An American Program

THE ADMINISTRATION has made many protestations of noble aims in foreign policy, but when the moment came to act on them, it has hesitated and compromised. Its foreign policy has not been to support American principles of freedom. It has dealt with the fascist elements in conquered countries; it has disregarded the will of the people of those countries; it had stubbornly and incredibly refused to acknowledge the Committee of Liberation as the Provisional French Government. It has been canny and personal and subjective. It has called this policy expediency. But since the policy has produced little but dislike, distrust and loss of prestige for the United States without achieving the intended political aims, it has not been even expedient.

The formulation of an affirmative foreign policy by the Republican Party is thus a particularly important platform task. There have been sharp divisions within the Party concerning the extent to which it is desirable for the United States to maintain and develop relations with other nations. But surely the long debate, the events through which we lived before the war, and the war itself have made plain that American policy cannot be separated into two unrelated compartments, one labelled Foreign Policy and one Domestic Policy. The two areas of action are inseparable; what happens in either immediately affects the other.

We are not living in several worlds. Our small American farms, our huge American factories, have close bonds with what is produced in the Andes and the hills of Szechuan, with the complex trade mechanism of London, with the cargoes that sail from Bombay and Oslo and Melbourne. Whatever we do at home constitutes foreign policy. And whatever we do abroad

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