Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy - Ludwig von Mises ...

52 Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy
Taking the side of one of two combatants in a confl ict always
incurs risk. For months, FDR and his close associates had been
secretly encouraging the British to expect continued and increased
U.S. support in their struggle against Germany. At the same time,
they had been reassuring the American people they were doing
everything that could be done to keep the United States neutral
and at peace.
Th ese contradictory pronouncements were certainly intentional.
Some time later Ambassador Bullitt, a long-time intimate
and adviser of Roosevelt’s, as much as admitted that this equivocation
had been deliberate. Roosevelt’s “White House advisers,”
Bullitt wrote “persuaded him that if he told the truth he would
lose the 1940 election. Th e president knew that war was coming
to the American people. . . . Th is was a low-water mark in
presidential morality,” Bullitt said, “but the president won the
election.” 53
53 William C. Bullitt, “How We Won the War and Lost the Peace,” 2 parts.
Life (August 30, 1948), pp. 83–97; (September 6, 1948), pp. 86–103.