HOPE & BELIEF

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 July 1941, Page 5

HOPE & BELIEF

AMERICA AND THE WAR PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT’S DISTINCTION. ANTICIPATED BROADCAST. WASHINGTON, July 2. President Roosevelt at his Press conference reaffirmed his hope that America could stay out of the war, but drew a distinction between nope and belief. Colonel Knox’s fighting speech urging the immediate use of the United States Navy in the Atlantic is taken as indicating that President Roosevelt, in his broadcast on July 4, will have more to say than patriotic generalities, says the “Sun's" Washington correspondent. At the same time, Washington realises that: members of the Cabinet do not necessarily speak their chief’s mind. The truth of the matter is that Washington has undergone a profound revision of its thinking about Mr Roosevelt's relationship to the international situation. Cabinet members, instead of being used by the President to prepare the way for him, are on the contrary seeking to convince him of the necessity for immediate action. Colonel Knox’s statement that Germany is sinking three ships for every one that Britain and the United States are building is taken as a clear indication that the war is still running against the democracies. Whatever happens in Russia, naval observers will not concede that Britain has a real chance of victory until the building of ships outweighs the losses. If there is any barometer of success in the present war. that is it.