One World

by Wendell L. Willkie

AROUND THE WORLD IN 49 DAYS

In "One World" Wendell Wilkie gives a highly personal account of his meetings with Stalin, Chiang Kai-shek, General Montgomery, General Chennault and other United Nations leaders. He tells of his talks with prime ministers and kings, and with teachers, soldiers, librarians, factory workers, and farmers around the world. He reports a great awakening that is going on among the peoples of the world and his deep conviction that the United Nations must learn to work together now, while they fight, if they hope to live together after the war is over.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Memoir, Politics, Biography, World War II

206 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1943

About the author

Willkie was born in Indiana in 1892; both his parents were lawyers, and he also became one. He served in World War I but was not sent to France until the final days of the war, and saw no action. Willkie settled in Akron, Ohio, where he was initially employed by Firestone, but left for a law firm, becoming one of the leaders of the Akron bar. Much of his work was representing electric utilities and in 1929, Willkie accepted a job in New York City as counsel for Commonwealth & Southern Corporation (C&S), a utility holding company. He was rapidly promoted, and became corporate president in 1933. Roosevelt was sworn in as U.S. president soon after Willkie became head of C&S, and announced plans for a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) that would supply power in competition with C&S. Between 1933 and 1939, Willkie fought against the TVA before Congress, in the courts, and before the public. He was ultimately unsuccessful, but sold C&S's property for a good price, and gained public esteem.
A longtime Democratic activist, Willkie changed his party registration to Republican in late 1939. He did not run in the 1940 presidential primaries, but positioned himself as an acceptable choice for a deadlocked convention. He sought backing from uncommitted delegates, while his supporters, many youthful, enthusiastically promoted his candidacy. As Hitler rampaged through Western Europe in 1940, many Republicans did not wish to nominate an isolationist like Thomas E. Dewey, and turned to Willkie, who was nominated on the sixth ballot over Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft. Willkie's support for aid to Britain removed it as a major factor in his race against Roosevelt, and Willkie also backed the president on a peacetime draft. Both men took more isolationist positions towards the end of the race. Roosevelt won a third term, taking 38 of the 48 states.
After the election, Willkie made two wartime foreign trips as Roosevelt's informal envoy, and as nominal leader of the Republican Party gave the president his full support. This angered many conservatives, especially as Willkie increasingly advocated liberal or internationalist causes. Willkie ran for the Republican nomination in 1944, but bowed out after a disastrous showing in the Wisconsin primary in April. He and Roosevelt discussed the possibility of forming, after the war, a liberal political party, but Willkie died in October 1944 before the idea could bear fruit. Willkie is remembered for giving Roosevelt necessary political cover in 1940, which allowed the president to aid Britain in its hour of need.

Reviews

[Andrew]

A really fascinating and enjoyable document from 1943. It would have been exceptionally interesting had Willkie lived longer to see what he would have said about second-wave feminism and decolonization. I suspect he would have been a big fan.

[Davy Bennett]

Cult classic, but not in a good way.

Everything the right came to stand against, all the "one world" puff, propagated by the leftist elites that had dominated the New Deal years.

WW flew around the world early in WW2 and gave an account of world leaders he met.

He was from Ellwood, Indiana, but was a NY lawyer.

He ran against FDR in 1940. This, despite having been a Democrat his entire life.

I read this years ago and still remember Willkie's repugnant observation about the high quality of Stalin's military garb.

Those were sick times. I hear a lot of folk talking about the present being the worst, but that hasn't happened yet.

[Alejandro Teruel · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1943, Franklin Delano Roosevelt offered Wendell Willkie his erswhile contender for his third Presidency the post of special envoy on a 31,000 mile trip that would take him to Egypt, the Middle East, the Soviet Union and China:

I had an opportunity to fly around the world in the middle of this war, to see and talk to hundreds of people in more than a dozen nations, and to talk intimately with many of the world’s leaders.

It is a fascinating glimpse into the time and the man, considered by many as one of the most interesting and promising US Presidential candidates, a Democrat who ran on the Republican ticket, a clear-sighted defender of human rights who argued passionately about freedom, independence, economic advancement and the end of colonialism:

...the world is awake, at last, to the knowledge that the rule of people by other people is not freedom, and not what we must fight to preserve […] For the peoples of the world intend to be free not only for their political satisfaction, but also for their economic satisfaction.

Even more interestingly, he includes a chapter against Our imperialisms at home:

...we have practiced within our own boundaries something that amounts to race imperialism. The attitude of the white citizens of this country towards the Negroes has undeniably had some of the unlovely characteristics of an alien, imperialism -a smug racial superiority, a willingness to exploit an unprotected people. We have justified it by telling ourselves that its end is benevolent. And sometimes it has been. But so sometimes have been the ends of imperialism. And the moral atmosphere in which it has existed is identical to that in which men -well-meaning men- talk of the “white man’s burden”

But that atmosphere is changing. Today it is becoming increasingly apparent to thoughtful Americans that we cannot fight the forces and ideas of imperialism abroad and maintain any form of imperialism at home.
[…]
When we talk of freedom and opportunity for all nations, the mocking paradoxes in our own society become so clear they can no longer be ignored. If we want to talk about freedom, we must mean freedom for others as well as for ourselves, and we must mean freedom for everyone inside our frontiers as well as outside.

But I am getting ahead of myself. The first part of the book is about the trip, Wilkie visited Cairo and El Alamein where he spoke with Montgomery, Tedder, Godfroy -the French admiral in charge of the interned French naval forces in Alexandria, and King Farouk just as the tide on the North African war front was turning; he visited Jerusalem where he met both Zionists and Palestinian arabs, Beirut where he spoke with Charles de Gaulle, Bagdad and Teheran in the Middle East to learn at first-hand about the political intricacies and the pressing needs for public health and public education. He visited and was struck by the young Turkish republic:

For the Republic of Turkey has in one generation offered a possible prototype for what is happening to all the vast area that used to be the Ottoman Empire,

In the Soviet Union he talked to Stalin, in China to Chiang Kai-Shek and, curiously enough in a brief period of truce between the Nationalists and the Communists, with Chou En Lai. He went as close to the front lines as his hosts allowed him, he toured factories and talked to foreign ministers, finance and other ministers, military commanders, factory managers, governors, and, of course, embassy officials, but he also talked to many ordinary people. This eyewitness glimpse into life behind the front lines in China and in the Yakutsk republic of the URSS is just as fascinating in its own way as John Gunther’s Inside Europe in the 1930s or William Shirer’s The Nightmare Years.

If the first part of the book focuses the trip itself, the second part, while drawing on the observations made in the first part of the book, thoughtfully draws lessons from them about the future and sketches out ideas about the role of the United Nations, the USA, and the USSR in a very changed post-war peacetime world in chapters such as Our reservoir of good will, What are we fighting for, This is a war of liberation, Our imperialisms at home, One world. There are some stunning insights:

The re-creation of the small countries of Europe as political units, yes; their re-creation as economic and military units, no, if we really hope to bring stabilization to western Europe both for its own benefit and for the peace and economic security of the world.

His hopes for a better relationship with URSS and his reading of China were not borne out and neither was his optimism about the role of science.

All in all, a book well worth reading to gain more insight into key times for the world. My late father-in-law, Jean André, talked to me about how much he admired this book and, quite by chance, I managed to find him a second-hand copy. I am grateful to him for having drawn my attention to Wendell Wilkie and only wish I had read One World some years ago to have been able to discuss it with him.

[Cameron Black · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her şeyin ötesinde Türkiye 1923 - 1950 döneminde gösterdiği gelişmeyi devam ettirebilse şu anda Avrupa’nın çoğu ülkesinin ötesinde bir gelişmişlik ve refah düzeyinde olurmuş.

[Al Berry · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book, by probably the greatest would be President (excepting John C Fremont). Willkie is an internationalist visionary and an avid speaker of American principles. He defends free speech principles, during his world tour he was present with Montgomery at El-Alamein and defines that victory as one of free speech, it was the British public’s criticism of former commanders that led to Montgomery’s appointment. He insightfully reads the various peoples of the world and harshly condemns returning to Colonialism, the old ways are coming to an end and America will lose her bank of goodwill around the world if she embraces them, harsh words are given for FDR’s embrace of Darlan. His only poor reading seems to be in China, where he sees that Chaing Kai-Shek has surrounded himself by a small group of advisors, who Willkie hopes will help propel China forward but led to closed thinking corruption and the losing of China. Willkie the lawyer son of two lawyers has unique insight and sees the world needed to become economically integrated while keeping unique political institutions for the various Countries of the World.

[Biscuits · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elwood, baby.