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From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 5 No. 2, 11 January 1941, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Scratch a “liberal” these days, and you will inevitably uncover a nauseous hypocrite and Uriah Heep.
These are the elements who most ably gild the lily of the imperialist war aims of the “democratic” ruling class, and cloak the sordid motives of the Allied war lords in the dainty gossamer of democratic fictions.
True to type is the Nation, leading liberal weekly, and its editor-in-chief, Freda Kirchwey.
It seems that the State Department is clamping down ever more heavily on the admission of anti-fascist refugees into this country, while paving the way for the entrance of rich and well-born foreign reactionaries, dispossessed members of the nobility and others of similar ilk.
The Nation and Freda Kirchwey are shocked, outraged, overwhelmed, stunned. They have been beating the anvil for a good, noble, democratic, idealistic, untainted, purely-motivated war against the Axis powers. And now the handling of the refugee problem by the government is adding a trace of tattle-tale gray to the virginal robes of the “democratic” champions.
Freda Kirchwey says as much in an article in the Nation of December 28, bewailing the short-sighted policy of the administration, as expressed in a recent State Department statement “designed to silence the mounting protest against the handling of the emergency refugee problem created by the Nazi conquest of Western Europe.”
This statement, charges the article, “cited figures which ... told lies of monstrous proportions when published without explanation.”
And “the statement as a whole only increased justifiable fears that the refugee problem will in the end be left to the harsh mercies of the most reactionary, anti-alien elements in the State Department.”
Strong language, with stronger to follow:
“The record is one which must sicken any person of ordinarily humane instincts. It is as if we were to examine laboriously the curricula vitae of flood victims clinging to a piece of floating wreckage and finally to decide that, no matter what their virtues, ail but a few had better be allowed to drown.”
Outraged virtue then gets down to the nub of the question:
“But politically the behavior of the State Department is even more shocking. It betrays the profound failure of leading officials of the department to understand even the elements of the conflict in which the United States is inextricably engaged. Has the preservation of democracy anything to do with the conflict? If it has, surely the leaders of democratic thought and action in Europe will not be deliberately sacrificed to their – and our – fascist opponents. This position should determine every act of every official charged with the conduct of our foreign affairs.”
It thus seems, according to Freda Kirchwey, that the “democratic” motivation of the war for which she has been beating the drums in not “understood” by the State Department, – that is, the department which has most to do with American foreign policy and is the most direct agency for the promulgation of this policy.
The State Department understands full well what it is doing and why. It leaves the blather about democratic ideals to the Freda Kirchweys, who also “understands,” but like the whore in the fable cries, “it’s love I’m really after.”
Why the behavior of these liberals “must sicken any person of ordinarily humane instincts,” is forcefully demonstrated by one of the concluding sentences of this scandalized lady:
“It is difficult to believe that the President himself would knowingly countenance such a change.”
According to this outraged female, frantically rubbishing among the scrap heaps for a “democratic” rag to throw over the suddenly denuded paunch of the American ruling class, the policy of the government toward the refugees is something alien to the real motives of the war-mongers, a ravishment accomplished in the dead of night behind lock doors, and hidden from the eyes of noble men like Roosevelt.
On the contrary, as Freda Kirchway well knows, this is Roosevelt’s policy, as it is the policy of the whole boss class of America which Roosevelt represents, as it is the policy which most truly reflects the actual motives for the American war preparations.
This picture of a Roosevelt deceived, kept in the dark, surrounded by secret enemies in the guise of friends is the only fig-leaf left to the liberals whereby they can still cover up the nakedly reactionary character of the war.
Scratch a liberal these days, indeed, and you will find a cowardly, yellow-bellied, hypocritical apologist for capitalist war and plunder decked in the garments of a vestal virgin. But a white robe can’t hide her smell!
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