War or peace in Europe hangs on the calculations and miscalculations of a few men in power, and there is a major unknown in their calculations: In case of war can they or can their enemies rely on the economic resources of the U. S.? If one of the men in power is tempted to take a bad gamble on that question, the U. S. may be indirectly responsible for launching a World War.
That would be a Tragedy of Errors. For the U. S. wants Peace. But the U. S. has spent nearly eight years trying to make up its mind what it will do to stay at peace. And still the U. S. does not know. Its quandary arose nearly eight years ago when the U. S. people discovered themselves Babes in a pre-war World.
The First Madness. In September 1931 the peace system which for twelve years had ruled the world—the system of Britain's ex-Socialist Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, of France's ex-Socialist Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, of the U. S.'s Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and of their peace pacts—was at its prime.
In the late evening of September 18, the whole imposing edifice collapsed like a circus tent assailed by impatient roustabouts. Japan had detected some reputed Chinese sabotage on the Japanese-controlled South-Manchuria Railroad and Japanese troops marched into Mukden. By the standards of the era which had passed, the world has been haywire ever since.
On January 4, 1932 out of the gloomy General Grant rococo of the State Department emerged the figure of an intense, chivalrous man, Colonel Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of State. He descended the long flight of steps, stalked across the street, entered the White House offices where he was closeted with President Herbert Hoover. Three days later a U. S. note went out to call Japan's attention to the Kellogg-Briand Peace pact. A copy of the note went to the other signatories of the Nine-Power Treaty in order to invite them to cooperate in putting pressure on Japan.
This move, whose object was not to preserve the peace (which was already shot full of holes) but to preserve the peace system, was received by Sir John Simon, Britain's cold, cautious, legalistic Foreign Secretary, with a yawn. Britain answered that she would be satisfied if Japan reaffirmed her pledge to maintain the Open Door, a polite way of saying that she did not care whose throat was cut.
Three weeks later Japanese bombs were falling on the flimsy wooden hovels of Chapei, a section of Shanghai and 24,000 Chinese were killed or wounded in the ensuing holocaust. Once again Colonel Stimson tried to rally Britain by suggesting that the Nine-Power Treaty, guaranteeing the territorial integrity of China, which Japan had signed at Washington in 1922, be invoked. Once again Sir John Simon turned his back. The Japanese, undisturbed, made mince meat of the heroic Chinese 19th Route Army.
Peace Passion. For a dozen years the U. S. had enjoyed peace with placid satisfaction. In this new pre-war world peace became an emotional issue. As the anti-war chorus swelled, Senator Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota, emerging from nine years of obscurity as a minor radical in Congress, led the shouting. The Senate gave him carte blanche and $50,000 to investigate the part which munitions makers and their bankers had played in implicating the U. S. in World War I.