Stimson Backing String U.S. Foreign Policy, Cites Fascism’s “extreme Brutality”

the “serious moral deterioration” involved in fascism and its “extreme brutality toward helpless groups of people” were among points stressed by former Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson in a letter to the New York Times today endorsing a policy of “farsighted affirmative action” against the fascist powers by the United States as a means of preventing war. Answering contentions of critics that the democracies should be able to live in the same world with autocracies since they had done so before, Mr. Stimson declared.

“If all that modern fascism meant were a system under which a nation voluntarily submitted itself to an autocratic ruler and under him was willing to live quietly and at peace with its neighbors, we might agree that it was a domestic matter which concerned that nation alone, and that it was not our business to meddle with it. But it is becoming every day more clear that fascism is not such a system. On the contrary, it is now evident that it is a radical attempt to reverse entirely the long evolution out of which our democracies of Europe and America have grown, and that it constitutes probably the most serious attack on their underlying principles which those principles have ever met….

“Furthermore, fascism has involved a serious moral deterioration; an increasing and callous disregard of the most formal and explicit international obligations and pledges; extreme brutality toward helpless groups of people; the complete destruction within their jurisdiction of that individual freedom of speech, of thought, and of the person which has been the priceless goal of many centuries of struggle and the most distinctive crown of our modern civilization. Such a loosening of the moral and humane ties which bind human society together gives powerful confirmation of the basic unfitness of such a system for organized international life.”