DEFIANCE OF AXIS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 4, 16 October 1940, Page 5

DEFIANCE OF AXIS.

MR ROOSEVELT’S STATEMENT. “PLAIN AS WORDS CAN MAKE IT” LONDON, October 14. Mr Roosevelt’s broadcast on Saturday, following closely the recent declarations of the Republican candidate (Mr Wendell Willlcie) has given what the press here feels is authentic notice, in unmistakable terms, of where the United States stands on the great moral issues which took Britain into the war against Hitlerism. It shows too, where the American people will continue to stand until all danger to the ideals of freedom, justice, and neiglibourliness among nations is overthrown.

The “Daily Telegraph” hails the speech as the most forthright answer yet given to the Axis-Japanese Pact. 1 1 says: “The President has restated his country’s intentions with new emphasis. He has placed the widest possible interpretation’ upon its policy of defending the Western Hemisphere against acts of aggression, reminding all whom it may concern that not merely the territories of the American Continent and its adjacent islands are guaranteed by that policy, but also the ‘peaceful use of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans’—a traditional principle of American diplomacy which has been ignored before with disastrous results to challenger. “With this Mr Roosevelt combines a perfectly clear assurance upon a matter which more nearly concerns Britain and those peoples who are in any way able to act with her as combatants : ‘No combination of dictator countries of Europe or Asia,’ said Mr Roosevelt, ‘will prevent the help we are giving to almost the last free people fighting to hold them at bay.’ That is as plain as words can make it.” “The Times” says: “If the pact with Japan was designed to 'intimidate America its failure has been disastrous. Mr Roosevelt’s broadcast left no doubt where the United States

stands and how it regards the pact. On the eve of a bitterly-contested election the President could not have spoken as he did in this vigorous uncompromising pronouncement if he had not been speaking for the great majority of the country.”

The same point is made by the “Daily Herald” which writes: “Whoever wins, the pledge to help Britain stands. Mr Willkie’ sees his duty as clearly as Mr Roosevelt.”