ld Pratt House. Mounting
pressures throughout the year ... made it advisable to plan a
conference program that would facilitate re-examination of the
strategic uses of the United Nations for American Policy in the
years ahead. Accordingly, the conference theme was designated as
_United States Policy and the United Nations_. Emphasis was upon
re-appraisal of the United States national interest in the United
Nations--and the cost of sustaining that interest....

"In the course of the year, officers and members of the Council and
of the staff visited most of the Committees for the purpose of
leading discussions at meetings, supervising Committee procedures
and seeking the strengthening of Committee relations with the
Council."

Chapter 2

WORLD WAR II AND TRAGIC CONSEQUENCES

Although the Council on Foreign Relations had almost gained controlling
influence on the government of the United States as early as 1941, it
had failed to indoctrinate the American people for acceptance of what
Colonel House had called a "positive" foreign policy.

In 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt (although eager to get the United States
into the Second World War and already making preparations for that
tragedy) had to campaign for re-election with the same promise that
Wilson had made in 1916--to keep us out of the European war. Even as
late as the day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December,
1941, the American people were still overwhelmingly "isolationist"--a
word which internationalists use as a term of contempt but which means
merely that the American people were still devoted to their nation's
traditional foreign policy.

It was necessary for Roosevelt to take steps which the public would not
notice or understand but which would inescapably involve the nation in
the foreign war. When enough such sly involvement had been manipulated,
there would come, eventually, some incident to push us over the brink
into open participation. Then, any American who continued to advocate
our traditional foreign policy of benign neutrality would be an object
of public hatred, would be investigated and condemned by officialdom as
a "pro-nazi," and possibly prosecuted for sedition.

* * * * *

The Council on Foreign Relations has heavy responsibility for the
maneuvering which thus dragged America into World War II. One major step
which Rooseve