Mexborough & Swinton Times – Saturday 08 November 1941
Egg and Tomato
Pacifist women armed with eggs and tomatoes “mobbed” the British Ambassador to Washington, Lord Halifax, who took a very unusual experience with his customary calm. The demonstration, and the rough methods used, reveal the growing desperation of the isolationist party. These harridans denounced Lord Halifax as a “war -monger” but they know in their hearts that the issues of peace or war for the United States have little to do with Lord Halifax, or with any influence the British Government can exert. They know that the future course of events depends not on Halifax but on Hitler. Nevertheless they are the stuff Hitler is using everywhere to corrupt and enfeeble his victims in advance.
Isolationists everywhere, from Wheeler and Lindbergh down to these crazy women are doing the work of Hitler, more or less consciously, more or less willingly, and more or less skilfully. The incident may have done good in helping to arouse American public opinion to the progress of this treason in pacifist clothing. All this indecision, vacillation, and dissension is America’s tragedy, not ours. We should go on to the end though all forsook us and after us—the deluge. It is well that the Nazi cause is represented by such lunacy as led to the assault on Lord Halifax; our cause shines by contrast.
We are grateful for the help we have received and for assurances of help; so also is the other great race now grappling with this Hitler tyranny. But we would not hurry by a moment the fateful hour when the one guardian of freedom and democracy in the West will shake itself free of fear and scruple and work out its destiny rather than await its fate.
Whether the United States fights for its freedom or meekly lays its neck alongside that of Vichy France is for the American citizens to decide; Britain and its representatives have nothing to do with that. The safety, honour and welfare of His Majesty’s envoy is nevertheless the concern of all decent American citizens, the most civilised and hospitable race on earth.
Lord Halifax is not only a great Englishman, he is a great exemplar of all that is wise, kindly, and gentle in personal conduct and in social relationships. Those who in America revile him as a war-monger forget that but yesterday he was attacked even in his own country as a peacemonger, an appeaser, a “man of Munich.” Lord Halifax sought to keep his country out of war as long as he could do so with honour: when that was no longer possible he gave his whole mind and strength to the task of waging war effectively.
America to-day stands where he once stood; soon she will stand where he stands now, and it may be that (as in this country) those who now cry out against war will yet rage for more war and ever more effective prosecution of war. There are millions of American citizens who to-day stand where our pacifists stood yesterday. The pacifists of Britain would have seen their country pass under the Hitler yoke without lifting a hand to prevent the tragedy—but Holy Russia is a different matter. To-day they roar and romp in the Russian cause as they would not in the cause of their own race and nation.
So it is in the United States—the interventionists will be the wildest lingoes when America’s hour strikes, but the curse has not yet fallen on their tribe.