MORE ATTACKS ON PRESIDENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 February 1939, Page 7

MORE ATTACKS ON PRESIDENT

Criticism of War Sales to Britain

MR ROOSEVELT TO GIVE FIRESIDE CHAT

By Telegraph —Press Association. —Copyright.

NEW YORK, February 3.

While the controversy over President Roosevelt's statement on aid to Europe's democracies in war time raged unabated today, a forecast of something still more sensational than the sale of advanced types of American warplanes to France was given by Senator Nye. says the Washington correspondent of the New York “HeraldTribune.”

Senator Nye stated tonight that he had received reports that the army's most prized possession, an anti-aircraft gun director, had been sold to Britain.

The instrument, which was the most closely-guarded secret till last summer, when the “deal was made with Britain, has the power of focusing a radio beam on an approaching aeroplane by picking up the faint electrical discharges from its sparking plugs and automatically training anti-aircraft batteries on the machine long before the eye or ear can sense its approacn.

The release of this gun to Britain is understood to have occurred after the United States Ambassador in Paris, Mr Bullitt, had persuaded the President on the subject of the urgency of the situation abroad.

REPUBLICAN PROTEST. An indication that the foreign policy situation is rapidly coming to a head is also seen in the formal statement issued by nine Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee as follows:— <

“We, the minority members, deplore and protest against the un-neutral actions and secret methods employed by the President, which would not have been known to the American people except through the accidental injury to a French flying officer in an experimental bomber’s crash.

“We have no objection to the sale of aeroplanes to any nation with which we have diplomatic relations, but we insist that such secret and un-neutral acts will entagle us 'in foreign conflicts and endanger the peace of America.

“We urge the President to present all the facts openly to the American people and to uphold our traditional foreign policy of neutrality, non-intervention and peace. The American people, irrespective of party, are opposed to being committed to any war programme through secret diplomacy.” Former Representative Fish, known as President Roosevelt’s “best hater, today accused the President of entering on a quasi-military alliance with France and with the intent to fortify Guam Island so that it would bean “arrow aimed at the heart and lifeblood of Japan.” The continuous pressure on the President over foreign policy is expected to induce him to'deliver one of his so-called “fireside chats” in the near future to clarify the position and to reassure the people. OPINION IN FRANCE ABANDONMENT OF POLICY OF ISOLATION. PARIS, February 2. The Press without exception emphasises the revolutionary character of Mr Roosevelt’s pronouncement, some claiming that it is an abandonment of the isolationist policy fob active participation in European affairs, coupled with the realisation that America could not hold aloof if the totalitarian States committed acts of aggression against.the democracies. The “Petit Parisien” says that Mr Roosevelt could implement his ideas more quickly than Rome and Berlin imagine.