Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1939. AMERICA AND THE DICTATORS.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 February 1939, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1939. AMERICA AND THE DICTATORS.

ALTHOUGH it. lias awakened some angry criticism and opposition in the United. States, President Roosevelt s statement to the Senate Military Affairs Committee that the United States “would back Europe’s democracies against the dictatorships in every way short of war” evidently also will attract strong support. Backed and seconded as it now is by ex-President Hoover’s ’warning to the dictators that the bombing of British and French cities would probably result in the United States entering a war against them, Mr Roosevelt s open stand against totalitarian aggression seems likely to exercise an important and, far-reaching influence on the course of international affairs.

Any modification of the policy of isolation is bound to awaken keen and bitter controversy in the United States, but in the attitude he has now 7 declared the President has reasonably good prospects of gaining adequate support in Congress and in the country. It certainly may be hoped that the American people will not endorse the policy advocated by Republican members of the Senate Military Affairs Committee of selling war materials as readily to aggressors as to their victims.

Enlightened self-interest may well be supposed to ’ have played a big part in weakening extreme isolationist sentiment in the United States and in making, a considerable part of its people willing to back the democracies against the dictatorships “in every way short of war.” At anything but the most immediate view 7, an attack upon the European democracies by the dictatorships which are today proclaiming their sympathy with Japan, and which are doing their utmost to establish spheres of influence in South America, evidently would threaten the security of the United States. Jt is, of course, well established also* that the outlook and methods of the. totalitarian dictatorships are just as repugnant to a great majority of the people of the' United States as they are to the citizens of the British and other democracies.

Too much significance might easily be attached to such a lead as President Roosevelt is reported to have given in his statement to the Senate Military Relations Committee. The generally prevailing desire in the United States, as in most other countries, is to keep out of war while that is humanly possible. On the other hand, there is some specific evidence of a great change in the attitude of the American public on the question of foreign entanglements.

The “Christian Science Monitor,”, for example, recently macle extended editorial reference to . a poll conducted in the United States by “Fortune” magazine, which causes that publication to say that there has been “a revolutionary swing of popular sentiment toward a policy; of militant collective security.” “Fortune” adds on this subject:—

A good majority of the entire public (nearly two-thirds of those with opinions) seem to be willing to join in a democratic front forcibly to restrain the dictator nations from further conquests.

The magazine observed that more than 56 per cent of those voting said that the democratic powers, including the United States, should “now stand firmly together at any cost.”

The “Christian Science Monitor” comments that it would be unwise to- make too much of this sampling of opinion and that there are very deep desires to keep out of war which will be more in evidence when efforts are made to alter the Neutrality Act in the coming Congress.

But added to other indices of opinion (it continues) this survey does disclose how quickly America responds to world tensions. Even more, it shows how far Americans have shifted from a belief that the United States could keep out of war. "Eighteen months ago,” says "Fortune,” "only about 22 per cent of the population thought that we would be drawn into a foreign war in the next two or three years. Now. more than three times that many believe that we actually would have been embroiled in the war that was so narrowly averted in 1938.”

The “Monitor’s” final comments are highly pertinent. It asks what the American people are ready to do to prevent war and further:—

If America will have to join up to carry on a war, aren’t there more measures of co-operation in which she could join to prevent a war?

That is the standpoint above all others from which it is, or should be, open to the United States to render a supreme service to world civilisation. We are being told today that the. League of Nations has failed. In the extent, however, to which men and nations are turning back from civilisation to barbarism, from a reign of law to a ride of brute force, it is not the League of Nations, but humanity that has failed. There is comfort, in the knowledge that if the worst comes to the worst the democracies of the world, including the United States, will be forced sooner or later, to stand together against the world forces of reaction and despotism. But why should the great democracies surrender the initiative to warmongering dictatorships.' Bo not morality and common sense equally demand, for example, that the democracies, while yet there is time, should use their combined economic strength to the end of defeating and restraining aggression?. In this great matter, the American and European democracies are faced by a magnificent opportunity, b?.t one that will not remain open indefinitely.