Don't Tread on Me!
Sirs:
. . . Long ago when this country was very young our emblem was not the eagle—it was the rattlesnake, coiled to strike, with the slogan, "Don't Tread On Me!" This was the spirit that won our freedom. With this spirit we can survive—if our brains and our guts haven't been bred out of us.
DOROTHY OSWALD
New York City
"Realists"
Sirs:
... In World War I, I was one of the first flock of volunteer assistant secretaries to the General Munitions Board (later the War Industries Board) and subsequently an Aircraft Armament officer in the A. E. F. For the past number of years, I have been editor of a national magazine devoted to Conservation of our Natural Resources, and also a New Mexico dude and cattle rancher.
As a regular reader of your Letters, I have recently gone out of my way to do some canvassing of public opinion in the Rocky Mountain region on my own hook. . . . The almost unanimous opinion of those to whom I have talked seems to be as follows:
1) The Rocky Mountain west believes generally that the Allies have irretrievably lost the war, and that the reason lies in the fact that they called names and offered criticism of Germany without the force necessary to back it up. This is a serious error in any barroom, and today international law and barroom law are about the same. The U. S. is less well prepared to back up its criticisms of the Axis Powers than the Allies were. Therefore it is the height of foolishness for our nation to stick its head in the lion's jaws and incur the enmity of the German people, particularly at the present time. . . . The highly vocal but locally infinitesimal minority of our people who call for aid to the Allies "short of war" gives an entirely wrong impression of real public sentiment hereabouts. We feel that such actions are not "short of war" but provocative of war itself. We are unconvinced that our frontier is in Europe.
2) A short time ago New Mexico seemed overwhelmingly pro-New Deal and pro-Roosevelt, but people are saying that the President has permitted his personal pro-Ally bias to betray our nation into what is already almost a state of war. Today it seems likely that Roosevelt would be defeated in this State solely on the basis of his recent conduct of international affairs. Recently people are saying that Wendell Willkie is the one possible savior in sight.