Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY. SEPTEMBER 23, 1939. NEUTRALITY AND POLITICS.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 September 1939, Page 6

Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY. SEPTEMBER 23, 1939. NEUTRALITY AND POLITICS.

TAKING action to secure the immediate repeal of the arms 1 export embargo provisions of the American Neutrality Act, President Roosevelt finds himself well placed to break down the opposition of (he isolationist and pacifist sections in Congress, particularly in the Senate, by whom he was defeated in Ids efforts to the same end only a. month or two ago. In a measure, Mr Roosevelt is stealing the thunder of the isolationists. He affirms that his essential aim is to keep America out of the war and invites his opponents to assist him in achieving that aim.

Much has happened since July, when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee refused, by twelve votes to eleven, to recommend an immediate revision of the Neutrality Act. At the conference at the White House which followed, Mr Roosevelt is said to have asked the Senators for another “shot” to fire in the interests of world peace. Both the President and his Secretary of State, Mr Cordell Hull, sought, to impress upon Senators the gravity of the European situation.

The President and Mr Hull (it was reported at the time) based their arguments on the confidential reports they receive from sources abroad, American diplomats and others. The Senatorial leaders took a contrary view of the imminence of a crisis. Led by Mr Borah, Mr Roosevelt’s opponents challenged the complete • finality of the reports and willingly accepted responsibility for delay in revising the neutrality law. i

1 i * The responsibility thus rashly accepted by the isolationists has now become rather burdensome. The crisis they refused to regard as imminent has broken on the world and they are called upon to justify if they can their refusal to co-operate in altering a state of affairs in which the United States is definitely assisting, by its embargo on arms exports, the aggressor nations to whom an overwhelming majority of its own people are opposed. President Roosevelt was merely stating simple facts when he said, in the address to Congress reported yesterday, that:

This embargo enactment did more than merely reverse the traditional policy of the United States. It put the land Powers on the same footing as the naval Powers so far as seaborne commerce was concerned. A land Power which threatened war was thus assured in advance that its prospective sea Power antagonist would be weakened through denial of the ancient right to buy anything anywhere. This gave an advantage to one belligerent, not because of its own strength or. geographic position, but through affirmative action by the United States.

The President used another effective weapon when he urged those who .sought to retain the embargo tjo be consistent and to seek, legislation to prevent the sale of copper, meat, wheat, cloth and a thouand other articles to belligerents. There is.not much doubt about the fate that would overtake American politicians who ventured to advocate this undoubtedly consistent policy. i

It is clear that in the present state of American public opinion, general sympathy with the Allied democracies is accompanied by a widespread desire to keep out of the war. So far as the removal of the embargo on the export of arms is concerned, President Roosevelt appeal’s to have gained a decisive tactical advantage over his opponents. If he had a free hand in directing and controlling American foreign policy, he would no doubt be prepared to go a good deal further than he is now proposing to go, but he has evidently resigned himself to the facts of the situation and recognises that he can act only in the extent to which his policy is supported by an overwhelming weight of public opinion. He is thus in no danger of incurring the fate of the late President Woodrow Wilson, whose policy—a policy that might have set the League of Nations on its feet as an effective agency for the maintenance of world peace—was rejected by Congress and people.

Mr Roosevelt ’s aims may appear, by contrast, to be sadly limited, but the removal of the embargo on the export of arms will be of considerable service to the Allies and obviously nothing more is to be expected meantime from the United Slates. It is not of necessity to be concluded, that the American people will continue to insist upon keeping .out of the war. On the contrary there is every reason to believe that if they saw their own inKrests and security threatened their present attitude would change speedily. THE SOVIET-NAZI PARTNERSHIP. for the reason that no completely dependable information on the subject is yet available, opinion continues to sway between wide extremes as to the significance of the Soviet-Nazi pact and its bearing on the present and prospective couyse of events in Europe. At one extreme is the view expressed by Air Winston Churchill, that the Soviet and the Nazis are two sets of rival gangsters who have discarded their ideological pretensions and joined forces in order that they may trv “Io shoot their way out, with any loot they can carry, through the G men of civilisation.” On the other hand, some of the Balkan countries, in spite of their being bitterly opposed, to the Russian regime, arc said to have hailed the news of Moscow’s renewal of active participation in Balkan allairs as affording a chance to break' Germany’s economic strangehold. Although' Rumania, like Hungary, is reported Io look askance al her newly created border with Russia, Bucharest is named as one of the capitals in which the .Russian development is stated to be regarded as not without its advantages from Ihe viewpoint of the balance of power.

Any hopes raised that Russia may set limits to Germany’s expansionist aggression should be tested in the immediate I‘ntnre by the course of events in Rumania. The assassination of the Rumanian Premier, M. Calineseu, reported yesterday, presumably was not an isolated event, but had its place in p more or less extended Fascist agitation of the kind that the Nazi dictatorship has fomented, supported, and followed ii]> by intervention and invasion in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and elsewhere. Il is no doubt open to the Soviet Government, if it so desires, to prevent the same programme being carried out in Rumania. If, however, the Soviet has entered into the gangster partnership described by Mr Churchill, Rumania is in rather obvious danger of becoming the next victim.