HOW AMERICA TAKES IT
By E. SINCLAIR HERTELL
New York.
AMERICA is enjoying the war—on the stage, the cinema, the radio, and above all, in the newspapers, some of which in the largest cities are carrying so much foreign news that the city news staffs have had to be reduced because there isn't enough room for their stories.
I think an Englishman visiting America would be rather keenly astonished to see how interested Americans are in the conflict. I suppose there is no question that people in England dislike Hitler, but here in America he and his Nazis are actually despised. Never before in the history of this country have our newspapers printed such things about the head of a State as they print about Hitler, Goering and Goebbels. And the readers of these papers just lap it up. Any of the Nazis shown in news reels in cinemas draw in- stant boos and hisses, and that peculiarly American indication of derision, the Bronx cheer. Any of the Allied figures, especially Churchill and Gamelin, draw long and hearty cheers and handclapping. Even Mr. Chamberlain, whom most Americans thoroughly distrusted after Munich, now gets his share of applause. And, of course, King George and Queen Elizabeth are always warmly greeted when they appear on the screen.
The stage has made its anti-Nazi contribution in skits in revues, and what is at present the most successful drama on Broadway—Margin for Error—is all about a German consul in an American city. The consul is a thief, a liar, a blackmailer, a double-crosser and about everything else that savours of unpleasantness. The mayor, having found it necessary to provide police protection for the consulate, impishly appoints a Jewish policeman, who turns out to be the hero of the play. The playwright is Clare Booth, wife of the editor of Time, Life and Fortune magazines, and the author of The Women, which ran in London last autumn. The German chargé d'affaires in Washington actually pro- tested, when the play was tried out in the Capital, that it was " derogatory " to the Reich. Secretary of State Hull didn't do anything about it, and the play now draws packed houses in New York where it opened a fortnight ago.
The radios are being tuned in as they have never been for the frequent news reports. Although these reports (not by commentators but by straight news reporters) are sup- posed to be impartial, there is no escaping the very evident inflections of the voices, which clearly show a pro-Allied sympathy. The commentators, of course, are allowed to put their own interpretation on the news, and they are the ones who are giving the Nazi officials over here the headaches, for they never let slip a chance to get a hit at the Nazis. The interesting thing about all this is that there is no Govern- ment control over the radio, and there is no means of making the broadcasting partial to one side or the other. It just happens that, like most other Americans, the broadcasters and the commentators are all very pro-Ally.
American newspaper; are overwhelmingly pro-Ally both in their news and editorial columns, though the latter stress the thought that we must keep out of actual participation in the war. An American who makes almost a fetish of neutrality wrote to the managing editor of a leading New York daily protesting against the predominance of Allied news items. The editor replied. frankly that the paper's policy was to present the Allied side. He said: (r) Allied news reports are more reliable than those emanating from the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda ; (2) Americans are more interested in Allied news ; and (3) Americans are sym- pathetic to Allied aims and want all the news they can obtain on the matter. In this connexion it is interesting to recall that in a recent Gallup poll regarding the reliability of information received from abroad, less than ten per cent. of the persons polled had any faith whatever in the Nazi propaganda machine, while a large majority had complete faith in the truthfulness of the news sent out from England.
Our newspaper columnists are having a heyday letting themselves go against the Nazis, and especially against one whom General Hugh Johnson, a leading columnist, calls " Sourpuss Adolf." Even Mrs. Roosevelt, whose daily column is generally concerned pretty much with local chit- chat and observations, could not resist the opportunity to take a whack at Colonel Lindbergh's radio addresses plead- ing for the retention of the arms embargo. She frankly accused him of being pro-Nazi, and although a few persons wrote letters defending the ex-hero of this country, the fact remained very clear that while Colonel Lindbergh never uttered one single word of disapproval of the Nazis or their aims, he had gone out of his way to pour scorn on the idea that England and France are fighting for democracy, and, in addition to this, he really aroused the whole country with his very ill-tempered slur on Canada. • Those columnists who are best described as funnymen are having nothing short of a perpetual circus. Typical of the things they write is a recent column by Dave Boone in the New York Sun, a leading evening paper : " The Nazis are blaming that beer-hall bomb on England, and we may hear it alleged any day now that Churchill's footprints have been found outside the garden, and that Chamberlain's umbrella was dug up in the debris. . . . It may not have been a bomb at all. Adolf lets off a terrific amount of gas when he makes a speech. In a low building the accumu- lated stuff may have been set off 'by a lighted match."
No reference to American reaction to the war would be complete without some remarks on the complete liquida- fion of any respect that had previously existed for the Soviet Union. For the past decade all the Liberals and the parlour pinks have been extolling the Soviet Union as a great Democracy. Indeed, if some of the writings and utterances of these people were true, American Democracy was actually far inferior to the Soviet brand., With the Communazi front all these people have been confounded. The newsstand sales of the Daily Worker, New York's Communist sheet, have dropped amazingly, and Liberal organisations which have strung along with the Communists even in only a loose sort of way, have been quietly retreating to a more safe position. Earl Browder, the American Communist leader, is at the present time under indictment for admitting in a Congressional inquiry that he twice went abroad on a false passport (he is an American citizen). The leader of the German-American Bund, one Fritz Kuhn, is also in trouble. He is accused of embezzling approximately a thousand pounds of the Bund's money for his own use. His trial has just begun on a merry note, the first day's proceedings being devoted to the reading of three telegrams which " Der Little Fuehrer," who is a married man, sent to his lady love in the Middle West, all signed " Love and Kisses. Fritz." No doubt the trial will become more serious in a few days, and Americans trust that Kuhn will also get the maximum penalty under the law. [He has since been sentenced.—Ed. The Spectator.] In both of these cases, it should be observed, there are no charges whatever based on the defendant's political beliefs, but the fact that one is a Communist and the other a Nazi does not make for their popularity with the American citizen.
So, despite the fact that we have no black-outs and practi- cally no restrictions, except such minor ones as having British and French merchant vessel arrivals and departures omitted from the shipping tables in the daily Press, we are having quite a taste of the war in Europe. And even though there is a certain Congressional bloc, and a certain number of citizens who want us not even to look towards Europe, much less do anything there, we have taken a hand in Euro- pean matters on certain occasions and still shall. President Roosevelt's note to the Soviet President on behalf of Finland, that admirable little country which Americans all like so much, was extremely popular. The fact that the Soviet Foreign Affairs Minister rebuked Mr. Roosevelt because of it made it all the nicer to us.
Our papers, as I have said before, stress the fact that we want to keep out of war. Any American citizen you might meet on the street and question would give the same answer. But oddly enough, he would follow it up, in a large majority of instances, with the observation that he doesn't think we can stay out, especially if it drags out very long.
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