Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 1940. WHAT SHOULD AMERICA DO?

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 June 1940, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 1940. WHAT SHOULD AMERICA DO?

ALMOST day by day action is being taken in the United States to extend and elaborate the great programme of national defensive preparation by land, sea and air already m hand, to provide for the suppression of what the British Prime Minister has called, with reference to his own country, malignant internal activities, and to build up a closer defensive understanding and relationship with the other republics of the Western Hemisphere. As they are taking actual shape, these measures amount to putting the country into a state of warlike preparation for any eventuality that may arise. Even in this there is evidence of a great retreat from the policy of isolation and from the faith that it implies. As it is taking concrete and impressive shape, the defence policy of the United States is that of a country which feels itself menaced only less directly than the nations now involved in a life and death struggle against, aggression on the battlefields of Europe.

As usually happens in a free democracy, however, public opinion in the United States is running well ahead of the policy of the Government. In Congress and in the Press, it is being asserted ever more imperatively and insistently though as yet without majority or official backing, that the fate of the United States is linked with that of the nations which are locked in grim conflict with the Nazi hordes. The opinion appears to be gaining ground, too, that it is inconsistent with the interests of the American democracy that it should continue to be merely an inactive spectator of events in which the future of the world is being determined. Mr James W. Gerard, who was American Ambassador to Germany up to the time when the United States entered the Great War, now declares uncompromisingly that: “The United States is cooked unless she joins the Allies. We ought to be in the war.”

It might be going "(veil beyond the facts, however, to suppose that there is yet any general or growing opinion in the United States in favour of actual intervention in the war. Some months ago, a well-informed Washington commentator observed that the question of American intervention would hardly arise unless it became likely that the Allies might be defeated. No doubt the belief still prevails in American minds that the Allies will win the war, though they may not win it easily. What has developed in the United States, however, if recent indications are to be trusted, is an increasing dissatisfaction.with the limits imposed by the 'present American neutrality law on economic and other co-operation with the Allies.

Of late there have been a number of suggestions by American politicians and newspapers and now by the New York Chamber of Commerce, that aeroplanes ’and other war materials should be supplied freely to the Allies without regard to the effect upon the neutral standing of the United States. Thus far, suggestions of the kind, with minor exceptions, have been officially rejected or ignored. They continue to be made, however. Undeterred, for example, by the action of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee a day or two ago in rejecting by 21 votes to 2 his proposal that American army and navy equipment should be sold io the Allies, Senator Pepper declared that he would again bring this proposal forward. “The temper of the country,” lie affirmed, “demands that the United States give quick and full aid to the Allies.”

It must be hoped that Senator Pepper is right. From a strictly practical standpoint of regard for purely American interests, there is manifestly a great deal to be said in favour of the policy he advocates. No one can doubt any longer that the defeat of the Allies would lay the United States open to damaging attack, probably in the first instance by way of some of the Latin American republics. Neither is it in doubt that the decisive victory of the Allies would contribute in a number of ways to the safety and security of the American continents. From a strictly American standpoint, it would be an excellent stroke of policy to provide the Allies with all the war material possible, in whatever conditions will make that material available as speedily and conveniently as possible on the battlefields of Europe.