BACK IN AUTUMN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 April 1939, Page 5

BACK IN AUTUMN

“IF WE DON’T HAVE WAR” PRESIDENT’S INTRIGUING REMARK. “STOP HITLER MOVEMENT." By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright NEW YORK. April 9. “I will be back in the autumn if we don’t have war.” President Roosevelt, standing on the rear platform of the train told a crowd gathered at the station as he prepared to return to Washington from Warm Springs (Georgia) after a holiday. President Roosevelt uttered no other word. The crowd waited speechless and motionless for a further explanation of what the President meant, but he turned, still smiling, and entered his private compartment, leaving the crowd of journalists to place their own interpretation on his remarks. There was no hint as to whether President Roosevelt was voicing concern only lest Europe might become involved in war, or whether he feared that the United States was also threatened with involvement. • The. use of the word “we” seemed to indicate the latter. At any rate there is no doubt about the reality of the President's concern over the developments in Europe.

The Washington correspondent of the “New York Times” says it learned from sources close to President Roosevelt that it is the collective judgment of ranking American observers in Europe, as given to the President by transatlantic telephone, that war on the Continent is extremely probable within a few weeks.

The correspondent comments: “Accidentally or by design each elucidation recently of the President’s attitude on the struggle between the European democracies and the dictatorships followed immediately upon some overt move by or against the Rome-Berlin axis, so much so that observers .are forced to conclude that President Roosevelt is determined to lend whatever support he could short of outright reprisals, to the “stop Hitler movement.”