KENNEDY INTERVIEW

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 November 1940, Page 6

KENNEDY INTERVIEW

ATTACK BY AMERICAN COLUMNISTS AMBASSADOR TAKEN SHARPLY TO TASK. ACCUSED OF -UNBLUSHING APPEASEMENT.” (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) NEW YORK, November 12 Two North American Newspaper Alliance Washington columnists, Messrs, Alsop and Kintner, describe the Kennedy interview as one of the most fantastic incidents in American diplomacy and allege that Mr Kennedy plans a crusade for “unblushing appeasement of the dictators. The columnists add that Mr Kennedy seems to have confided to the “Globe" reporter ideas he has industriously and privately spread for some time. It was his announcement of a personal crusade'to limit American involvement in the war, for which reason he is seeking the support of, publishers and Congressmen. It is impossible to mistake the general drift of the interview toward open and unashamed appeasement. It is serious to suggest that such a public man holds theories to which ninety per cent of Americans are opposed, but Mr Kennedy’s record speaks for itself. His dispatches from the beginning to the end of his mission in London reflected appeasement. He attempted to convince President Roosevelt that such views were correct, despite the terrible evidence to the contrary from Hitler. When Mr Roosevelt sent a message to Hitler and President Moscicki of Poland, urging arbitration before the war began, Mr Kennedy angrily cabled the State Department declaring that the President should have urged a Polish capitulation. Then came the outbreak of war and Mr Kennedy, near hysteria, telephoned President Roosevelt announcing that it was “the end of the world.”

Mr Kennedy has disclaimed responsibility for the Boston “Globe” interview.