Evening Post MONDAY, JULY 3, 1939. CONGRESSIONAL REVOLT

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 2, 3 July 1939, Page 8

Evening Post MONDAY, JULY 3, 1939. CONGRESSIONAL REVOLT

By means of a limited number of votes —worth their weight in original undevalued gold dollars to the totalitarian Governments—the Roosevelt policy has met reverses in both branches of the United States Legislature. These reverses affect foreign policy and internal policy, arid the key to the revolt is to be found as much in internal affairs as in affairs oversea. In fact, the revolt may be more a revolt against the domestic side of the Roosevelt regime than against its internationalism, for the "New York Times" holds that the retention by the House of Representatives of the embargo on the export of arms and ammunition to a belligerent (and other, points on which the Roosevelt Administration's Bill was defeated) "wa3 largely the result of purely domestic factors, and was merely one phase in a general revolt against the Administration." This revolt, in its wide stride, included some successes for American isolationism and European totalitarianism. Those successes of reaction should be neither exaggerated nor minimised. The amending Neutrality Bill is not yet finished with, but it is contended that the embargo on arms and ammunition will have to be read narrowly, and that it will permit the export of many things needed in war which are held to be prohibited by the Neutrality Bill as passed in 1937. As the Bill now stands amended, the "New York Times" interprets it as meaning that it will be legal to export from America "those materials which enter into the making of arm& and ammunition" to "those nations which control the sea in time of war." In short, the President is not given the freedom he sought in the matter of war exports and financial credits in war-time, but with regard to the former he is not cramped as much as hitherto. Aircraft, it is held, will be exportable. But the Bill as amended by the House still has to pass the Senate. While the House of Representatives has been amending the Neutrality Bill in a manner unfavourable to the Roosevelt policy, obstruction in the Senate-^-organised by Republicans and Conservative Democrats —has prevented the passing of a Bill to continue the President's authority to revalue the gold content of the dollar. By means of this obstruction his existing legislative authority lapsed by effluxion of time,' and the Bill renewing the authority remains unpassed. This is a win for antiNew Dealers. The President may yet win if the opposition can be placated—placating, in American party politics, is a fine art —and if legal difficulties attendant on the lapse of the authority can be overcome. It is obvious that the action (or inaction) of the Senate is a rebuff for Mr. Roosevelt's domestic policy. As to foreign policy, it is cabled that Congressional delay has "killed the Treasury's 2,800,000,000 dollars currency stabilisation, fund, which is the heart of the tripartite monetary agreement with Britain and France." The fact that Congress has not only failed to renew the dollar revaluation authority, but has severely cut the relief votes —causing, according to Mr. Roosevelt, hardship and inequality to "more than two million citizens"—indicates how wide is the front of the revolt against the New Deal.

Not only the "New York Times," but also the "Herald-Tribune" of; New York, holds that Rooseveltian foreign policy is feeling, in greater degree than it deserves, the impact of this domestic policy revolt. Congressmen who resented in special degree "the President's insistence upon the continuance of all his emergency monetary powers" were not likely to be in a mood to be merciful to his foreign policy. In the "Herald-Tribune's" opinion, the President's insistence "made it impossible to hope that reason would prevail" with respect to "unwise restraint on his control of foreign affairs." From such opponents of Rooseveltian domestic

policy "fine distinctions can hardly be expected." Congressional wrath falls alike on the just and the unjust, and the latent conflict between the Executive and the Legislature seems now to have come to its crisis, while a vitally-interested Europe can only watch and wait.