LAST DITCH OF DEMOCRACY - Majority Rights

Mr. Welles appeared to be renouncing dollar diplomacy. If the U.S. had
renounced the more aggressive features of dollar diplomacy a few weeks
sooner, a good deal of bloodshed might have been spared us. Mr. Welles
also spoke of misapprehensions, of incomplete knowledge, of
heedlessness, inconsideration. I am perfectly ready to take Mr. Welles’
speech at its face value. If the U.S. has been ill-informed or tardily
informed of the conditions of Europe, there is no reason for you to
remain VOLUNTARILY in that condition, but it is now extremely hard
for the people inside ANY country to get accurate impressions of the
state of mind of people inside any other.
It has been for years extremely hard to get news INTO America. I have
long held that MORE disinterested observers, American observers,
should be let loose on Europe. I mean people whose news and view is
not limited by what they can sell to the advertisers of a particular paper
or group of papers. Undeniably misunderstandings have arisen, and still
arise, and will continue to arise until it is possible for people to talk
without heat, and without attempting to read into other men’s statement
what the speaker or writer never intended to put there.
I mean there is the question of will, the question of good will, of being I;
ready to hear what the other man says to you. It is not to be supposed
even now that Mr. Welles would listen to me over a table. Or answer
what I intended to say during the next five minutes. I have been trying to
get news of Europe across the Atlantic for a number of years.
It is today my impression that Mr. Welles was speaking of a Germany
which no longer exists. I know that for years the American people were
incited against an Italy which was NOT the Italy that I live in.
Before all wars, before any war, there arises a tide of misrepresentation.
That sort of thing did NOT begin in this century or the last one. In every
country there are groups of people who aim at construction, who reform