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They tell us down in Washington that the United States is on the verge of en tering the war. We are not ready to go to war. We have not calculated the cost of going to war, or the prospects of victory. America has fought six major wars. The Revolutionary and 1812 wars were won for us in Europe. We participated in the victory in Europe which concluded the World War. The Spanish American war was won in Asiatic waters, for Spain had no chance after the battle of Manila bay. The Mexican war was fought on for eign soil with an unequal foe. The Civil War was a fratricidal strife. The American people learned early that life is a battle and that some sort of fighting is in progress all the while. When the English, the Irish and the Germans, who constituted the bulk of the early comers to these shores, had erected their cabins, they found it necessary to cre ase to protect them against murderous Indians. But fighting savages was quite a different sort of business from that in which European armies were engaged even at the same period of history. It was really not until the World War that American soldiers had a part in a war conducted on the European pattern, and our participation then was due to the supplies of arms for our infantry and artillery supplied by Great Britain and France. “The grand principle of war,” said Napoleon, “was, that an army ought al ways to be ready, by day and by night, and at all hours, to make all the resist ance it is capable of making.” Emerson said of Napoleon: “Napoleon understood his business.” An army without adequate arms may be ever so alert, but it can’t be ready. The United States army is a fine body of men, but they are in a large measure un armed. Tuesday’s newspapers told of the sur render to the government of eight large planes by private owners in the United States and that a score more would be turned over in like fusion. That was as much a token of the un preparedness of the United States as it was of the patriotism of the eight men who made the contribution. It was as startling as it was enspiriting. The war in Europe began in the fall of 1939. We are approaching the fall of 1941. France fell almost one year ago. Yet America is unarmed and those who pose as our leaders are talking about our entry into the war. Our military affairs resemble in a startling degree the state in which Rus sia was in 1914. Franklin Roosevelt never spoke more feelingly, nor more optimistically, than did Nicholas II. The czar of All the Rus sias had no more unity behind him than has Franklin Roosevelt. While the czarina was sending her imperial husband at the front an apple from the hands of Rasputin, urging the czar to eat it “in order to strengthen his will,” and imploring him to “be Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Emperor Paul,” to “crush them all under your feet,” strikes were being fomented in Russian industry and mutiny in the Russian army and navy. Congress heard a report Monday of resistance among a labor union in New Orleans harbor to the enlistment of the crew of an American vessel in the naval reserve, and while the resistance was in progress three swastikas were gleaming from the sides of the vessel, having been painted there. Yet there are those in Washington who are talking of taking the United States into the war. There has been opposition among our people to every war in which the United Sates has engaged. New England threat ened to secede during the war of 1812. The Mexican war was opposed by a great many people on the ground that it was designed to increase the power of the slave states in the government at Wash ington. eh Copperheads of the north membered for their opposition to the Civil War. While the Suanish war was generally approved in the beginning, the cry of “imperialism” was heard
Newspaper Details
Somerset Daily American
Somerset, Pennsylvania, US
Wed, May 21, 1941
Page 4
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 04 Jun 2026
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