DON’T WANT TO FIGHT’

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 March 1940, Page 5

DON’T WANT TO FIGHT’

ATTITUDE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ACCORDING TO AMBASSADOR. NO BOOM IN TRADE AND INDUSTRY. By Telegraph-Press Association—Copyright. LONDON, March 7. The United States Ambassador to London, Mr. J. P, Kennedy, who has been on leave, arrived back in London by air from Paris. He gave newspaper men some of his impressions of how America was reacting to the war. He said that if isolation meant a desire to keep out of war, he would say that that desire had become stronger in the United States because the people understood the war less and less. It was not that Americans did not want to support the Allies or were selfish, but the one thought in their minds was: “We don’t want to fight.” Mr. Kennedy added that he thought that the feeling of isolation had been increased by the examination of mails and ships. He would not say that the American people were thinking more favourably of the German cause than they did before. Speaking of the effect of the war on United States trade and industry, he said that contrary to there being a boom, there was a severe dislocation of trade and business. “The. idea that America is sitting on the sideline and getting a lot of money is nonsense,” he said.