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Flynn first warned that "ahead of us lie more Koreas. We could be at war inIndo-China," he stressed. If the U.S. won or lost, "the price would beappalling." In the context of increasing United States imperial penetration ofAsia, John T. Flynn cogently and calmly applied the logic of As We GoMarching to post-war developments.American leaders, he stated on September 15, 1953, were "borrowingfrom Fascism." That doctrine's popularity among liberal intellectuals was notunique. Flynn listed the many notables who once had been admirers ofBenito Mussolini. He included in his list former Columbia UniversityPresident Nicholas Murray Butler, Congressman Sol Bloom, diplomat RichardWashburn Child and financier Thomas W. Lamont. Fascism was popularbecause it promised jobs and security through the technique of spending largeamounts of money, to be raised by taxes and government borrowing. Themoney was then to be spent on arms production.Mussolini, Flynn continued, had initiated "a kind of statism in which thegovernment should be responsible for the material welfare of the people."Flynn would have called it socialism, but he noted that Mussolini called itfascism because that "didn't have a bad name." Yet the only new industrythat kept Italy prosperous was "militarism and war." By 1937 Mussolini wasspending 37 billion lire on the armed forces. Now Americans, Flynn noted,were emulating Mussolini. Since 1939 America had been floating ongovernment military spending. The lesson to be learned was that in Italy sucha path led only to war.In June of 1954, Flynn accused the Eisenhower administration of"seriously thinking of leading the United States into another war with Asia."Eisenhower was contemplating such a course, Flynn thought, because hefaced "the same trap that President Roosevelt" faced in 1939. In times ofeconomic depresssion, only war saved the nation from unemployment. Since1941, Flynn sadly reported, America had "been living on the big business ofwar."Without a new war to maintain prosperity, the 1950's business boomwould collapse. Eisenhower had been unable to find any substitute "for warto keep fifteen or sixteen millions employed." The national debt was up to274 billion dollars, and the government was spending two billion per monthon munitions production. Without a new war, that business would drop. Warspending could not be stepped up "if you don't have a war." It was a fact,Flynn insisted, that "war has become the basis of the prosperity of theUnited States." The domestic cost was the "slavery of militarism for millionsof young men," increased debts piled upon debts, high wage's and prices, andcontinuing spiraling inflation.xiv