Moulding the Future of WWII

Brigadier-General Osborn is Chief of the Special Services Branch of the United States Army. A short time ago he came to Princeton and delivered an address to undergraduates in which he described what America’s war effort must be, how Princeton men might best take part in it. Part of his talk, dealing with national morale, forms the basis for the accompanying article — the fourth in a series by Princetonians on the war and its effort on us.

The first six months I was in Washington I spent as Chairman of a civilian Committee on Selective Service, helping to draw up the Selective Service regulations, and helping set up their administration. I was amazed at the intensive, hard work and the fine spirit of cooperation I found in all of the departments with which we had contacts. The next six months in Washington I spent as Chairman of the Joint Army and Navy Committee on Welfare and Recreation, with offices in the Munitions Building, alongside the officers of The Special Services Branch. Here again, my impression was of long hours of work, warm cooperation, and flexibility and imagination on the part of the highest officers of the Army. In my work as Chief of the Brach during the past seven months, I have seen the same things, and, further, have been constantly impressed with the good organization of the Army and its relatively smooth operation in the face of a gigantic task being done under great pressure. I feel pretty sure that this general picture of what I have seen in Washington is approximately what would have been seen in my place by any other ordinary citizen with a fair business background.

MENTAL SOFTNESS

This is a very different picture from the picture of chaos and confusion that you hear so much talk about outside of Washington. Part of this talk comes from the horde of usually self-interested job seekers who are bustled in and out of every office in Washington as courteously as possible, our only purpose being to get them out of the way so that we can get back to work. No wonder they leave confused. Another part of it comes from the great number of publicists and columnists who have made a living for twenty years past by feeding the public with uncritical emotional material. But basically I think the reason is that we as a people are soft. I do not mean physically soft or morally soft; int hose respects we can take it. I believe you are about as tough a generation as any this country has produced, but I mean we are mentally soft. We have been believing what we would like to believe, uncritically, not viewing the world realistically. That’s true of us oldsters. Look what we have been thinking and doing the past twenty years, while this war was building up in plain sight on both sides of us. It’s true of many at least of the undergraduates who were leaving college just as you came in. Two weeks before Pearl Harbor I had a long talk with a recent graduate in my son’s class at Princeton, who was a strong isolationist. This was his position, which I wrote down, I think quite fairly, immediately after my talk with him: 

           1. U.S. to cease all hell to all nations resisting Hitler or Japan except sale of lease-lend of goods, including munitions, when resisting nations call for them at our ports.

           2. When this policy is established by U.S. there will be a stalemate in the war between Britain and Germany. Germany will be able to consolidate Europe and part of Russia, but will not invade England or break up the British Empire. England will not be able to invade the continent. Both parties will desire peace, and will negotiate a peace which will leave England free to continue her trade with Australia, Canada, India, Egypt, Africa, and South America. Germany will be free to reorganize Europe and European Russia, and in carrying out this task the German people will eventually drop the evil features of Nazism.

           3. In addition to ceasing help to China, U.S. will reopen trade with Japan. Japan and China will negotiate a peace. This may mean that U.S. would find barriers to its trade with the Orient, but this would be a lesser evil than war; especially since with the return of trade, Japanese business interests would take over increasing control of government from the military.

           4. The isolationist believes the U.S. should take no part in maintaining the peace of the world, and should make no commitments to that end now or in the future.

THE BLINDNESS OF ISOLATIONISM

Now all this would be mighty nice to believe. We have to work our minds before we realize that it isn’t true. Everybody who has any sense knows that the war would not be a stalemate if we stopped helping England; the war would then have been a walkover for Germany. Everybody who has any knowledge of the Orient knows that the Japanese militarists have been in complete control of their government for generations. Cancelling the embargo on American goods would not have put pacifists in control of the Japanese Government. It would only have given the Japanese army more arms with which to fight us later on. We had to close our minds to accept the isolationists position, as many of us did. You remember the experiments on the chimpanzee, who was forced to pile a series of boxes on top of one another in order to reach his food. Figuring out which box to use was so complicated that every little while the chimpanzee would go off in the corner of his cage and cry at the effort he was making. But then he would go back to figuring on the boxes. For twenty years we have been softer in the head than that chimpanzee. We have closed our eyes to the real world of other nations about us. We have thought of other nations in terms of our ideals not of theirs. For example:

           Before I went to college, one of my friends came back from Germany indignant because his mother and sister had been pushed off the sidewalk whenever they met German officers. He said the whole country was saluting; there were soldiers everywhere. In my Freshman year I went to Germany. The size of the army, their concentration on it, the size of their manoeuvres along the French border were beyond belief. I closed my mind to it all. I didn’t know what a military caste was. In a few years, Germany, with her great commerce and wealth, her population with the highest standard of living of any in the world except ourselves, was plunged into the war she had been preparing for. Who did it? Little Belgium, which was invaded? The French, who were so afraid, and fought so desperately? England, which sent her little army of “Contemptibles” to die in Flanders? Twelve years after the war the same military caste took over in Germany again; the same story began to repeat itself, the same concentration on military things, on great armaments; and we sat here and watched it unbelieving.

           With Japan, much the same thing. After the last war we made a treaty and scrapped a lot of our new battleships. Japan began arming the mandated islands. We let her do it. She went into Manchukuo; we let her. Friends of mine who knew Japanese generals told me they were all planning the conquest of Asia and an attack on the United States. “Very interesting,” we said. They went into China, they went into Thailand, they stated their aim as the control of the Pacific, and to put the United States in a position where she would have to do as the Japanese wanted. All that time, we kept our minds shut and didn’t see it. Not until they sank our ships at Hawaii. Now I’m going to tell you my opinion. Perhaps your historians won’t agree.

THE AGGRESSORS

We didn’t go into this war. Whatever we have done since 1939, arms to England, embargo on Japan, had nothing to do with our ultimately getting into this war. This war has been waged on us and on all the world since 1933 by two great military castes controlling the only two large countries which are still dominated by the military. They have waged war against us since 1933 by propaganda. You know that this country has been full of German spies and paid agents since 1933. What do you think they were here for? We had no corresponding agents in Germany. They have been waging war by fomenting internal dissension, and, finally, when they felt their comparative strength was at its peak, by treacherous attack. This war was made against us by two ruling military castes. The rulers of these two countries have these things in common: 

           They not only do not share a Christianity it has taken civilization four thousand years to develop, they deny that Christianity.

           They not only refuse to respect the rights of the individual, and the political democracy it has taken a thousand years to develop, but they laugh at democracy.

           They not only refuse to accept the scientific search for truth which western Europe established in the last hundred years, they prostitute the truth with a primitive mysticism.

           Their feudal reliance on arms is an attempt to go back to a primitive stage of social development in which —

Man’s heart and conscience would not be free.

Man’s person would not be free.

Man’s mind would not be free.

           This is the kind of world they seek to force on us; for this they have welded the one hundred and sixty million people of their two countries into the two greatest military machines the world has ever seen, armed and trained to the last detail, coordinated in their major strategy.

A CAUSE WORTH FIGHTING FOR

Against these great machines have fought four hundred million Chinese for four and a half years with almost bare hands; are fighting one hundred and eighty million Russians, hastily prepared, driven to a desperate defense of their homes and of their new, confused, but moving idealism. Resisting Germany and Japan are also sixty million people of England, or of English descent in her Colonies; the British Navy, the Dutch, few but courageous; and everywhere subject peoples, over run starving unarmed, but still ready to die if in dying they can strike one small blow against the common enemy of mankind; and, finally, the United States, great, rich, rapidly growing in armaments, threatened at last more than at any time in her history, literally and truly the hope, the only hope, of all the impoverished, all the desperate, all the subject, common peoples of the world. 

           I for one can only say: “This is a cause worth fighting for.” This defense of our country, of our whole national life; this hope for the survival of a decent world which lies with us by so narrow a margin.

           This is no war for the maintenance of the British Empire. The British Empire is already becoming a loose confederation of independent states. This is a war of the common people of the world to prevent the formation of two new empires formed only to exploit the common people of the world.

           Germany and Japan would surely win if they had not made two great miscalculations: First, they appear to have miscalculated the strength of the Russians; second, they thought that because we were soft in the head we were also morally soft. These miscalculations will cost them the war, however long and however desperate it may be.

THE PEACE OF THE WORLD

Some time, some year, one, two, five, or more years from now, this war will have been won. You in this audience will have a part in moulding that future world of which we all dream, for which we all strive. There will be voices to point your way. Some may be Princeton voices, as they were after the last war. These are not new issues. Let me read you the final words of a speech made in 1919 by my father, then and now a Trustee of Princeton. The occasion was the debate on American participation in world affairs to maintain the peace of the world. These were his closing words:

           “We must decide. There is no escape from it…We must make up our minds what course we will take and our decision will affect our children and our children’s children….

           “Be not mistaken, the choice is Law or War. We cannot withdraw now, we cannot permit greed to rule again, we cannot leave the nascent peoples of the world to alien and hostile tutelage, we cannot repeat the old story while we doze comfortably by our fire, trusting in our riches and denying our duties, when some night unawares we shall wake from our comfortable slumber with the thundering knock of war upon our door and find ourselves forced to seize our unaccustomed arms and face a hostile world.”

           For my father’s generation this was a prophecy, unheeded by most. For my generation, and yours in part, it has become a grim and an actual reality. For your generation emerging after this war, these words will be an old question repeated, an old task waiting to be done, a task in which we in our generation failed. I pray God your hearts may be stronger, your vision clearer. 

This was originally published in the March 27, 1942 issue of PAW.