us, and because a few politicians
hated the President, we withdrew and declined to collect our profits.
This ruined the peace, made the League impossible, and another war
certain.
Q. _How much American blood and treasure did we spend in the last war?_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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