THE PEOPLE'S CENTURY
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"People's Century" line ("The age of imperialism has ended")
and promises that the United Nations after the war will maintain
"an international police power ... to insure freedom from fear to
peace-loving peoples."
(N. Y. Times,
May 30) The Federation of
British Industries simultaneously reached the conclusion that "the
post-war world will need policing by an armed force capable of
striking at any point without notice."
The last word on the family quarrel between Hull's State
Department and Wallace's Board of Economic Warfare was pro·
nounced by the conservative
U.S. News
(June 5): "Both the Hull
and Wallace ideas would keep control for some time to come in
the hands of the United Nations. In this sense, both seem to imply
a moderate and humane type of imperialism."
3.
The post-war world is to be refashioned in the image of
America.
In "The American Century," Henry Luce had described the
post-war role of the United States as "the power-house of the ideals
of Freedom and Justice," "the elder brother, strong, brave, and
above all generous ... of the nations in the brotherhood of man."
He had seen America as a unique historical phenomenon: "Because
America alone among the nations of the earth was founded on the
ideas and ideals which transcend class and caste and racial and
occupational differences, America alone can provide the pattern
for the future." And he had summoned his fellow-Americans "to
create the first great American Century."
In his "People's Century" speech, Wallace retorted to Luce:
"Some have spoken of the American Century. I say that the cen–
tury on which we are entering-the century which will come into
being after this war-can be and must be the century of the com–
mon man." These generous sentiments thrilled the liberals since
they seemed a repudiation of Luce's embarrasingly frank national–
ism. But a month later, on June 9, Wallace made another speech,
before a religious body, which he entitled, "Why Did God Make
America?" This speech has aroused very little attention in liberal
circles, perhaps because in it Wallace joins hands with Luce, and
in fact goes him one better.
(It
is interesting to note that the latent
imperialistic content of Wallace's ideology emerges unmistakable
when he casts his ideas into wholly religious form.)
"History this far," Wallace begins, " seems to be but the
prelude to a magnificent world symphony. In this prelude many
