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On May 19, when Germany had broken through the Low Countries, he telephoned Eichelberger: "I think it's about time to act." His appeal went out to 60 men—Governors, college presidents, editors, a sprinkling of actors, lawyers, writers and one prize fighter (Gene Tunney): "From this day on, America must spend every ounce of energy to keep the war away from the Western Hemisphere by preparing to defend herself and by aiding with our supplies and wealth the nations now fighting to stem the tide of aggression. . . ." Next day 20 telegrams of acceptance hit the Emporia Gazette office in one hour; the Western Union office two blocks away stayed open overtime to handle Committee business. In 35 days a Historians' Committee had been set up under President Charles Seymour of Yale; a Scientists' Committee under Nobel Prizewinner Harold Urey; a Theatre Committee under Robert Sherwood, who drafted a "Stop Hitler" advertisement and raised $25,000 to have it printed. The day after the advertisement appeared, 500 volunteers appeared at Committee headquarters in Manhattan. The week that Italy entered the war, 5,000 swarmed to the Manhattan office to urge increased Allied aid.
But no more positively than last spring could U. S. opinion on World War II be said to be clarified. Hard-working Committee volunteers found plenty of support, but they also found the familiar U. S. dilemma—a desire to aid Britain, coupled with a desire to shun all contact with war. They found that some are afraid of war. if aid is given some afraid of losing it—by letting Britain lose—if aid is denied.
In this strange spectacle of the U. S. wrestling mentally with a problem of world policy, nothing is stranger than the sight of William Allen White, an editor from a small city in Kansas, leading the argument. The kind of U. S. which Editor White has known and believes in has been traced in his innumerable Emporia Gazette editorials, in his 14 books that included The Court of Boyville in 1899 and wound up with The Changing West last year. It is primarily a land of small cities and small towns a good deal like Emporia, each with a broad business street, usually called Commercial, running right down the centre. It has about ten churches for every 12,000 inhabitants, and has fine-looking schoolhouses that somehow developed out of the red rural school, of the sort he attended years ago. It is full of small dwellings, lawns, trees, and moderately prosperous businesses like the Gazette, where the average employe has been with the company 17 years, and three drive better cars than the boss.