An American Prophet
It is long (as far back, perhaps, as Theodore Roosevelt) since a Vice-President of the United States has figured so largely in the public eye as Mr. Henry Wallace. In the striking series of speeches he has delivered in the last eighteen months he has been, quite certainly with the President's full concurrence, steadily and systematically educating his countrymen in the conception of a post-war international order. That involves two fundamental assumptions: that there must be a post-war international organisation and that the United States must play a full part in it. Mr. Wallace's broadcast on Monday embodied both those assumptions, and discussed in greater detail machinery for the disarmament of the aggressor nations and the prevention of economic warfare ; a world council and an international court for the settlement of disputes ; and the renunciation by creditor nations of protective tariffs, calculated to prevent debtors from discharging their obligations in the only way possible. A speech full of constructive thought, delivered on Woodrow Wilson's birthday and with full recognition of the great potentialities of the League of Nations, included a reference to the vital but baffling task of " recivilising " the children of Germany and Japan by some external supervision of their schoolsystems. No question needs more thought and discussion, and at once. The Vice-President's ideas will be resisted by a solid and still formidable bloc of isolationists. On this side of the Atlantic they will command universal approval.
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