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Ar THE Pan-AMERICAN ConFERENCE at Rio de Janeiro, Mr. Sumner Welles, the representative of the United States of America, in an address before twenty-one South American Republics, on January 15, 1942, made the following declaration:
“The record of the past two years is ever before us. You and I know that had there existed during the past decade international order based upon law, and with the capacity to enforce such law, the earth today would not be subjected to the cruel scourge which is now ravaging the entire globe. Had the law-abiding and peaceful nations of Europe been willing to stand together when the menace of Hitlerism first began to become manifest, Hitler would never have dared to embark upon his evil course. It was solely because of the fact that these nations, instead of standing together, permitted themselves to hold aloof one from the other, and placed their hope of salvation in their own neutrality, that Hitler was enabled to overrun them one by one as time and circumstances made it expedient.”
The representative of the United States Government declared further:
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“The shibboleth of classic neutrality in its narrow sense can, in this tragic modern world, no longer be any real neutrality as between the powers of evil and the forces that are struggling to preserve the rights and independence of free peoples. It is far better for any people to strive gloriously to safeguard its independence; it is far better for any people to die, if need be, in the battle to save its liberties than, by clinging to the tattered fiction of an illusory neutrality, succeed only by so doing in committing suicide.”
These words uttered by the representative of the United States of America are the most tragic self-condemnation of one’s own former policy ever pronounced by a government.
These were precisely the words with which Great Britain and France tried to persuade the United States of America about the vanity, inefficiency and emptiness of its neutrality policy during the past years. These were the very words the Spanish, Austrian and Ethiopian Governments vainly repeated over and over to the British and French Governments. These were the very words which fell on deaf ears and had no effect at all when the Czechs addressed them to the Poles, the Poles to the Scandinavians, the Greeks to the Yugoslavs, and the Yugoslavs to the Turks.
Today, when the “policy of neutrality” is a dismal failure all over the globe, when no neutral nation—with the exception of a few minor countries—escaped aggression, war and conquest through its neutrality, it is no more great statesmanship to admit that neutrality is suicide.
The fact remains that not one nation gave up its neutrality in this world conflict, until it was forced to do so; that no nation admitted any criticism of its policy of neutrality, and [ p. 88 ] that no democratic power dared to touch the dogma of neutrality, even during the war when in many cases it was obvious that the proclamation or recognition of neutrality was the surest road to military defeat. So we have witnessed not only the Manchurian-Ethiopian-Spanish farce in times of “peace,” but also the tragi-comedy of landing British troops in Greek ports under the eyes of German diplomats and of the operating of the British Middle East headquarters in Cairo under the constant watch of Axis diplomatic representatives on the spot.
The active help given to the dictatorial powers in this war by the principle of neutrality is immeasurable.
The series of non-aggression pacts and neutrality guarantees signed and proclaimed by Hitler during the past years, thus permitting the conquest of all the countries which he never could have conquered if they had been united, but which he swallowed up one by one, was the greatest triumph of seduction since Casanova and Don Juan. The victims were made all the more ridiculous, as each one of them from the tiny Luxemburg to the mighty United States believed profoundly that they would be treated differently and that the saccharine words Hitler addressed to them were in their special cases really sincere.
The dogmatic belief in neutrality is so strong that even today, after the conquest of so many countries due entirely to their neutrality, many representatives of those countries, Poles and Dutch, Rumanians and Norwegians, defend their old futile policy, maintaining that neutrality in itself was right and they could not have followed any policy other than the one they did follow.
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As there is little chance that people will learn from expetiences, however tragic and however close such experiences may be to them, it is almost certain that they will return again to this policy unless we realize the utter historic, moral and political impossibility of the principle of neutrality.
The idea of neutrality stems from those ages when wars were recognized as legal acts of policy, when wars were fought among dynasties, among countries for frontier changes and for colonial expansion. In those periods when wars were generally limited to two or a few participants, when they never went beyond certain geographical boundaries, when they were fought under certain accepted regulations, and ended usually in negotiation and reconciliation, it was possible to establish a principle whereby certain wars did not touch nations outside the conflict or its dangers.
But since the technical developments and the industrial evolution have reduced the earth to a small unit; since the wars are no longer fought for reasons of dynastic jealousies or for local controversies; since we are in a great struggle for power to put the earth, or at least major parts of it under unified control; since the democratic nations are trying to organize this struggle for world power without bloodshed, and are trying to outlaw wars by calling them a crime, neutrality is not only political nonsense, but the greatest moral turpitude.
It is a total contradiction to qualify certain acts of the totalitarian regimes as criminal and to declare the intention to remain neutral before the drama that is unfolding.
Every declaration of neutrality sanctions the actions of [ p. 90 ] the Fascist, Nazi and Japanese militarists, because it expresses implicitly the assumption that the violations of international morality committed by the totalitarian forces permit an attitude of neutrality.
What is really revolting in the tragic events of the past ten years is not the repeated breach of faith, treachery, aggression, brutal conquest and the enslavement of hundreds of millions of people by the totalitarian governments, but the attitude of those people in the civilized, Christian countries who possess the moral capacity to recognize that we are faced with the most outrageous crimes ever committed on this earth under any form, and who in spite of the realization of the truth believe themselves to be entitled to say: This does not concern us; we want to stay out.
Whatever the excuse for such an attitude may be, whether it is fear, cowardice, indifference or blindness, from an ethical point of view it is beyond doubt that those who have the moral strength to recognize the crime, and yet tolerate it, are more guilty than those who commit the crime.