To distract attention, to put people's minds on useless or bewildering projects is a bit of sabotage, in a total war. It is well enough to divert people, for a moment, so that they are refreshed; but no one has the right to confuse a clear issue or to start inessential projects or to ask people to look at anything except the job in hand.

For five minutes, I propose a look at the Declaration of Independence, because it is the one document essential to our military and moral success; it is the standard by which we can judge the necessity of all projects; and although our destiny, and the means to fulfill it, are written into it, the Declaration is the forgotten document of American history. We remember the phrases too often repeated by politicians and dreamers; we do not study the hard realistic plan of national action embodied in every paragraph of the instrument.

The famous phrases at the beginning give the moral, and revolutionary, reason for action; the magnificent ground plan of the character and history of the American people is explained in the forgotten details of the Declaration; and nothing in the conservative Constitution could do more than delay the unfolding of the plan or divide its fruits a little unevenly.

I suggest that the Declaration supplies the motive of action for today; the moment we understand it, we have a definition of America, a specific blueprint of what we have been, what we are, and what we can become—and the action necessary for our future evolves from this; moreover the unnecessary action is likewise defined. Our course before we were attacked and our plans for the world after the war may seem the mere play of prejudice and chance; but the destiny of America will be determined not by the affections of one group or the fears of another, nor by hysteria and passion; our fate will be determined by the whole course of our history—and by our decision to continue its direction or to reverse it.

The rest of this book flows out of this belief in the decisive role of the Declaration, but it does not attempt to indicate a course of action in detail. For the sake of illustration I cite these instances.

Q. Should the U.S. try to democratize the Germans or accept the view that the Germans are a race incapable of self-government?

A. The history of immigration, based on the Declaration, proves that Germans are capable of being good and great democratic citizens.

Q. Can the U.S. unite permanently with any single nation or any exclusive group of nations?

A. Our history, under the Declaration, makes it impossible.

Q. Can the U.S. join a world federation regulating specific economic problems, such as access to raw materials, tariffs, etc.?

A. Nothing in the Declaration is against, everything in our history is for, such a move.

Q. Can the U.S. fight the war successfully without accepting the active principles of the Totalitarian States?

A. If our history is any guide, the only way we can lose the war is by failing to fight it in our own way.

I have already indicated the possibility that our whole military grand plan must be based on variety, which is the characteristic of America created by specific passages in the Declaration; I am sure that the whole grand plan of civilian unity (the plan of morale and propaganda) has to return to the leading lines of our history, if we want to act quickly, harmoniously and effectively; and the peace we make will be another Versailles, with another Article X in the Covenant, if we make it without returning to the sources of our strength.So, if we want to win in the field and at home, win the war and the peace, we must be aware of our history and of the principles laid down in 1776 and never, in the long run, betrayed.

To Whom It May Concern

The Declaration is in four parts and all of them have some bearing on the present.

The first explains why the Declaration is issued. The words are so familiar that their significance is gone; but if we remember that days were spent in revision and the effect of every word was calculated, we can assume that there are no accidents, that the Declaration is precise and says what it means. Here is the passage:

The first official utterance of America is based on human necessity—not the necessity of princes or powers.

It is the utterance of a people, not a nation. It invokes first Nature and then Nature's God as lawgivers.

It asks independence and equality—in the same phrase; the habit of nations, to enslave or be enslaved, is not to be observed in the New World.

And finally "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind"; the first utterance of America is addressed not to the nations of the world, but to the men and women who inhabit them.

Human—people—Nature—Nature's God—mankind.

These are the words boldly written across the map of America. A century and a half of change have not robbed one of them of their power—because they were not fad-words, not the catchwords of a revolution; they were words with cold clear meanings—and they destroyed feudalism in Europe for a hundred and sixty years.

The practical application of the preamble is this: whenever we have spoken to the people of other nations, as we did in the Declaration, we have been successful; we have failed only when we have addressed ourselves to governments. The time is rapidly coming when our only communication with Europe must be over the heads of its rulers, to the people. It does not seem practical; but we shall see later that, for us, it has always been good politics.

The Logic of Freedom

The next passage in the Declaration is the one with all the quotations. There can be little harm in reprinting it:

Starting off with a rhetorical device—the pretense that its heresies are acceptable commonplaces, this long paragraph builds a philosophy of government on the unproved and inflammatory assumptions which it calls "self-evident". The self-evident truths are, in effect, the terms agreed upon by the signers. These signers now appear for the first time, they say "we hold", they say that, to themselves, certain truths are self-evident. The first three of "these truths" are some general statements about "all men"; the fourth and fifth tell why governments are established and why they should be overthrown. These two are the objective of the first three; but they have been neglected in favor of adolescent disputation over the equality of men at birth, and they have been forgotten in our adult pursuit of happiness which has often made us forget that life and liberty, no less than large incomes, are among our inalienable rights.

The historians of the Declaration always remind us of John Locke's principle that governments exist only to protect property; when States fail they cease to be legitimate, they can be overthrown; and Locke is taken to be, more than Rousseau, the inspiration of the Declaration. The Declaration, it happens, never mentions the right to own property; but the argument for revolution is essentially the same: when a government ceases to function, it should be overthrown. The critical point is the definition of the chief duty of a government. The Colonists, in the Declaration, said it is to secure certain rights to all men; not to guarantee privileges granted by the State, but to protect rights which are born when men are born, in them, with them—inalienably theirs.

So the Declaration sets us for ever in opposition to the totalitarian State—for that State has all the inalienable rights, and the people exist only to protect the State.

The catalogue of rights is comparatively unimportant; once we agree that the State exists to secure inherent rights, the great revolutionary stride has been taken; and immediately we see that our historic opposition to Old Europe is of a piece with our present opposition to Hitler. The purpose of our State is not the purpose of the European States; we might work with them, side by side, but a chemical union would result only in an explosion.

There is one word artfully placed in the description of the State; the Declaration does not say that governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed. It says that governments instituted among men to protect their rights "derive their just powers from the consent of the governed". Always realistic, the Declaration recognizes the tendency of governors to reach out for power and to absorb whatever the people fail to hold. The idea of consent is also revolutionary—but the moment "inalienability" is granted, consent to be governed must follow. The fascist state recognizes no inalienable right, and needs no consent from its people.

It is "self-evident", I think, that we have given wrong values to the three elements involved. We have talked about the "pursuit of happiness"; we have been impressed by the idea of any right being ours "for keeps", inalienable; and we have never thought much about the fundamental radicalism of the Declaration: that it makes government our servant, instructed by us to protect our rights. The chain of reasoning, as the Declaration sets it forth, leads to a practical issue:

So in the first three hundred words of the Declaration the purpose of our government is logically developed.

Blueprint of America

There follows first a general and then a particular condemnation of the King of England. This is the longest section of the Declaration. It is the section no one bothers to read; the statute of limitations has by this time outlawed our bill of complaint against George the Third. But the grievances of the Colonials were not high-pitched trifles; every complaint rises out of a definite desire to live under a decent government; and the whole list is like a picture, seen in negative, of the actual government the Colonists intended to set up; and the basic habits of American life, its great traditions, its good fortune and its deficiencies are all foreshadowed in this middle section. Here—for the sake of completeness—is the section:

"He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

"He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained, and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend them.

"He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

"He has called together legislative bodies at places, unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

"He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

"He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

Here I omit one "count", reserved for separate consideration.

"He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

"He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

"He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies, without the Consent of our legislatures.

"He has affected to render the Military Independent of and superior to the Civil power.

"He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For depriving us in many cases of the benefits of Trial by jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses: For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: For suspending our own Legislatures and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

"He has abdicated Government here by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

"He has plundered our seas, ravished our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

"He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

"He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

"He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have We been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends."

The eighteen paragraphs of denunciation fall into seven general sections:

So the bill of complaint signifies these things about the Founders of our Country:

These were the rights to which lovers of human freedom aspired in England or France; they were the practical application of Locke and Rousseau and the Encyclopedists and the Roundheads. Little in the whole list reflects the special conditions of life in the colonies; troops had been quartered in Ireland, trial by jury suspended in England, tyrants then as now created their Praetorian guard or Storm Troops and placed military above civil rights, and colonies from early time had been considered as tributaries of the Mother Country.

The Practical "Dream"

The American Colonists were about to break the traditions of European settlement, and with it the traditions of European government. And, with profound insight into the material conditions of their existence, they foreshadowed the entire history of our country in the one specification which had never been made before, and could never have been made before:

"He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands."

This amazing paragraph is placed directly after the sections on representative government; it is so important that it comes before the items on trial by jury, taxation, and trade. It is a critical factor in the history of America; if we understand it, we can go forward to understand our situation today. The other complaints point toward our systems of law, our militia, our constant rebellion against taxes, our mild appreciation of civil duties, our unswerving insistence upon the act of choosing representatives; all these are details; but this unique item indicates how the nation was to be built and what its basic social, economic, and psychological factors were to be.This brief paragraph condemns the Crown for obstructing the two processes by which America was made:

Immigration
Pioneering

With absolute clairvoyance the Declaration sets Naturalization, which means political equality, in between the two other factors. Naturalization is the formal recognition of the deep underlying truth, the new thing in the new world, that one could become what one willed and worked to become—one could, regardless of birth or race or creed, become an American.

So long as the colonies were held by the Crown, the process of populating the country by immigration was checked. The Colonists had no "dream" of a great American people combining racial bloods and the habits of all the European nations. They wanted only to secure their prosperity by growing; they constantly were sending agents to Westphalia and the Palatinate to induce good Germans to come to America, one colony competing with another, issuing pamphlets in Platt-Deutsch, promising not Utopia with rivers of milk and honey, not a dream, but something grander and greater—citizenship, equality under the law, and land. Across this traffic the King and his ministers threw the dam of Royal Prerogative; they meant to keep the colonies, and they knew they could not keep them if men from many lands came in as citizens; and they meant to keep the virgin lands from the Appalachians to the Mississippi—or as much of it as they could take from the Spaniards and the French. So as far back as 1763, the Crown took over all title to the 250,000 square miles of land which are now Indiana and Illinois and Michigan and Minnesota, the best land lying beyond the Alleghenies. Into this territory no man could enter; none could settle; no squatters' right was recognized; no common law ran. Suddenly the natural activity of America, uninterrupted since 1620, stopped. The right of Americans to move westward and to take land, the right of non-Americans to become Americans, both were denied. The outcry from the highlands and the forest clearing was loud; presently the seaboard saw that America was one country, its true prosperity lay within its own borders, not across the ocean. And to make the unity clear, the Crown which had taken the land, now took the sea; the trade of the Colonies was broken; they were cut off from Europe, forbidden to bring over its men, forbidden to send over their goods. For the first time America was isolated from Europe.

So the British Crown touched every focal spot—and bruised it. The outward movement, to and from Europe, always fruitful for America, was stopped; the inward movement, across the land, was stopped. The energies of America had always expressed themselves in movement; when an artificial brake on movements was applied, friction followed; then the explosion of forces we call the Revolution.

And nothing that happened afterward could effectively destroy what the Revolution created. The thing that people afterward chose to call "the American dream" was no dream; it was then, and it remained, the substantial fabric of American life—a systematic linking of free land, free trade, free citizenship, in a free society.

A grim version of our history implies that the pure idealism of the Declaration was corrupted by the rich and well-born who framed the Constitution. As Charles Beard is often made the authority for this economic interpretation, his own account of the economic effects of the Declaration may be cited in evidence:

And the Ordnance of 1787, last great act of the Continental Congress, inspired by the Declaration, created the Northwest Territory, the heart of America for a hundred years, in a spirit of love and intelligence which the Constitution in all its wisdom did not surpass.

That is what the Declaration accomplished. It set in action all the forces that ultimately made America. The action rose out of the final section, in which, naming themselves for the first time as "Representatives of the United States of America", the signers declare that "these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States...." In this clear insight, the Declaration says that the things separating one people from another have already happened—differences in experiences, desires, habits—and that the life of the Colonies is already so independent of Britain that the purely political bond must be dissolved.

So finally, as a unity of free and independent States, the new nation arrogates to itself four specific powers:

To levy war
conclude peace
contract alliances
establish commerce.

Only these four powers, by name; the rest were lumped together, a vast, significant et cetera; but these were so much more significant that they had to be separately written down; three of them—war—peace—alliances—are wholly international; the fourth, commerce, at least partly so. The signers of the Declaration made no mistake; they wished to be independent; and in order to remain independent, they were fighting against isolation.

The error we must not make about the Declaration is to think of it as a purely domestic document, dealing with taxes and election of representatives and Redcoats in our midst; it is the beginning of our national, domestic life, but only because it takes the rule of our life out of English hands; and the moment this is done, the Declaration sets us up as an independent nation among other nations, and places us in relation, above all, to the nations of Europe.

At this moment our intercourse with the nations of Europe is a matter of life and death—death to the destroyer of free Europe or death to ourselves; but if we live, life for all Europe, also. Like parachute troops, our address to Europe must precede our armies; we have to know what to say to Europe, to whom to say, how to say it. And the answer was provided by the Declaration which let all Europe come to us—but held us independent of all Europe.

CHAPTER VIToC