Speech Against Lend-Lease
By Colonel Hanford MacNider, former Acting Secretary of War
February 1941

There has been introduced in the Congress of the United States a war bill: H. R. 1776. War bills have but one purpose, no matter what their first significance, and that is war. Let me quote from an interesting state document:

“The object of this war is to deliver the free people of the world from the menace and the actual power of a vast military establishment controlled by an irresponsible government which, having secretly planned to dominate the world, proceeded to carry the plan out without regard, either to the sacred obligations of treaty or the long-established practices and long-cherished principles of international action and honor, which chose its own time for the war, delivered its blow fiercely and suddenly, stopped at no barrier either of law or of mercy, swept a whole continent within the tide of blood. Not the blood of soldiers only, but the blood of innocent women and children also, and of the helpless poor. This power is not the German people, it is the ruthless master of the German people. It is no business of ours how that great people came under the control or submitted with temporary zest to the domination of its purpose. But it is our business to see that the history of the rest of the world is no longer left to its handling.”

Does that sound familiar? Those are the words of Woodrow Wilson, twenty-odd years ago. Is 1917 repeating itself? President Wilson had been re-elected because he had kept us out of war. We have but recovered from another presidential campaign in which both major candidates assured us over and over again that they were against our participation in war. Is 1917 still repeating itself?

In any discussion of the legislation now before the Congress, H. R. 1776, it is only fair that the attitude of whomever discusses it be understood and that it be taken into account, for better or for worse. So I wish to make two clarifying statements.

One: all my sympathies are with Britain, Greece, and China. They are fighting a gallant fight against great odds and I pray, as does every free man, that they may win it. I would like to see all dictators and aggressors--especially Hitler--liquidated once and for all. Consistent with a speedy and sound building of our own national defense, I am willing, as are all Americans I know, that all or any nations fighting aggression be allowed to purchase such weapons as we can spare.

If the emergency is as great as the leaders of the administration say it is, stripping our forces of their weapons at such a time is, in my opinion, almost a treasonable policy. I do not believe that we should give away our own defenses or allow carefully manufactured fear or propagandized hysteria to destroy the best defense we possess, the very thing which has made America the greatest nation on earth: plain, ordinary common sense.

I have heard no accredited military authority who thinks that we are in imminent danger of invasion from anywhere. What is more, if we can depend upon the statement of the Undersecretary of War—and I think he knows what he is talking about—we soon shall have the necessary men trained and under arms to turn any hostile approach to our shores into a first-class disaster for whomever tries it.

Two: I am unalterably opposed to any attempt on our part to further demand a place in the old world’s everlasting quarrels. Europe and Asia have been in constant battle over the balances of power for thousands of years, and they’ll be at it long after all of us here are gone. Our fathers came to this land to leave all that behind them. If we put ourselves back into it now, we shall lose this republic, a heritage we have all sworn to protect.

Along with several million other Americans, I spent two years overseas twenty-odd years ago, in a great crusade to save democracy. I have no regrets over that experience, costly as it was to this nation, not only economically, but morally and governmentally, if from it we learned our lesson: the utter futility of our intervention in European affairs. I shall not willingly allow my sons or any American sons to be committed to the policing of the rest of the world. I am unalterably opposed to stopping with their lives all or any wars which Europe and Asia want to start and about which we have never been consulted.

I am for America first. That may be treason to those who believe that all wars abroad are our wars and that we should let others fight our battles for us. I do not. I am for an impregnable defense for America. No foreign power nor group of powers will ever attack a prepared America.

The spokesmen of this administration told us in effect not so long ago that we must accept the fact that dictator nations can do things much more efficiently and effectively than we can. I disagree utterly. Given half a chance, a free America can out-do any of them. If necessary, we can whip them all put together.

Either the wars overseas are our wars or they are not. If they are, we should be in them now with everything we have. If they are not, we should obey the laws upon our own statute books and preserve America as a great citadel of enlightened democracy, which men and nations can repair for inspiration and guidance to a return of civilization, an America strong and unafraid.

I believe that the American people, through their elected representatives, are competent to make that decision, and that brings us straight to the legislation now under consideration, H.R. 1776. We all have heard that there has been some objection made to Senator Wheeler’s designation of this bill or its companion piece in the Senate as when he referred to it as the administration’s new AAA program. There may be objection to calling it the war bill. So let’s simply refer to it instead as the triple threat bill: lease, lend, and lose America’s defenses. It is proposed at a time when we hear on all sides from practically the same people, or their echoes, is our time of greatest danger. I agree with them. I think it is myself. But that danger is not invasion from without. It is danger of disintegration from within.

There is a strange significance to the number assigned by chance to this bill in the House of Representatives, 1776. It is hardly the same thing we have always celebrated, not I hope for the last time, on the Fourth of July. This is not a declaration of independence, except for the president, who would be free indeed from necessity of consulting with the representatives of the people whom we elected for just that purpose. For the rest of us, it would be a declaration of dependence, of decadence, of destruction to America. “Temporary, only temporary,” say its proponents. Might we answer, with all due respect, “yes, we’ve heard that before”?

I’m against the abdication by Congress, almost at the moment it is seated, I am against the delegation of the powers given to it by the Constitution to any one man, no matter how wise and able he may be. That would be, in my opinion, a direct scuttling of our form of government, a betrayal of the American people, a direct violation of the basic law of this land, the Constitution. The first responsibility of every American is to his fellow Americans. The first responsibility of our government is to the American people, not to the rest of the world, no matter how sorely beleaguered it may be. There can be but one test, and only one test, for every measure which comes before the American Congress: first, is it good for America? This legislation, under the guise of aid to democracy abroad, destroys our democratic processes at home. A vote in its favor by any man would be to my mind a confession that democracy will not work in an emergency. It would constitute his personal admission that he has lost faith in America, its people, its form of government. It would serve notice to all who believe in dictatorship that they were right, that we have always been wrong. It would be hoisting the white flag of surrender for free men everywhere.

Without outlining the powers and their limitations imposed by our Constitution, we can all well remember that alliances with foreign powers are accomplished by legislation in the United States. Not by decree or will of the head of the state as in most other lands. The American people are the stockholders of the United States. They elect a Congress who act as their board of directors, and they elect a president and general manager. Board of directors is the policy-making body, and upon the general manager rests the duty of carrying out the policies of the board, of Congress. Congress is vested with the sole legislative power of the federal government. The people of the United States in electing a Congress have a right to rely upon the constitutional powers under which the Congress is to act. Congress cannot escape that responsibility by giving blanket authority to the chief executive. In my opinion, the adoption of this legislation would constitute something much more reprehensible than that. It would in reality be throwing the greatest, and up until now the most successful going business in history, these United States, into receivership and appointing the president its receiver. Are we as bankrupt in courage, in character, in fiber, as that? The passage of this bill would mean to me that we were willing to quit as a republic. Give a receiver the power to liquidate it, not for the benefit of the stockholders--the people of the United States--but for some hypothetical creditors to whom we owe nothing. If the board of directors of any corporation should do such an act, there is not a court in the land that would not instantly remove them and subject them to penalties for a failure to perform their trust and their duty.

A few days ago over the air, Guy? Gillette, United States Senator from Iowa, my own state, spoke to the question before the nation. I am not of his political faith, but I was proud to hear him. And as one listener, out on a farm in the state he represents, to second with my heart the words he said. Twenty-three years ago, he told us, as an American soldier in France, he went down on his knees in the mud and swore to his God that he would do everything within his power to prevent that sort of experience again for American boys. He made a plea for open and free discussion, that the will of the American people might be fully developed and translated into action by Congress, that they might have guidance in the situation which may well hold in balance the whole future of the United States as a free land of free people. The issue was not before the people in the last campaign. Now your voice must and should be heard. If you don’t want to go to war, without being asked, write your senators and congressmen tonight.