Uniting America by Peter Shinkle

Author:Peter Shinkle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

* * *

WILLKIE WENT TO the White House for a private meeting on October 14 with the president. Afterwards, seeking again to underscore his independence from FDR, the Republican leader said of the trip, “This was my own idea. Nobody asked me to do it.”33 He also made a statement saying that the first purpose of the journey was to “demonstrate to our Allies and to a good many neutral countries that there is unity in the United States on the purpose of winning this war.”

FDR told reporters two days later only that the two men had had “an exceedingly successful and a very interesting talk.”34 He had to tread lightly on the subject of liberating colonies to avoid irritating Churchill. Ever the strategist, however, the president by his silence quietly endorsed Willkie’s anti-colonialist proclamations. Just as FDR benefitted from Stimson’s aggressive stances on matters such as the Neutrality Act or starting military conscription, the president now gained from Willkie’s ardent appeals for liberation for colonized peoples.

On October 26, Willkie discussed his globe-trotting trip in what he called his “Report to the People,” a radio broadcast heard by a vast audience estimated at thirty-six million Americans.35 Once again, he called for opening a second front and sending more arms to the Allies. Railing against imperialism, he painted the Atlantic Charter as an agreement that promised self-determination for the nations of the Atlantic but turned a blind eye to colonies within the Pacific region. “Is there to be no charter of freedom for the billions of the East? Is freedom supposed to be priceless for the white man, or for the Western World, but of no account to [people] in the East?” He also denounced US policy toward India. “They cannot ascertain from our government’s wishy-washy attitude toward the problem of India what we are likely to feel at the end of the war about all the other hundreds of millions of Eastern peoples. They cannot tell from our vague and vacillating talk whether or not we really do stand for freedom.… I can assure you that the rule of the people by other people is not freedom, and is not what we must fight to preserve.”36

William Allen White, the Kansas editor and internationalist Republican, swiftly applauded Willkie for challenging FDR and Churchill. “For the first time in human history, a major leader of a great republic spoke out specifically, naming names of nations and races, and demanding in terms definite and certain, freedom for all mankind. Mr. Roosevelt and the Atlantic Charter and Mr. Churchill have spoken of freedom but apparently with crossed fingers for Asia and Africa. The Atlantic charter did not interest ‘the yellow and brown and the black,’ but Mr. Willkie demanded the end of the colonial system. And he looked square at the remains of the British empire as he said ‘the end of the colonial system.’ His demand was a forward step in the battle for freedom.”37 The speech also drew support from Clare Boothe

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.