THE PEOPLE'S CENTURY
297
ity or malevolence of all governing classes, but to the rapacity of
the enemy. Guilt and guilelessness must be assessed geographi–
cally, and all the guilt must be on the other side of the frontier."
The enemy, furthermore, tpust be represented as "Satanic" and
"an obstacle to the realization of the cherished ideals and dreams
of the nation." Wallace refers to Hitler as "Satan" seven times in
the course of his speech.
Against the black picture of Satan-Hitler, Wallace sets a
bright painting of the situation on our side of the battle-lines: a
steady, 'inevitable' forward march by the common people towards
ever-increasing democracy and security. I doubt if this picture
makes much appeal to the common man-not the columnists and
politicians who·use such brave words in his name, but to the real
man in the street. New Dealers like Wallace are in the difficult
tactical position of the Blum Popular Front, the Weimar Social–
Democracy, or the present British Labor Party: they are liberal
apologists for a system whose workings patently contradict the
principles they profess, and never more so than in a crisis like the
present war. They are on the defensive, forced to whitewash a
system that is no longer just or humane or even workable, fighting
a "survival war" in every sense. Wallace betrays an uneasy con–
sciousness of this in the desperate efforts he makes to paint this as
a "revolutionary" war. But it is a curious sort of revolution whose
army is commanded by a Stimson, whose navy is led by a Knox,
and whose foreign policy is in the hands of Hull and Welles.
Wallace's speech strikes a major note of Democratic propa·
ganda in this war in its frequent appeals to religious sanction.
"The idea of freedom," he writes, 'the freedom that we in the
United States know and love so well, is derived from the Bible
with its extraordinary emphasis on the dignity of the individual.
Democracy is the only true political expression of Christianity."
When it comes to The Enemy, his tone becomes revivalist: "As
long as his [Hitler's
J
spell holds, he defies God himself and Satan
is turned loose on the world. . . . Through the leaders of the Nazi
revolution, Satan is now trying to lead the common man of the
whole world back into slavery and darkness." These statesmen
nowhere betray the conservative nature of the war they are waging
than in their attempts to appeal to a religiosity which their own
system has for centuries been killing.
The flabbiness of the Democratic war aims is also betrayed
