H. R. Knickerbocker

“ I tell you truly and what you must believe when I say this evil man, this monstrous abortion of hatred and deceit, has resolved on nothing less than the complete wiping out of the French nation and the disintegration of its whole life and future. By all kinds of sly and savage means he is plotting and working to crush forever the fountain of characteristic French culture and French inspiration to the world. It is not defeat that France will now be made to suffer at German hands, but the doom of complete obliteration. ”

“ How many Americans today understand and fully realize, emotionally as well as intellectually, that in order to retain our liberty and our national independence and make secure the lives of our children, we have to face now the prospect of years of war, hardship, and the loss of many American lives, and the wounding and maiming of many more? Certainly it is brutal, not my words, but the reality. It is unworthy of a nation of 130,000,000 for its leaders to suggest that all will be well if only we pass this piece of legislation or take that stand or appropriate another trillion dollars. ”

“ Finally Lindbergh demands that we “define our war aims,” and tell “how we are to impose our ideology on Germany, Russia, Italy and Japan.” We do not wish to “impose our ideology” on anyone. All we wish at the moment is to preserve our nation, keep from becoming slaves of the Nazis, and prevent Hitler from imposing his ideology upon us. We want only to make the world safe for the United States, which means also for the friends and allies of the United States, and if victory is ours we shall attempt to include in the circle of security all the nations of good will on earth. ”

“ Witness today how for a long time the subjugated peoples of Europe seemed sunk in abject apathy, but awakened to demonstrate against their despot the moment Russia’s resistance awakened the hope of eventual victory. If Hitler wins over the rest of the world, he must destroy us in order to be safe in his own Empire.
As long as a democracy exists on earth it will hold out before the eyes of hundreds of millions of Hitler’s subjects the vision of a place on earth where the body and soul of a man belong to himself and there are no masters and slaves. ”

“ We can talk all we like about being in a state of undeclared war, but until we are formally at war we will continue to behave as though we were at peace. Only by going to war can we discipline ourselves, our workingmen, and our employers to defeat the Axis in the battle of production. At this moment when Britain and Germany are devoting four hours of each working day to making arms, we are devoting thirty minutes to making arms. Only by going to war can our citizens’ army get the morale to be a fighting force. ”

“ Who will dispute that Hitler is more evil than money-changers in a Temple, and that all the forces of Christianity ought to be ranged together to destroy his hateful power. You cannot win a battle, you cannot win a war, you cannot win any kind of fight that involves killing unless you have the spirit to kill. You cannot have that spirit unless you are convinced of the justice of your cause, and you know that God is on your side, and that God approves your killing your enemies. ”

“ The service rendered by Finland to mankind is magnificent. They have exposed for all the world to see, the military incapacity of the Red Army and of the Red Air Force. Many illusions about Soviet Russia have been dispelled in these few fierce weeks of fighting in the Arctic Circle. Everyone can see how Communism rots the soul of a nation; how it makes it abject and hungry in peace and proves it base and abominable in war. ”

“ For the deepest blot upon Nazi Germany is its dark love of torture, its base delight in pain endured by others, its cruel concentration camps. Never in any quarter of the globe at any time in mankind’s history has any nation revealed so determined a will and clever a method to exploit permanently as slaves the unfortunate victims of its martial skill. The problem then is, how to restrain Germany, or how to reform Germany, how, if possible, to bring her into our world family. ”

“ On July 14, 1940 when Hitler’s army had swept all before it save the British Isles, Churchill said: “And now it has come to us to stand alone in the breach, and face the worst that the tyrant’s might and enmity can do. Bearing ourselves humbly before God, but conscious that we serve an unfolding purpose, we are ready to defend our native land against the invasion by which it is threatened. We are fighting by ourselves alone; but we are not fighting for ourselves alone. ”

“ He says the longer the war continues, the more confused its issues become. Not at all—the longer it lasts the more plain it becomes that the issue is: Germany against the world. Do not be confused by the fact that some countries which were fighting Germany, now come out on Germany’s side. As Germany conquers one country after another, she attempts to force them into fighting for her, as in the case of France. No matter what Hitler’s puppet government in France does, we know that the true France is no friend of Germany, but an implacable enemy. ”

“ Does Lindbergh ask us to say: “We, the United States of America will give so and so many American lives in order to preserve our national independence, our institutions, our children’s lives and our liberty, but we will give so many and no more? If it costs more, we will surrender! If it takes two years to win, we will make the trade; if it costs ten, we give in!” If that is our attitude, we are beaten before we begin. It is not America’s attitude. It was Vallandigham’s, but not America’s. ”

“ This tribute, which is to be paid not merely for generations to come, but as Hitler modestly estimates, for 1,000 years, will go to elevate the standard of living of all Germans, and to depress the standard of living of all non-Germans. It makes no difference that most Germans have no voice in their government; every German will be under Hitler’s New Order, a slaveholder, and every non-German inhabitant of occupied territory is automatically a slave of the whole German tribe. ”

“ Does the Russo-German war prove Hitler’s thesis that he was an implacable enemy of Bolshevism? Nonsense! Hitler’s brand of Bolshevism is infinitely more menacing to us all than any produced in Russia. The bibles of the twin regimes, Mein Kampf and Das Kapital, preach identical doctrine: Here, hate everybody of a different race; there, hate everybody of a different class. Since Jesus Christ was on earth the Communist Party and the Nazi Party and the states they founded are the first institutions of such dimensions to be built avowedly and officially on hatred. ”

“ They knew that the Germans are bound to realize if they lose this war they will be worse off than if they win. War is Hell, but much more hellish for the defeated side. It is untrue that war never settles anything. It always settles something, whether for a short time, as for the twenty years following the uncompleted war of 1914-1918, or forever as the Third Punic War. The Germans know this better than almost any other people. But now they have had a crushingly frank statement of basic British-American war aims: abolition of German military power. ”

“ If the British were to have a mental breakdown and declare they disliked us so thoroughly that they would accept no more help from us of any kind and would rather be beaten by the Nazis than win with American help, we should be compelled from our own vital self-interest to beg to be allowed to help them and then we should have to urge and even threaten until reluctantly the British made room for us in the battle line. It is good luck that the British are people who would be worth saving even if thereby we were not going to save ourselves. ”

“ Fighting, speaking, writing, eating, drinking, sleeping, smoking, all are the source of intense satisfaction. He relishes every moment in his life. This war was made for him, because fighting is life itself to Churchill. In the last war he was a subordinate and could not thoroughly enjoy the fight when others checked his combat plans. Now he is unchecked by anybody except the British people, and they have shown they are only too glad to let him savor to the full what are to him the joys of responsibility in the greatest fight with the greatest consequences in the memory of mankind. ”

“ They are like the Negroes on a pre-Civil War plantation in our own South. The Germans, like the white folks, live in the big house, eat caviar and chicken, drink the wonderful wines of France, clothe their women with the creations of the great couturiers, and promenade the Boulevards while the French people, half-starving, broken, humiliated, work desperately hard to support their masters. The French are now not even being treated as well as slaves under a master considerate enough to wish to keep his slaves in good health and fit working order. ”

“ The French had up to the bitter end, so little primitive, full-blooded spirit that they neither sang on the way to battle nor cursed while in action; they harbored no anger toward the enemy, no hatred for him, and they had no will to kill. They were apologetic for being at war, until catastrophe was upon them, and it was too late. Most Americans feel apologetic about the war and behave as though they were not sure of the rightness of our cause. ”

“ All our long history built up century after century, all our great affairs in every part of the globe, all the means of livelihood and safety of our faithful, industrious, active population depended upon them. Open the seacocks and let them sink beneath the surface and in a few minutes, half an hour at the most—the whole outlook of the world would be changed. The British Empire would dissolve like a dream; each isolated community struggling forward by itself ”

“ Let us not argue the definition of Communism and whether we ought to call it State Capitalism. The world had made up its mind that the collectivist system as practiced by the Russians could not produce enough to make its population as well off as the people were even under old-fashioned, broken-down, rickety capitalism. Now, victory by the Red Army would be evidence that Russian Communism could do what Western capitalism could not do—defeat Hitler. The populations of Europe would count that power victorious whose land armies were on the spot to occupy the territory of the defeated. ”

“ Churchill it became every day more clear that war was certain to come, and that a violent gesture by Hitler might precipitate it any moment. Suddenly Hitler marched into Prague, breaking the fresh vows he had made at Munich, deliberately insulting Britain and France, cynically strangling the rump state he had sworn to respect. Throughout Europe ran a shudder and the mind of every man was absorbed with anxious exploration of the possibilities. ”

“ Never has such a quantity of news been put before a people as we Americans have before us at breakfast every day and from then on until midnight. American newspapers are doing today the most superb job ever done by daily journals. But that is not their chief merit. Their chief merit is their honesty and incorruptibility and their sincere endeavor to be fair and objective. These qualities have enabled the American press, since the foundation of the United States, to be the equal in importance to the executive or the legislative or the judicial branch of government. ”

“ Churchill has a profound historical sense and the thought of himself as a part of the broad stream of the British people, flowing from the distant past into the limitless future, is never absent from his speaking and writing. He is never just Churchill, he is Churchill of British history, of the Marlboroughs, but now more than ever Churchill of the British people, with whom he has established a community of feeling seldom equaled in the relationship of leader to people. It has always been Hitler’s boast that “I am Germany!” ”

“ Jean, you seem to believe profoundly that Germany is strong enough to win a war no matter how France fights to prevent it; and you also seem to believe that the German kind of National Socialism would be a good thing for the whole continent, including France. Now what would you do, believing as you do, if France were to be at war with Germany, and you thought defeat was inevitable, and you foresaw a long and bloody conflict, and you suddenly found yourself in possession of a military secret which would end the war immediately in favor of Germany if the Germans knew it. ”

“ To the Nazi heart justice to the weak is a proof of weakness; and to the Nazi mind only one thing prevents a human being from seizing the property of a neighbor, weakness. So Hitler on the one hand thinks us weak, but on the other hand he recognizes that we could become strong.
As he once told me that he admitted the entry of the United States into the last war had decided the struggle, so now when America is preparing to throw its whole weight against him, he shows signs of wishing to keep us out. By now Britain has taught him that even a democracy can become tough if it has time. ”

“ Hitler’s secret is twofold; first, that his unconscious has exceptional access to his consciousness, and second, that he allows himself to be moved by it. He is like a man who listens intently to a stream of suggestions in a whispered voice from a mysterious source, and then acts upon them.
“In our case, even if occasionally our unconscious does reach us through dreams, we have too much rationality, too much cerebrum to obey it—but Hitler listens and obeys. The true leader is always led. ”

“ Lieutenant Churchill fought his way through a tangle of howling dervishes? He has the enduring physical courage to play a championship game of polo with a dislocated shoulder. He has the moral courage to lead a lost cause. It was he who defended the Duke of Windsor at the abdication, when the once most popular man in the British Empire had lost every other friend. He has the courage to take responsibility, and since he has been Prime Minister he has personally taken the criticism for every ill turn of fortune, every plan gone wrong. He can meet a hostile mob and talk it down. ”

“ You may say that the only difference between a Bolshevik’s or Nazi’s breaking his word and a bourgeois’ doing the same is that the Bolshevik or Nazi would be proud of it and the bourgeois would not. True enough, and that makes all the difference between a moral world and an amoral world. It is the difference between the recognition of morality and the defiance of it—the difference between civilization and the jungle. This jungle attitude we hope to eliminate by defeating Hitler. ”