The golden opportunity of talking to the people of Europe before we went to war has been missed. Now it is harder for us, but it is not impossible. We have to counter the despair of Europe with the hope of America. The desperation of the occupied territories rises from the belief that the Germans are invincible and that they themselves are doomed to servility; to that we reply with the argument of war--but in the first part of our war, the argument will be hard to follow; we shall be pushed back, as the British were, because we are not yet ready for the offensive; so for a year perhaps our very entrance into the war will tend to increase the prestige of our enemies. Therefore, in this time, we must use other powers, our other front, to touch sources of despair: our counter-propaganda must rebuild the self-respect of the Europeans, of those who resisted and were conquered and even of those who failed to resist. We can send them the record of heroism of their fellow-countrymen in our armies; if we can reach them, we should smuggle a sack of flour for every act of sabotage they commit; and we should send them at once a rough sketch, if not a blueprint, of a post-war world in which they will have a part--with our plans for recovering what was stolen from them, rebuilding what was destroyed, and restoring the liberty which in their hearts they never surrendered. And there is a special reason why we must speak promptly. We have to declare our unity to Europe in order to destroy the antagonisms which our enemies will incite at home. It will be good fascist propaganda to lead us to attack Americans of German and Italian birth or parentage; our enemies will say that the unity of America is a fraud, that we have only welcomed Italians and Germans to make them support the Anglo-Saxon upper classes--and that "good Europeans" can never become good Americans. The moment we give any pretext for this propaganda, our communication with _all_ of Europe is lost. _Short Wave to Ourselves_