BOLD VETO

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 April 1939, Page 7

BOLD VETO

AGAINST DICTATORIAL ORGANISATION ROOSEVELT SPEAKS OUT WESTERN NATIONS & WORLD AFFAIRS. ENSLAVED PEOPLES URGED TO BREAK BONDS. (Received This Day, 9.40 a.m.) NEW YORK, April 14. Speaking on the occasion of the Sesquicentenary celebration at Washington, President Roosevelt pledged the United States’ economic support and its readiness to match “force to force” if necessary, in defending western hemisphere nations against foreign aggression. The President took the role of spokesman for the west in a bold veto against a dictatorial organisation of the world. His words, apparently inviting the plain people of the totalitarian States to “break ' their bonds,” were translated for short-wave delivery in six languages to every corner of the globe. President Roosevelt reminded all men that “they have within themselves the power to become free at any time.” ■!eying rhe thought further, he said' that “the truest defence of peace in our hemisphere must always lie in the hope! that our sister nations beyond the seas I will break the bonds of ideas which! constrain them toward perpetual war-1 faro. By example we can at least show them the possibility that we too have a stake in world affairs.” OLD & SUCCESSFUL. | President Roosevelt opened his remarks with a review •of American achievements. “The American family of nations ! pays honour today,” he said, "to the oldest and most successful association i of sovereign governments in the whole world. Few of us realise that Pan-I American organisation at present has •' attained a longer history and a greater : catalogue achievements than any simi-1 lar group known to modern history. I Justly we can be pn.ud of it and even ; more rightly can look to it as a symbol j of great hope at a time when much of , the world finds hope dim and difficult. | Never was it more fitting to salute Pan-American Day than in the stormy [ present. I “For upwards of half a century the republics of the western world have been working together promoting a common civilisation under a system • of peace, finat venture, launched so hopefully 50 years ago. has succeeded, and the American family is today a great co-operative group; facing a troubled world in serenity and calm.

This success sometimes is attributed io good fortune. PROBLEMS HAPPILY SOLVED. “I do not share that view. There are not wanting here all the usual rivalries, all the normal human desires for power and expansion, and all the commercial problems. The Americas are sufficiently rich to be the object of desire on tne part of overseas governments. Our traditions and our history are as deeply rooted in the Old World as Europe’s. It was not an accident that prevented South America and our own west from sharing the fate of other great areas of the world in the nineteenth century. We have here diversities of race, language, customs, natural resources, intellectual forces, at least as great as those prevailing in Europe. What has .protected us from the tragic involvements wnich are at present making the Old World a new cockpit of old struggles? The answer is easily found, a new puw erful idea—that of a community of nations—that sprang up at the same time as the Americas'became free and independent. "We noiu conferences, net as resul... of wars, but as the result of a will to peace. islsewhere in the world, to hold conferences similar to ours, it is necessary to fight major war until exhaustion and defeat at length bring governments together to reconstruct the shattered fabrics. Greeting the conference in Buenos Aires in 1936, I said: ‘Madness of great war in another part of the world would afreet us an j threaten our good in a hundred ways. The economic collapse of any nation j or nations must necessarily harm our i prosperity. I am confident we can : help the Old World to avert the catastrophe which impends. FATALITY DENIED. | “I still have that confidence. There is no fatality which forces Europe towards a new catastrophe. Men are not prisoners of fate, but prisoners of their own minds. They have with- ■ in themselves the power to become free at any moment. "As an instance, last summer. I stated that, the United States would join in defending Canada if she were attacked from overseas. At Buenos Aires in 1036. all of us agreed that in the even of a w-r fh'-nal—on |h : ' c'mimm —we would consult to remove that threat. Yet no American nation regarded these understandings as threats. American peace has no quality of weakness. We are prepared to maintain and defend it to the fullest extent. cur strength matching force to force, if an attempt is made to subvert cur institutions or impair the inde- I pendence of any of our group. Should the method of attack be economic pressure. I pledge that the united States will also give economic support, so that no American nation need surrender any fraction of its sovereign freedom. America may rightfully claim now to

speak to the rest of the world. We have an interest wider than the mere defence of our sea-ringed continent, and know now that development in the next generation will so narrow the oceans that our customs and actions necessarily will be involved with Europe’s. The economic functioning of the world becomes increasingly a unit and no interruption anywhere can fail in future to disrupt economic life everywhere. The truest defence of peace in our hemisphere must alwavs lie in the hope that our sisiei a - :ions beyond the seas will break the bonds of ideas which constrain them toward perpetual warfare. SENATE CRITICISM PRESIDENT HOTLY ATTACKED. ACCUSED OF CREATING WAR HYSTERIA. (Received This Day 9.10 a.m.) WASHINGTON. April 1-1. Senatorial displeasure at President looseveil’s utterances rn foreign affairs was given an airing in the Senate culminating in a resolution introduced by Senator Bridges (Rcpubh•an, New Hampshire) calling on the Senate to disapprove “inflammatory <var statements by Mr Roosevi.lt and other officials.. Senator George (Democrat. Georgia). led the attack, using Mr Roosevelt’s Warm Springs farewell: "I'll be jack in the autumn if we don’t have war," as his text. Senator George said he declaiaiion had aroused "a genuine fear throughout the nation that sornejody had afforded some encouragement o a distinguished English statesman (Lord Halifax), who today said the United States is in full sympathy with, or shared fully, expressions which had just been made in the House of Commons by the English Premier." ""irilor George added he was resolved to ’vote against war and he was nviutd that Congress would vote in the same way. "It should be made abundantly clear to the European people (he said) that we do not propose to enter any European war." Senator Vandinburg. commen'ing >n the imputation of American approval of the British course, said any such action would have to come from a majority of the members of Congress, before "it will have the slightest validity.” Senator Bridges, in a statement accompanying the resolution charged Mr Roosevelt directly with creating war hysteria. Senator Reynolds echoed the charge without specifically naming the President. adding: "The only people in the whole world who are excited about what is happening in Europe are Americans. We are exercising ourselves because we cannot gel into 'war. We almost want to go to war.