A Time for Thought

The focus of world news was not in the U.S. last week. Citizens were beginning to find that not only their country's military frontiers, but its political, social and economic frontiers as well, ranged from North Africa to the Far Pacific. The words "isolation" and "intervention" were both equally dead--slain not by Franklin Roosevelt but by events beyond the power of any man to control. The U.S. was now the senior partner of all the United Nations, and the problems that this responsibility brought with it were beginning to come home to roost.

> Having set an original pattern of military overseas policy in French North Africa, the U.S. had explanations to make and judgments to justify to its British ally. A solution to the North African political and military obscurities has to be worked out, and the lines of a policy broader than the military expediency of the Darlan deal laid down. It will have to be an American solution since Americans are calling the turn in that area, and it calls for far greater thought and vision than the immediate and very practical problem of rationing U.S. food in North Africa.

> The U.S. needs to work out with Great Britain an even more basic understanding. While Americans have worried over the resurgence of old-line British imperialism, the British anxiously want to know if the U.S. will develop and stand by a strong and intelligent policy of participation in world affairs.

> The defeats of the German armies in Russia now call not only for political unity but for closer military cooperation between the U.S., Britain and Russia.

> While high strategy envisions the defeat of Hitler first and then a concerted attack on Japan, it is necessary to convince Chinese that exhausted Western powers will not let them down, will fight to a finish and sign no negotiated peace with Japan.

There are many more American problems, including intricate dealings with the exiled governments of Nazi-conquered nations. They were high on the agenda of U.S. leaders last week. Were the U.S. people sufficiently informed to follow their leaders?

From a sectional survey made by the Foreign Policy Association came mixed and disturbing reports. The war had made the U.S. people military and, perhaps, political internationalists, the survey showed, but they are far away from ready acceptance of worldwide economic and social responsibilities.

Said one contributor, Editor Paul B. Williams of the Utica (N.Y.) Press, who took a personal poll in upstate New York: "Concerning relations between . . . the U.S. and states seeking to achieve economic and political independence, notably China and India, the replies were remarkably vague. The most illuminating answer came from a prosperous Welsh dairyman who said: 'Can we teach a man like Gandhi to wear britches?' "

The San Francisco Chronicle's editor, Chester H. Rowell, thus gauged Pacific Coast sentiment: "We want to sell goods for money, and will even lend our customers the money to buy them at the risk that they may not pay the debt in cash. But to let them repay with their own goods, which might compete in our markets with our products, goes against our whole habit of thinking."

Said Denver University's International Relations Professor Ben Cherrington: "The determination of the Rocky Mountain people to be rid of war is ... resolute, but they have little knowledge of where lies the road that leads to 'the citadel of international collaboration.' "

The U.S. people still had a long way to go before they would be ready to face their serious, tough jobs around the world.

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