So you see, fascism in America is not dead. It has been pretending sleep. And I wish I could say that the America First spirit, and the threat of an American Fascist Third Party movement were over. I recall the evening I spent with James Banahan at the German-American Athletic Club. Hunched over a glass of beer he finished telling me how the Nazi consulate had helped finance the Phalanx, and added:

"Y'know, George, there aren't many of us right now, but we can sure raise plenty of hell. A pinch of salt isn't much, but throw it in your coffee and regardless of how much sugar you put in you'll still taste the salt. We are that salt and we're here to sour up this Democracy. We are the salt of American nationalism!"

I have indicated the salts which threaten to overflow at the "right time" at the peace table after we have won the military war. For if America's fascists who are psychologically courting America's defeat and fear most a democratic victory, cannot "win the war" their way -- the fascist way -- they are determined to "win the peace" at any cost.

At the same time they are determined to prolong the conflict in order to intensify their work of dissension and distrust and justify their proposed leadership at the peace conference. I am convinced that American Fascists do not want to see, and are sabotaging with every means at their command, a quick Allied victory. Such a decisive victory would completely shatter their time table and give Democracy a permanent victory. The keynote of the fascist strategy was set by Father Coughlin only a few weeks after Pearl Harbor in Social Justice:

First things come first. It is necessary, first in time, to win the war. But, first in importance, it is necessary to win the peace which follows the war...To win the war and lose the peace would be a worse defeat for us [Coughlinites] than if we fought the war to a draw...Americans, Social Justice advises you to get into every patriotic organization in America. Join up. Be neither a slacker for war nor a slacker for peace.