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The 62-year-old Chicago businessman and onetime soldier was alarmed at the foreign policy of the President who as early as 1937 left no doubt of his opposition to totalitarian aggression. The General believed it was drawing the country into a European war on the side of Britain. He was sure that Hitler could not invade the U.S. across 3,000 miles of ocean. He believed that England could defend herself, and could, if she would, make a negotiated peace with Germany by which she could keep her fleet and colonies and leave to Germany economic control of the Continent. He was confident that the U.S. could hold its own in world trade afterwards. As he figured it, the countries of Europe needed the U.S. more than the U.S. needed them; the U.S. would hold the economic whiphand.
To the question, what price war and what price peace?, the General had an answer:
The interventionists' bargain, as he saw it, was a bad one. To line up with Britain would be "just like a well-organized, money-making business deciding to take a bankrupt firm in as partner." In that "impractical" partnership, the U.S. would squander its treasury and its sons' blood. The strain would be too much for democracy, some form of totalitarianism would have to be set up. The net: turmoil, chaos, revolution.
The isolationists' bargain was better, he was convinced. On the debit side, the U.S. would probably have to trade with a victorious Germany on a barter basis. All exports and imports would have to go under strict Government control. Government would have to lay an even heavier hand on private industry. The U.S. would have to learn to produce as Germany did under Hitler, and figure out a way to keep individual freedom. The U.S. would have to maintain a huge armament program. (But after all, the General told himself: "Hitler ... is mortal and he'll die some day. The way to tame a rebel is to make him rich and then he becomes conservative and settles down.") The net, as the General cast it up: retention of "most of the good things of our way of life and progress as a great nation."
It was tragic, thought the General, that the Administration did not agree with this view. But he was sure that most of his fellow countrymen, certainly most realistic hardheaded businessmen in isolationist Chicago, did agree. The General thought something ought to be done about it.
At that providential point the General heard of a young man with a bright idea. The young man, who had already organized a committee to spread the gospel of nonintervention, was personable Robert ("Bobbie") Douglas Stuart Jr., a Princeton graduate and a student at Yale Law School, son of a wealthy Quaker Oats Co. executive. The name of his committee: The Committee to Defend America First. The General joined immediately.