WAR & PEACE: Mr. Hoover Raises a Ghost

With his habitual air of grumpy wisdom, Herbert Hoover last week summoned up a ghost: the ghost of Fisher Ames (1758-1808). The only living ex-President was making a speech to warn the U.S. against entry into the war. To show how wrought-up earlier interventionists had been, he quoted some of Ames's sentences on Napoleon which sounded exactly like Walter Lippmann's sentences on Hitler. Said Ames: "If Bonaparte prevails [in Europe], we will be his vassals. . . . Britain fights our battles. . . . One single hope of security is the British Navy. ... If Russia is disarmed,...

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