The President has NO LEGAL power to enter into devious and secret agreements with foreign powers. He has no legal power to cook up policies with the late Johnnie Buchan and sign the nation’s name on the document.
United States Treaties are valid when ratified by the Senate and not before. The President has no legal power to enter into condominiums with foreign governments, for the misconduct of scandalous islands off the China coast or in proximity to distant oriental, or any other damn harbors.
The President has no more legal right to do these infamies than you have to sign my name on a cheque, or I yours.
There is no darkness save ignorance.
The labile, that is to say slidy and weak memory of past events is no asset to a nation or statesman. Looking back to an unsavory part of our American past we find it more savory than the present. Whether Roosevelt has mental stamina enough left to learn anything from his nasty forerunner and foreslider, Woodrow the codface: I know not. But men of mental capacity above that of a wart hog ought to be able to look back as far as 1914 and 1919. Woodrow resisted clamor to get us into that war. When he came in, he was in accord with the will of the people, a will which he had not faked or concocted. The Allies won that war, and then cheated Italy. It was an error. The cheating of Italy was an error, and Lloyd George ought to know it by now. The cheating of Italy was an error.
When Wilson further signed or tried to sign the United States name to a rascally agreement, he was NOT expressing the will of the nation. He had already wormed and wriggled out of the proper functions of his office. He had already wormed and wriggled, KNOWING that he opposed the will of the people.
There is a limit or orbit to power. There is a limit or orbit to the practical effects of illegality. The error of old codface, sorefoot, was his own. But he was abetted. In fact he was buttered, caressed, inoculated, and led down the garden path, by his accomplices. They were warned and even had they not been warned it was their duty to ascertain what Woodrow’s real powers were. The position of the Warburgs and Lloyd George at Versailles was that of crooks who accept a forged cheque in the hope of passing it on to some one else.
The dirt and grease of the Versailles scoundrels, Jews, sub-Jews and Gentiles alike, was that having concocted Wilson, having passed him off on their brutalized and stupefied peoples as the United States of America, they proceeded to offer his forged cheque to their people.
The League stank from the beginning. It stank of the Bank of Basel, the Warburgs, the Regents of the Banque de France and the ulcer of England. Not all Roosevelt’s actions are infamous. As there is no criticism of music till you can judge the relative merits of different works by the same com poser, so there is no political or ethical criticism till you can measure and judge the different political acts of the same political criminal, gangster, or statesman.
When the President acts within his powers, he has NO NEED to do violence to the laws. His powers are executive, that is, he is legally there to PUT INTO effect the will of the nation and the laws made by the representatives of the People. When he violates and passes beyond his legal powers, he acts TOWARD the destruction of ALL legal government of the United States of America, all government by law and by the laws.
I mean by ANY law, he moves toward a total illegality. This is evil, this is extremely dangerous in the long run, it is myopic, it is short-sighted. In fact, the man is an ass. No good American objects to the U.S.A. assuring the tranquility of the Caribbean.
There is no need to violate the mandate of the people in making QUITE sure that there be no submarine bases, poison factories, etc. immediately off the coast of Florida or in easy reach of Georgia, Alabama, and the mouth of the Mississippi. There are even ways [for] America [to] occupy foreign territory after at least attempting to do it legally.
One can offer to buy, even if one thinks one will have to take over, and make reparations later. I do not think Congress would have objected to the taking over of ALL Guiana, not merely the gotterdamn Dutch part. When a politician’s WHOLE policy has been indirect, when his whole political strategy has consisted in indirectness, in the carom shot (not the straight shot), it is unwise to accept any act of his at its face value.
If Roosevelt’s aim had been Dutch Guiana, he would probably have turned public attention elsewhere. It is reasonable to assume, on the basis of Roosevelt’s public career since the end of his second year in the White House, that his aim in this case was NOT Dutch Guiana.
It is legitimate at least to suspect that his MAIN purpose was to grab yet more ILLEGAL power, to put a hot one over such fools as Senator Pepper and the other fools in the Senate and Congress. Like balloon-faced bumbustuous Churchill, Roosevelt follows every error by a demand for more personal power.
We should be very careful in arriving at [a] judgment of his Caribbean policy. It may be another mere grab. His interest in international politics is considerable. His hate and loathing of legitimate action, of reasoned action, is extreme. His intolerance of all real collaboration either is, or ought to be known to men who share the responsibility for the governing of the United States of America. I should desire an open mind in considering the Caribbean policy, which is O.K. insofar as it aims at peace and security. The question of how far Brazil should agree [with] our IDEAS of peace and security is a hemisphere question. All this is a matter of the American hemisphere. And as I said in opening, we will have no criticism of our own politics, no criticism of it worth the name, till we can judge between one act of our blowy rhinoceros and another. The policy for the western hemisphere is one thing, Asian affairs are another.
England’s conduct in China has been for the most part an infamy. Let some bloody-minded betrayer of the British people get up in their grimy assembly and tell the world of their kind acts in the Orient. From the sacking of the Imperial Palace in Peking to the Jewsoons’, Sassoons’ century of infamy and of opium with Robert Cecil their advocate. That is their dirt, why make it ours ? In any case secret agreements between an usurious nature faker whether in or out of the White House are ILLEGAL. And a foreign government which presents these secret pledges to ITS people as acts of the United States of America participates (and naturally HAS participated) in the swindle. We should leave this trash to its own people, human— —. If this people hasn’t the manhood and sense to spew out their Churchills, Baidwins, Buchans, and lesser vermin, that is their own affair, and they will presumably pay the penalty for their own flaccidity and mistaken toler ance. They will slang us for THEIR errors all right. But that any sub-Jew in the White House should send American lads to die for their Jewsoons and Sassoons and the private interest of the skum of the English earth, and the still lower dregs of the Parsee and Levantine importations is an outrage: and that ends it. To send boys from Omaha to Singapore to die for British monopoly and brutality is not the act of an American patriot.
EZRA POUND SPEAKING 