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208 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
people such as the United States of Americans. You are in it and
Lord knows who is trying to get you out. As the late Lord
Rothermere, who was not much, as you might say, to write home
about, finally decided that the English public was unteachable,
wholly unteachable. Well, I don't know whether you can learn anything
from history, I mean, I don't know whether you are even yet
in a state of mind where you want to learn anything from history
or from any other source whatever. A way to get yourselves out
might be discoverable. It might be more discoverable if you first
had a faint inkling or a curiosity as to how you get yourselves in.
". . . How well you can learn from the disasters of England
I do not yet know. But I would lay it down as an axiom that
empires do not get knocked apart from outside until they are
plumb gone to rot in the middle. The laws of right government
have been known since the days of You and Shun, old Chinese
Emperors, and from the time of King Wong was a thousand years,
and from Wong to Confucius was more than two thousand years
ago.
"And those days when the policies of Chun and of Guan were
slipped together, compared, they were as the two halves of a peel.
Or it might be the two parts of a talley stick. And for nigh on to
four thousand years I think no one has dodged the fate of those
policies. Then from the time of Confucius, every dynasty in China
has learned from Confucius—I mean he learned it from looking
at history—talking of Chun and Guan. And after him whenever a
great man learned it he started or upheld some sort of imperial
order."
February 19, 1942. Power:
"The President hath power. The president has no legal power to
enter into serious and secret agreements with foreign powers. He
has no legal power to cook up policies with Jones? Borkin? and
sign the nation's name on the document. The United States treaties
are valid when ratified by the Senate and not before. The President
has no legal power to enter into condominiums with foreign governments
for a misconduct of scandalous islands off the China
coast or in proximity to distant Oriental or any other damn harbors.
The President has no more legal right to do these infamies