A War Worth Fighting...

Whether the policies of the so-called "isolationists" if adopted by the Administration from the beginning of the present war would have led this country safely through the emergency is at present a purely academic question. There now can be no isolation for America. Whether a policy of aiding England to which the "short of war" reservation was tacked would have succeeded is more certain; it never could have worked. This is the policy which the Crimson supported last year, and today finds untenable. The middle of the road path which looked so inviting to us last year now appears to have the common failing of compromises-the weaknesses of both sides without the strength of either.

Either we must believe that Hitler has to be defeated or we must believe that America can live alone and like it. We believe the former. We though the job could be done by England and China, while we sat at home engaged in the vital but safe and prosperous tasks of manufacturing airplanes and fattening hogs. Now we realize that any cause worth espousing is worth espousing completely. We have felt all along that England was fighting a "good" war from an ethical point of view. Now we are convinced that if a war is worth fighting it's worth fighting well. We believe that there can be no middle ground between the way of life of the democratic countries and that of the totalitarian powers. Democracy in any form cannot survive in a world dominated by Hitlerism, and Hitlerism cannot survive in a world it cannot dominate. We have thrown in our lot with our ideological allies, England and China, and our military ally, Russia. We must be prepared, if necessary, to crush Fascism, to align ourselves with them completely, though it means allout war.

The actual declaration of war is a question of internal as well as international strategy. Not only is there the consideration of the usefulness of a war declaration to Britain, China, and Russia but also the necessity of obtaining an overwhelming majority of the people to back the war effort.

While we believe that war and the inevitable loss of freedom that goes with war will surely become necessary, we do not abandon our fight for a better, more truly democratic country to emerge when the struggle is finally over. The adoption of a dictatorship in this country, like those of Churchill in England and Chiang Kai-shek in China, will, we are convinced, be purely for the means of winning the war. That is the first objective. Until the war is won we can put into effect neither social aims nor peace programs.

We are well aware of the far reaching consequences of a war. We do not expect it to be won easily. We do not expect it to be over in the next few months or even the next few years, and we are aware that many of us and of our friends will never live to see the final victory. We know that this country, as well as all the other countries of the world will be impoverished by the fight. We know that at the end of the struggle we will still have two Herculean tasks: helping to create a better peace than the last one and setting this country back on its feet on a firmer basis than it was in 1919. And yet, knowing all this, we are willing to go ahead.