Toward a Decision

So far as the U.S. press was concerned it looked last week as if the issue of War & Peace was as near settled as it was likely to be short of war's declaration.

The two biggest U.S. papers, Chicago's Tribune and New York's Daily News, still led the isolationist press and News Cartoonist Batchelor pulled out a more macabre anti-war cartoon than usual (see cut). But the great majority of cartoonists pictured Uncle Sam or Average Citizen reproving isolationists and defeatists.

And outside of the widely scattered minority of isolationist papers nearly all the press had reached unity--in a demand for decisive action.

Typical isolationist editorials:

The Topeka Capital: "Public apathy toward the convoy business is readily understandable."

Hearst: "The American people want peace. . . . Better get busy American citizens before your blood is so casually and indifferently spilled."

Typical of the rest of the press:

Louisville Courier-Journal: "Why do we wait? What are we waiting for?"

Atlanta Constitution: "This country is in the war till the end, regardless of what may come."

Milwaukee Journal: "At some time we take our place and fight or we accept a world in which Americans do not care to live."

Kansas City Times: "The risk and sacrifice of staying out are not so apparent, but they are real. . . . They might prove even greater than those of war."

Cleveland Plain Dealer: "To make no effort to insure the safe delivery of material [to Britain] by using the Navy and also the Air Force would obviously be folly."

Nashville Tennessean: "Our moment in history is at hand. A crisis now exists, one in which the free way of life is at stake--but the greatest array of warships in the world is not being used as an instrument for national safety."

Charleston News & Courier: "The singular fact of the present day is that Americans, most of them, do not recognize that their country is at war."

Providence Bulletin: "The American people ... are ready and anxious to do whatever these tortured times require."

Philadelphia Record: "If we are going to send aid to Britain--and that has been decided--let's see that it gets to Britain."

The Paul Block papers (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Toledo Blade, Toledo Times): "Whatever the risk of war, the risk of England's defeat is more serious."

Chicago News: "We are not weak. We are strong, and ready."

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