Dorothy Thompson

Fort Worth Star-Telegram/January 1, 1939

At Lima the American republics have formulated a common foreign policy which, if it is properly implemented, will constitute the clearest counter program which has yet been framed to the policies of the two totalitarian internationals: The Comintern and the Fascintern.

The importance of this eight-point statement of policy should not be underrated.

First of all, it is the cleverest formulation of foreign policy which this country has had in generations.

If it becomes so fixed in the minds of our own people that it is taken as the Monroe Doctrine has been for 150 years, as natural and continuous, it will greatly clarify our position in the world.

It is important in that it limits the blanket and unilateral interpretations that have been put in the past upon the Monroe Doctrine and that have often been a cause of strained relations and misunderstandings with the Latin-American republics.

It does not, for instance, support Theodore Roosevelt’s interpretation of our responsibilities in the Latin-American countries which was expressed in 1911 in the words of Secretary of State Knox: “Whether rightfully or wrongfully we are in the eyes of the world and because of the Monroe Doctrine held responsible for order of Central America.”

For the first of the eight statements of principles is, “The intervention of any state in the internal or external affairs of another is inadmissible.”

If that statement means anything at all, it brings us bang up against the avowed policies of all of the totalitarian states but particularly against those of Russia and Germany.

It is incompatible with the principles of Nazi Germany in respect to its own nationals and blood descendants in all countries.

Those principles have been enunciated time and again both in official statements and in actual laws.

A committee of sponsors headed by Charles C. Burlingham and containing a number of eminent lawyers and professors and one former Secretary of State, Henry L. Stimson, has recently performed a service by publishing the actual decrees of the Reich insofar as they affect Americans of German origin.

The book contains no comment whatsoever, simply facsimiles of the decrees as they have appeared in official publications together with English translations.

If the publishers—the Oxford University Press—have not already sent it to every member of Congress, they should do so.

It makes it perfectly clear, first, that the National Socialist party and the German state are a complete unity; second, that all cultural activities abroad are being organized as instruments of the state and party; third, that all Germans living in other countries are claimed by the party as its instruments; and fourth, that the entire program for mobilizing foreign Germans has as its object the spreading of the National Socialist world philosophy throughout the earth.

Point one is also completely incompatible with the policies of the Russian Comintern, which lays claim to the working classes of the whole world.

The Comintern has shifted its policy continually according to the international situation of Russia at any given moment, but it has never abandoned its messianic intention eventually to make over the world according to the pattern of the Soviet Union.

I consider this first point of the most critical importance, for it is perhaps the first official recognition of the use of the revolutionary weapon as an instrument of conquest.

Had such a policy been a clear part of the treaties which the small states of Central Europe had with France, the whole picture there might have been very different.

It is interesting that the last chancellor of Austria, Dr. Schuschnigg, made exactly this point as a sine qua non for the maintenance of Austrian independence. He said in his book that unless the nations accepted the principle that one state had no right to interfere in the internal affairs of another state, every small country would eventually fall to the larger and more powerful ones.

But whether this policy is effective or not depends upon whether we are prepared to implement it. That would mean that we should reject by every possible diplomatic pressure and by clear political action interventions which are announced or put into practice. Otherwise, it remains a pious platitude.

Numbers two and three reaffirm our allegiance to the Kellogg-Briand Pact and numbers six and eight seek to substitute international collaboration for force.

How one can achieve international collaboration along cultural or economic lines with countries whose intellectual and economic programs are specifically designed not for cooperation but for propaganda and monopoly is not clear.

Six and eight are at present applicable to Pan-America and could be extended to democratic countries. They cannot be extended elsewhere.

Numbers four, five and seven put into succinct form ideas repeatedly expressed by Secretary Hull: namely, that our whole policy is based upon respect for international law and for the observance of treaties and is against any unilateral revision of them.

This puts all Pan-America in a unique position in the world. Respect for treaties is not the fundamental basis of the foreign policy of any other country in the world today.

That it is not the basis of the policy of the British Empire has been demonstrated repeatedly in the last years.

We stood on this basis in preparing to resist the Japanese invasion of Manchoukuo in 1931. We did not prepare to resist because of our interests in China. They were negligible. We prepared to resist because a treaty was being violated.

Similarly, the whole British argument in regard to Czecho-Slovakia runs completely afoul of this interpretation. The argument advanced by the British was, “Why should Englishmen risk war to save Czecho-Slovakia?” According to this American policy, that was not the issue. The issue would have been—had we been in the position of England—”What is our obligation in respect of an existing treaty?” And the policy formulated at Lima would have made it quite impossible for us to collaborate to break down the position of a nation tied to us in the second degree through an alliance with one of our allies.

Indeed, the eight points of the Pan-American foreign policy, as between themselves and as between Pan-America and the rest of the world, have created a concert of international order which is very close to the ideas of the League of Nations.

It is also extremely American, for it puts over and above all relations the conception of justice under law.

It is an affirmation of the belief that there is no possible harmony between nations except on the basis of universally accepted principles of international intercourse expressed in terms of a sovereign law.

Its weakness of course is that it is not implemented, but if we should implement it only for ourselves we should in all probability chart a new course in international affairs.