Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, MAY 28, 1940. AMERICA’S RUDE AWAKENING.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 May 1940, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, MAY 28, 1940. AMERICA’S RUDE AWAKENING.

ANYBODY who understands American politics, it has been said “knows that with the Presidential election immediately ahead, no political leader dare risk an election issue turning unon the chance of America being led, persuaded, enforced into the war.” With that fact in mind it is. nodoubt to be conceded that President Roosevelt, with the thud tenn issue still unsettled and the whole question of national leac.eiship in the immediate future in the melting pot, went as a as he could have been expected to go in discussing, in his latest fireside chat, “the means of building up the national defence to safeguard democracy from the attacks oi aggressors.”

As in all his past statements of a similar kind to the American people, President Roosevelt restricted himself to t le attitude of one who is determined not to run unwisely ahead oi public opinion. Without departing from that policy of caution, however, he found it possible to condemn unsparingly the essential contention of the isolationists—that the United States can make itself secure within its own boundaries.

The past fortnight (he said in part) has shattered the illusion that the United States is remote, isolated, and secure against the dangers from which no other country is free. This rude awakening has brought for some a fear bordering on panic. It is said that we are defenceless and that adequate defences can be built and the aggressor’s strength can be matched, only by abandoning our freedom, our ideals, and our way of life. I did not shaie t e illusions; I do not share the fears.

While he declared that the United States would defend and build its way of life, “not only for America, but for all mankind,” Mr Roosevelt, as he is reported, dealt m practical terms with’the problems of defence only in noting the co-operation of Congress in voting additional defence expenditure and in giving an assurance that he would not hesitate to ask for more if and when required.”

The more important part of the President’s statement evidently is that in which he spoke of the shattering of the illusion of security in isolation. That shattering had 'been emphasised already in other responsible utterances of Ameiican opinion. About a fortnight ago, for example the New ) ork “Herald-Tribune” wrote in an editorial:—

Guns are wreaking the Nazi will on the Low Countries, slaying, burning, and annihilating, and have made of neutrality a pathetic folly. Before such bestiality, to be neutral, whether in thought, word, or deed, is unthinkable. Any doubts Americans held regarding the threat confronting them have been blown to bits.

At the stage now reached, it must surely be a very obtuse citizen of the United States who fails to perceive that the Allies are defending American freedom, as well as their own, against the onrush of Nazi aggression in Western Europe. That truth stands out clearly whether the position is viewed in detail or in mass. It is sufficiently obvious, for example as one American writer put it recently, that: —

The forced abdication of Britain as the ruler of Europe s waves would open to the navies of Continental Europe a free access to the Atlantic they have not had since the day the Monroe Doctrine was pronounced. . . . For the future, the Monroe Doctrine would have to be maintained actively by the United States, aided only by such minor help as the Latin-Amercan republics might be able to give and such assistance as the United States might be able to persuade Canada to provide.

At the largest view, a defeat which destroyed the Allied nations, or even reduced them to helplessness, would open an immediate and deadly menace to the United States. In place of externally safeguarded security on its eastern ocean frontier and an assured predominance in the Pacific, the American Republic might well find itself called upon to cope with formidable and concerted attacks from both oceans.

In a prudent regard for their own continued security, the people of the United States may find excellent reasons for taking action, if only by assisting the Allies in measures short of war, to avert the development of a situation in which American freedom definitely would be menaced. The scale on which, from the standpoint of purely American interests, that assistance ought to be given no doubt will be indicated clearly in the outcome of the great battle now being fought for possession of the Channel coast and in what is to follow.