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No. 1 ideologue to U. S. fifth columnists is wooly-haired, swarthy Lawrence Dennis, author of The Coming American Fascism; dabbler in "native fascist" politics. Said he to the New Dealers: "What is the policy? Is it for defense or for war?" And he answered his question with an accusation: "You are using defense as a WPA project of which the Republicans have to approve." The talk drifted back to price controls. But underneath a storm was brewing. About 15 minutes later it broke. Up rose Jerome Frank, let loose a torrent of evangelical capitalism. Eyes popping, head shaking like a metronome, he accused: "It is ridiculous to say that it is desirable to be just as grim and nasty and sadistic as we can in working out defense and make every man feel as though an iron collar were around his neck. ... Of course we ought to try to run our defense program in such a way that it will slide off into a non-defense economy. ... I know Mr. Dennis is a well-informed and a subtle-minded man. . . . He knows perfectly well that if we were to do it his way [minimum spending] ... we would actually hurt our productive capacity, we wouldn't have private industries ready as we come to need them, we wouldn't have healthy morale on the part of our citizens." Soon Frank and Dennis were trading blows across the room. The last smack hit Dennis on the chin. "You don't like capitalism," said Frank, "therefore you think it must make people miserable. You think it is bound to fail and you want to see it fail, and you hate to see a program that will work and preserve capitalism. I think this program is going to conserve capitalism. I think Mr. Connely's fellows [the investment bankers] are going to get business out of it."
By this time a come-to-meeting atmosphere was in the room. Up jumped Kuhn Loeb's Ben Buttenwieser to top it off: "We may quarrel with some of the methods and some of the views of the present administration, but the charge was made that the New Dealers are against capitalism, and that is completely unwarranted. If that is so I don't know the definition of capitalism . . . you can't test capitalism by a temporary narrow interest return."
The meeting broke up in the nearest thing to personal friendliness between Wall Street and New Dealers since the "breathing spell" days of 1936. Next day most of the bankers were back working for (or at least wanting) Willkie. But it was clear to most forumists that the New Deal v. Business feud need not hamper the fiscal end of defense. As Alf Landon said, "Politics end at the water's edge."