To Keep the British Isles Afloat by Thomas Parrish

Author:Thomas Parrish
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-06-15T16:00:00+00:00

The republic’s stirring processes had formally begun to move in Washington on January 10 with the introduction of the lend-lease bill—“an act further to promote the defense of the United States, and for other purposes”—in the House and the Senate. The House parliamentarian, applying what seemed a numerical pun, tagged the bill H. R. 1776—a neat switch on history. The parliamentarian had more than a game in mind, however; he hoped to provide a bit of patriotic cover for the majority leader, John W. McCormack, who represented heavily Irish South Boston, where his sponsorship of a program to aid the English spalpeens would hardly strengthen him with constituents.

An official characterized the clamor across the country following the introduction of the lend-lease bill as “the final stage in a running national debate that had been going on in the United States with increasing vigor since the fall of France.” Even after the stirring and tragic events of the previous summer, the debate had moved slowly, noted the official, Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., and the pace with which the United States had proffered aid to the countries battling the Axis had thus proved correspondingly slow. That was because, Stettinius believed, the situation demanded a great consensus: “a mere majority is not a sufficient foundation when drastic and far-reaching action is necessary to protect the nation in time of peril.”

During the preceding summer two organizations had entered the debate—first, the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, which took formal shape on May 17, a week after the great German attack in the west. Chaired by the famous Kansas editor William Allen White, a Republican, it advocated supplying Britain and France with arms and war materials but did not argue for U.S. entry into the war. There soon followed a counter-organization, the America First Committee, a rallying point for isolationists or antiwar activists, founded at Yale with leadership by such young men as Gerald Ford, Potter Stewart, and Kingman Brewster; General Robert E. Wood of Sears, Roebuck agreed to serve as chairman. Both groups built up nationwide organizations, held mass meetings—with Colonel Lindbergh as the star attraction for America First—and waged extensive advertising campaigns. Though America First attracted a number of fringe types, the range of its adherents included many of the old liberal isolationists as well conservatives. “The ‘Great Debate’ was impressively orderly and nonviolent,” commented a historian; “emotions mounted as concerned Americans earnestly jousted verbally on what were literally life-and-death issues. Passions grew, and so did intolerance of conflicting foreign policy views. Increasingly, many on each side saw their adversaries in the debate as not merely wrong, but evil and perhaps subversive as well.” With each side wrapping itself in the flag, the debate became to some extent a contest of labels, “warmongers” versus “appeasers,” and some of the debaters flourished bare knuckles indeed. And now, the introduction of the lend-lease bill, with the committee hearings that would follow, would bring focus to the debate, giving senators and congressmen the chance to summon onto the national podium the voices they favored.

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