Harry Hopkins Quotes
I have great difficulty in finding a good reason for telling boys eighteen years old they should not go in the Army. I presume this is because I think there is nothing more important in the world than to win this war [World War II], because if we don't win it there won't be any schools to go to.
Harry Hopkins, 1890-1946, U. S. Secretary of Commerce (Democrat), Director, Works Progress Administration, Director, Federal Emergency Relief Administration, Special Assistant to the President, Letter to James I. Wendell, Headmaster, Hill School, July 8, 1942
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
What is particularly interesting about this quotation is that it shows the role that vengeance played in the support of the war effort. Revenge is a “baser” motive than making the world safe for democracy or preserving freedom or stopping dictators. Yet the political and military leadership did not shy away from revenge as a war aim. Contrast this with later wars. Arguably the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor created a different dimension than existed in the Korean or Vietnam wars. Yet in the War on Terror, the attack of 9-11, created a situation like Pearl Harbor did. Yet President Bush and other political and military leaders had a definite policy of never acknowledging that revenge was a factor, despite the fact that many Americans openly saw this as a major war aim.
Wilson was very candid that there would be high cost to war and sacrifice would be needed. See {584570} for other similar candor. This quotation was often used by critics of George W. Bush who initiated the Iraq War and then cut taxes for the rich, but then financed the war through the budgetary emergency appropriations bypassing the budget rules that the revenue must be specified to pay for it. His administration even claimed at an early stage in the war that the oil revenue from Iraq oil would defray the costs.
The founder was Charles E. Coughlin, 1891-1979, a demagogic Catholic Priest who drafted the principles and invited others to join him. Hundreds of thousands did in this organization which began in idealism, and ended in scandal and hate mongering, so much so that Father Coughlin was ordered off the radio and out of politics by the Catholic Church. The National Union in 1936 had morphed into the Union Party which ran Presidential candidates in the 1936 election. In this principle there were two purposes: First to have the wealthy sacrifice something in time of war. Historically wealth could keep a man from the draft if he so wanted. Second, when the company went to war the argument went it was the rich who could profit who had more political influence and could make the war. This way, they would pay a high price and might oppose war. Many of Coughlin’s followers were pro-German and wanted to keep the country out of the European war.
During the Iraq war the enlistments of servicemen were unilaterally extended causing great controversy. However the concept of extension of a term of service in an emergency existed more than 60 years earlier.
Harry Lloyd Hopkins was the 8th Secretary of Commerce, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's closest advisor on foreign policy during World War II. He was one of the architects of the New Deal, especially the relief programs of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which he directed and built into the largest employer in the country. In World War II, he was Roosevelt's chief diplomatic troubleshooter and liaison with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. He supervised the $50 billion Lend-Lease program of military aid to the Allies.
