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U.S. Communists whooped with joy. American liberals looked confounded. It might be just as calamitous and unthinkable to conclude, as Wallace did, that the tensions between the U.S. and Russia could be resolved by appeasement. But at least Wallace had laid the issue bare. He would speak again, and again. Out of the Cabinet, and released from his pledge of temporary silence, he spoke over the radio: "The success of any policy rests ultimately upon the confidence and the will of the people. ... I intend to fight for peace."
Henry Wallace will have a strong appeal to Americans who want wishful thinking to do duty for a U.S. foreign policy and to Americans who want to believe that Russia is an "economic democracy." He will be welcomed by church groups, by labor unions, by parent-teacher societies, by leftist organizations of all shades and sizes, and by the myriad special committees which can spring up overnight. He will also be welcomed by isolationists, by Anglophobes and by Russophiles, and by those who believe that the only way to prevent the next war is to woo and win Russia's shy and aching heart.
But all these groups, if they are charmed by Henry's line, will have to forget a massive set of disagreeable facts. They would have to forget the Russian denial of religion, the Russian territorial expansion since World War II, the Russian denial of individual rights in both conquered and satellite countries, the character of the Russian police state, the new Russian five-year plan. They will have to forget, in short, that Russia is a totalitarian state.