NOTES AND COMMENTS

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 33, 3 November 1942, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

America’s Congressional elections are taking place today in circumstances very different from those that prevailed on the previous occasion two years ago. Then, the two main issues before the electors were nonbelligerency, raised by the isolationists, and whether President Roosevelt’s decision to break traditional precedent and stand for a third term, should be endorsed by the people. Tlie result was a blow to the isolationists and a triumph for Mr. Roosevelt, for though the President had no mandate to go to war—a question which is the constitutional prerogative of Congress to decide—the trend of the voting greatly strengthened his hands for shaping a firm policy in dealing with the Axis Powers. The whole situation since then has changed portentously. America, following on the treacherous attack by Japan, has been almost a year at war, and. the attention of the American people has been keenly concentrated upon tlie issues arising from the march of events on sea, land, and in the air, upon the problems of war production, and, lately, upon the conduct of the war and tlie criticisms passed upon- it. There can obviously bo no question whether the United States should have entered the war or not. Pearl Harbour decided that. But tlie management of the war may have -been widely canvassed during the pre-election campaign, the tenor of which has not been reported here. It will be interesting, therefore, to study American comment, on the results of the voting after the numbers go tip.

A message from New York quotes the New Zealand Minister to tlie United States, Mr. Nash, as advocating the immediate creation of a 'postwar reconstruction council “in order to define clearly and to tell the world how the principles of the Atlantic Charter will be put into practice. There has been a good deal of discussion about planning for post-war reconstruction, but responsible statesmen in Britain, Mr; Churchill especially, have preferred to take the line that, while principles of action may be adopted, as in the Atlantic Charter, the machinery and methods for applying them must necessarily be dependent upon the actual state of the world, tint! of the various countries, when hostilities cease. Obviously, the first thing to be done then will be to take stock of the general position and its requirements, both immediate and long-term. It is in the methods of meeting these long-term requirements that, it is assumed, (lie principles of tlie Atlantic Charter will be applied. It is difficult, however, to see how the vast problems involved in those long-term plans can be attacked until tlie ground has been cleared of the tasks of immediate and urgent necessity.