VI. "He Lied Us Into War"

VI. "He Lied Us Into War" LEREis no authority under the American Constitution to "make" war upon another country. The Founding Fathers ex pected that Congress would "declare" war only in the eventu ality that some other country should "make" war upon the United States. In the Constitutional Convention on August 17, 1787, El bridge Gerry of Massachusetts said he "never expected to hear in a Republic a motion to empower the Executive alone to de clare war." George Mason of Virginia said such power could not safely be entrusted to the president. Pierce Butler of South Carolina was the only member who had suggested vesting the war power in the president, and he abandoned his proposal in the face of overwhelming opposition. On a motion by Gerry and Virginia's James Madison the members even sought to narrow the war power of Congress by substituting "declare" for "make." This fundamental principle of the Constitution was sub verted by Franklin D. Roosevelt. As Clare Booth Luce told the Republican national convention in 1944, "He lied us into war."

Some of the late President's most zealous apologists now acknowledge that he betrayed the American people into World War II. In his book, The Man in the Street, Professor Thomas A. Bailey, of Stanford University, an unmitigated intervention ist, writes: "Roosevelt repeatedly deceived the American peo ple during the period before Pearl Harbor .... He was faced with a terrible dilemma. If he let the people slumber in a fog of isolation, they might well fall prey to Hitler. If he came out unequivocally for intervention, he would be defeated in 1940."

"HE LIED US INTO WAR" 75 Reviewing Professor Bailey's book for the New York Times, Professor Schlesinger commented approvingly: "If he (Roose velt) was going to induce the people to move at all, Prof. Bailey concludes, he (Roosevelt) had no choice but to trick them into acting for what he conceived to be their best inter ests." This is the anti-moral Marxist-Leninist precept that the end justifies the means. "We must be ready to employ trickery, de ceit, law-breaking, withholding and concealing truth," wrote Lenin. Can good ends be achieved by evil means? The Gospel according to St. Matthew, 8: 18, tells us: "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit." It is self-evident that those who justify the President's de ception of the people on the ground that he knew what was best for them, while they did not, have no faith in representa tive government. The same argument could be used to justify any conceivable despotism, as in fact it has been used by tyrants throughout history. "Necessity is the argument of tyrants, it is the creed of slaves," said William Pitt.

Many Roosevelt partisans scorn any critical.examination of his misdeeds as the judgment of hindsight. Their argument overlooks the historical fact that eighty per cent of the people, according to all the polls, had enough foresight to oppose inter vention in the war. Moreover, all history is hindsight. If we don't learn from history, from experience, how can we learn? It is doubly important to scrutinize Roosevelt's record because his adherents still have charge of the foreign relations of the United States. Also, the subversion of the constitutional war power is rele vant to any survey of the revolutionary movement in this coun try. President Truman, relying solely on the recommendation of the United Nations Security Council and even anticipating that, took the countryinto the Korean war. A documentsub sequently prepared for the information of Congress by the ex... ecutive departments of the government, headed "Powers of the President to Send Armed Forces Outside the United States,"

76 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION declares: "Use of the congressional power to declare war ... has fallen into abeyance because wars are no longer declared in advance.... Repelling aggression in Korea or Europe can not wait upon congressional debate." There is impressive evidence that Roosevelt was responsible for the intervention of Great Britain and France, as well as the United States, in World War II. If he had refrained from goad ing British and French officialsto stand up to Hitler, and from promising American help if their resistance should result in war, the conflict might have been confined to Germany and Russia. The two most horrible dictatorships in history then might have fought each other to impotence. Western Europe and the United States might have been spared the disasters visited upon them by World War II, as well as the terrible sacri ficesnow required by the menace of communist Russia.

Hitler had made it unmistakably clear in Mein Kampf that he was driving at Russia. He had set himself up as the great enemy of communism, the defender of western civilization; but he had more practical reasons for smashing the Bolshevik re gime. He wanted the grain of the Ukraine, the oil, lumber, and mineral resources of the Caucasus. There can be no doubt that he would have settled accounts with Poland by seizing the Po lish Corridor, which was taken from Germany by the Versailles Treaty, but this loss would have been negligible compared with the fate that befell Poland. Great Britain's guarantee to Poland on March 31, 1939, which was supported by France,was followed by British and French declarations of war on Germany when Hitler's Wehr macht attacked Poland on September 1. The guarantee to Po land was a military absurdity, for there was no possibility that Britain and France could protect that country from a German attack. B. H. Liddell Hart, one of Britain's leading military writers, said the commitment to Poland was both a temptation and a provocation to Hitler. Winston Churchill, who was not a member of the cabinet when Prime Minister Chamberlain made the commitment, declares in his memoirs that history af fords no parallel "to this sudden and complete reversal of five "HE LIED US INTO WAR" 77 or six years' policy of placatory appeasement and its transfor mationalmost overnight into a readiness to accept an obviously imminent war."

Churchill recalls that at Munich, in the previous September, Britain and France recoiled from war, in violation of France's treaty obligations to Czechoslovakia, although the Czechs.had thirty-five divisions behind their natural fortress line in the Sudeten Mountains, the French had sixty or seventy divisions, and the Germans "could scarcely put half a dozen trained divi sions on the Western front." After all these advantages had been thrown away, Churchill scornfully declares, "Great Britain advances, leading France by the hand, to guarantee the integrity of Poland which with hyena appetite had only six months before joined in the pillage and destruction of the Czechoslovak state."l Why did Chamberlain do this? Would we have done so with out American instigation and a commitment of American sup port? In December, 1938, less than ten weeks after the Munich conference, Anthony Eden, former British foreign minister, who had resigned from the Chamberlain government in the previous February as a protest against appeasement of Hitler and Mussolini, conferred with President Roosevelt at the White House. The late Senator WilliamE. Borah (R., Ida.) who had been chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and was well acquainted in Washington diplomatic circles, told this author he had information which made him believe that Roose velt gave Eden a war commitment. He said he was advised that Roosevelt told Eden to go back home and tell Chamberlain to stand up to Hitler. Roosevelt, it was said, told Eden that if re sistance to Hitler should result in war, the United States would not permit the defeat of Britain by Germany.

On December 27, 1945, the late James Forrestal made an entry in his diary about a conversation that day with Joseph P. Kennedy, former ambassador to Great Britain. Forrestal asked Kennedy to tell him· about his conversations "with Roosevelt 1. The Gathering Storm, by Winston Churchill.

78 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION and Neville Chamberlain from 1938 on." Kennedy's view, For restal wrote, was that Hitler would have fought Russia without any later conflict with England but for the commitment to Po land. Neither the French nor the British would have made Po land a cause of war "if it had not been for the constant needling from Washington," Kennedy told Forrestal. Kennedy also de clared that in his telephone conversations with Roosevelt in the summer of 1939 the President kept telling him "to put some iron up Chamberlain's backside." Forrestal also noted in his diary that Clarence Dillon, a New York investment banker, told him that at Roosevelt's request he had talked to Lord Lothian, the British ambassador before the war, in the same general sense as Kennedy was urged to talk to Chamberlain. Forrestal acknowledged that there was "undoubtedly foun dation for Kennedy's belief that Hitler's attack could have been deflected to Russia," but he said Kennedy failed to take into ac count "what would have happened after Hitler had conquered Russia." What Forrestal failed to take into account was that Hitler never would have conquered Russia. The German gen erals knew this. According to Liddell Hart, in his book, The German Generals Talk, both General von Brauchitsch, Com mander in Chief of the German Army, and General Halder, Chief of the General Staff, "tried to curb Hitler's ambition to succeed where Napoleon had failed." In the captured archives of the German foreign office there was a memorandum dated April 28, 1941, by Baron Ernst Von Weizsacker, Secretary of State, warning Hitler that although the German armies might advance victoriously to Moscow and beyond, Germany would not be able to turn what it had won to account because of "the well known passive resistance of the Slavs." He said Germany would have to reckon with "a continuation of the Stalin system in Eastern Russia and in Siberia and with a renewed outbreak of hostilities in the spring of 1942." Even General George C.

Marshall, Roosevelt's Chief of Staff, declared in his official re port to Congress that the "turning point of the war" came in December, 1941, when Hitler's forces were stopped before Moscow by a combination of the Russian army and the Russian "HE LIED US INTO WAR" 79 winte:t;. And that was before American lend-lease aid had reached Russia in sufficient quantity to have any appreciable effect. Writing in the September-October, 1949, issue of Army Ord nance, General J. F. C. Fuller, distinguished British soldier and historian,assessedthe results of Roosevelt'sintervention as follows: "Though Germany was defeated and National Socialism overthrown, Russia and Stalinism took their place. Great Brit ain was bankrupted and her empire is now in a state of dissolu tion; and yearly America is spending billions of dollars to stem the Communist flood.... "We Europeans are a truculent congeries of nations who have been fighting each other for upward of 2,000 years and we dislike outside interference. In 1917 you Americans stepped into the war to save one side; and whatever at the time we may have asked for as Englishmen and Frenchmen, as Europeans we did not want to be saved by a non-European power; instead, what we really wanted was to settle our quarrels in our own historic way. Had you not stepped in we should have been forced to come to terms between ourselves, as we have done scores of times before. Without your aid, and it was generous, we Europeans would have concluded the first world war, prob ably in 1917, by a negotiated peace, which could not have been worse than the one established.

"Again, in the last war, what with your lend-lease, etc.., you got entangled in the European brawl, and between 1942 and 1945, backed by your enormous industrial power, you laid the greater part of central Europe flat. But for lend-lease the war could not have continued for long. Again there would have been a negotiated peace, which could not possibly have been as bad as the present so-called one. Though it is true that it would almostcertainlyhavebeenfollowed(if not preceded)by a war between Germany and Russia, nothing could have been more beneficial to the world at large; for in it the two dictatorial powers which were threatening the western way of life would 80 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION have bled each other white. To imagine that Hitler, had he con quered Russia in Europe, could have held it for long is a joke. It needed no hindsight to see these things, only a modicum of foresight; but sad to say this was lacking. Europe is now im potent either to make peace or wage war, and today she is hanging around your neck like the Ancient Mariner's albatross.

If you abandon her she will turn Red; if you do not, there is a high probability that there will be anoth~r war." There is neither space nor necessity here to review the steps by which Roosevelt dragged the country into the war. That has been done by George Morgenstern, in Pearl Harbor; by Pro fessor Charles Callan Tansill, in Back Door to War; by Frederic Sanborn, in Design for War; and by the late Charles A. Beard, in President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War. It is per tinent, however, to consider some of the factors which ac counted for the transformation of Roosevelt from a "perfect isolationist," as he was described by Senator Hiram Johnson after his Chautauqua, N. Y., speech in 1936, into a passionate interventionist. In the Chautauqua speech, Roosevelt acclaimed the Neu trality Act which Congress had passed at his behest in 1935, and warned the country: ". . . if war should break out again in another continent, let us not blink the fact that we would find in this country thousands of Americans who, seeking im mediate riches-fools' gold-would attempt to break down or evade our neutrality."

The President added: "We can keep out of war if those who watch and decide have a sufficiently detailed understanding of international affairs to make certain that the small decisions of each day do not lead toward war and if, at the same time, they possess the courage to say 'no' to those who selfishly or unwisely would let us go to war." But even before the European war started, the President, in his annual message to Congress on January 4, 1939, attacked the neutrality law and called for its revision to permit action against aggressors by "methods short of war." Four years after "HE LIED US INTO WAR" 81 making the Chautauqua speech, Roosevelt, on September 3, 1940, announced the transfer of fifty American destroyers to Great Britain in exchange for naval and air base leases in Brit ish western hemisphere possessions. Winston Churchill, in his memoirs, frankly acknowledged that the destroyer deal was "a decidedly unneutral act" which would "have justified the German government in declaring war upon 'them (the United States) ."2 Shortly after transferring the destroyers to Britain, Roose velt wanted to institute a naval blockade against Japan. Ad miral J. O. Richardson, former commander of the United States fleetin the Pacific, testified before the Joint Congressional Com mittee which investigated the Pearl Harbor disaster that on Oct. 10, 1940, he was summoned to a conference in the office of Navy Secretary Knox. He said Knox reported that the Presi dent was considering a plan to station two lines of American ships, one from Hawaii to the Philippines and one from the Dutch East Indies to Samoa, which would shut off all Japanese trade with 'North and South America. Richardson protested that such an act would mean war with Japan, for which the navy was not prepared, and that the United States would lose the ships. Roosevelt was compelled to abandon the scheme.

Only three weeks after proposing what would have been un declared war against Japan, the President, on October 30, 1940, declared at Boston: "And while I am talking to you mothers and fathers, I give you one more assurance. I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars." When he made that speech he had no doubt that the United States "sooner or later" would be at war. He had discussed the Pacific situation with Admiral Richardson at the White House on October 8. Richardson testified before the congressional committee that Roosevelt said the Japanese could not always avoid making mistakes, and that "sooner or later they would make a mistake and we would enter the war." What had come over Roosevelt? Certainly the failure of 2. Their Finest Hour, by Winston Churchill, p. 404.

82 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION his New Deal to solve the unemployment problem was a factor. Just as naturally as in the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love, a tyrant becomes interested in for eign quarrels when he gets into trouble at home. In Shake speare's King Henry IV, the king admonishes his son, Prince Henry: "Therefore, my Harry, be it thy course to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out, may waste the memory of the former days." John D. Biggers, appointed by the President to make a spe cial census of unemployment, reported that about 11,000,000 were totally unemployed as of November, 1937. The depres sion was as bad as it was when Roosevelt took office. The situation got so bad, according to Morgenthau's diary, that on January 16, 1938, the President told him they would have to continue running a deficit of 3 billion dollars a year for the remainder of Roosevelt's second term and then turn the coun try over to a Republican or a conservative Democratic adminis tration. Roosevelt was certain that the economic policies of such an administration would produce "chaos" and that the people then would return the New Dealers to power.

In the 1938 elections the Republicans gained 81 House seats, 8 in the Senate, and 11 governorships. It looked bad for the Democrats in 1940. Although Roosevelt told Jim Farley at a Hyde Park conference on July 23, 1939, "Of course I will not run for a third term," Farley doubted his sincerity. Soon after the European war broke out Farley ceased to have any doubt that Roosevelt was a candidate. 3 The President had been telling Cordell Hull that Hull was his candidate while telling Farley that Hull was impossible. All the time he was maneuvering, through Harry Hopkins, Henry Wallace, Harold Ickes, and Tommy Corcoran, to be "drafted" as an indispensable man in a great war emergency. With the country in an economic crisis, Roosevelt would go out of office as one of the most discredited presidents in American history unless he could win a third term. Roosevelt's biographers all agree that vanity was one of his strongest characteristics. He was profoundly concerned 3. Jim Farley's Story.

"HE LIED US INTO WAR" 83 about his place in history. In the war he saw an opportunity not only to defeat the depression, but to defeat Hitler and all the forces of evil as well, and thereby to assure for himself an incomparable place in history which would endure throughout the ages. Roosevelt's impulse to get into the war was fostered, of course,by internationalist-mindedmen, the same forces which prevailed upon Woodrow Wilsonto lead the country into World War I. Some were·pro-British, or pro-French, or just anti-Hit ler; some sincerely and patriotically believed that Hitler's vic tory would imperil American security; others wanted to make money out of the war. A third factor which contributed greatly to Roosevelt's trans formation from isolationist to interventionist was communist influence. When Hitler began to rearm Germany and menace the Soviet union, Communists throughout the world became champions of "collective security." The Spanish civil war, be ginning in 1936, presaged an eventual death struggle between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, and the Communists intensi fied their agitation for collective action against Hitler. During the Hitler-Stalin alliance, from August, 1939, to June, 1941, the Communists violently opposed intervention in the Euro pean "imperialist" war, but clamored for intervention against Japan in China. The reason, of course, was that a Japanese victory in China would ·menace the Soviet Union. Stalin had staked out China for the Soviet empire in the'1920's. The Sen ate Internal Security Subcommittee, after an exhaustive in vestigation of the Institute of Pacific Relations, reported that organization was controlled by Communists and used by them "to promote the interests of the Soviet Union in the United States."

The IPR "line" on the Japanese-Chinese war during the pe riod of the Hitler-Stalin alliance is shown by the following quo tation from an articleby "Asiaticus"in the June, 1941, issue of Pacific Affairs, officialorgan of the IPR: "The conclusion of the Soviet-Japanese neutrality agreement . . . was a serious defeat for the equivocal Anglo-American policy of non-inter..

84 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION vention in the Sino-Japanese war and another proof that such a policy brings results quite different from those presumably expected. The toleration which allowed Japan to swallow Man churia and North China failed to encourage Japan to wage war on the Soviet Union. But it did encourage Japan to reach out beyond for spheres of colonial possessions of the non-interven tion powers in the south." Professor Philip C. Jessup, IPR chair man, reported in the March, 1940, issue of Pacific Affairs that an IPR meeting at Virginia Beach had been marked by "vigor ous intimations that it was not only to the interest but also was the duty of the United States to take a stand in behalf of China." As early as 1935, John V. A. MacMurray, a veteran Far Eastern specialist in the American diplomatic service, now retired, wrote a prophetic memorandum warning the State De partment that "even the elimination of Japan, if it were pos sible, would be no blessing to the Far East or to the world. It would merely create a new set of stresses, and substitute for Japan the U.S.S.R. as the successor of imperial Russia-as a contestant (and at least an equally unscrupulous and danger ous one) for the mastery of the east. Nobody except Russia would gain from our victory in such a war."4 Joseph C. Grew, United States ambassador to Japan, wrote in his diary, on May 15, 1939, that a "Japanese-American war would be the height of stupidity from every point of view." Grew repeatedly urged Roosevelt and Secretary Hull to strengthen the position of the Japanese moderates, including Emperor Hirohito and Premier Konoye, by heeding their ap peals for a settlement of differences between the two countries.

The counsel of these experienced and wise diplomatists was ignored, however, because Roosevelt wanted' to get into the European war through the Japanese backdoor. War with Japan would mean war with Germany, Japan's ally under the Tri partite Axis Alliance. After the American occupation of Iceland on July 7, 1941, according to Churchill, "American convoys escorted by Amer ican warships ran regularly to Reykjavik, and although the 4. George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy, 1900-1950.

"HE LIED US INTO WAR" 85 United States were still not at war they admitted foreign ships to the protection of their convoys." Thus the United States was waging undeclared war against Germany in the Atlantic. On. July 31, Admiral Harold Stark, Chief of Naval Operations, wrote to Captain Charles M. Cooke Jr.: "The Iceland situation may produce an 'incident'. . . . Whether or not we will get an 'incident' . . . I do not know. Only Hitler can answer." Roosevelt was compelled to wait for the Japanese to give him the "incident" he wanted, because Hitler was determined to keep the United States out of the war if possible. According to Churchill, Admirals Raeder and Doenitz urged Hitler to permit submarine attacks on the American ships if convoyed or proceeding without lights. "Hitler, however, remained ada mant," Churchill declares. "He always dreaded the conse quences of war with the United States, and insisted that German forces should avoid provocative action against her." Church ill's testimony is amply supported by the minutes of Hitler's conferences with Admirals Raeder and Doenitz and other Ger man naval documents captured at the end of the war, which are set forth in a book titled, Hitler and His Admirals, by An thony K. Martienssen.

While negotiations for a settlement with Japan were in prog ress in Washington, the administration, on July 25, froze all Japanese assets in the United States. On August 1, the United States banned the export of gasoline and oil to Japan. Roose velt took these steps in the expectation that sanctions against Japan would mean war. Admiral Stark, testifying before the Pearl Harbor Investigating Committee, declared that all high officials in Washington believed that an oil embargo against the Japanese would force them to grab the oil supplies of the Dutch East Indies, which the United States was secretly com mitted to defend. After his Atlantic conference with Churchill, the President, on August 17, handed the Japanese ambassador an ultimatum: ". . . if the Japanese government takes any further steps in pursuance of a policy or program of military domination by 86 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION force or threat of force of neighboring countries, the govern ment of the United States will be compelled to take immediately any and all steps which it may deem necessary toward safe guarding the legitimate rights and interests of the United States and American nationals and toward insuring the safety and se curity of the United States."

Sumner Welles, Undersecretary of State, testifying before the congressional committee, said this meant "that if Japan con tinued its aggression the United States would be obliged to take the necessary steps, which would include military action." In the face of this ultimatum, Prince Konoye, the Japanese prime minister, and Admiral Toyoda, the foreign minister, per sisted in efforts which indicated, according to Ambassador Grew, "the earnest wish of the Japanese government to achieve a basic settlement with the United States."5 The Japanese offi cials urged a meeting at Honolulu between President Roosevelt and Prince Konoye, but Hull stalled, maintaining that such a meeting should be preceded by a general agreement. The Konoye cabinet, repeatedly rebuffed by the United States, fell on October 16 and was succeeded by a military dic tatorship under General Hideki Tojo. Even the Tojo govern ment, however, did not abandon negotiations for a peaceful settlement. On the contrary, Japan sent a special envoy, Saburu Kurusu, to Washington to assist Admiral Nomura, the Japa nese ambassador, in peace negotiations. New proposals also were sent to Nomura for submission to the United States. By in tercepting Japanese communications, the United States learned that these proposals were to be Japan's "last effort to prevent something from happening," and that Nov. 25 was the dead line for an agreement. On Nov. 22, Tokio sent a highly sig nificant message to Washington, fixing a new deadline for the negotiations and indicating that a breakdown would mean war.

This message, intercepted by the United States, said Japan had decided to wait until Nov. 29, an added: "This time we mean it . . . the deadline absolutely cannot be changed. After that things are automatically going to happen." 5. My Ten Years in Japan, by Joseph C. Grew.

"HE LIED US INTO WAR" 87 From November 22 to November 25, Hull worked on a modus vivendi proposal, calling for a ninety day truce, during which the United States and Japan would resume economic relations and Japan would make no more expansion moves. War Secretary Stimson wrote in his diary that the proposal "adequately safeguarded our interests." However, Hull never handed the modus vivendi proposal to the Japanese. Instead, on November 26, he handed them his historic ultimatum, which was described by an army board appointed to investigate the Pearl Harbor disaster as "touching the button that started the war." Why did Hull change his mind? One reason may have been the President's attitude, expressed at a meeting of the war cabi net at noon on November 25. Stimson's diary gives the follow ing. account of this meeting: "The President . . . brought up entirely the relations with the Japanese. He brought up the event that we were likely to be attacked perhaps (as soon as) next Monday, for the Japanese are notorious for making an attack without warning, and the question was what we should do. The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too mucn dan ger to ourselves."

Hull himself testified at the Pearl Harbor inquiry that the Chinese, British and Dutch influenced his decision to drop the modus vivendi. Chiang Kai-shek's political adviser at that time was Owen Lattimore, whose appointment had been recom mended by Roosevelt. Lauchlin Currie, Roosevelt's adminis trative assistant for Far Eastern affairs, persuaded the President to· recommend Lattimore to Chiang. Lattimore, according to the report of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee on its investigation of the Institute of Pacific Relations, was "a con scious articulate instrument of the Soviet conspiracy." Eliza beth Bentley testified that Currie aided her in her work for the Sovietmilitaryintelligenceduringthe war. On June 18, 1941, while the Hitler-Stalin alliance was still in force, Lattimore and Edward C. Carter, secretary general of the IPR, had a. two hour luncheon with Constantine Oumansky, the Soviet am88 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION bassador in Washington, about Lattimore's appointment as Chiang Kai-shek's adviser. Lattimore testified that his appoint ment was the subject of their discussion.

On November 25, while the modus vivendi was still under consideration, Lattimore, in Chungking, sent Currie at the White House a message saying: "After discussing with the Gen eralissimo the Chinese ambassador's conference with the Sec retary of State I feel you should urgently advise the President of the Generalissimo's very strong reaction. I have never seen him really agitated before. Loosening of economic pressure or unfreezing would dangerously increase Japan's military ad vantage in China. A relaxation of American pressure while Japan has its forces in China would dismay the Chinese. Any modus vivendi now arrived at ... would be disastrous to Chi nese belief in America ... I must warn you that even the Gen eralissimo questions his ability to hold the situation together if the Chinese national trust in America is undermined by reports of Japan's escaping military defeat by diplomatic victory."

At the Pearl Harbor hearing, Hull testified that: "It was manifest that there would be widespread opposition from Amer ican opinion to the modus vivendi aspect of the proposal, espe cially to the supplying to Japan of even limited quantities of oil. The Chinese government violently opposed the idea. The other interested governments were sympathetic to the Chinese view and fundamentally were unfavorable or lukewarm. Their cooperation was part of the plan. It developed that the con clusion with Japan of such an arrangement would have been a major blow to Chinese morale." Thus it is clear that Lattimore and Currie, both identified in sworn testimony as Soviet agents, exerted pressure in the name of Chiang Kai-shek to prevent a settlement with Japan. Even more remarkable evidence of the part played by the Soviet fifth column in precipitating the war is disclosed by William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason in their recently published quasi official history, The Undeclared War. They report that on No vember 17, 1941, the late Harry Dexter White, a highly placed Soviet spy in the Treasury Department, handed a memorandum "HE LIED US INTO WAR" 89 to Secretary Morgenthau, who submitted it to President Roose velt the next day. According to Langer and Gleason, the White memorandum "became the basis" of the 10-point ultimatum which Secretary Hull transmitted to the Japanese on Novem ber 26.

When Stimson returned to· his office from the war cabinet meeting on June 25, he found a G-2 report that five Japanese divisions had embarked on ships at Shanghai and had been sighted south·of Formosa. When this.intelligence was reported to Roosevelt the next morning, according to Stimson, the Presi dent "fairly blew up," accusing the Japanese of bad faith in their truce negotiations. That afternoon Hull obtained the President's approval'and handed the Japanese ambassadors his ten-point ultimatum. In language threatening war, Hull's ten-point note demanded withdrawal of all Japanese forces from Indo-China and China, including Manchuria; withdrawal of recognition and support from the Wang Ching-wei and Manchukuo regimes; abandon ment of all extraterritorial rights and special concessions in China, and abandonment of the axis alliance to give the United States a free hand in the European war.

On Thursday, November 27, Hull indicated that he regarded his note as an ultimatum. When Stimson called to find out what had happened, Hull said: "I have washed my hands of it and it is now in the hands of you and Knox-the army and navy." With a Japanese attack expected soon, perhaps by Monday, December 1, as the President had indicated,Washington sent messages on November 27 to the army and navy commanders in Hawaii which were in full accord with Roosevelt's expressed purpose to "maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot." In a message purporting to be "a war warning," Admiral Kimmel was told that a Japanese amphibious expedition against the Philippines, Thailand, or the Kra peninsula was indicated, and that he should "execute a defensive deployment." The mes sage said that Guam, Samoa, and the continental districts had been directed to take measures against sabotage, thus implying that Kimmel should do the same thing. The message to General 90 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION Short warned of possible hostile Japanese action at any moment and said that if hostilities could not be avoided the United States desired that Japan should "commit the first overt act."

Short was told to take such reconnaissance and other measures as he deemed necessary but "not to alarm the civil population or disclose intent." The army board of inquiry characterized this as a "do-don't" message. Having been instructed to report on measures taken, Short reported on November 28 that his command was "alerted to prevent sabotage." He interpreted Washington's silence as tacit approval. At the Congressional inquiry, Representative Keefe (R., Wis.) asked General Marshall whether it was not his re sponsibility, as Chief of Staff, to give further orders when it .appeared that Short was alerted only against sabotage. Mar shall said it was his "responsibility as Chief of Staff" to intervene and that he did not do it. On November 29, Admiral Stark, Chief of Naval Opera tions, sent Kimmel a message saying: "Undertake no offensive action until Japan has committed an overt act." The next day Kimmel received, for his information, a dispatch addressed to .Admiral Hart, commander of the Asiatic squadron in the Phil ippines, saying the Japanese were about to attack points on the Kra isthmus. On December 1 the fortnightly naval intelli .gence summary, issued by Stark, informed Kimmel that, "Ma jor capital ship strength (of Japan) remains in home waters, as well as the greater portion of the carriers."

In short, the only information conveyed to Hawaii by Wash ington indicated that the Japanese were expected to attack the Kra isthmus and that the Pearl Harbor commanders were ex pected to take defensive measures against sabotage only. Meanwhile, Washington was intercepting Japanese war mes sages indicating the time, place and character of the Pearl Harbor attack. Washington knew that Tokio had requested in formation from Hawaii that obviously was intended to make a "bomb plot" of Pearl Harbor. The army board of inquiry re ported that "between the dates of December 4 and 6 the im"HE LIED US INTO WAR" 91 minence of war on the following Saturday or Sunday was clear-cut and definite." On D.ecember 6, Tokio advised its emissaries in Washing ton that it was sending a fourteen-part reply to Hull's Novem ber 26 ultimatum. The ambassadors were directed to withhold the reply from the American government pending the arrival of a separate message fixing the time for its delivery. The first thirteen parts of the message were translated and delivered to President Roosevelt at the White House by Commander L. R.

Schulz, assistant White House naval aide, at 9:30 P.M. Com manderSchulz testified that when Roosevelt read them he looked up at Harry Hopkins and exclaimed: "This means war!" It was more than fifteen hours before the attack came, ample time to warn the Pearl Harbor commanders, but this was not done. Schulz said the President asked the White House tele phone operator to get Admiral Stark, but was told that Stark was at the National Theater, where The Student Prince was playing. The President did not have Stark paged, Schulz said, because he did not wish "to cause public alarm." When the thirteen parts of the Japanese message reached the War Department at 9:00 P.M., they were transmitted at once by Colonel R. S. Bratton to Colonel (later Lt. General) Walter Bedell Smith, secretary of the General Staff. Bratton emphasized the extreme importance of the information, but Smith did nothing about it.

"Whatever was the reason of Colonel Smith for not convey ing this message to General Marshall on the night of December 6, it was unfortunate," said the Army Board of Inquiry. At 5: 00 A.M. on December 7 the final part of the Japanese message, breaking off relations and proclaiming war with the United States, was intercepted. It was translated and available for distribution by 9:00 A.M. Then, between 9:00 and 9:30 A.M., there came a separate message directing delivery of the fourteen-part reply at 1:00 P.M. Although he failed to do any thing about it when this information was received, Secretary Knox later stated in a secret report to Roosevelt, on December 92 THE TWENTY-YEAR REVOLUTION 15, 1941, that "a. surprise move of some kind was clearly in dicated by the insistence upon the precise time of . . . 1 o'clock on Sunday." One o'clock Washington time would be 7:30 Honolulu time, the right hour for a daylight attack. The at tack came at 1:25 Washington time (7: 55 Honolulu time).

When the message fixing one o'clock as the time for delivery of the Japanese note reached the War Department, Colonel Bratton tried to reach Marshall but discovered that the Chief of Staff was out horseback riding. According to the Army Board's report, Marshall finally reached his office at 11: 25 A.M. The final message from Washington to Hawaii was drafted by Marshall and was dispatched to Short at 12: 18 P.M. Wash ington time (6:48 A.M. Honolulu time), one hour and seven minutes before the Pearl Harbor attack. But it was not delivered until 11: 45 A.M., two hours after the attack had ended. Mar shall could have reached Short in a matter of minutes by using his "scrambler" telephone but he did not. He said "there was a possibility of a leak which would embarrass the State Depart ment." The War Department was dubious about getting through to Hawaii with its own radio transmitter but Marshall could have used the powerful navy and FBI transmitters. Instead he sent his message by commercial radio. Because it was not marked "priority," other messages so marked were decoded first in the Hawaii signal office. Marshall's use of only one means of communication, according to the Army Board, "violated all rules requiring the use of multiple means of communication in emergency.... We find no justification for a failure to send this message by multiple secret means either through the navy radio or FBI radio or the scrambler telephone or all three."

Marshall was questioned at the congressional inquiry about Stimson's statement, "The question was how we should ma neuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves." He replied: "Of course no one anticipated that that overt act would be the crippling of the Pacific fleet." The announced army and navy casualties in the Pearl Har bor disaster were 2,897 dead, 879 wounded and 26 missing.

"HE LIED US INTO WAR" 93 Also lost, or severely damaged, were eight battleships, three cruisers, three destroyers and 188· airplanes. Ernest Lindley and Forrest Davis report in How War Came that Roosevelt was tieless and in his shirtsleeves, attending to his stamp collection, when Secretary Knox reached him by tele phone and said: "Mr. President, it looks like the Japanese have rrttrrckedPerrriHrrrbor.... " "No!" the President is said to have cried, as if the informa tion surprised him. At 8:30 P.M. on December 7, after he had received fairly comprehensive reports on the catastrophic extent of our losses at Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt presided at a meeting of the Cabi net in the White House. Miss Perkins reports that Postmaster General Frank C. Walker turned to her as they left the White House and remarked: "I think the boss really feels more relief than he has had for weeks."