The Pro-Red Orchestra In the USA, 1941
The ante rises after Pearl Harbor on production and appropriations for Stalin
With Pearl Harbor and full-fledged belligerency four days later, the end of a season of delicacy concerning matters Stalinist was just one of the consequences, even though the passage by the House of Representatives a week after the attack of a national defense appropriation bill for $8,243,839,031 brought from Time an almost apologetic tag that, after all, “only $78,000,000” of this vast sum was intended for Russian lend-lease.(196) For the British, American entry into the war was a life raft of indescribably vast dimensions, far more esteemed at this early moment for its part in this economic salvation department; British income taxes in the Pearl Harbor week were 50% of its workers' pay, and 95% of “big incomes."(197) At this same time, Sir Kingsley Wood, Chancellor of the Exchequer, was telling the House of Commons that Britain had already spent the equivalent of $33,200,000,000 to fight the war so far,(198) with the end far from in sight, the consequences of which were evident to the far-visioned. Julian Huxley, in New York City the same day, predicted that “The United States will be the most powerful country when the war is over, while Europe will be a mess."(199) It was interesting to see how few political and ideological warriors cared about the outcome; there was a long and beautiful war to fight and experience, which no one wanted to deny himself through such ignoble artifices as the termination of hostilities via negotiation. As for another outcome of the war, one had to consult Rev. Charles E. Coughlin’s editorial in his five-year- old weekly, Social Justice, an unmentionable source among the chic of the day. Two weeks after Pearl Harbor, Rev. Coughlin predicted, “Karl Marx will win this war."(200)
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