Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1939. AMERICAN NEUTRALITY.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 September 1939, Page 6

Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1939. AMERICAN NEUTRALITY.

it had been predicted freely in the United States V that on the outbreak of a European war President Roosevelt would at once convene Congress with a view to securing the amendment of the American Neutrality Act, he has shown no haste to do so. 11 is now announced, however,'that Congress is to meet next Thursday., In his unhurried procedure, Air Roosevelt no doubt is showing himself a good tactician. With the war in progiess, time is on the side of those sections ol opinion in the United States which favour put,ting American economic resources as freely as possible at the disposal of the Allies. Before hostilities opened, the weight of American public opinion was definitely with the European democracies and against Hitlerism, but account had and has to be taken also of a very general desbe on the part of the people of the United States to establish safeguards against being themselves drawn into the Avar. It is indicated in the news that the events of the war, and the now and lurid light those events are casting upon the policy and methods to which the Nazi dictatorship is committed are influencing profoundly the development of American opinion. In comparison with the pre-war German demands lor Danzig and the Corridor, the murderous ferocity of the invasion of Poland, and Germany’s proclaimed intention of exploiting the Silesian mining and industrial areas, about "which she had said nothing before her troops crossed the Polish frontier, are in themselves illuminating. So, too, are individual events like the sinking without warning of the liner Athenia, in which Germany has made it clear that, she intends to repeat, as far as she is able, the abominable crimes of her ruthless submarine campaign during the Great War. The American people may be as anxious as ever to keep out of the war, but it is likely that opposition to the lifting of the arms embargo, which lias already weakened, will further dwindle. As matters stand the Allies arc under a limited, but v definite disability in their acquisition of war supplies in the United States. Nor instance, the automatic imposition of the embargo on the export of arms to belligerents has led to the suspension of contracts under which Britain and Prance were being supplied with American aeroplanes. For the lime being, the Allied democracies are debarred from purchasing even replacement parts of American aircraft already acquired. On the other hand, it is still open to the Allies to buy a wide range of war materials in the United States. According to a message from Washington yesterday, it is acknowledged that ninety pei- cent, of the things necessary to wage a war can be sold to belligerents, since they do not tall in the category of “arms, munitions and implements of war.” Of the American neutrality law as it stands, the United States Secretary of State, Mr Cordell Hull, said not long ago: — I say it is illogical because, while the trade in “arms and ammunition, and implements of war” is at present banned, trade in equally essential war materials, as well as the essential materials out of which the finished articles are made, can continue. For example, in time of war we can sell cotton for the manufacture of explosives, but not the explosives; we can sell steel and copper for cannon and for shells, but not the cannon and shells; ve can continue to sell to belligerents the high-powered fuel necessary for the operation of. airplanes, we are not able to sell the airplanes. The America ij Government wishes to amend' the neutrality law. not. only by the repeal of Hie mandatory embargo on,the export of arms, hut by authorising the President to keep American ships out of combat areas and to prohibit American citizens from travelling on ships of belligerent nations. ’Whether the policy of isolation is or is not to be maintained in the United States, il is reasonably certain that all restrictions on the export of arms will shortly be lifted. It has been said that Hie present law is not one to keep America neutral, but . rather is a law to restrict al] war profits to wheat farmers, cotton-growers, copper miners, stockmen and meat packers. “ If the law prohibited Americans from selling to any belligerent any article that would help prolong Hie Avar,” an American, correspondent observed recently, “it would still be unwise, but. at least it would he honest. But there is no such prohibition, as Mr Hull has shown and as Congress well knows.” The prospect meantime raised is that the Allies presently will be able to purchase Avar supplies of all kinds from the United States without let or hindrance. Whether the American nation will play, as linn* goes on, any larger pari in the struggle to overthrow Nazism no doubt will be determined largely by the course and fortunes of the war which is now in its opening stages in Europe.