Willkie was awakened to the ugliness of American imperialism during his brief experience working in Puerto Rico as a young man. How did that incident shape his world view?
A year or so after college Willkie spent a few months working as a “junior chemist” for an American sugar company in Puerto Rico. One day he was out on a horseback ride with the manager of one of the big sugar plantations when a starving cane worker—most likely a fugitive, hiding out after a recent revolt of exploited cane laborers—emerged from the brush at the side of the road. With no hesitation, Willkie’s companion drew his cane knife and attacked the worker, nearly severing the man’s arm. According to friends, Willkie talked about this moment for years. Son of a labor lawyer, he had grown up in a family in which sympathy for the underdog was expected, but he would later say that this brutal moment was when he realized he had to develop a social conscience. Whether this incident caused him to recognize the larger structure of exploitation in which he himself worked that summer—the sugar companies were the main instruments of U.S. empire on the island—is less clear, but the story sets the stage for one of The Idealist’s primary dilemmas: will Willkie’s anti-colonial ideals—also inculcated in him since childhood—bring him into conflict with the U.S.’s longstanding imperial power?
How did Willkie’s thinking about international affairs, and America’s role in the world, change over the course of his 1942 trip?
Over the course of the trip, Willkie began to understand just how much the positions the United States took towards the postwar peace would shape the future of global relations. And he also began to realize that it was crucial that Americans recognize the actual state of global affairs. The war had pushed the problem of empire back onto the world stage and given colonized peoples new hope for freedom during a conflict to end fascism and militarism. As he traveled—across the Middle East to Russia and China—he intuited something that we now take for granted—World War II was the hinge of the twentieth century and so much depended on the U.S. recognizing and granting the expectations and demands of the world’s people for freedom. The trip gave him the insight he needed to convert his earlier belief in civil rights, equality, and freedom for all to a strategic vision, one in which the U.S. would cooperate with the Soviet Union to help end colonialism and usher in a new cooperative future for the globe.