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Aid to the Allies. Last week more & more U. S. citizens were determined that the U. S. should aid the Allies. No longer was it a subject for earnest editorials, for appeals on humanitarian grounds by distinguished educators and Nobel Prizewinners, of Senator Pepper urging action by Congress; it was a matter of citizens ringing doorbells, handing out petitions, joining committees that urged aid, quitting committees that held back. Said piercing-eyed General Pershing, with his jaw firm and his fist clenched: "The Allies are fighting a war for civilization. They are holding our front line. . . . We should send them not only food, clothing and medical supplies, but also arrange to send airplanes, artillery, small arms and ammunition in unlimited quantities. There is no time to lose." Said Mrs. Dwight Morrow, mother-in-law of Isolationist Charles Lindbergh:"I urge immediate aid to the Allies-the sending of munitions and supply.,, food, money, airplanes, ships and everything that could help them in their struggle against Germany. . . . There are some things worse than war. . . . There are some things supreme and noble that are worth fighting for. We have them in our own heritage. We are a great democracy, founded on a belief in personal liberty, freedom of speech and freedom of religion. There is no need to claim the British and French are paragons, but the fact remains that they are fighting to preserve these liberties. . . ." But most action centred around Midwestern William Allen White's Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies.
Founded last month, it grew so rapidly that last week its national headquarters did not know how many chapters it included (last count: 125) or how many signatures it had on the 20,000-odd petitions being circulated. But it said it expected over a million.
Typical was its Manhattan headquarters. A onetime business office, it resembled the field headquarters of a revolutionary army. Its windows looked out over green Bryant Park, the great, grey, peaceful bulk of the Public Library, Fifth Avenue that swarmed with crowds under the early summer sun. It was a room of confusion, noise, action, ringing telephones, of wooden desk-tables, of slatted folding chairs bought from a secondhand store, of rented typewriters with ribbons that always stuck, of not enough wastepaper baskets, stamps or paper clips. It teemed with improvised life-with the 30 paid employes running up & down the aisles between shoulder-high stacks of petitions, opening mail, answering mail, calling for somebody else to answer a clamoring phone, with a revolving staff of volunteer workers handing out petitions to some six hundred volunteers ringing doorbells all over Manhattan streets.
Simple and sweeping was the Committee's program:1) release as much U. S.
military equipment to the Allies as, in the Commander in Chief's opinion, could be released without impairing national defense; 2) make available $100,000,000 for the purchase of surplus supplies of food and clothing for French, Dutch and Belgian refugees; 3) stop export of war materials to aggressors; 4) take other measures, short of war, to insure the fullest possible support to the Allies.