The seventh gigantic error in Roosevelt’s statesmanship was the total economic sanctions on Japan one month later, at the end of July, 1941. The sanctions were war in every essence except shooting. Roosevelt had been warned time and again by his own officials that such provocation would sooner or later bring reprisals of war.
The eighth time statesmanship was wholly lost was Roosevelt’s contemptuous refusal of Prime Minister Konoye’s proposals for peace in the Pacific of September, 1941. The acceptance of these proposals was prayerfully urged by bot the American and British Ambassadors in Japan. The terms Konoye proposed would have accomplished every American purpose except possibly the return of Manchuria — and even this was thrown open to discussion. The cynic will recall that Roosevelt was willing to provoke a great war on his flank over this remote question and then gave Manchuria to Communist Russia.
The ninth time that Roosevelt became lost in international statesmanship was his destruction of the 1933 World Economic Conference. This conference was arranged by British Prime Minister MacDonald and myself to take place in January, 1933. Owing to the election of Mr. Roosevelt it was postponed until June. At that time the world was just beginning to recover from the world-wide depression but was engaged in bitter currency wars and multiplying trade barriers. The preliminary work had been done by experts. Roosevelt called ten Prime Ministers to Washington with whom he agreed to restore the gold standard in international transactions. Suddenly during the conference he repudiated (‘the bombshell’) these undertakings and the Conference cracked and died without accomplishment. His own Secretary of State Hull explicitly denounced this action as the roots of WW II.
Herbert Hoover
Freedom Betrayed — pg. 876, 878-879
