368 J.-A. PEMBERTON
the League’s technical experts should continue to be exploited in the con-
text of post-war planning.^61
While in Washington in 1942, McDougall conferred with such lead-
ing figures in the Roosevelt administration as Henry Agard Wallace, the
vice president, Sumner Welles, the under secretary of state, and Dean
Acheson, the assistant secretary of state. McDougall had met these three
men when in Washington in the previous year and all three had recently
made statements on post-war planning in which they envisaged a better
way of living for all peoples after the war.^62
With the onset of war, McDougall’s responsibilities at Australia House
in London came to encompass what was known as ‘political warfare’.^63
In May 1942, he described such warfare in the following terms:
Its object is to achieve the political purposes of the State, either without
bloodshed or, after hostilities have commenced, to ease the tasks of the
Armed Forces. Its purpose is to undermine enemy morale, to secure Allies,
and to strengthen the will to victory of our own people and those associ-
ated with us. It is the war of Ideas.^64For McDougall, as with others, the promise of improved condi-
tions of life after the war was an essential element of Allied propaganda.
However, for this promise to be credible, it was necessary to for the
United Nations to beginning planning for the post-war world: such plans
would give much-needed substance to the broad commitments made
in the Atlantic Charter and to Roosevelt’s pronouncement on freedom
from want.^65
With Wallace’s encouragement, McDougall arranged a meeting
with Eleanor Roosevelt on August 15 as a consequence of which he
was issued an invitation to dine at the White House which he did on
August 24.^66 There McDougall talked to the president ‘about the war of
(^61) Ibid.
(^62) Ibid., 236, 244–45, 252.
(^63) Ibid., 221.
(^64) McDougall, 1942, quoted ibid., 240.
(^65) Way, A New Idea Each Day, 242–43.
(^66) Ibid., 252.