“No Harm Can Come to Thee” (September 24, 1941)
By Ralph Lee (1906-1947)
15 x 22 in., ink on board

Ralph Lee was an editorial cartoonist for the Portland Oregonian. He died suddenly, at 41, in January 1947. His cousin, Art Bimrose, was the editorial cartoonist for the Oregonian for more than three decades. In 1937, the Oregonian hired him part-time to work on printing plates. Following Lee’s death, Bimrose was hired as the Sunday editorial cartoonist.

Still entrenched in isolationism just 3 months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Senator Burton Wheeler sings a soothing and ineffective lullaby to Uncle Sam, who sees the nearby peril of Adolph Hitler, peering in. An ardent New Deal liberal until 1937, Wheeler broke with FDR on the issue of packing the United States Supreme Court. In foreign policy, he became a leader of the non-interventionist wing of the party, fighting against entry into World War II.