On the table of [Congressman] Dewer Short's reception desk were copies of Kullgren's America Speaks and the Reverend Harvey H. Springer's (who was a staunch Winrod-Fundamentalist) Western Voice. Both publications shrieked the "Jewish Gestapo" theme used in smearing the Department of Justice. Short, whom I had already heard at a Brooklyn America First meeting, proved to be a chubby fellow with twinkling blue eyes and a disarming smile. But he was an America First nationalist to the core.

"The America First spirit is not dead," he said. "Lindbergh is still the hero. Every once in a while," Short confessed, "some of us with the America First viewpoint still meet to talk things over -- Congressmen, Senators, and men like William R. Castle and Samuel Pettengil," who was spokesman for Rumely's Committee for Constitutional Government...

..."I don't think we had to get into this war," Short continued, "and we wouldn't have if we had not called everybody dirty names and insulted them, if we had built our home defenses and minded our own business."

Short summed up all the deceptive arguments advanced by the ignorant sector of the so-called isolationists. In the first place, Short had voted against all twelve national defense measures introduced in the House by the Administration, including the bill to arm the Guam Naval Base, and he also voted "Nay" on the Military Appropriation Act and Conscription Bill.

Short denounced the President for suggesting a peace-time defense army. He denounced the Administration for its expenditures for national defense. His total ignorance of the world-revolutionary nature of National-Socialism matched his apparent ignorance of the motives of the baseball-loving, gadget-loving, bath-loving Japanese, as the editorial from the Washington Times-Herald he inserted in the Congressional Record on November 17, 1941 stated. That editorial, endorsed by Short, went on:

Of all the oriental people, the Japanese are the most nearly like us...It is against these people that our war hawks are proposing that we fight a war. Again why? The Japs don't want to fight us. They have gone to the length of clippering a special envoy over here to make another bid for peace.

Short impressed me as the symbol of the willful and short-sighted politician whose Roosevelt-hatred had blinded him to the failings even of his own record to arm America against enemy attack. Unfortunately, his simplification of the causes leading to our entry into war and his abysmal ignorance of the global revolution initiated by the Nazis was shared by other of the Congress...

...Doubtless the Congressmen and Senators I interviewed were sincere in their hearts, One cannot doubt their fervor and one cannot justly impugn their patriotism. But the impression I carried away was that these men would disrupt our Democracy rather than permit "this gang in the White House," as one of them termed it, to win a just, enduring and universal peace.

So subtle was the needling these Congressmen had received that they saw nothing wrong with the phrases "America First" and "Nationalist America." The patriotic connotation of these slogans would be difficult to attack were it not for the fact that "nationalism" is a trend toward an international "new order" -- the grouping of reactionary forces against the individual freedom of Democracy.

Just as old notions of anti-Semitism have been altered to become a revolutionary Trojan Horse device, by the same token, the old notion of healthful nationalism has been warped by Nazi strategists to subvert Democracy and serve as prelude to revolutionary fascism...

...Mussolini's fascist system was first described as "nationalist." The French fascist organization Croix de Feu which developed into a Vichy instrument was called "nationalist." The Nazi party is the National-Socialist Party. The Japanese War Party is a "nationalist" party and Franco's Falange was first known as a "nationalist" party. All these countries had their "Germany First," "France First " and "Spain First" parties. Recall that the motto of Sir Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts was "Britain First" and Stahrenberg's slogan of the American National-Socialist Party was "America First, Last and Always."

"America First" can be no different in its connotation and ultimate outcome despite the sincere intents of some of those who mouth it. "America First" is a cry unwittingly used by Liberty's hangmen.

As to Lawrence Dennis who relentlessly promoted the America First cry and carried on the needling of Congressional members while his friend and collaborator, Viereck, was in jail, I regard him as one of the most dangerous men to our war-time unity...Because of his native background and training in our consular service, Dennis is an adroit diplomat and makes expert use of well-meaning clergymen and a high official of the Civil Liberties Union to stand by him whenever he is brought before an investigating body. It enraged me to hear him boast how well-meaning and democratic groups had defended him, while in the next breath and in the name of freedom of speech he denounced Democracy and plotted to multiply its tensions. Goebbels' statement fitted Dennis' role perfectly:

We National Socialists have never maintained that we were representatives of a democratic viewpoint, but we have openly declared that we only made use of democratic means in order to gain power, and that after the seizure of power we would ruthlessly deny to our opponents all those means which they had granted to us during the time of our opposition...

...It will always remain the best joke made by the democratic system that it provided its deadly enemies with the means of destroying it.