No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
American Foreign Policy: A Review of some Recent Literature on Isolation and Collective Security
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Extract
As professor Friedrich has pointed out in his Foreign Policy in the Making (Norton, New York, 1938) an effective foreign policy presupposes national unity and continuity. President Wilson tasted the bitterness of defeat over his League of Nations because he was an innovator and because he found it impossible to rally the nation behind his plan for American participation in an international peace program. At the present moment President Roosevelt is confronted both inside and outside his party by aggressive dissenters from his foreign policy. Persons and groups posing as the true defenders of the American democratic tradition have demanded the Ludlow referendum on war. They have presented isolationism, neutrality and economic nationalism as the principles of an authentic democratic way of life and have depicted international collaboration against aggressors as autocratic and dictatorial in tendency. The traditional American foreign policy of a “broad neutrality” says former President Hoover in Liberty, April 15, 1939, is being discarded by the present administration for a “vague use of force in association with European democracies.” Others say that President Roosevelt is leading the United States into war in order to assure himself a third term and to perpetuate New Deal “dictatorship.”
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1939
References
1 Senator Johnson a short time ago uttered a warning to the effect that if the United States goes to war in an effort to destroy the Fascist and Nazi dictatorships “we shall have a dictator in the United States and he will be with us forever.”
2 One might use the terms “nationalist” and “internationalist” to describe these two positions, but the employment of “isolationalist” and “non-isolationist” may avoid the danger of calling up false images.
3 Howe, Quincy, Blood is Cheaper than Water. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1939, has indicated the odd assortment of reactionaries, conservatives, liberals and radicals that may be found in the opposing schools of isolationists and non-isolationists designated by Howe as the Peace party and the War party. President Roosevelt, Earl Browder, Nicholas Murray Butler, Bernard Baruch, Lewis Mumford, Hamilton Fish Armstrong are found on the rolls of the War party. Herbert Hoover, Father Coughlin, Norman Thomas, the German-American Bund, General Hugh Johnson and Edwin Borchard find a place among the leaders of the Peace PartyGoogle Scholar.
4 Jessup, Philip, Neutrality: Its History, Economics, and Lams, Volume IV, Today and Tomorrow, New York: Columbia University Press, 1936Google Scholar, favors a flexible neutrality which will supplant a policy of cooperation against aggressors. He thinks that the use of economic sanctions as provided for in the Argentine Anti-War pact is a sound principle of foreign policy.
5 Wise, J. C., Woodrow Wilson, Disciple of Revolution, N. Y., Paisley, 1938Google Scholar, portrays the war President as a great conspirator in a plot to bring about a world dictatorship of international capitalism in the form of the League of Nations. Wise ferreted out a nest of co-conspirators in the persons of Former President Taft, Nicholas Murray Butler, Elihu Root and Andrew Carnegie. For an objective evaluation of this astounding book see the New York Times Literary Review (05 22, 1928) comment by Chamberlain, JohnGoogle Scholar.
See also Turlington, Edgar W., Neutrality: Its History, Economics, and Law; The World War Period, Columbia University, 1936.Google ScholarRippy, J. F., America and the Strife of Europe, University of Chicago, 1938Google Scholar, furnishes a notable treatment of isolationism in relationship to American expansionism. America's traditional policy suggests the need of tolerance in our relation with other countries.
For a more balanced account of the background of Wilson's foreign Policy see Notter, Harley, The Origins of the Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1937Google Scholar.
5a Peterson, H. C., Propaganda for War, University of Oklahoma Press, 1939, seeks to demonstrate with a wealth of material, some of which is new, that British Propaganda almost exclusively swept America into the World WarGoogle Scholar.
6 For descriptions of the conduct and general policies of American foreign Relation see Mathews, John Mabry, American Foreign Relations, N. Y., Appleton-Century, D.., rev. ed., 1938Google Scholar, and Benjamin Williams, American Diplomacy, N. Y., McGraw-Hill, 1936Google Scholar.
7 See also Bradley, Phillips, “Neutrality—as of 1936 and 1937,” American Political Science Review. Vol. XXXI, (02, 1937) pp., 100–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 An important statement from this point of view is made by Wright, Quincy, The United States and Neutrality, (Public Policy Pamphlets), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935Google Scholar.
9 Bradley, Phillips, Can We Sfm, Out of War?, N. Y., W. W. Norton, 1936Google Scholar, takes a stand similar to that of Beard who has contributed a preface to this volume.
10 In an earlier volume, Is America Afraid? Hartley argues for the conclusion that America should place her strength and her will at the disposal of those countries which make for an international democracy. Hartley is a staunch Anglophile who believes that the downfall of the British empire would be disastrous for the United States.
11 Meade, Edward Earle, “Military Policy and Security,” Political Science Quarterly, Volume 53, 03, 1938, pp. 1–13,Google Scholar thinks that problems of national defense have not been sufficiently ventilated and asks for further inquiry into the subject.
12 Clark, John Bates, A Tender of Peace, N. Y., Columbia University Press, 1936Google Scholar, proposes a vigorous international policy, which takes its initial drive from a real demonstration of military power against the dictators as a condition of international consultation with them.
Mumford, Lewis, Men Must Act, Harcourt, 1939, favors an uncompromising American policy towards fascists powers before it is too lateGoogle Scholar.
Davidson, F. P. and Viereck, G. S. Jr, editors, Before America Decides, Harvard University, 1938, a collection of articles by isolationists and non-isolationists. The contribution of Professor Clyde Eagleton is a particularly vigorous argument for collective securityCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
See also Jessup, Phillip C., International Security, Council on Foreign Relations, 1935Google Scholar.
The annual volumes of The United Stales in World Affairs, Harpers, for Council on Foreign Affairs, edited during the last several years by Whitney H. Shepardson and Willim H. Scroggs, are invaluable for a survey of American foreign relations during recent years.
The bi-monthly reports of the Foreign Policy Association provide objective and trustworthy studies of special topics in the foreign relations of the United States.
13 Simonds, Frank H., American Foreign Policy in the Post-War-Y ears, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1935Google Scholar, supports the League of Nations in principle but criticizes the existing League for its maintenance of the status quo. Simonds is on this account distinguishable from the undiscriminatng advocates of the League of the type of D. F. Fleming.
A popular scheme for the replacement of the League into a Union of democratic governments, which will first be established in the Western hemisphere is over-enthusiastically espoused by Streit, Clarence K., Union Now, N. Y., 1939Google Scholar.
14 It is often said that it is more important to mind our own business than to meddle in European disputes of centuries' standing. Many of these same persons likewise question the sanity of a foreign policy which would eventually lead to collaboration with the most brutal and atheistic and anti-democratic state of Europe—The Soviet Union.