True, its leadership at first was as American as Plymouth Rock. But the rank and file following -- at first sincere and respectable -- was later polluted by the Pelleys, Coughlins, McWilliamses; the Vierecks, Kuhns and Deatherages; by Klansmen; by Japanese and Nazi agents. And its weak-kneed leadership, cowed and bullied by stories of Nazi might, swayed by Chamberlain sentimentality and Pollyanna smugness, took craven comfort in the delusion that they were "defending America." The surrender of a mighty nation in appeasement to Hitler might easily have been the outcome if the designs of its two most publicized spokesmen had been carried through.

Its national chairman, General Robert E. Wood, told Kenneth Crawford a reporter for PM, a New York newspaper, that in the event of an invasion of South America by a Nazi armada, he would defend our Latin Allies "only the part as far south as the bulge of Brazil." Without firing a shot in self-defense, the General indicated his willingness to let Hitler seize more than half of South America, plant his legions firmly on the Western Hemisphere and place the Panama Canal at the mercy of his Luftwaffe.

William R. Castle, another founder of the America First Committee, expressed amazing shortsightedness for a former official of the State Department. Apparently dominated by Viereck's syrupy assurances that Hitler was the friend of all and the enemy of none, Castle wrote in the Nazi organ Today's Challenge:

Let's mind our own business -- and keep our powder dry -- avoid all the ideologies which are contrary to our own good system. Let us so live our own lives in a world of neighbors that we shall be a power for good because we have the respect of all.

This sample of infantile trust after years of relentless Nazi aggression during which Democracies crumbled one by one because they, too, believed in Hitler's promises, remained dominant with the "new leadership." Faith in Hitler but an unreasoning lack of faith in the Administration -- these were the cornerstones of the Committee's policy of appeasement and defeatism which corroded our democratic fibre. It delighted Nazi commentators, who crooned from Berlin: "The America First Committee is known as true Americanism and true patriotism, as opposed to the synthetic brand."

"Patriotic" meetings of the Mobilizers and the Bund fell down in attendance, while most of the other fascistic groups were suspended altogether as their members flocked to America First rallies...